Turn on “Dot labels”. Find out how to turn on and view datalink. Know which way is “indian country”.
Is pilot-speak for an AMRAAM with an activated radar seeker. The little radar in the missiles’ nose is on, and any target it finds, it’ll do it’s level best to fuck it up. Agressive little fuckers, those.
Launching it maddog means launching it without a radar lock from the mother aircraft. You just fire it in the general direction of some target and hope it’s in the missiles’ cone of view when that activates (usually about half a second after launch IIRC).
The finger things are divine. In MSFS they work ok’ish, but they aren’t tuned for it, and the mouse cursor does weird things in VR in that sim, so close one eye to get it to click right.
A cheaper, easier fix for blind-mouse-grope’itis is to put a trackball near your stick or throttle.
I use AMRAAMS when the target is within the engagement range of said missile. If you play it right (IE. fly as high and fast as you can) at a target flying straight towards you(“hot”), that can be really fucking far. At low level versus a retreating (“cold” in pilot-speak) target, the AMRAAM is decidedly a WVR (within visual range) weapon. Also great for face shots just before the merge (The moment in aerial combat where the radar tracks of the blue and red plane merge, ie, they are so close the radar can not distinguish them. It often means the end of the jousting phase and the time to do some of that pilot shit. Turn & burn baby!).
Preferably TWS or what it’s named in the hornet. The mode that allows you to keep a bead on everything in front of you while maintaining detailed track files on two or more targets. Those tracks are fine enough to guide a missile on, but to the target the radar still registers as in scanning mode, so it might not clue them in to their impending doom.
For the closer range stuff, use one of the WVR radar modes, such as vertical scan or boresight. Get a lock, shoot.
Once you launch the missile, you see a timer in the lower right corner of your HUD. First it counts down to missile activation, at which time you can drop lock (turn cold), then to missile flight time. If it hasn’t hit past that, it’s missed.
All missiles have a relatively short boost phase and a longer coast phase in their life. Once their rocket motor has burned out, they are pretty much very fast gliders. Every course change, and even straight flight costs them speed. Below a certain speed, the missile can’t move anymore and it’s called trashed in fighterpilotese.
