SgtPappy

By all means! Keep sharing! For anyone who's on instagram (hopefully you don't mind, Dr. Petersen) here's the link: https://www.instagram.com/spetersen13/?hl=en My fianceé and I are big fans of your photos of cats and planes (respectively)!

The manual is supposed to teach you how to operate the aircraft though, so detailed descriptions on how it all works internally might be out of scope if done for every component. That said, some things can be explained as long as it is relevant to understanding how to employ a certain system. Additionally, a lot of the manual is taken from the real manuals so the content was more of a McD/USAF decision. Now for a very high level answer to your questions: the pulsed radar transmission is used to determine range, by timing the receipt of the reflected signals. The CW signal reflection is used to determine the Doppler shift return of the target and the AIM-7 homes in on a reflection matching the expected bandwitdth of Doppler shifted returns. Range information isn't extracted from this signal so theoretically if another target flew into the beam within the expected Doppler gate but with a bigger RCS, the AIM-7 might go for that target instead. The rear antenna is used to compare the reflected signal to the APQ-120 transmission directly behind the missile so that it can calculate the speed gate by comparing the two (since that is also red shifted as the missile moves away from the F-4). The rear seat antenna polarization switch determines the polarization direction of the transmitted radar EM waves. I believe the reason for this switch is explained on the manual, if not the 1F-4E-34-1-1 which you can find online for free. Reflections are polarized more or less in either the vertical or horizontal direction depending on what they were reflected from (ground vs rain for example), so the switch is used to filter out some of this clutter return. Similarly, most sunglasses filter out horizontally polarized light due to the reflection of light (glare) from the ground. My guess is that there was a hardware limitation or a reason to reserve CCW polarized reflections so the AIM-7 will only guide on the other 2 settings.

Thanks for these! It makes me feel like I'm being inducted into the 3rd TFS - without having to do all the other hard stuff lol

I'm not sure how or if it can be modeled in DCS, but because the F-4 does not use coherent pulses needed for true pulse-Doppler tracking, the APQ-120 and its computers can calculate a simulated Doppler signal which the AIM-7 uses (in CW mode, not pulsed mode) in order to home in on a target that is moving per what the radar believes is the target. There is no range gating here so the AIM-7 just follows the Doppler return in the expected bandwidth. This Simulated Doppler signal corresponds to target closure over time which is probably why it takes 4 seconds to calculate the signal then tune the AIM-7 accordingly. This is what the APQ-120 does with the Master Arm = ON. With the Master Arm = OFF, it uses a pseudo Doppler signal that - at least in other applications - estimates Doppler return from an antenna moving around a target or an array of antennas replacing the moving single one. I'm not sure how the F-4 applies this principle but at some point, the pseudo-Doppler technique was removed entirely from the APQ-120 and the simulated Doppler was used whether the Master Arm was ON or OFF per 1F-4E-34-1-1. But maybe someone at HB can expand on this or correct anything I've said.

Modern aircraft are amazing in their own right, but I'm absolutely in the same boat as you. These older jets are more interesting to me. I have noticed there isn't much out there on the slatted F-4 vs Mirage III in terms of Israeli pilot opinion, but lots of raw data and comparison with similar platforms infer it has better 2-circle performance than the Mirage III. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence of the Mirage being a better dogfighter but then again, the majority of F-4s by October 1973 were hard/BLC winged. Trends from anecdotes may very well be at least partly a result of human psychology and physiological responses and not just solely aircraft performance. If you'll entertain this idea: Mathematically, the Mirage III's only advantage vs the slatted F-4E would be instantaneous turn rate (and maybe max AoA?) when both planes are in a fully air-to-air configuration and maybe Israeli doctrine for air to air combat prioritized that. After all, they were flying the Mirage for a longer time and adapted themselves well to the its advantages. The F-4 also required lots of force on the stick, per anecdotes with the Blue Angels, so it also wouldn't be surprising if the Mirage simply felt lighter which would make it easier to handle in a dogfight for longer periods - a pilot could reasonably conclude this with better max turn rate would infer a better "dogfighter". To your point, Epstein preferred his Mirage III over the F-16 (great fun factor!) and I've also heard F-4/F-15 pilot Moshe Melnik comment on a similar thing saying that the "F-16 flies itself" so anecdotes are good for pilot opinion but don't always get us very far if we're trying to determine certain aspects of aircraft DACT. They need to be combined with context and data for a conclusion.

