henshao

Now, as I understood it, there was only ever one production line for Eagles and the tooling for Cs was never destroyed. Some of the F-15Cs the Saudi's ordered after E production began were still 28000lb, -220 F-15Cs. But I could be wrong. Additionally, I've been told that all CFTs are made by IAI. Considering how much more drag the strike CFTs have than the slick ones, the EX having bomb racks is kind of telling

Makes me wonder if the Air Force isn't doing a little shuffling of duties. Originally, the F-15EX was going to replace the F-15C, but you only ever see the EX as two-seaters with strike CFTs. Perhaps the EX is going to replace the E, and the current Es are going to replace the Cs as they age out. As I once mentioned, take those bomb racks off the Mudhen and even the Typhoon starts to look mortal. So much for never ever ever never in 100 million years flown even on a training sortie without CFTs, though.

You raise a good point; FLOOD should be available without AIM-7 Sparrow onboard (and should provide air-to-air gun ranging information out to a few miles...)

"Ewwww, is that a target?"

Ok I see now...HPRF in velocity search mode uses no FMR at all while normal HPRF uses "3 cycle (1 flat - for Doppler speed estimation, and with 2 linearly changed freq - for distance measurement)"

how can that be, was this velocity search mode

Yes, I think R-27 use some kind of fuel/generator system

F-15 TWS should have 8 target designation/launch capability F-15 has never been compatible with AIM-7E, as it has never had CW capability FLOOD illumination cone shape should be 16 degree wide 40 degree in elevation centered around waterline

Battery powers not only seeker, but in some missiles also aerodynamic controls, and this is not an insignificant load. It is not unusual for a missile to have more kinematic range than battery life although I agree we should be sure of the actual value

I'm sorry you have to live under such fears. I am glad you at least have the freedom to criticize this. I would hate to think any man went to jail over a video game, any inaccuracy in game is better than someone losing his freedom Definitely R-27ER has superior range to AIM-7M. How do other factors compare? Does Sparrow have any advantage?

if not interleaved, TWS should indicate high or medium PRF (TWSH or TWSM) target "bricks" in RWS should be heading stabilized when the aircraft turns Gunsight/pipper should be assuming a target/firing range of 2250ft when not in STT. Basically a smarter gyro sight normally wheel braking should not be output until wheels actually spin-up after touchdown Fuel quantity indicator is from an F-15A

Based on my knowledge of the Eagle, I would expect spotlight in the Viper to be stabilized in space, which combined with automatic acquisition could be very useful when the workload starts climbing

So how about our dear turkey?

Some tidbits from Wiki talk page... F-15 allegedly has about 8 mil dispersion by comparison, shipboard phalanx CIWS 1.4 mils, dunno what the F-14 does/is supposed to

Antenna elevation control keybind moves elevation at antenna look angle degrees-per-second, should be in feet-per-second at search distance (rate logic favored on 3000fps) Radar display should bump down in range when STT target reaches 45% of the displayed range When range bumping radar display to lower range, acquisition cursor should move to midpoint of the display

just the stuff I can remember at the moment, feel free to add or clarify as correct. not going into outright missing features Bugs: Radar Range too short by ~38% NCTR has many missing aircraft types NCTR range too short ? (should be 40nm+) Guns AAcq appears to be clone of Vertical Scan! (should be horizon scan) Altitude Hold, doesn't especially in turn pitch trim compensator does not hold velocity vector steady under accel/decel CAS high AoA irregularities Stores drag too high/acceleration too low with stores Wing tanks should normally deplete before centerline Nav mode waypoint manual cycle buggy nav mode picks random airfields when switching to ILS cannot always cycle between all missiles when carrying 3+ types Empty weight of 29500 should (I think) include gun ammo

the mudhen is not my first love but I believe she carries AN/APN-232 Combined Altitude Radar Altimeter (CARA), which goes from 0-50000ft

altimeter/radar altimeter

Must not be too late into 2003...

god help me I can't resist responding to this pedantic nitpicking I know 32 cockpit units does not generally correspond to 25 degrees AoA but why don't you cut out the middle man and go tell the F-15 that

