Nerd1000

They're in the same ballpark, its just that the F-15's team scores a home run if they get to the third base (The AMRAAM runs the last leg for them).

Is the server down at the moment? I can't see it in the server list and attempting to connect via IP just returns me to the server list screen.

TAS isn't a great way of tuning the controller because 600km/h TAS at sea level is very different to 600 km/h TAS at 10,000m. IAS roughly approximates the forces on the wings and control surfaces regardless of altitude (assuming you discount mach effects), so your controller implementation will be more universal if you use IAS. Dynamic pressure (The pressure exerted on the airfram by its movement through the air, often written as Q), might be even better.

It is likley that the autopilot uses a Proportional, Integral, Derivative (PID) controller. Short period oscillations often happen because the proportional gain is too high for the conditions- this causes the controller to overreact to the current error in position. The Integral component of the controller tries to compensate out small errors by adding all past error together and adding that sum to the control input. If you're not careful about how you set it up then you can end up with a situation where the integral component winds up to very high values in one direction before the system starts responding. This then causes a massive overshoot and windup in the other direction, and so on so forth. That sort of situation tends to cause long period, very large oscillations, not a rapid, continuous wobble. The Derivative component tries to prevent overshooting by measuring the change in error over time and subtracting that from the control signal. PID controllers generally work well over a range of conditions for which they have been tuned. Because the tuning is a compromise, it may be that the autopilot is not tuned for flight below 530 km/h IAS out of an expectation that the aircraft is unlikley to spend much time flying at such low indicated airspeeds.

Well, that's what the octane rating is all about: the anti-knock performance of the fuel compared to n-heptane (rated as 0) and 2,2,4 trimethylpentane (rated as 100, and also known as isooctane :smilewink:). The higher the better.

Arrgh! I am very upset right now! You can see the anger on my face! -> :mad:

You're thinking of tetraethyl lead, which is nasty stuff and historically a common fuel additive even in lower grade petrol. It boosts the octane rating significantly and has the added benefit of coating the valve seats with lead oxide, which reduces wear. Sadly it is of course highly toxic. The 150 grade fuel also contained aniline, meaning that it smelled of rotten fish and was even more toxic than normal leaded Avgas.

Australian pilots liked the F-4s we rented from the US so much that we nearly ended up keeping them.

Pretty sure the radar on those systems would have difficulty detecting an A2A missile, let alone prompting the gunner to fire on it in time. Ship-based CWIS with larger radar is only expected to engage anti-ship missiles, and those things are much bigger than an A2A weapon.

Are you using full flaps and keeping your engine above ~75% RPM? The sink rate at 350km/h is okay so long as you make sure that the BLC system is operating properly.

Not all of them. The Invincible class carriers are twin screw (though they're far smaller than American nuclear powered CVs).

I don't think there's anything in principle to prevent you from detecting the datalink to the missile, assuming that you have a sufficiently sensitive receiver (the missile manages, and its much smaller than your jet). It might be more accurate to say that in-game RWRs don't have this capability, as we don't know what newer designs (or even software updates to existing ones) are capable of.

If I were a betting man I'd put money on some part of the FM using the aircraft's velocity vector relative to the ground when it should be using the aircraft's velocity vector relative to the air.

I'm fairly certain that the M-link is mid-course guidance for the sparrow- it has a much smaller antenna than the main radar, so it can't detect the reflections from the target at its max launch range. Instead the main radar radios course corrections to the sparrow until it is close enough for its seeker to see the target. The R-27 uses similar principles AFAIK. Many but not all SARH missiles use this sort of feature, and there are a few ways of doing it: the RIM-8 Talos was a beam rider until it was close enough to go SARH. The HAWK by contrast doesn't use mid-course guidance at all- its called 'Homing All the Way Killer' for a reason.

I know that. I'm working on the assumption that we want to use signal strength as the indicator for a lock-on or a launch. If we're doing that the RWR must have some kind of threshold signal strength for danger. The missile needs a certain amount of incoming energy in order for its sensor to detect the target (in the graph I arbitrarily set this value to 0.1). Lets say the RWR wants to detect missile launches at maximum range. The RWR can detect signals at 0.1 strength as well, but we are interested in actual threats here. The RWR must have its threshold for a launch warning set to account for the stronger signal it will be receiving or it will create spurious warnings. On the graph it turns out that when the missile is getting its arbitrary 0.1 signal strength, the RWR is getting around 0.31. The second set of lines on my picture are what happens when we halve the strength of the radar signal. All ranges are reduced, but now at the distance where the missile is receiving 0.1 the RWR is only receiving a value of 0.22. If we had just set the RWR to say 'danger!' when signal strength reaches 0.31 then we would be in trouble. This is of course all kind of irrelevant to the real deal because RWRs don't work like that, at least to my knowledge. Now for a real-world anecdote from the formative days of radar that demonstrates the point: During WW2, RAF coastal command bombers used ASV radar to search for U-Boats. When the Germans became aware of this they fitted their U-boats with a primitive RWR known as the 'Biscay Cross'. All it could do was detect signal strength. When it went over a certain threshold the U-boat would dive. Allied crews developed a method for overcoming this: As they approached the U-boat they turned the transmission power of their radar down. The signal strength at the U-Boat's end decreased, tricking the crew into thinking that the bomber was flying away, however for the bomber the decreasing range meant that the U-boat remained visible on their radar as they closed in.

