BlackPixxel

Can anyone with a real Su-27 or MiG-29 manual confirm the complete loss of radar function when rolling more than 120° at lower altitutes? To me it seems that such a significant restriction would have to be mentioned in the manual.

I think the aircraft can already be put into different flights for the datalink groups in the editor. A better solution for the datalink groups is to add a simple option to the #-menu, so that each player can assign his plane to the group he wants to.

I understand that the Su-27 radar is less advanced in technology. But what is the technical reason why it cannot see any target when inverted below 1500m? Being a cassegrain antenna with mechanical steering is not a reason for me, as the only difference when being exactly upside down is that the antenna is rotated to a max of 60° from its usual roll angle (only 120° roll stabilisation in each direction). But being slightly rolled does not mean it should completely lose its ability to find and lock targets.

I am interested in why this is supposed to be happening? From the F-15C manual it seems that the compensation antennas for sidelobe supression do not rotate with the radar antenna itself, so upsidedown the radar will have a harder time to see the target because of increased sensitivity to sidelobe returns. But why does this result in an instant loss of lock, wouldn't a decrease in range be a better approximation? Right now the radar is blind everytime when inverted below 1500m. Even when the target is right in front of you or above you and you are 1.4km above the ground your radar will not see it. Under such a condition the reflections from the ground should barely matter, as most of the radar's energy is going straight forward/upwards. To me the current behaviour seems like a overly simplified solution. A reduction in radar sensitivity, similar to how it has reduced sensitivity when you are below 1500m in general, would be a much better approach in my opinion.

MiG-29S please! [100☭] BlackPixxel

I encountered a similar situation with the standalone MiG-29. To use a cockpit mod, just copy the files from the mod into the "default" folder. Then just select the default cockpit, and it will work!

I also wonder if the radar should keep illuminating if a missile has been launched and the system switches to EO backup. From my understanding the radar would still be slaved to the EO system and even if the radar itself does not have a lock anymore there is no need to stop illuminating. Maybe there would be no datalink updates for the missile when the target is out of the laser rangefinder limits, but the homing of the missile seeker itself should still work.

A better and still simple approximation would be to reduce the sensitivity a bit just as it gets reduced when you get lower than 1500m.

Interresting find SnapRoll. Maybe this is intended to model this behaviour. But it just shuts off the radar no matter what the target aspect is. He can be hot and 5 km in front of you, and your radar will lose lock. According to that F-15 manual it would only affect lock on a a cold bandit.

We have encountered a strange issue with the Flanker radar in DCS: When you fly below 1500m AGL and roll over more than 135° left or right, the radar will no longer work. Lock will fade and no targets will be shown on the scope when the lock is gone. Under this condition (inverted and below 1500m AGL) the Radar will stop working at any range to the target. This cannot be intentional? To me it looks like a bug.

I also had such a situation yesterday. ER fired at head on bandit. The bandit (F-15) starts to do a gentle turn with 1.5 to 2.5 g and pulls a max of 3.9 g for a very short moment. Still enough to make the ER that has lots of energy miss. No chaffs + look up against the clear sky. I may as well take R-27Rs, they have the same chance of hitting the bandit (0 %) and they also give the bandit a launch warning, but at least my plane will be lighter and faster with them.

In vertical scan there is no need to spam the lock button, you can just hold it until the target is locked. At least in the Flanker you can do vertical scan + helmet lock while still in the gun funnel, I would think that it works the same way in the MiG-29.

From what mode are you starting? If you are in vertical scan you can still lock targets even when the gun funnel is displayed. Same with helmet mode. The circle does not show, but by using the center of the screen you can still lock the target.

The less-than-90° due to the hinging being at a certain distance to the rotor shaft may indeed be the part I was missing. Durnig fast forward flight the blades of the lower rotor will have the highest lift at the 3 o'clock position. With a super rigid rotor the disk would tilt backwards and have its highest point at 12 o'clock. With a hinged system and a reduced phase delay of lets say 70°, the disk will tilt mostly backwards, but also slightly to the left. The upper rotor will tilt mostly backwards, but also slightly to the right. The backwards tilt component of both rotors gets compensated by the pilot by applying forward cyclic, as you do in the DCS Ka-50 during forward flight. With a single rotor helicopter the pilot would also add a certain ammount of roll to counter the smaller roll moment. But on the Ka-50 this would mean that the lower rotor needs right roll and the upper rotor needs left roll. As you cannot controll the cyclic independent on each rotor, there is no way to compensate for that. As a result we end up with the disks tilting into each other. While the source of the disk titt is dissymmetry of lift, it is not as simple as it was described here. The disks do not tilt left and right, they tilt backwards alot and a little to the side. The backwards tilt (pitching up) gets compensated by the pilot, the sideways tilt does not.

