Tape Player

Although not present in the real Phantom, our aircraft is equipped with a Tape Player to listen and rock to great tunes in-flight!

Therefore, the Airborne Video Tape Recorder doubles as recorder and, if inserting a special music cassette, as music player.

Music Cassette

💡 The songs can also be found in highest quality in <DCS Install Folder>\Mods\aircraft\F-4E\Music\Of Ghosts and Thunder (Meteor F-4 OST).

Controls

The AVTR and most of its controls are to the right of the pilot seat, see 2.1.10.3 AVTR System for details. Status lights and its mode switch can be found on the main panel in the WSO cockpit, see 2.2.2 AVTR Control.

💡 Jester can set the mode from his UI under "Systems > AVTR Recorder".

To swap the cassettes, the AVTR first has to be turned off by setting its mode to OFF. Then, the EJECT button can be pressed to open the cassette holder.

Once the cassette is out, it can be swapped by clicking on it. Insert the cassette back by left-clicking the holder.

With the music tape loaded, songs can be played by setting the mode switch to RECORD. The RECORDER ON lamp next to the pilots left knee indicates the status and rotating it will adjust the volume.

The AVTR shows the soundtrack currently playing on its display for Elapsed Time, e.g. M01 for the first track. Tracks can be skipped by using either the UNTHREAD button or by clicking on the RCD/EOT lamp in the WSO cockpit.

Track Display

If the tape has finished playing all songs, the EOT lamp illuminates and explicitly commanding the next track will start the first track again.

Custom Songs

The Tape Player automatically fetches any song found in

<DCS Install Folder>\Mods\aircraft\F-4E\Sounds\TapePlayer

and plays them in alphabetical order.

Note that it is necessary for DCS that each song is also set up as a SDEF file in

<DCS Install Folder>\Mods\aircraft\F-4E\Sounds\sdef\TapePlayer

To add your own songs, simply put them into the above folder and create the corresponding SDEF file. Make sure to restart DCS, as sounds are loaded during start of the game.

💡 If you have trouble getting a custom song to work, try out the file format OGG for the sound file. Also make sure the file names do not contain any special Unicode characters, such as · or 你好, DCS tends to crash on those.