I'm assuming maybe the Israelis just flew the Mirage for so long and were so successful in 1967 that they fell in love with it and it's instantaneous turn rate. You're right, there's not too much out there to support that it was a better jet than the F-4. And the F-4 was such a versatile jet that it had to do so much, under very difficult circumstances, I would imagine that those missions were not as "romantic" and classically epic as just the dogfight missions that the Mirage/Nesher had in October 1973. It would not surprise me therefore if pilots associated the Mirage with these missions and had high morale flying them. This is just my wild speculation. Yes, though it's hard to confirm them all, lots of them are indeed confirmed. I believe the Israeli claimed total between 1969 and the end of the 1982 Lebanon War is 116.5. The 85 was all Yom Kippur War. Honestly if even half of those kills are confirmed, that's still an incredible amount in just 2.5 weeks of terrible, bloody combat.

I hope I didn't miss anything but it seems that in chapter 3.2.1 - Engines, the diagram with throttles is numbered but only (3) is elaborated upon. I believe the counter measures dispense button is explained under the ECM chapter but the other labels are not.

Correct, it doesn't precisely match the strobe display (APR-36/37) on most F-4E's during the Vietnam War. However to my understanding, the ALR-46 was around during this time, just being built for Iran's FY1971 block 56 jets (for which the ALR-46 was standard) and for some of the USAF's FY1972 jets post Rivet Haste. So it's not reflective of the battles of the time in which the F-4 participated but it still fits for the era.

Just curious... has anything ever been in pre-order state for that long?

I always get giddy when this kind of discussion pops up again because I can link the analyses that were done in the other threads. Below is my educated guess for some of the jets: And below is Smyth's excellent EM diagram analyses on the MiGs and F-5 based on real available data. Obviously none of this exactly reflect DCS (particularly the aforementioned inaccuracies with the MiG-21 low speed, high AoA turn rates), but it will give us a good idea:

Totally fair, again I agree. As you may realize everyone's got a threshold of what is subjectively realistic and what is unrealistically pessimistic or optimistic. It's totally okay to not agree on the same threshold. I'm not getting my hopes up but I think it's far likelier than what I would consider unlikely. No biggie.

Agreed with all that you said. I however feel that being overly pessimistic per your post I quoted before is more or less as speculative as being overly optimistic. The dev said they will make a Navy F-4, then that's their plan. It's not any more or less likely than any other cancelation or interruption. DCS could also one day stop existing or being popular. But just like the latter, why would anyone point out "well DCS could die one day just like so many other games so I'm fairly sure we won't get X,Y or Z modules". Things can always change and those changes can affect pretty much anything, so there's not any reason to think the Navy F-4 will be as likely to not exist compared to any other module that has released or been canceled. Not trying to argue, just a thought.

I mean, module makers don't just make a few modules then stop forever. They make one every, say 5-10 years (which yes, is an immensely long time) but that's how games work right? This is assuming the game continues to be profitable enough and I've been told the community is growing. HB plans to make a Naval Phantom at some point in time, after the F-4E, Typhoon and A-6 in the same way ED made the F-16 about a decade after FC3. Then they made more modules. And then they made more. The Naval F-4 isn't coming any time soon and I'm not going to sit here hyped for it because that would raise my blood pressure for the next several years, but it's equally illogical to assume it probably won't ever happen just because it won't happen now. That said, please don't take this the wrong way - I might have misinterpreted what you mean, but I just wanted some of those who are not hopeful to hang on to a bit of hope. One day, it is likely to happen.

