Hooking
Click a track: primary hook, yellow circle. Shift+click: secondary hook, yellow square. Click empty space, Cancel or Esc: both released. Hover a track for a pre-hook readout without designating it. Plots — returns the tracker has not correlated yet — cannot be hooked.

Readout rule
Two hooks give BRAA of the secondary from the primary, formatted for the call. One hook gives bearing and range from the B/R origin, which is the bullseye set in BR Setup, or the picture centre if none is set.

Range scale
− and + in the PPI title bar step one scale at a time (+ zooms in); key R cycles the whole set (16–350 NM); the mouse wheel over the PPI steps it too, keeping the point under the cursor still. The Zoom VAB key opens the zoom lens on the point you click next: a patch of the picture magnified, without changing the scale. The scale is the reference on the real screens: there are no range rings unless you turn them on in Geo Ctrl.

Ownship
The aircraft hosting the console is the circle with a dot, with its heading vector and callsign. It is not a contact: it cannot be hooked and has no track number. With the picture translated it moves off centre, and that is where you see where you are.

Translate
The picture normally rides the aircraft. Translate (key T) lets you designate a fixed point instead: press it, then click where the picture should sit. Useful to hold a station or a corridor while ownship flies its orbit. A TRANSLATED line appears on the scope with the offset from ownship; click it, or press Translate again, to recentre. The sweep keeps radiating from the aircraft — the antenna does not move because the picture did.

The set
Mechanically scanned rotodome, one revolution per antenna period: 12 s (5 rpm) for the APS-145 of the E-2C, 10 s (6 rpm) for the APY-1/2 of the E-3 and the APY-9 of the E-2D. The period and the nominal range are set from the platform you are sitting on; System lets you override both.

Scan
A track's data refreshes when the beam sweeps its bearing, not all at once. Between passes the symbol is frozen where the antenna last saw it, and the velocity leader is what tells you where it is now. This is the visible difference from an AESA, which updates the whole picture together.

Coverage
The picture stops where the antenna stops. The status line under System says how it is worked out:
• from the sim — the mission script is loaded and DCS reports which units each radar detects. Terrain, altitude and jamming are already in that list. It wins over anything computed here.
• computed — telemetry only: nominal range, radar horizon 1.23·(√h₁ + √h₂) NM with the 4/3 earth radius for refraction, and terrain masking by line of sight against an elevation model of the theatre. A contact behind a ridge drops off.
• full picture — no platform, no coverage model, everything is drawn and the line says so.

Platform
Auto (the default) sits the console on the AEW aircraft airborne: an E-2 as an E-2 (APS-145, 12 s, 350 NM), an E-3 as an E-3 (APY-1/2, 10 s, 250 NM), a crewed one before an AI one. Antenna and range follow the type; pick a specific aircraft to override. The choice is not remembered between sessions: the next mission may fly a different module.

Sensor
Own radar + datalink net (the default): your antenna plus what the other sensors of your side report and the participants that report themselves, an integrated air picture. Own radar only: your antenna and nothing else, to see the difference.

Not modelled
No RCS, no burn-through, no clutter, no ECCM, no sidelobe returns: the feed carries none of it. Jamming shows only as the jammer's own flag. Better a gap you can see than a number invented to fill it.

Plot to track
A fresh return is a plot: a bare dot, no track number, not hookable. After a couple of antenna turns the tracker correlates the returns and opens a track — number (T0100 and up), NTDS symbol, velocity leader. Contacts arriving over the net are tracks from the first sweep: whoever holds them opened them.

Symbology
NTDS shapes carry identity: semicircle friendly, chevron hostile, square neutral, rectangle unknown, bare dot pending. The leader is one minute of travel at present speed. A bar under the symbol means the contact comes from the datalink rather than your own antenna.

Drop
Drop de-tracks the hooked contact: the tracker forgets it, but the radar still sees it, so the raw return stays on the picture as a dot. Drop with no hook restores everything dropped.

Filters
Trk Display filters by category and can show datalink contacts only. Video Ctrl puts the raw return under every symbol. Hist Ctrl sets the trail length and whether it is coloured by identity.