Obviously we are very proud of the F-15 over here, so a little history first: One of the most important demands of the USAF on the FX (ultimately F-15) was one-man operation of the aircraft, avionics included. Without the dedicated RIO of the Phantom and Tomcat, the what would become the APG-63 had to be that much more intelligent at picking out the real target from the clutter, jamming, and so on. Hughes beat out Westinghouse for the FX radar program when they deliver a set capable of Medium PRF: AFAIK the very first airborne set in the world capable of this data-intensive mode, and in 1972-1973 no less. So what is medium PRF as implemented in the F-15? It's an extraordinarily complex topic which is not my forte, so I can only offer a cursory explanation. I expect you already know most of this. In high PRF, the radar is running as hard as it can to detect targets. Maximum energy downrange on contacts (while the antenna is sweeping, it will hit a potential contact many many times, allowing many chances to distinguish signal from noise). The amount of filtering it can do is limited by the speed of the electronics behind it, but this mode provides the best detection distance. Range data will be highly ambiguous and must be determined some other way. Often there is limited or no capture of targets moving away, and inherently this mode filters out stationary objects (the ground) In low PRF, the radar is working almost like a sonar. Ping, echo, ping, echo. Ranging of contacts will be very accurate but overall energy output is low and detection distance suffers greatly. Additionally it is very difficult to tell what is moving and what is not. In medium PRF, the radar is only going as fast as it can allow a ton of extra signal processing. Usually the maximum realistic detection distance of this mode in fighter aircraft will be in the neighborhood of 40 miles. This still generates more radar energy on contacts (better detection distance) than a low PRF mode, while signal processing allows accurate determination of relative speed and distance. The latter part is key. In medium PRF, a target which is not moving faster than the ground in relative terms (a "beaming" aircraft) can still be determined to be much closer than the ground behind it. Hence the radar is not "fooled." From a systems perspective, normally the APG-63 will automatically transition to Medium PRF track when the target signal is strong enough. However, in the Desert Storm encounter in the video above, the target was being tracked in High PRF despite the close range, overriding normal logic to support an imminent AIM-7 launch. If a "range gate" was being employed at all, it was a very large one. When the target Mig-29 turned perpendicular, the radar no longer had enough doppler shift it needed to distinguish the target from the ground, and lost track. However, as GGTharos pointed out, when the radar returned to search, it either went into an interleaved pattern (HPRF, MPRF, HPRF, MPRF) or the pilot selected an all MPRF search, and the radar immediately picked the contacts back up in their beaming maneuver. This was probably because 1) their doppler shift was small, but still present, and 2) at medium altitude flying over the desert, the targets were some 2 miles closer to the radar than the ground behind them. Here is Hughes' take on such matters, from way back in the original version of the APG-63. The Desert Storm PSP+MSIP F-15s were much, much improved.

Without getting into too much detail about these systems, the F-15s were almost certainly in High PRF track (lock) when they got notched on that steep lookdown beam maneuver, because their selected weapon was the Sparrow which requires HPRF for guidance. Whether it would have worked against Medium PRF, who's to say (I doubt it) but it does highlight another rarely mentioned advantage of the AMRAAM, beyond launch-and-leave capability: the ability to stay in Medium PRF track for target prosecution

32 units, 25 degrees as I mentioned, the F-15E has revised AFCS scheduling particularly for high angle of attack flight, it might be superior to an earlier Eagle in the event neither were carrying CFTs. Which, my original comment was to a poster who wanted to use the F-15E primarily for air to air, and my comment was that with its heavy draggy CFTs and targeting pods it has lost a lot of the high alpha capability of the F-15C

you seem really impressed by this. We do see a period of sustained 25 degrees AoA which isn't bad I guess. But look at the sustained AoA from the F-15 spin tests that plane (F-15A) is at close to 40 degrees angle of attack IMO when "there's right rudder, there's left stick" is input (and it still takes a while to spin) if you read here they often had to put massive fuel asymmetry into this F-15A just to get it to spin at all, outside of speed-brake development https://www.docdroid.com/zmrZTQT/f-15-spin-test-program-notes-pdf