Ah apologies then, I had maybe misunderstood from your previous post that security reasons were preventing ED from doing it but perhaps your points are not mutually exclusive. ED perhaps doesn't want to even look at it partly because of security reasons even though we know it can be done. Just another reason for me to beckon to everyone to come join the early Cold War servers! After the F-4, I think they'll be packed

As mentioned a few times before, I think this is why DCS does Cold War combat so well - say 70's and earlier, through to WW2. ECM was just starting to show up in meaningful ways (debatable, I know) during the Vietnam War and many assets we have in the game often didn't carry any ECM during this time. That said, I believe that ECM could be vastly improved and simulated to at least a more realistic degree than what it is now. We have the basics of deception jamming in public documents that would work on certain radar systems more effectively than others but it would be such a massive task, I can understand that it isn't the focus right now. Another user mentioned that we even have lots of information for early SAM sites that could be simulated very accurately - theoretically, if not practically. I think it can be done but maybe not just at this moment.

I too really hope for a J. I feel that the S, as an 80's aircraft, would be too out of place since it might be too much of a challenge to fly competitively in 80's servers while absolutely crushing anything in the 60's and 70's servers, unless it's heavily restricted lke the F-14A and MiG-29A in ECW. Also the J with its hard wing would make a more diverse planeset since it would have the performance of a hard-wing. Personally, I'd like it more since it saw combat.

Good point. To support this, it is well-known that radar guided missiles in DCS have all experienced strange guidance behaviour through the years so it does not surprise me that this is more on ED's side to fix. I recall the F-14 blinking jammer made any radar guided missile fail even WVR at one point. Now, it is the Mirage that manages to take advantage of rolling dodges using ECM and chaff (or so I've noticed thus far, I could be wrong).

Very disappointing to hear. Has it been reported already?

Adding further to the issues experienced above, the AIM-7s are also being dodged at essentially any altitude by simple barrel rolls + spamming chaff. I've only experienced this with the Mirage but have yet to test other jets. If it is only reproduceable with the Mirage, I'll post it in the M2k forums as well. Link to tacview (it's too big to attach): https://file.io/eZND4892GFaX Link to track: https://file.io/Sge770WFtLiB

There's an FAQ for questions like this pinned to the F-4 forum page:

Very nice pictures! Yes hopefully the ALQ-101 and the ALQ-119 become available. Although with DCS' current implementation of jamming, the benefit will be mainly cosmetic. Not that aesthetics is ever a bad thing!

This appears to be the same bug, affecting the AIM-120 and the AIM-7M/MH but I've only ever encountered it vs the Mirage. I'm sure it's happening with other aircraft but I've never managed to reproduce it with other planes: AIM-7M/MH examples:

Very good points! Thanks for the added context. It certainly didn't help that the flight paths of bombers and attack aircraft were extremely predictable in order to simplify planning.

If you ever feel inclined, I recommend Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972 by M. Michel III. Great read about basically everything you'd want to know about how the F-4 performed in Vietnam. Spoiler alert: the gun did not change anything. The USAF slightly improved into Linebacker II from better tech and raw experience. But what really made the difference was training - for the USN anyway. The USAF didn't catch up with its training syllabus or tactic reforms until after Vietnam.

I mean I can see where you're coming from. But also note that there are a lot of modules whose performance are either off (MiG-21, and until recently the Viggen) or unknown publicly (M2k, F/A-18C). It can be a downer but personally, I think it's a limitation we have to deal with - no matter what, most planes will not be exact or accurate. I'm hoping that the performance of the F-4 will be accurate enough that we will still see the 2-circle advantages it holds vs the MiG-21 even if in real life, the gap may be even bigger. There will be frustration even if everything was perfectly correct. So maybe just wait and see what the community thinks of the F-4 and make your decision then. Deciding right now that it isn't worth your time may not be any more logical than those who believe they'll wipe the floor in MP.