Nothing is hostile by default
The console does not know the coalitions: the simulator does. Only contacts that answer on the datalink are born friendly — they report position and identity themselves, which is what PPLI does on Link 16. Everything else stays pending until you declare it.

Label
Hook the track, press Label (key N) and type the name you use on the radio: a callsign learned at check-in, a group name from the PICTURE, BANDIT 1. It replaces the track number on the picture and in the readout, it is the callsign in the composed calls, and it is shared with the GCI and the other consoles on the same feed. Empty removes it; a new mission clears them all.

Declare
Hook the track, press Declare (key D) and choose: friendly, hostile, unknown, neutral, back to pending. A manual declaration always wins over the automatic one and stays until you change it, exactly as a track keeps its identity on a real console.

Callsigns
The console knows the callsign only of net participants. Every other contact carries its track number, because the name of an unidentified contact is something the simulator knows and the operator does not.

IFF
DCS exposes no transponder, so the replies come from SRS: every SRS client carries modes 1, 2, 3, 4 and IDENT, read from the cockpit or set on the SRS panel, and the tracker collects them on the server (Admin, Transponder). AI units declare a code in their unit name, LotATC style (#IFF:(M1)[M2]M3M4). The IFF CRO page shows the hooked track's replies; the IFF VAB key (or I) filters the picture: all contacts, replies only, emergencies and IDENT only. IFF Chal (or H) interrogates: the hooked track, or every track in range with no hook. Replies ring in yellow for a few seconds, a track with no reply gets a bar, and the CRO jumps to the IFF page with the codes. DCS has no interrogator to drive, so the answer is what SRS (or the unit name) already says: the key asks now and shows it for a moment, the way a challenge works. Mode 4 is FRIEND only with our side's key, and a friend born from Mode 4 is recorded at Declare.

CRO
Character Read Out: the left column with the hooked tracks. The CRO key (or C) shows and hides it. Two columns: primary on the left, secondary on the right.

Pages
STD — kinematics and position: TN, callsign, course, speed, Mach (from ground speed and ISA altitude, so without wind it is exact and with wind it is close), altitude in thousands, identity, category, source, net, bearing and range from the B/R origin, lat/long.
CMD — what this station has done with the track: status (plot, tracked, de-tracked), which hook holds it, the identity and where it came from, how many antenna turns you have held it, track age, time since the last beam pass.
L16 — the net: whether the contact is a participant, how it reaches you (own radar, datalink or both), the callsign if the link carries it, how many stations are on the net and whether this station is on it.
IFF — the transponder: reply state, Mode 3 with its label from the code table, Mode 1, Mode 2, Mode 4 (FRIEND, NO, or WRONG KEY), IDENT, who sets the codes and where they come from (SRS, or the unit name for AI).

Dark pages
L11, ESM, CEC stay unlit: the feed carries no Link 11 track blocks, no passive detections and no cooperative engagement data. On the real console a page with unassigned positions looks exactly like this.

Keyboard
T translate the picture / recentre.
R cycle the range scale.
D open the identity picker.
V raw returns under the tracks.
C show or hide the readout.
N name the hooked track (the Label VAB key).
H IFF challenge, I IFF filter, P the PICTURE call.
Z zoom lens at the cursor; the Zoom VAB key arms it and the next click on the PPI places it.
Wheel on the PPI steps the range scale and keeps the point under the cursor still: away from the centre the picture translates.
Esc release both hooks.

Panel bar
Geo Ctrl, Hist Ctrl, BR Setup and Trk Display open the picture settings. VAB and CRO show or hide the two left panels. Video Ctrl toggles raw returns. IFPM is the In-Flight Performance Monitor: the health of the station (feed, platform and radar, coverage, tracks, transponders, radio) and the alert log; the box in the top bar turns amber or red while an alert is unread. Menu Bar hides the top bar.

Top menu
System: coalition, platform, antenna, sensor, track promotion, radar range, terrain masking, and the status line. PPI: Geo Ctrl. Tracks: Trk Display. Mission: bullseye. Windows: window list. Info: this manual.