xxJohnxx

The radar launch light definitely works in some occasions. The IR lights are broken and will be fixed. The flood lights are not implemented yet.

Hi, Recently I got a problem with this forum. It just forgets which posts I have already read and which I haven't. Whenever I log on (boot up PC and Firefox), it will show all the posts being read. Only when I stay online (have the Tab open) unread posts will start to show up (the posts made while I have been online). I know this happened to me some years ago, but now it started to occur again. Any ideas on what is going on? It's quit hard to keep track of the new posts manually and I start to miss out on a lot of conversations. Thanks, John

I actually start to doubt that it is the Tomcat. It is getting way to obvious to actually be an F-14. While the name "Leatherneck" suggests the US Marines, are we actually sure that the Marines in focus are the US ones? Other countries have Marines too, though they mostly don't have their own aircraft. Maybe it is all a swift plan to mislead us into thinking something while they bring us DCS Plot Twist? Half Life 3 confirmed!

While this is true, I wouldn't worry to much about it. Yes, an SSD will degrade over time when doing a lot of read/write cycles, however if you are not doing insane amounts of those you should be fine. While you get some "theoretical" loss of space, you won't even notice it. A 500GB SSD normally has around 750GB of internal storage, those spare 250GB are there for replacing failed parts of the initial 500GB. Only after you have burned through 250GB of your SSDs storage space, you will start to notice a loss. And thrust me, this won't happen within a couple of years, after which the SSD will be horribly outdated anyway. While I do recommend a normal HDD for data storage as well (it's just so much cheaper than an SSD) you don't have to worry about degrading your SSD to much. :smilewink:

Very easy: If you want a system that fits your need, build it yourself. If you want to waste money on some medium end system, buy Alienware. Just look at their "detailed" information: It's not even stated which video card it is! For all we know it could be a 560 or something like that. Given that Alienware often use low-end cards, I wouldn't be surprised. This is not want you want to look for when you are buying a gaming PC. A small case often means bad airflow, which normally results in reduced performance. On such a small case I even doubt there is a "normal" graphics card included. It is probably some laptop version, which will be trimmed for low heat production and low power consumption, not for performance. My tip: If you want a console, buy a console. If you want to do PC gaming, build your own system.

A glorious mess! I definitely would love that!

This starts to look very good! Really looking forward to this helicopter! ;)

I rolled back to 344.11 yesterday, as the 344.48 would give me flickering of the taskbar, windows explorer and Firefox. Not sure to what's the cause for that problem. However, doing a quick search in google didn't bring any fixes for the problem unfortunately, so I had to roll back.

This is not completely true for newer systems, and is only partially true for older systems. Tracking someone at a low level is not to complicated. Yes, sure there are some conditions where you can't track a target, but most of the time it shouldn't be a problem. For example the old S-75 (SA-2) had the possibility to engage stationary ground targets with it's missiles. Even if radar tracking would be a problem, most SAM systems are capable of different tracking modes, such as manual or automatic optical tracking. A bigger problem are the missiles themselves. The fuse systems often send out radio waves in all directions and when those radio waves hit something within for example 300m, the missile would detonate. Now if you have a target flying at 150m above ground, and the missile is flying at the same altitude, it will detonate just because of the reflections from terrain. This was a problem at the early days of SAM systems, however it soon became a non-factor because of improved fusing mechanisms. Also diving missiles into the ground (which is very effective in DCS) is almost impossible against modern airframes, as improved guidance methods prevent the missiles to dive below the target, and therefore it can't hit the ground before the target does. If at all, the SAM systems in DCS are currently underpowered. Air defence systems seldom operate alone, but rather in huge command networks that have the ability to share targets over data link and perform ambushes. It could be very likely that you fly over an area and you have some distant contacts on your RWR, when suddenly a new contact on the RWR pops up, which is an SA-11 just sitting under you, already guiding two missiles in against you. Also a single SAM system would operate different from what it does currently in DCS. Turning on tracking radars several minutes before firing and keeping it on during the whole time of missile flight is just asking for getting shot at by ARMs. If I am at it, I would recommend to have a look at Samsim (https://sites.google.com/site/samsimulator1972/home). This free simulator allows you to play some historical scenarios with the SA-2, SA-3, SA-4, SA-5, SA-8 as well as the Shilka in a very high simulation level. As some of these systems are available in DCS as well, you can actually see how underpowered they are. I hope the SAM systems will get some love once the FA-18 is coming out. Firing ARMs at the derp SAMs we currently have is no challenge.

