Matrix Games Forums

Ok I am playing a scen and I have had my F18's return to base and I want to get them loaded out for the next mission but they are listed as ---Winchester-- and ready in 3+ hours. What does this mean? I already have 4 listed in Maintenance which are useless for now. I can not ready 12 of my aircraft. Am I missing something? I can understand the maintenance ones but what is Winchester when already landed?[&:]

Edit: Also in the same scen I have some AV8B's that are hovering around the carrier and will not land. I have lost 2 AEW Sea Kings to this so I guess my three AV8's are next. I have looked and can see nothing wrong, I have tried many time to get them to land to no avail. I even launched some choppers to make room if that was it...

This is all in the same attached file..

ORIGINAL: JRyan

Ok I am playing a scen and I have had my F18's return to base and I want to get them loaded out for the next mission but they are listed as ---Winchester-- and ready in 3+ hours. What does this mean? I already have 4 listed in Maintenance which are useless for now. I can not ready 12 of my aircraft. Am I missing something? I can understand the maintenance ones but what is Winchester when already landed?[&:]

"Winchester" is a air operations brevity code for "out of ammo". They need to re-arm and refuel, which takes 3 hrs in your current scenario. The ready times have been discussed intensely in another thread.

How come a "JRyan" missed the term "Winchester"? Have you been skipping pages in your Clancy? [;)]

Does it say the ready time for the load-out is 3+ hours? Depending upon your load-out that is possible.

Does not make sense. I would expect - and that is the result I have seen in the scens I played so far (not as much as I would like to), that returned aircraft change status to "Readying" or sth, loading it with the same loadout as before and giving the time it will take to re-arm.
An aircraft in my hangar that still says "Winchester" and a ready-time, no loadout - that would make me ask the same question, wether I read my Clancy cover to cover or not.
As I understand the question it has nothing to do with our discussion on ready-times.

No?

I think you misunderstand the question, Winchester I knew was out of ammo, but they have landed and a while ago...I need to load them out with iron bombs if need be but I can't (see pic).

Also...when one adds aircraft on Maintenance, then I assume they are not good for the whole scen? Not sure here but if that is the case, then I would just leave out of the scen as it is a distraction to keep looking back to see if they can be loaded out.

I have had it happen to my Carrier now....seems Spain has more planes in 'Winchester' or 'Maintenance' than they do to fight. Not looking good...this can not be expected behavior..Build 444.

Have you checked that the carrier actually has sufficient ordinance to rearm the aircraft ? You get the situation you describe when you are trying to arm your planes when you have an insufficient quantity of them to do so.

I was thinking the 'Winchester' message for grounded, prepping aircraft was because the airbase didn't have the proper weapons in its magazines?

Well I always have iron bombs and there is still ATA loadouts...something is amiss with these planes and the airbase. I can reload others when they land....

The planes will try to rearm on landing with the ordinance they launched with. That other ordinance may be available will not stop them trying to re-arm with their original loadout - you need to manually intervene if you have run out of specific ordinance and want your places to arm with something else.

What are they they trying to arm with, and how many of those weapons do you have at the base ? You seem to be playing Canary's Cage. There are only 6 loadouts of AGM-64Es on the carrier in Gruppo Alfa. If you have already launched a strike using those weapons, and given you have five Harriers armed or arming with them, then you will have run out.

I understand but I can not manually do anything with the planes marked Winchester or maintenance(which I understand) here...
This is what I see when I try to do anything with the Winchester marked aircraft..

Ethan can you post a save of the scenario with the Winchester Messages.

Thanks!

Mike

Sure..Attached

Its getting worse..planes are coming back and going to Winchester Status.......If it is because of no ammo to reload last loadout, then fine but I should be able to choose another loadout.

Added questions on failing to land and running out of fuel to the main topic up top..

ORIGINAL: JRyan

Its getting worse..planes are coming back and going to Winchester Status.......If it is because of no ammo to reload last loadout, then fine but I should be able to choose another loadout.

That is the message I get when there are not enough stores in the magazine for a particular load out.

Winchester is the winchester logic. I've pinged D on this as it should be suppressed from appearing here.

I'm on a new beta so as long as I have munitions I can switch to that loadout but to be clear you cannot switch to any loadout and you're not trying to add one that you're empty correct?

Mike

Hi JR. I reported the exact same issue last week (?) while I was playing Libyan Strike. Aircraft were returning to the carrier because they were 'winchester'. There was no more ammunition of a certain needed type for the aircraft loadout (which I already knew about). The aircraft landed and were 'stuck' in winchester status for the remainder of the scenario. The loadout could not be changed.

Ok, it is as Maromak has said, they land and stay at Winchester....