Question about Briefing and Tanker availability
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Ran into an issue the other night with TACAN and UHF mixup on tankers. BMS 4.36.3 and latest Balkans.
First is the Briefing screen showing Texaco3 will be my tanker. I am scheduled to take off at 12:43
After performing my DEAD mission I head to the Tanker waypoint. When I asked AWACS for tanker, it gives me Texaco3, Y60, U000000, and says it has 30 minutes left on station??
In this pic, you can clearly see that Tex is already done with station prior to me taking off. Also in this pic is a cockpit shot of WDP at 13:44 while I’m trying to figure this out.
Per WDP I’m supposed to have Copper4 on Y59 and U226.950
I plug in U13 and Y60. I get DME yet no response. In the next pic, I plug in the WDP Uniform frequency and get clearance for pre contact from Copper4 with DME on 60Y???
Why such a jumble of TACAN and radios
Are these known issues with having a mission right at sunset/sunrise of two tankers. This was slight headache to work through. Thanks for any insight. Q -
@Quasi_Stellar I have seen all sorts of mangled tanker+AWACS information in WDP while flying ME128. I have stopped using WDP entirely for support planning. The map room briefing is usually right.
One thing that looks strange for Texaco3 in your screenshot is the patrol duration. That is usually 5 hours?
PS: One suspicion on why WDP can not show the proper tanker information is if more than two tankers are airborne. Was that the case here ?
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To elaborate on jayb’s comments…the short answer is Yes, Tanker & AWACS code is still buggy, so please keep this in mind and be patient. It’s being worked on.
With that said, looking at the UI map, and considering the early departure of Texico, it could be close to min-fuel. If there are a lot BARCAPs or HAVCAPs with aircraft that have small fuel loads, the AI will refuel much more often and thus reducing the tanker’s endurance.
To avoid this in the Balkans I ensure any tanker I expect to refuel from still has at least 1+ hours on station at my takeoff time. If it doesn’t, and there are no other tankers during the sortie, then (if time permits) I’ll create a new tanker sortie using the “Add Package” option.
As for the Briefing TACAN vs. UI Map TCN, it is a known bug. Best I can say is AWACS does have the correct TCN and I’ve had some luck with repeatingly using the “Vector to Tanker” & “Vector to Nearest Tanker” commands in the comms menu.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Jolly -
Known, M8. We, (me and guys) already noted this since U1 … there is a thread somewhere - not really important as… still a pending fix.
Tanker AA tacan “rotates” randomly?, after some time on 2D map (2-5 game mins, after loading a savegame), … hence, “breaking” mission tanker structure.
For other employments AA-tacan is fine … just tankers are affected. afaik…
Annoying, but not game-breaking… just preset TNK steerpoint.
As @JollyFE said, in 3d , Awacs will have an “updated” tacan info , so you’re covered, … well if awacs present anyway.
Cheers
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@white_fang thank you and @JollyFE for the heads up. Strangely, my next frag had the debrief showing a tanker that wasn’t going to be on station for another 4 hours and WDP had the tanker that was currently on station, and still up from my previous flight, but the TACAN had changed. So when I get to the tanker point I plug in the TACAN from the debrief and the UHF from WDP and I’m happily tanking…eyes melting…