Well, who knows. It started off as a bug report, came past a somewhat technical explanation on why things are how they are and finally started to become a suggestion how to improve the real radar. A bit strange, but if you ask me, interesting none the less! :pilotfly:

I hope my posts in this discussion where not interpreted as such. It was meant to try and figure out what's going with the radar and see how it works instead of pointing out something that is wrong. Although I haven't found anything yet that seems wrong anyway.

That was the post where Cobra corrected himself, saying that it was not flown by the USMC.

Yes, this is a good point actually. This is also something that confuses me. This German MiG site has a lot of information about the export version used by Germany. Unfortunately their data is about the RP-21, where it says that the dead zone is from 0-300m and the ranging zone begins at 500m. However, I am not sure how it looks about the RP-22SM simulated. It is very hard to find any information on that online. It appears to be even harder to find any information about the ASP sight. Hard to tell what is correct and what is not. In such situations knowing Russian would come in handy, because there seem to be quite a lot of knowledgable guys over in the Russian parts of this forum.

I had a look into it today. It turns out they really seem to be using software PWM, as the LEDs operate at a frequency of 200Hz, which is far lower than usual hardware PWM. Nevertheless 200Hz is 4 times faster than the visible limit of 48Hz, so this should not be a problem in that regard. While having it open, I started to see the flickering as well. On the lowest brightness level it is hardly noticeable, but it is there. With the equipment I have at home, I don't really have the chance to figure out where that is coming from unfortunately. The only thing that could be somewhat related, that some of the internal connectors had a 50Hz signal going over them. I don't know where it is coming from (could be inducted over electro-magnetic fields, could come over the USB line or might even be intentional), and I don't know if it has anything to do with the problem at all. It's just very close to the critical 48Hz, which is why it came to my attention. It just seems this is present on the most TM Warthogs, while most users probably don't even know it. So I wouldn't worry to much and maybe turn the brightness up to the next higher setting. Best regards, John

Though in a helo, even flying at 10ft above ground, you don't have to worry about radar detection. Every radar that barley has LOS on you, will know you are there. Rotors make for great radar wave reflectors. :joystick:

Okay, as promised, let's talk about the radar and the ground clutter it displays: Let's first take a look at this screenshot: In this situation, the aircraft is flying level, 500m above the ground. If you look at the radar screen you can see ground clutter returns from 0 to 5km. Now let's draw something in paint and do some maths: Yes, I do have the paint skills of a 5 year old. If our altitude is h = 500m and the radar scans 1,5° below the horizon (angle a) (stabilised) we can calculate the distance d where the ground clutter should appear on the screen. d = h / tan(a) = 500m / tan(1,5°) = 19094m This means, that the lowest part of the radar beam intercepts the terrain at an distance of 19km. Therefore the ground clutter indications have to start in that distance and continue to the maximum range of 30km. But wait, in the screenshot I posted there are no reflections up there. The only reflections we can see are from 0 up to 5km. This is well within the 19km it takes for the lower part of the radar beam to intercept the ground (and therefore we should not be able to see it). So in theory our radar should not even be able to see that ground clutter at that distance, still it does. Why? The reason this happens is something that has been a problem with antennas ever since and still is. It does not matter if you build an antenna for a radar or you build an antenna to communicate with satellites, you will always have so called side lobes. Side lobes are electro-magnetic waves that are emitting into another direction than the main part of the antenna it self. Source: https://earth.esa.int/handbooks/asar/aux-files/ephimg-20188850.gif When you build a communication antenna, you do all you can to minimize those side lobes, because they don't add to your transmission but still consume power. When you build a radar, this is also true, but with the additional effects. The ground clutter that is displayed on the radar at a distance from 0 to 5km is exactly one of those additional effects. While the main lobe is not being reflected from the ground (as it only reaches the ground 19km as calculated previously), the side lobes that are possibly emitted straight down, are. These side lobes, that are reflected from the ground at very steep angles (therefore a lot of the signal returns) create that ground clutter at the bottom of the display. Due to the amount of reflection, the low altitude filter does not do much and the low altitude radar elevation does even less, as the side lobes are just moved a little bit. The only time you do see ground clutter on the radar screen that is not created by side lobes, is when you are in a very steep dive (> -25°, because the earlier mentioned self levelling of the radar). This looks like this: In the screenshot you can see that those reflections seem to appear at a correct distance of 15-30km. In such a situation both low altitude radar modes (filter and lifting the radar) do have an effect on the radar returns displayed. I hope this answers the question about the ground clutter displayed on the radar to some extend. It seems to be fairly well simulated, although it is hard to tell if there should not be more ground clutter all over the screen (not just the bottom) in some situations. For example, when you fly at 100m above ground, the -1,5° depressed radar beam reaches ground just 3km in front of the aircraft, and it therefore should create a high amount of ground clutter all over the display. This would also be the point where the second low altitude mode for the radar would start to come in handy. Best regards, John

