Sorry for the delay in finding this. Life's been, well, life. This was the book I had in mind:
Lake, Jon: Jane's How to Fly and Fight in the MiG-29 Fulcrum, Harper Collins, 1997, page 57.
The particular section I was remembering concerns a section quoting an unnamed USAFE F-16C squadron commander whose unit was one of those who fought mock battles with the (former East) German MiG-29s. Pages 55-57 deal with issues of switchology and poor user friendliness of the avionics.
But page 57 reads in part:
"He'll have lost lock on me as I pass, and if he breaks lock, his radar display and scan automatically jump back out to the 70 nm range settings. He can't change that... I talked to the western-trained MiG-29 pilots, who admitted that, 'yeah, our chances of locking you up as you flew past us in the merge were slim-to-none because of the way the system is set up'.
For what it's worth.
Rich