Yes, it is telling you that your flight plan is set for you to arrive at steerpoint 4 at 10,000 feet MSL. You can change the desired altitude in the flight plan, or fly at whatever altitude you want to. Your mission success is not directly affected by your altitude. But, flying higher than 20,000 feet will keep you out of IR SAM range and most AAA. The AI monkeys will follow the altitude in the flight plan if you are not leading the flight.

Questions:

1) What method(s) do you, personally, use to find out where the enemy aircraft are? I get a little tired of asking AWACS to declare....

2) What mode do you leave your DED on most of the time and why?

1) I call AWACS regurarly to "Request Picture." If you have not selected "Radio Calls use Bullseye" in the setup (and I find it much easier to leave unselected), AWACS will respond back with the bearing to the nearest bogey group, their distance from you, and their altitude. Sometimes AWACS will tell you what kind of plane it is and how many. Another option is to "Request vector to threat." AWACS will answer with the vector to the nearest enemy fighter (Mig 21, Mig 23, Mig 29, etc...) and will not tell you about bombers or helicopters. With this info, you now know where to start looking to declare and may save you time trying to declare every contact. However, don't use this as an excuse to keep looking same contact once AWACS tells you where they are. He may have some buddies coming in behind him or off to his side, and declaring is the only way to know if the other contacts are good guys or bad guys while BVR. Situational awareness is always important.

Some older generation enemy planes leave a black smoke trail that can be seen with night vision, even during daytime.

Listen to and look at your RWR to see who may be around you.

In the sound setup, disable your pilot voice. That way, when you call AWACS for a picture or to declare, you don't need to listen to your pilot call first. You just get the answer, and it saves a few seconds

2) I generally leave mine in the default page (I think it is called the CNI?) to know what steerpoint I have selected. If I need to see something something or enter some data, I'll do what I need to do and hit the return toggle to get back to the main page.

Cane, as always your response is most helpful. Thank you.