Yes, while this would be more intuitive, for some (probably technical) reason they didn't implement it. One explanation is, that the ideal gun engagement range of 300m is within the 500m blind zone of the radar. That radar blind zone probably has to do with the minimum time it takes for the radio wave to travel from the radar to the target and back. If the timespan it takes for the radio waves to do that is lower than what the analogue electronics can process, you just can't use them for ranging. This is still a problem, even with very fast electronics. Many laser ranging systems (even in military vehicles such as tanks) have minimum ranges of various reasons. On systems that use the time it takes for the light-pulse to be reflected it is often because of the minimum time the electronics can measure. Don't expect a radar from the 1960s to not have such limitations. This is by no means that easy you make it sound, unfortunately. The radar has to be way more sensitive than that. A radar return from an aircraft 30km away, is probably as powerful as a radar return from a house at the same distance. Filtering on signal strength probably would hide both. Just as a comparison, in the normal operating mode the radar does even detect moisture in the form of clouds. That's a good indicator how sensitive the radar actually is. Logically, the radar return of an aircraft is very depended on the size of an aircraft. Head on a bomber will be much easier to detect than say an F-4, as the radar return will be much more powerful. Filtering out on return strength therefore can be very dangerous, as you never know if you aren't filtering out potential targets as well. Let's take a look at this picture: Source: http://www.mig-21-online.de/Funkmessvisier/fmv_UEH.htm This is a photo from an RP-21 radar (the predecessor of the RP-22 (which is the one in the simulation)). In this particular photo you can see all the radar returns when the ground clutter filter is off. Every radar return on the screen is just from ground-clutter reflections. At the bottom of the screen we also have the returns as we often see them in the DCS MiG-21Bis when flying at a low altitude. We will talk about those in a second. If you look at the top part of the radar screen, you will see a lot of returns as well. We don't normally see them in the MiG-21Bis, and that is for a reason. I will provide a post in a couple of minutes to explain why. Thanks! ;) PS: One question about your radar scan zone diagram, why is it not a rectangle but more a circle? All information I could find about the RP-21 and RP-22 radar indicated that the scan zone is rectangular.

Activations are regained, just in a different way than you suggested. You start of with 10 activations. Once you have 0 activations left, you will get one activation back after a month. I don't really see how you can burn through 10 activations quickly. If you know you are going to change something, you have the possibility to deactivate it before, which won't cost you an activation later on. And even if you are at 0 activations left, until you aren't upgrading your PC on a monthly basis, it should be more than sufficient to get one back every month.

Ah, okay I see, now that sentence makes a bit more sense. I thought he meant that the MiG-21 is always under maximum landing weight in any fuel and payload configuration. But he actually meant that the MiG-21 can land in any configuration when it is below the maximum landing weight.

It was stated earlier in this post that the aircraft was not flown by the Marines (which the F6F was) altough you would have expected it to be flown by them. It was also stated on diffrent occasions that they would go for a jet aircraft again. So basically we are looking for a jet that the Mariens could have flown, but haven't.

The manual completely disagrees with you there. EDIT: Yes. These are the possible configurations: During peacetime, when just flying a patrol, you probably can risk landing at these overload conditions: EDIT: Misunderstood the quoted post.

The ground clutter when pitching up being still visible seems to be correct, as the radar is self levelling within the following roll and pitch angles: Scan zone stabilization, bank angles: ±70° Scan zone stabilization, pitch angles: +8° climb -25° dive Once you have locked the target, it should be able to track the target in ±30° into all directions, even below the weapon axis. However, anything below the weapon axis will create problems with ground clutter, possibly breaking the lock. EDIT: Also talking about the minimum range of the radar of 500m, this probably has to do less with any sort of cone width, but more with the time it takes for the radar waves to travel from the radar to the potential target and back. They have to have some sort of intended (you have to filter out the reflections that the nose-cone itself creates) and possibly also unintended (response time of electronics) minimum range on that, which is probably the main factor for the minimum range of the radar.

I guess the harrier might be a pretty good guess, as we have seen the MiG-21 do vertical takeoffs in one of the WIP videos...

If I am not misstaken, you are expering the backside of the powercurve. Your AoA is so high, that you can't accelerate any further, which leaves you flying in a nose-up high drag config. Try to use the afterburner to accelerate to a 1000km/h indicated airspeed. Once you reached that speed, throttle back to about 95%, and you should end up crusing at a speed of 900km/h to 970km/h.

A lot of unexpected plot twists there. :D