SgtPappy

It was indeed circling for both of us. The WSO had normal FPS, I'd say around 80. He was able to see the hand control unit for the radar circling on its own despite removing his hands from any controls. The Ghost of Jester, perhaps lol

I wonder if I perhaps accidentally force activated him while my friend was in the back! My missile uncage - which I guess I didn't even need with the AIM-9B - is on the same thumb/hat switch as Jester ON/OFF. That said, Jester was fiddling with the controls in an odd fashion. You can see in the video that he is rotating the cursor in circles and the elevation up and down through a large range - that is, in a nonsensical fashion. So if I did accidentally turn Jester back on, the bug is that he is not really searching, but rather moving the controls in such a way that he is not really being Jester. You'll notice when my friend leaves the cockpit in an attempt to rectify the situation, Jester returns to normal. He does his search and stops gyrating his controls. You will also see that when my friend moves an axis, the gyration is overlaid on top of his input. When he stops touching the controls you see the gyration remains.

Please see the attached track and video. It seems at some point, having Jester on was interfering with my human WSO's controls. I only noticed when rewatching the video that I could hear Jester callouts despite my friend being in the backseat since engine start up. Only turning Jester off solved the issue. I am not sure what caused the issue. Track was too large so I uploaded it to this hosting site (I swear it's not a virus!). The issue happens right after the MiG-19 is shot down. That's when Jester starts talking again. https://file.io/34Cv5lTvkKoA

You bet! It's one of my favourite liveries and I made it for the F-4 in Ace Combat 7 It is more appropriate for the DMAS F-4E we will be getting, but when I have a bit more time, I plan to make this for our F-4E since it's not visually too different.

This is because Jester will take your place once you hop back in the front seat. He is programmed to follow a certain workflow and so you can't really override certain things like antenna elevation, range, etc. but you can change the aspect knob since it doesn't affect his scan algorithm. If you want to manipulate the radar yourself, you have to turn him off (there is a binding and it's also on the wheel - Jester > crew presence). Then you can hop in either cockpit and do what you wish. Of course, this means Jester is effectively asleep and won't call out bandits, do IFF or any of his automatic tasks until you turn him back on.

Glad I could help! Thanks for checking it out and fixing it. I did notice though that he was responding in the video: "returning to regular scan!" but he would stay locked for a while despite being awake. But maybe his voice lines play even if he's knocked out? You'll notice he responds 3 times before actually breaking lock. Would it be fair to say if he is conscious and I tell him to break lock, that should be his next priority in his task flow? Jester being better with gain is an exciting development. He's way better at seeing things in clutter than I am but smarter gain adjustment will help me as the pilot more. On this note, I notice that when I'm in cage mode pointing down at a target, the clutter return drowns out the IFF response (I learned the hard way and killed a friendly yesterday ). I hope this isn't a big request but if I ask Jester to interrogate in while in boresight/CAGE, do you think you can program him to kill the gain and IFF the target? This way, he and I can see the friendly bars and have him respond "that's a friendly!" Right now, I need to turn him off, kill the gain entirely and then press the IFF button myself as a workaround. It would be great for immersion and also gameplay if he could do this himself. Of course, just a nice to have as I'm sure there's a lot more to work on at this time.

Thanks as always Zabu! Please see the attached tracks. I have attached one track for the boresight TD tracking. This issue makes it hard to get a lock since he's not moving the cursor onto the target. I can reproduce this every time, even when there's just 1 target merged (see 2nd youtube link). I basically point right at the target, break off and point again or sometimes at a different target and the cursor is stuck wherever he was tracking the previous target. I can't recreate the instances when Jester takes a long time to lock onto to something. Perhaps that is user error, a distracted Jester in the merge or something has changed in the latest patch. I do notice, however, that sometimes he takes a while to return to search if you lock clutter or a target and pass it and somehow the radar is still locked on to something. Let me know if you have an explanation. Need to reset cage for jester to follow target.trk Jester wont return to scan on first request.trk

Thank you and thanks for the advice! I haven't worked with the various channels directly yet but I aim to next time.

He's saved my butt 3 times in the last couple days. He's been calling one bandit followd by "and another at..." whatever position. I'm thankful for what he can do. But I still have issues when locking things. By the time he locks the target, it's too late so I've been locking manually then turning him off for the time being. He also seems to get the TD cursor stuck if he finds a bandit in boresight. The cursor remains where he last saw something then it never moves until you go out and then back into boresight.

That's awesome to hear. I'm always happy to hear about more Clark liveries, being Filipino myself. If convenient, let me know if your SME or you find some reference pictures with the canopy rail names of this jet or any other that could fit which you are not making already.

I also decided to use the templates available to make this. Working with the roughmets for the first time was fun. Hopefully I'll find the full names on the rails but for now, this will do! F-4E 68-0483 of USAF 90th TFS, 3rd TFW, Philippines.

