First of all, thanks for the reply!
But what you shown in your picture is not really a TACAN. You can even see VOR1 and VOR 2 written. This means that the aircraft is actually using VOR and not TACAN.
While one can consider TACAN as a sort of a “military VOR” but it is NOT a VOR. For instance, TACAN is usually tuned via channels, for instance 034X in case of Trenton TACAN and not as a frequency, although civilian aircraft can tune TACAN’s using frequencies but in this case they will only get the DME (distance) “portion” of TACAN and will NOT get the bearing/direction data.
After reading your post, I tried the A400M for the first time and from what I gather, the A400M modeled in FS2024 doesn’t have TACAN and that can be seen in your screenshot (only VOR’s are “tunable”). So and IMO what is happening in your case can be one of two situations:
- Either the A400M is improperly tuning the TACAN station as a VOR, something which again would be wrong and therefore somehow a problem/bug with the A400M aircraft and FS2024 or this was done by the A400M devs in order to implement a sort of a “makeshift” TACAN. For instance the A400M could be handling a TACAN like it was a VORTAC but this would be wrong/unrealistic since Trenton has a TACAN not a VORTAC (more on that below). Anyway, this is not how TACAN’s work and that’s why I used the F/A-18E Super Hornet and C-17 examples since they are realistic in this regard (TACAN tuning). And remember that both the Super Hornet and C-17 but specially the Super Hornet are also FS2024 stock planes.
- Or, the A-400M in your example/screenshot is in fact tuning the ILS for Runway 24 (ILS24) which uses the same 109.70 frequency as Trenton’s TACAN (UTR) but this would be strange as the it’s using the UTR code while Trenton’s ILS24 code would be ITR.
In line with what was mentioned above in point 1-, Trenton has a TACAN not VORTAC. TACAN can only be tuned (for bearing/direction) using a proper TACAN radio (military) equipment. VORTAC’s as the name implies, besides TACAN military radio equipment can also be tuned (for both bearing/direction and range) using civilian VOR radio equipment and this is something that I’m starting to suspect that the FS2024 A400M aircraft is doing (but I’m obviously not sure about it). Like I already said above, Trenton has a TACAN (and not VORTAC) beacon which can be seen here:
There are other locations worldwide that have VORTAC beacons like for example Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada:
Also like mentioned above, both Trenton’s ILS of Runway 24 (ITR) and TACAN (UTR) use/share the same 109.70 frequency. Could this be one of the reasons for this problem?
Anyway and to confirm what I’ve been saying and that this is a real issue/bug, below I’ll post a screenshot of the Super Hornet correctly tuning the Cold Lake TACAN (082X):
And now the same Super Hornet in Trenton and there you can see that it cannot tune Trenton’s TACAN (034X):
And next, the same experience above with the Super Hornet but now with the C17. Below I’ll post a screenshot of the C-17 correctly tuning the Cold Lake TACAN (082X):
And now the same C-17 in Trenton and there you can see that it cannot tune Trenton’s TACAN (034X):
Finally, below there’s a screenshot of the C-17 in Trenton tuning the 109.70 frequency using VOR1 (NAV1) and there you can see that it’s correctly tuning Trenton’s ILS for runway 24 (ITR) and not Trenton’s TACAN (UTR):
Sorry for the long post, but I think it was important to explain with better detail, what’s happening here. And I hope this help you solve this issue.
