Santi871

Yes, TMS up short with HUD as SOI when AIM9Ms are selected will uncage their seeker and make them follow a small circular pattern.

FC3 planes aren't fully modelled so it's not really fair to call them a sim (strictly speaking). Either way, the auto-lock feature is modelled, the vertical scan mode or boresight radar modes will autolock and the AIM9's seeker will be slaved to it. Or you can use the AIM9's seeker standalone without aid from the radar.

"Used appropriately" is a subjective phrase as is "proper tactics". I use them with nearly perfect effectivity on fighters 10-20km from me head on, with the sky as background, they rarely get spoofed by chaff.

Can you cite any sources for that? The seeker on the R73 and R27T/ET isn't the same. I get head on locks with ETs from up to 40km away in DCS, although I can't comment for real life. Is there any source that makes your 3-4km range claim valid?

Any sources for verifying what armaments are currently unrealistic?

Nope. FC3 includes several aircraft, one of which is the Su27 (not clickable, simple systems). You can also buy this Su27 standalone, instead of the whole FC3 package (which includes many other planes). There is no mig-21 level Su27 for now.

I know it does in real life, but I was not aware of whether it was modelled in DCS. Thanks!

So does whether the target is against the ground or sky affect SARH/ARH guidance?

Great find :thumbup:

I'm still underwhelmed by the amount of people who can do it properly. I've seen just a few. Again, that's why I wrote a guide for it.

Would a SARH seeker pick up ground clutter reflection?

Oh absolutely. The Su27 has different capabilities than the F15C. BVR is the F15Cs game and no matter how hard you try it will be the king of BVR until the russians get a plane that can deploy R77s as effectively as the F15C can deploy AMRAAMs. Until then, you need to sneak up on them and exploit the 27's WVR capabilities. Seeing as so few people can effectively use the Su27 with terrain masking and sneaking tactics, not even experienced squads expect it in my experience.

The F15C is severely worse than the Su27 at WVR. The lack of IRST makes it easy for the Su27 to sneak up unnoticed, whereas noticing an F15 is easy just because you can look at your RWR. That also renders your shots warningless. Most F15 pilots are always looking down, chances of your missile being spotted is next to zero from my experience. The vertical scan mode of the Su27 reacts much faster than the one in the F15C. R73s have thrust vectoring and turn way way way better than the AIM9M. Yes it can be spotted, but as I just said, without warning in the RWR odds are your enemy won't see it. 1 in 10 73s will hit for me. You also have a helmed mounted sight which allows off boresight shots, something the F15C can't even dream of. On top of all that, you have a negative stability airframe with the option to relax or disable the ASC which allows for extremely sharp and unexpected turns as well as great stability at low airspeed. Slammers are easy to dodge with some terrain masking thanks to mindless pilots who fire as soon as they find you, and that is if they can find you. It's all a matter of getting outside their radar FOV. I think that your issue is that you trust your missiles too much. I trust mine to fly straight into my target for 10-15km, nothing else. Works well, and my missiles rarely get spotted or spoofed. Do note that my target isn't even aware of where I am.

F15A... so the F15 that couldn't carry AMRAAMs. Take the AIM120s away from the F15s and they become horrible compared to the Su27. I'm talking about how to use the Su27 ingame to massacre F15s.

I think you guys are beating a dead horse. It's clear that the Su27 and F15 benefit from different tactics - each plane is great at what it does best and half-decent at everything else. The whole point on spending 10 hours writing a guide is that you realize relying on radar locks and lack of stealth gets you nowhere. Russian missiles have poor cm resistance, that's not news. Now you can continue to argue and complain about it or you can explore new tactics. Hint: its all about getting within 15-20km of your enemy without getting noticed. After that it's a game of picking your poison. I get kills with 73s, ETs, ERs and guns all alike. I said it and say it again: fight the F15 in its own game and you're likely to die. So find a different way that doesn't get you killed.

Oh well, learn to fly differently and remain undetected in the time being. Countermeasure resistance doesn't count if your enemy never knows you or your missile are there anyway. Got 13 kills with 2 deaths in 104th a couple days ago. 100% doable.

It's not a matter of balance or what it "should" be, it's a matter of realism - if the tracking capabilities of ERs is as bad in real life, it should be that way in DCS; if it's better, it should be improved in DCS. Doesn't get more objective than that.

Hold down the lock button and it becomes autolock, no need to spam it.

Yeah, but that was fixed in hotfix 1, and in the patch before the current one (hotfix 3), ERs had better countermeasure resistance.

Yep, I've noticed this, they seem to be really easy to spoof again.

Interesting findings. It's a shame there's so hard to find official data for this radar.

I find it to be redundant, I don't see how it's better than VS.

To be fair, the radar fov is tiny within 20km. It wasn't designed to search at such close ranges, so its a better idea to use the vertical scan mode.

The radar does look up 10°. It took a while to find but it was somewhere in this forum. And you are right, 30° gives 14.4km, and my diagram is wrong, I think I accidentally wrote sine instead of tangent in wolfram alpha. So in that case I'm not sure why it fades at 12.5, its possible the cone has some sort of diffusion, as it would in real life.

I can tell you the radar is working 100% correctly from what you've described. I'm a little busy and on mobile right now but I will do all the math for you later, but if you want a heads up, check the radar diagram on my guide.