Brian,
The TACAN wheel was a device that individual pilots constructed for their own use...There was a particularly good design in circulation and I used that. As far as I can remember, it was a device with only one moving wheel sandwiched between two layers of perspex and a map. My fading memory suggests that the rotating wheel had range circles radiating out from the pivot and somewhere there was a bearing scale. The idea was that you could somehow correlate three TACAN beacon Range readings. I think you used a chinagraph pencil to mark the front window of perspex and get a quick fix using the range readings only.
To be honest, we didn't use it much on the Mark 2 simulator because that had the "Offset TACAN" facility, so you could move an existing TACAN beacon "virtually" by dialling in an "Offset bearing and distance". By selecting a switch in the HSI to "Offset" the TACAN display at its centre would steer and range you, NOT to the TACAN beacon but to its offset position. The Offset switch was a bit of a trap if you forgot to switch it back to "Normal"...this might result in you homing in on base, short of fuel, only to discover when you got there, that you had in fact homed to an offset position seventy miles away!
I made the wheel when I was training on the Mk 1 sim at Coltishall...The Mark 1 did not have the TACAN offset capability. So it became a bit redundant when I moved to the Mark 2 sim at Leconfield.
Ewan...As I was a Lightning Mk2 Simulator instructor, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about something it didn't have...Auto Attack
...On the Mk2 Lightning SOP, you climbed from take-off to 36,000 feet at the "Loiter Gate" and then flew the loiter holding pattern. You would be advised by Ground Radar of a incoming threat and when you had it showing on your own radar then you would manipulate it to guide you round an attacking curve to attack from behind and below the target. During this manoeuvering you would be in full reheat and accelerating to at least M1.6...The targets for this exercise were always at 56,000 feet and the final part of the attack was an "Energy Climb", arming and obtaining missile aquire...Then you would use the Pilot Attack Sight for the last bit till you got "Range Brackets" show...Fire the missiles and fall back down out of space and back to the Troposphere. It was normal in this SOP sim exercise to find then that the weather had clamped at base and you would be diverted (a nice "Offset TACAN exercise)