for each pulse: energy received by target aircraft is proportional to 1/D^2. energy received by missile seeker is proportional to 1/D^4. Therefore the amount of energy received by the missile increases more rapidly than the amount received by the target as distance decreases, at least if we talk in terms of % of energy received at any given arbitary range (if we talk in terms of absolute energy, i.e joules, that might not hold). Depending on the specific situation, turning down the power of the radar and moving to closer range might allow the missile to track while the energy received by the target is still below that which would indicate a launch at maximum range. The graph I attached illustrates this better than my words- take a look at it, you should be able to see what I'm talking about.

Okay, didn't know that it was using the same emissions as HSTT for guidance. I suppose that makes sense- why have an entire extra mode if you don't need it? On the topic of power being used to detect missile launches, it is certainly possible. I'd say that such a solution was nowhere near optimal because changes in signal strength could easily deceive the RWR. You'd probably get a launch warning whenever you're locked by a radar within a certain distance for example. In the same vein, an aircraft or SAM could launch on you without giving a warning by ensuring that the signal strength of their radar is never high enough to trip the RWR (Obviously this would reduce range, but that might be an acceptable tradeoff). Still better than nothing if the only way to detect a launch is through changes in incoming power though.

STT is still a pulse doppler mode (it has to be for ranging). FLOOD causes the radar to emit in continuous wave mode, which is almost always used for guiding missiles (and measuring velocity when range is not needed or is already known, for example in police radar guns). The power output of the radar doesn't have a say in the matter- the RWR doesn't know how far the enemy radar is from its position and incoming radar energy decreases with the square of the distance, so incoming power doesn't really tell you whether there is an incoming missile.

what kind of vehicle was it that launched on you? Judging by the video, you were just in range of a wire-guided missile like the TOW, which of course requires no laser. Russian tanks use laser beam riding missiles. The guidance beam for laser beam riders is much weaker than laser rangefinders or the beam used to guide semi-active laser homing missiles or bombs, so its conceivable that the LWS might not detect it. In 1.2 ground vehicles used to lase you with the rangefinder even when using wire guided missiles. Maybe for whatever reason they don't do that anymore.

My understanding is that the real system finds the four highest contrast points inside the target box and attempts to keep the aim point between them. The in-game system, however, cheats. Rather than mucking about finding high contrast points in the image it just locks on to any in-game unit that the shkval is pointing at. There are hard-coded rules that make sure it maintains any offset from the middle of the unit at the moment of lock-on and prevent it from locking on in the dark. When a vehicle explodes it is removed from the game world and replaced with a static wreck which is not treated as a valid target. As a result the shkval automatically loses lock.

There are blades that are visibly stationary in the rear of the engine. They could however be some kind of stationary guide vanes intended to straighten out the exhaust flow rather than actual rotating parts of the engine.

For the MiG-21 I usually start my flare early and then throttle back to descend onto the runway, maintaining a constant 2 m/s rate of descent. The MiG and the Frogfoot both have parachutes and good brakes (the frogfoot has the additional perk of a low landing speed), so you can afford to overshoot the touchdown point a little on most runways. I'm not sure how well my throttle manipulation method would work on the Frogfoot though- the MiG uses blown flaps, so throttle directly affects lift.

Not to mention off-boresight abilities superior to the R-73, a 50g maneuvering limit and lock on after launch for shooting at targets behind you (requires a friend and link 16).

Player Ka-50s have trouble with situational awareness due to poor visibility and high workload, so they probably didn't even know you were there unless you lased them with the TGP (dropping a GBU-12 on a defenseless Kamov? you meanie :cry:). The other issue is that their weapons suck against air targets. The cannon on the Kamov is fairly powerful, but its difficult to use it on planes because of its low fire rate and the necessity of either getting lock on with the shkval (tricky against air targets) or being Luke Skywalker if you want to get hits at decent range. The Vikhrs can go further, but once again you need lock. They also have trouble with turning, so generally they're only effective against targets that are flying directly towards or away from you. AI units of course have near omniscient SA and can lock on instantly, which is why their abilities are so far removed from the players.

If you dive while hot against a high altitude AIM-120 the missile will just end up looking down and diving on you, so no it won't help. What this does mean is that SAMs and planes flying on the deck won't be able to see targets that are below the horizon, which is good news for attack aircraft. Aircraft flying at high altitude will be able to see just as far as before and attack with no problems whatsoever assuming they have a look-down/shoot-down radar (F-15, Su-27, MiG-29, and upcoming Mirage 2000 all have this capability). We might see a bit more high altitude combat in multi-player as a result.