near_blind

If you spawn on the carrier and the auto start unswept your wings, your aircraft would damage the aircraft next to you, and then there would be any number of explosions. There is a reason they wings weren't unswept until the aircraft was attached to the catapult and preparing to take off.

1. TWSA 2. Forrestal 3. A-6 4. Magic FOIA dump about the AIM-54C 5. APG-71

:thumbup: I just hope you guys aren't trying to crunch these out over another holiday season.

The green tint is the material that allows the windshield to act as a combiner. Without the green tint, the HUD don't work so good.

Did you: 1) Disengage emergency sweep? (drag the yellow handle all the way forwards and right click it so it depresses into it's slot) 2) Did you close the plastic cover? 3) Did you reset the CADC? (White button labeled 8 in this image http://www.heatblur.se/F-14Manual/_images/fuel.png) 4) Do you have a CADC light on your warning panel? If you've done all this you should only need to hit the "wing sweep auto" button.

The wing-sweep indicator has no "bomb" flag. The available options are "off", "auto", "man", "emer" and "over". Selecting the bomb mode will illuminate the "man" flag, so intended behavior Manual wing sweep control will revert to automatic control when you meet the currently calculated automatic sweep angle is also described in the NATOPs manual as correct behavior.

I'm assuming you're referencing this or something similar: http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-chinpods.jpg Broadly speaking the evolution goes as thus: The F-14 was originally planned to have an IRST like the F-4, F-8 and other aircraft that proceeded it. Generally the rationale of the time is less because airedales were overcome with fantasies of becoming air ninjas like you see in today MP, and more ECM was rapidly becoming much more powerful and capable and there was real concern that strategic bombers using powerful jammers would be able to negate the radar. A passive means independent of radar capable of detection and potentially cueing the radar was considered appealing if not necessary. Problem is that IRSTs of the time were largely ineffective in actually finding or tracking targets except under the most optimal conditions. They weren't used, and if you're not using it there's no point paying to maintain them, so they were ultimately removed from the aircraft in the late 70s/early 80s. Eventually someone had the idea to mount a variant of the ASX-1 TISEO system used on USAF F-4Es in the spot formerly occupied by the IRST for similar ends: passive, independent search and track. This ended up being the AAX-1 TCS we all know and love, and was fitted on most (if not all) F-14As and by extension A+/Bs starting in the mid-80s. By this time the technology to create an IRST sensor sensitive enough to track potential targets and the computers powerful enough to filter out shenanigans had been developed to make that type of sensor practical in a fighter. Development of the F-14D was ongoing at this time, and it was decided to keep the existing, functional TCS system, but pair it with a new IRST to give the aircraft greater flexibility and redundancy when passively tracking targets. Lastly the sketches/images of aerodynamic covers are not meant to imply the entire Navy woke up one day and decided they needed to rip all the TCS's out of their jets for a few years, twice. Things on aircraft break periodically, especially in a deployed state. The TCS isn't a system critical to the basic operation of an F-14 so the aircraft will still be flown without one present, however you don't want to leave a gaping hole flapping in the slip stream. Hence the aerodynamic cover over the hole until that TCS unit (or another) can be put back in the jet.

It should attempt to keep as many tracks as possible within a scan volume that has a two second refresh rate.

As far as I know MRPF wasn't a thing when the AWG-9 was designed, or at the total utility of MRPF wasn't fully understood. HRPF PD was used because the specification for long range look down / shoot down necessitated it. The large notch and susceptibility to terrain and maneuver understood, and LPRF pulse was chosen as the means to plug that capability gap. Why? If I had to guess it had to do with budget and time constraints of modifying the AN/ASG-7 into the AWG-9. There was already a large unknown quantity in computer driven airborne multitarget tracking. For "the other stuff" pulse was a known, capable quantity and offered performance greater than Eastern contemporaries and probably on par with anything likely to be fielded into the 70s. The APG-63 program had a different requirement specification, and chose a different, ultimately more successful path. As for why the AWG-9 itself was never physically upgraded, I would assume that has to do with the analogue nature of the set (hence the digital -71).

