Moonshine

Sorry but "i've seen a tv episode..." is never a good baseline to build an argument on. i bet if its true that there is flight instructors and weapons instructors within the group the OP mentions, their knowledge will be more fact based than a TV episode. with answers like this the post is dragged into the depths of the DCS forums again and no one will look at the very core issue the OP wanted to shine light upon. a lot of us here do not want this post to be locked due to going off topic too far or being just a standard internet argument.

added track. as you can see, the red DL contact is filled out (so my own ship radar has contact) at around the 40nm range (this seems reasonable), and the brick is visible below the red contact..weird that one. then i try to bug it with no chance for a solid 5 seconds, only getting a bug when the target gets within 32nm. multiple people have now reported the same issue in various posts, most notably this one: in the track as well as the videos of the linked post you can observe the same issue very clearly. Video 1 of the above linked post at the 1min mark for example. RWS_Bugging_Contact_issue_2.trk

ran the track again, here is the log as NL said, there is some sort of blinking happening which looks like it drops the lock, not sure if the lock really drops or if its just a symbology shenanigan and the lock is kept throughout. dcs.log

downloaded his track and ran it on my end, no mods, latest public OB version, same result as OP. as he bugs the first contact and fires, the lock drops as you can see from the symbology. this happens 2 more times before he then switches to the second contact to engage. after that, the locks are held with no issue. maybe run it with the exact same OB version as the one we report the bugs from and from which the trackfiles are created? if its no longer an issue in an internal build, one can only hope that this makes it into the next patch then, alongside the other radar threads

okay. getting consistent lock ranges of 30-32nm against any fighter size aircraft. guess thats the "expected" range... feels rather underwhelming at least they arent stuck in place anymore. thanks for that

Track Attached. as you can see, i am spamming TMS UP as soon as i get radar return, but cant get anything to bug for a long time. then within 20nm it finally works, so im trying to lock the second guy up in DTT, same issue, cant get him hooked. im happy with the DL contact finally not being stuck anymore but with a radar like this where you now cant even lock something up within useful ranges, it is arguably even more useless. sorry for the harsh wording, been a while that the Vipers radar is a pain to work with. RWS_Bugging_Contact_issue.trk

This. Can get radar returns (bricks) but cant bug for a long time as described above.

as Bignewy said, providing a track replay will help find and track down the issue. in addition to that, make sure you are not running any mods and see if the issue presists. this way bugs will be found and reported the easiest. i havent had any issues with JSOWS so far but its been a while since i used them last.

never had this happen in all my hours of flying the viper. got a trackfile or video that shows this? are you using any mods? if so, uninstall them and try again

This is the same issue reported here already:

not to mention the fact that the DL cuts out (at least wont get any blue icons on the HSD for your own flight) when the plane has a different Date than the mission. Happens on marianas quite often as the shift in timezones is around 12 hours from Zulu to local, therefore the mission will have a high chance of having a different Date than the aircraft (or when flying around midnight local time). However, datalink can only update the position of friendly units if the AWACS can actually see them. so in mountains and through valleys, DL might be outdated until the aircraft gets out of the terrain again edit: found the bug report

all the issues have been reported with trackfiles too and also been flagged as such. hoping to see some progress in the near future

he is talking about this: this: this: so all in all lots of things with the radar modes that do in fact limit its usefulness and force pilots to workarounds for these specific issues at this point in time. in RWS the contact gets stuck upon break lock so to fix that, just use TWS. however in TWS you cant bug anything until close to R max whereas in RWS you can get a bug as soon as he appears on the B-scope. and then the antenna elevation does not match the numbers shown next to the radar cursor so you have to first either switch radar mode or move it quickly over the edge of the B-scope to show the correct numbers again. i guess thats what he meant with "radar does not work all too well lately"..

already reported here:

agree, i think it has something to do with what is reported in this thread (Target Selection on Pitbull) i do hope to see some imporvements to the AMRAAM in this regard.

sometimes emitters seem to show up as PGM1 right off the bat when turning the HTS on. meanwhile they are nowhere near that location plus it will never update the PGM1 tracked location at all.

the Datalink contact being stuck und the HSD is an issue in RWS, while the contact bugging issue is in TWS. two separate things yet makes using any of the radar modes in A2A way too much work and often enough force you on the back foot during engagements because of that. i really hope this gets fixed. if one radar mode would at least work as intended, we'd have a workaround until properly fixed but like this, it kinda prevents you from taking A2A tasks unless self defense

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/293289-maverick-standby-after-boresighting/?do=findComment&comment=4895864

The jump to 160nm happens when the contact is jamming (idnicated by the yellow chevrons) other than that there are currently some bugs in terms of lost contacts being stuck on the HSD (when using RWS) and some things wrong with TWS

You can hit esc, go to controls and rescan input devices. No need to restart the game. Also fixes the issue in case trackir suddenly is not recognized by the game (or the other way around)

did some more testing: Interesting enough, when trying to manually bug a contact, it changes the scan azimuth to 2 and the bar scan to 3 (correct), just like it does when a contact is bugged on your radar, however, no launch and steering information shows up for the current weapon and the FCR symbology does not show anything being bugged. that is until you get closer to the target (in my test somewhere around 32-36nm, also close to R Max) and suddenly it either automatically bugs the contact or you can manually promote it with no issues. Track attached TWS Target Promotion issue_Test2.trk

the issue in my previous post seems to still exist in some cases. trackfile attached this goes hand in hand with a bugged target in RWS not being bugged upon switching to TWS TWS Target Promotion issue.trk

why not just wait and actually test it before judging it based off of some video?...