How to do sorties in ai

[aeromed202]

Can't quite find an answer from other places. I'm banging out an afcad for KPIE, a handful, and thought it could use some storm hunter activity. I figured out simple station to station flightplans but can't figure out how to do patrol sorties, flying out a grid and returning to base. Any help would be most welcome. Here's the afcad so far..

84322

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether this is possible in FS in the first place. I know about touch-and-go's and point-to-poin flights, but I am not aware of any way to create a flight that does seach patterns etc. There might be a way to work around it. In the Midway pack, there are fictual airports that the AI aircraft fly to , so they just happen to fly by the enemy fleet, for example.

Best regards,
Volker

[hschuit]

Can be done, you need:

- An existing or fictional ICAO waypoint code.
- Check touch ‘n go (TNG) for that WP (the AI plane performs TNGs from the time it initially arrives in the vicinity of the WP until its scheduled arrival time).
- Next leg DEP time has to be within 10 min of the ETA of the current leg so the AI plane will not land but instead will fly on to the next destination (I use 4 minutes).

In the Flightplans text file example leg below, the AI departs from RAF Wattisham EGUW at 08:30, flies to the (MAIW) Holbeach bombing range EGY1, does touch 'n goes there till the WP ETA (08:55), it does not land because DEP time is 4 minutes later (08:59) and then returns to RAF Wattisham EGUW:

AC#1,F6,1%,24Hr,VFR,08:30,TNG08:55,015,F,0021,EGY1 ,08:59,09:24,015,F,0021,EGUW

Be aware that AI Flight Planner 2 will give warnings "Departure scheduled before or very close to arrival time of previous leg" but you can ignore those.

[Skyhawk_310R]

In short, you create three text files. One for the airplane, one for the airports, and another for the flightplan. Then, you have to compile all three files and place them in your scenery folder.

Now, it is vastly easier to do this with the help of one of a number of utility programs commercially available for the job. They are not expensive and will reward your time spent. Once you get the hang of it, you can create a fleet of aircraft that operate in and out of various airports of your choice, flying airplanes of your choice. You can select any aircraft you have available in your personal collection, but you will also find that a stripped down AI aircraft performs better, unless you have a very powerful computer.

Ken

[aeromed202]

Thanks for the help. I ended up deciding just to stick with normal hops for now. I'm sending C130s to Key West and maybe the Bahamas as if hunting. Right now I'm evaluating the ai behavior around KPIE and think I'm pretty close to being done, should have something to share soon.