Gain Control: The AWG-9s wasn't great, especially compared to radars that would arrive later in the decade.

Sweet. I was just curious. Also I was mistaken. Apparently that video is VF-301 doing a CQ, Still some time in the 80's.

What's the approximate year on our Tape then? I seem to recall that video was shot sometime in the late 80s before CVW-17 transitioned to the B.

Sweet :thumbup:

Will Jester be trained in usage of the Track Hold button now that premature track loss will have a much larger effect on Phoenix shot Pk?

You guys rock! Re: extra lofty Sparrows, you guys might want to check your documents/smes for the relationship between the ACM guard and Sparrow launch behavior. Just sayin' :music_whistling:

The F entered service in the Mid 70s. The M entered service in the early 80s. The MH entered service in the late 80s. The MH is absolutely appropriate time wise.

Make sure you're not in the Cruise HUD mode. It looks extremely similar to A/A when you don't have a Target selected, shows type and number of weapons selected, but doesn't give any sensor or cueing info. This has caught me out more than once, easiest way to tell us if you have a heading tape at the top of your HUD instead of the aircraft datum cross

I shot IronMike a PM with the details on where to find it on Oct. 7th, but NAVAIR 01-F14AAP-1 August 2001 revision, page 41-56, which equates to page 864 if you're reading the PDF. The section is describing procedures for the RIO to manually assign missile sub variants by hooking stores position on the PTID and cycling between available models. (F, M and H for sparrows, A and C for Phoenix). AFAIK there were no major upgrades to the AWG-9 between that aircraft and ours, and the fact the aircraft is still largely ignorant of what is actually sitting on the launcher, combined with the maintenance training document indicating that the AIM-7M/P are launched from the existing LAU-92 are the best open source indications of AIM-7MH on the Tomcat to date. As girthy, lofty CM resistant MRM Bois have become something of a pet cause, I'll pass along anything else I stumble upon. :) Edit: also thanks for the other Sparrow updates!

The F-14B NATOPS references the AIM-7F as one of the three available Sparrow options configurable in stores by the RIO, the other two being the M and MH. This was for PTID equipped aircraft, but afaik the PTID didn't change any of the guidy-launchy bits of the jet.

The three seconds between trigger pull and launch are an electro mechanical process of transferring target data from the AWG-9 to the missile, synchronizing the seeker with the current radar configuration, and physically severing coolant, data and power umbilicals. If it were a safety feature, that would imply that either it is not a three second launch cycle, but a six second launch cycle (three for the safety, three for the launch prep), or that failing to keep the trigger depressed for the full three seconds would effectively dud the missile. You can't re-attach a coolant hose or power cord mid flight. I'm far more inclined to believe that the delay is of a mechanical limitation, probably pertaining to how the original AIM-54A was mechanized, than an intentional safety limitation. FWIW Here's a documentary from the early 70s about the system showing missile launches. There's no guarantee the cockpit footage was from an aircraft in flight launching actual missiles, but the RIO is not depressing the button for longer than a second

I believe this is a misunderstanding. The 2-3 second delay isn't a safety feature like in other aircraft. This is the time it takes for the aircraft to hand off target data to the missile and prep it for launch. When you flip up the ACM guard, the aircraft is performing a greatly abbreviated process to get the missile off the rail as quickly as possible. I don't know if it's desired that you must hold the trigger for the entire process, but I don't think it would be necessary

That is directly contrary to material I have read, however as I cannot provide it to you, I won't complain.

I'm in no way affiliated with the team. My understanding of the system is that hitting the PH ACT switch with a track that is supporting a Phoenix selected will command the missile to go active. I could be mistaken.

https://flightcontrol-master.github.io/MOOSE_DOCS/Documentation/AI.AI_A2A_Dispatcher.html##(AI_A2A_DISPATCHER).SetSquadron Isn't that what the resource count in set Sqaudron is for?