No problem, thanks Lance. I hope you had a good vacation! It's good to know I'm not the only one having trouble. I've found a few photos of that SN but nothing detailed enough. I'll try this next. Thanks for the advice, guys!

What resources do you use to make such stunning skins? I'm trying to find 3rd TFW liveries but I'm having trouble reading the names on the canopy rails:

I usually do AAR with the F-4 with a tanker at ~400 kn and am constantly making throttle corrections. For a super slow tanker, I've dabbled with popping the speed brakes a bit in the F-14A so that my engines are at a higher RPM for a given airspeed and therefore take less time to spool up.

I've only ever used it to cage/uncage AIM-9s and AGM-65s. I do not think it has anything to do with using the AIM-7 but I might be wrong.

I wasn't able to find a bug report for this exactly, and maybe I misunderstood the function so please correct me if I'm wrong. However the manual states that: When the cage condition is present the following changes happen: Air-To-Air light in the rear pit illuminates. Trigger control is transferred to the air-to-air weapons (including when ARM and TV are selected) Optical sight switches into the A/A mode. Computer Automatic Acquisition becomes available. It appears that the second point is not true. I am unable to fire any air to air weapons using cage mode if my weapon selector is in TV mode. I was able to fire just the gun with ARM selected but Sparrows and Sidewinders do not fire. Oddly, when I press the trigger, the weapons system just cycles through Sidewinders without firing when TV or ARM are selected and WRCS set to either off or direct. Please see the attached tracks. I am able to reproduce this every time. F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A.trk F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A part 2.trk F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A part 3.trk

Yes I found this works great versus other players, especially when the weapons and aircraft are restricted to the ones accurate to the conflicts of the F-4's prime time. Then again, when all-aspect heaters come out, you can still drain contemporary aircraft of energy and deny their shots if very careful - or just use the more reliable AIM-7F/M and blow through and repeat until they're dead!

Awesome, thanks for adding this. Sometimes I prefer to think that Jester is just another guy learning the module with me, and each update is just him figuring out more tricks

Perhaps the prompt can happen while he is aligning the INS since you're just waiting anyway.

Is it currently possible to set boresight to a 10 nm display? Or perhaps I misunderstand what you are suggesting. Like you mentioned, I often lock clutter at high Vc if I ask Jester to lock at 5 nm or if I try to lock with my own custom bindings since his cursor is not ahead of the fast-closing bandit. EDIT: I found the mode knob in the manual.. I just have to try it tonight and hopefully Jester doesn't kick me out of it since I like having him track the contact's range while in BST.

I may have a dumb question but do you also use the direct seeker head when arming/in the mission editor? I assume yes because I discovered I had been attacking an SA-6 with the mk 49 mod0/1 with loft seeker and my shrikes never hit. Weirdly enough, the Mk 49 mod 1 loft head hit the SA-8 in direct mode every single time.

Right and to add to the OP, the AIM-7F only needs 2 seconds for wait time. Then you can shave off 2 seconds of wait time of you lock first and then flip master arm to on. But I don't know how that works... would any be able to explain that?

I've also found a lot of success vs the SA-8 using the 49 mod 1 loft seeker in direct mode as long as I fire from above 10,000' and even around 8 nm. Almost every shot hits. It takes 3 Shrikes to kill it though (yes, I know SEAD vs DEAD etc but it was fun to try). The SA-6... not so much. I might just use Mavs and a jammer for that. As an aside, does anyone also have the issue/feature where your Mavs are fully warmed up but if you switch to Shrikes and back to Mavs, the Mavs have to warm up all over again? Is this by design?

For sure, I was more talking about my personal experience and of those of some of my friends. We had to rewire our brains and I think that's the case for lots of people. The temptation to pull for a missile shot is often all too real and it's not as much of a kill shot as it would be with newer missiles and newer aircraft.

Really good video. I think a lot of us are really just used to turn fighting but if you look at it, US planes generally excelled in speed ever since WW2 and the main strategy since then has been to drain your opponents of speed and drop on them like a sledgehammer. Mustangs, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, Hellcats and Corsairs did this in the Pacific vs Zeros. Bf 109s and Fw 190s used these strategies vs Spitfires. Then Australian Spitfire pilots had to learn the hard way to do the same vs the Zero as well... A lot of us are now in this stage with the F-4 since most of us are used to the extreme maneuverability and highly-rewarding 1 circle strategies learned in 4th gen jets where reliable HOBS and radar-homing missiles punish anyone trying to 2 circle or extend. Energy fighting is STILL dogfighting, but the idea that 1 circling IS dogfighting seems to be more persasive among jet pilots online. I'm convinced that F-4 pilots need to go back to the WW2 mindset and use missiles and radar as bonuses, not the primary means of winning a fight.