AAR refuelling unnecesary
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Add a package. Or if you have room in your package you can add a flight to that one. Typically, I keep it as a second package because then I can assign escorts to it if I want to, in the form of BARCAP usually just north of the tanker track. You can adjust the TOT option in the add package screen after each CAP flight to stagger them across the entire orbit time of the tanker, without affecting the on station time for the other flights. Especially effective if you use something with longer legs for the CAP, such as F-15s (Or F-22s if you add them to your campaign), otherwise you’ll have gaps because the F-16s can’t get much longer than ~45 minutes of station time. Even if you stagger them, there aren’t enough slots in a package to cover a 5 or 8 hour tanker orbit time. The alternative is to schedule the tanker for a 1 hour orbit time, with normal escorts, but that means they won’t be available at the end of your mission if you need them.
A typical scenario whenever I do a campaign is to pick a desirable orbit where the AI does not schedule tankers and build a 24-hour orbit rotation at the same spot for tankers (8-Hour orbits), and add escorts/CAP as required. Then I put one of the STPT Lines over the track so I can A) Always put the package back in the same spot when I am scheduling it, and B) always know where there is a tanker available when I’m in flight. Really useful on the long hauls later in the campaign, especially for CAS missions where you might burn 80% of your gas looking for a target to drop on.
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As I said before, schedule a tanker package every time I create a package for myself, and coordinate the arrival at a given location–IE: Tanker goes on station at their STPT 5, which is the same time and location of my STPT 2 (enroute). Tanker Station time is ~3-3.5 hours, or my anticipated mission duration +10%. Doing it this way has the advantage of always knowing they will be at the right place and the right time. But it can potentially eat up the tankers in the squadron if your sortie turnaround times are too fast, and they won’t be available if your mission runs longer than anticipated.
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Mort, thx for the info, it opens some interesting possibilities. In my campaign BfB ,I mainly fly Hornets and the carrier is off the west coast of Italy. My ingress route generally crosses the east coast around the same area(and it’s my normal Fence Point) and that’s a perfect place for a tanker track.
As I previously wrote, in most of my missions I don’t need AAR, but would welcome to include that, if only just for fun.
I presume putting in the 24 hour tanker cover is explained in the BMS Manual? -
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Not likely. Just add a package and set a time for it to be on station, say at 1000. Then add another package with the timing 8 hours later at 1800, then another later at 0200. If I recall, the Add Flight dialogue defaults the orbit time to 5hrs for tankers, so you’ll need to adjust it. You probably won’t be able to add the later flights right away because it is too far away, so after your first mission before you take off again do the second one, then the same for the third after another flight. Rinse and repeat for day 2.
If you are adding fighters in (Which you probably need in BfB regardless of where you put the tanker), you’ll want to add the first flight with ToT the same as the tanker. After you click the ok or add button or whatever it is on the STPT configuration tab for that flight, change the ToT on the (still open) add package screen. It will keep the existing flights with their timing and any new flight you add will have timing with the new time you just changed it to. Make sure to do it with the ToT option selected, not the Takeoff time. Then change it again and add another flight, etc… until you have all the fighter flights scheduled.
What about adding a tanker to any other location you’d need it and place a new line? Unless you always need it at the same place, of course. I’d say naming it a 24 hours tanker cover is a bit confusing to someone who is not totally used to package fragging, it’s simply the repetition of the same package as many times as needed on the same place.
drtbkj, you can also plan a tanker for an hour in a place you need it for one specific mission. It’s an interesting pattern too, limited HAVCAP time needed, limited amount of resources allocated.
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I’m late to the party, but here are my two cents.
When the campaign has advanced and my team has air superiority, I like to go on anti-anything search and destroy missions. But lugging around two fuel tanks plus ecm plus draggy bombs plus some air-to-air weapons leaves the viper quite unwieldy, and some searches don’t turn out anything. So before going back over enemy territory, I refill my tanks in case I have to jettison stores and start burning and turning and yanking and banking like crazy. It’s not good to jettison your external fuel tanks to get rid off the weight and drag, only to find out that they had been used up long ago and the engine has been feeding from the internal tanks for a while, and you may not have enough fuel to burn off back to friendly airspace.
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I’m late to the party, but here are my two cents.
When the campaign has advanced and my team has air superiority, I like to go on anti-anything search and destroy missions. But lugging around two fuel tanks plus ecm plus draggy bombs plus some air-to-air weapons leaves the viper quite unwieldy, and some searches don’t turn out anything. So before going back over enemy territory, I refill my tanks in case I have to jettison stores and start burning and turning and yanking and banking like crazy. It’s not good to jettison your external fuel tanks to get rid off the weight and drag, only to find out that they had been used up long ago and the engine has been feeding from the internal tanks for a while, and you may not have enough fuel to burn off back to friendly airspace.
H, your post made me remember my mission last night. It was a fairly long range simple in and out strike against a Depot. I thought about carrying 2 drop tanks instead of 120’s,as we supposedly had air superiority, but didn’t. So, of course what happens, Bandits were flying.
So, of course by the time the strike part is done I’m low on fuel. What I’ve been doing is having my divert field set up. I try to put a stearpoint over my divert field. What I would like to do , and at some point will start playing with, is putting a tanker up and including AAR in my missions like you say.
BTW, I generally do not drop my tanks. -
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It is a multi-role fighter yes, but deep strike in a contested environment is not how the aircraft is used.
That would be mudhen territory.
Too bad it doesn’t carry HARMs, otherwise that thing could do anything. -
I found AAR is not needed normally, at least at the Korean Campaign missions I flew.-
Fortunately for me, as I can hardly finish the procedure succesfully.-
Is there a mission or situation in which it turns useful or mandatory ?
ThanksYou know you don’t always have to follow the script. I find myself refueling at least twice during deep strike missions. I fight until the last bullet “that’s my motto”. After delivering my package, clearing out the skies is my next objective. A typical deep strike mission would take me 3 hour with a few AAR.
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There is a long-range TE (I forget the name … it’s included with the the BMS install). It has a refuel stop … always fun to see a couple other flights in formation, waiting for their turn to refuel.
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It is a multi-role fighter yes, but deep strike in a contested environment is not how the aircraft is used. Hence why you have to get creative to do the campaigns, and flight planning sometimes feels much more complicated than it should.
Operation Opera being an exception.
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Operation Opera being an exception.
You can’t contest an airspace if the enemy doesn’t know you are there, when he does you are already gone, and you only make one sortie.