Contents
DKS ATC: Replay, Rewind & Drills
Every source has the same playback row above the bottom strip: play and pause, the scrubber, the clock and Back to live. A recording or a drill seeks freely; a live feed can rewind through its last 15 minutes and come back to live with one key.
Recordings
Open a Tacview recording from the launch screen (Open a recording: .acmi, .zip.acmi or
.txt.acmi). Nothing is uploaded, large files load in the background, and the scope works
exactly as it does live: declarations, the PICTURE, the Call deck, alerts and strips.
| To | Press |
|---|---|
| Play or pause | K |
| Step 10 seconds | ← / → |
| Step 1 minute | Shift+← / Shift+→ |
| Play faster or slower (0.25× to 60×) | Shift+↑ / Shift+↓ |
| Jump to the previous or next event from the playhead (lands 10 s before it) | PageUp / PageDown |
Ticks on the scrubber mark kills, shots, merges and threats; turn on takeoffs, landings and picture changes from the ticks menu at the right of the row. Click a tick to go there. PageDown reaches the very next event, even one a second ahead. Press it again to walk the events in order.
Everything runs on mission time, so a recording played fast or paused never fires extra calls or alerts, and seeking back never raises them again. If the browser stalls or the tab is in the background, playback slows for a moment instead of skipping ahead, so group names stay put. A recording is never shared with other controllers, and the top bar reads PLAYBACK.
Live rewind
On a live feed DKS ATC keeps the last 15 minutes of the picture.
- ← starts a rewind. The scope border, the playback row and the top bar all say REWIND and how far back you are.
- K freezes the picture; K again plays on from there.
- → steps forward; stepping past the live edge returns to live.
- L goes straight back to live.
Your declarations, names and assignments apply while rewound. Alerts are not raised again for history you replay.
Drills
A drill is a scripted scenario played like a feed, with no server and no recording, for practice and for checking yourself. Pick one under Training on the launch screen. The lessons, track by track, are in Training: zero to hero; these are the Free practice drills:
| Drill | Practices |
|---|---|
| CAP vs a two-ship | One group closing head-on. Practice the picture, then a bogey dope when they ask. |
| Two groups, azimuth | Two groups abreast. Practice calling the shape, and assigning one so the other stops being your problem. |
| Merge and fade | A group closes to the merge and another drops off the scope. Practice the merged call, and noticing the fade. |
| Friendly flights cross | Two friendly two-ships pass head-on while two bogey pairs merge and part. Every flight keeps its own block and name throughout. |
Some drills also list steps in the Training panel: what to do and what you should see. Steps are not scored; a time is when that step comes up in the drill.
Friendly flights cross
Two friendly two-ships pass head-on while two bogey pairs merge and part. Every flight keeps its own block and name throughout.
| Step | Do | You should see |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · 00:00 | Acknowledge the PICTURE: press P (C only copies the text). | Two groups azimuth. P names them NORTH GROUP (two MiG-29s) and SOUTH GROUP (two Su-27s). |
| 2 | Layers › Data blocks › One per: Group. | VIPER 1 and COLT 1 have one block each: VIPER11* and COLT11 (* marks a human pilot). |
| 3 | Switch One per to Aircraft. | Every jet has its own block: VIPER11*, VIPER12, COLT11 and COLT12. Each bogey reads its own TN. |
| 4 | Flights: tick Humans only, open Objects, then come back. | Still ticked, with only VIPER 1 listed. Untick it again. |
| 5 | Right-click a moving bogey and keep the menu open. | The menu keeps its size; Copy copies the coordinates it shows. |
| 6 | Right-click a contact near the bottom edge of the scope. | The menu opens upward and stays fully on screen. |
| 7 · 02:56 | Watch the bogey pairs meet. | One group of four while they are together; none of the names jumps to another block. |
| 8 · 04:26 | Watch VIPER 1 and COLT 1 pass 0.6 NM apart. | Two groups the whole way. Each block keeps its own callsign before, during and after. |
| 9 · 04:55 | As the bogeys part, click the MiG-29s, now the southern pair. | NORTH GROUP left the merge with its own two aircraft; the Su-27s keep SOUTH GROUP. |
| 10 · 04:56 | Acknowledge the new PICTURE (P). | Two groups again, named by where they sit now. |
The launch screen shows what each drill is for before it starts.
A drill starts with its friendly flight already selected as your working flight and is marked DRILL everywhere, so practice is never mistaken for a live picture. Drills are never shared.
Drill scoring
Nothing can hear you speak, so DKS ATC counts a call when you copy it:
- copy a call from the Call deck (C copies the next one not yet copied), or
- copy or acknowledge the PICTURE (P).
Each expected call has a window: on time scores full points, late scores half, the wrong words score none. Your calls are matched to the expected ones for the best total, so an early call never uses up one that a later item needed. Scripted actions (declarations, assignments, JUDY, the threat sector) count too.
What a call must say:
- A PICTURE must name its shape: AZIMUTH, RANGE, VIC, WALL, LADDER, SINGLE GROUP and so on. A leading edge picture must also say the follow-on.
- A bogey dope must name the group and give its BRAA. The panel shows when the flight asks.
- A SAM warning must give the time to the ring.
Some drills also score staying quiet. In SAM ring ahead, a SAM call to the flight that is not heading for the ring costs points.
The Training panel shows the score, what is due next and feedback on each item; the top-bar DRILL chip shows the score as you go. Try again restarts the drill.
The session debrief
The Training panel exports any session, live, recorded or drilled, as Markdown or JSON: the calls you made, your actions, the drill score and the events. Paste the Markdown into a Discord thread or keep it with the mission's notes. A debrief never carries a server address. A saved connection with no name shows as "Direct connection".
For a full 3D replay and analysis of a recording (BFM, shots, formation, carrier passes), open it in Debrief instead.