If you want you can tell me why you think that the ingame behaviour is correct, the physical reason behind it. To me it seems wrong.

Why should the highest point of tilt be at the highest point of blade speed? It is a dynamic system. At the highest point of blade speed, the blade gets the most lift. So its upwards velocity is the highest. That does not mean that the blade will stop traveling upwards afterwards. It will still continue to travel upward until it is at the front of the helicopter. It is the same as with the regular cyclic controlls. In order to pitch the helicopter backwards on a clockwise rotating rotor, the blade on the 3 o'clock side will have its lowest pitch angle, and the blade on the 9 o'clock side will have its highest pitch angle. So to pitch backwards, the blade on the right will have the lowest lift and the blade on the left its highest lift. Exactly the same difference in lift that happens during forward flight. And the result is, that the disk tilts backwards. In fact, if the rotors should tilt to a side during forward flight, they should tilt in the exact opposite direction due to tranverse flow. The blade in front of the heli will have higher lift than the blade in the rear, because the air over the rear blade is already accelerated downwards. This means, that on a clockwise rotor the disk would tilt to the left. On the Ka-50 the bottom rotor would tilt to the right and the top rotor to the left, which is the exact opposite of what is happening.

But what is causing the disks to tilt sideways? It cannot be the airspeed difference between advancing and retreating blade.

Is the sideway tilt of the two disks correct in the DCS Ka-50? When a heli flies forward, the blades on the advancing side produce more lift, the retreating side less lift. But that does not mean that the disk will tilt sideways. It should tilt backwards, because it is a rotating system and the inertia of the blades will cause the largest deviation of the disk angle to happen 90° after the position where the maximum perpendicular force (lift) appeared (gyroscopic precession). This is why a heli will start to have a pitch up tendency the faster it gets, which needs to be countered with some forward cyclic. But why do the rotors tilt sideways in F2 view? To me that seems incorrect. The explanation in this thread seems trivial, but to my understanding it is wrong. If it was true, any of the older RC helicopters would require roll input to stay level during forward flight. Which is not the case. They need forward cyclic input, because they will pitch up and not roll sideways.

Of course I am just speculating. But as the R-27P was/is up for export the missile itself has to be working.

Passive homing is more accurate for air targets because of the shorter wavelengths that allow for more accurate bearing with the same antenna area, as well as the absence of environment reflections. Especially against an oponent that is also using SARH missiles it should work perfectly, because the missile does nothing else than what a regular R-27R would do, expect that it has to tune the seeker to the frequency of the hostile radar. (Minus the accurate range information)

If only the Soviets/Russians would have asked GGTharos before developing all their useless weapons :) I am sure that the R-27P has its application. Antennas always transmit some power in all directions, HF does not care if it should only have certain lobes in theory. There will also be additional reflections from the plane itself behind the radar. The R-27P may only see the radar during the periods where it directs its waves directly at the missile from far away, but that should be enough to get in closer range. Then it should be able to home in nicely. It is said to have a very sensitive seeker that has far more range than the missile itself. And it receives mostly direct radiation which also has to travel only half the distance compared to very low power reflected radiation that has to travel to the target and back.

I am sure that an upgraded R-27 has longer legs than the small R-77, especially with a new guidance logic to use a lofted trajectory at long range engagements and with an improved rocket motor. Also, why would so many years after the missile was created suddenly a variant with green proximity fuze antennas/covers appear? Right in Syria, where the new variants are tested according to the article.

https://iz.ru/882783/aleksei-kozachenko-aleksei-ramm/v-boi-idut-stariki-istrebiteli-vooruzhat-raketami-dlia-duelei I do not speak Russian and the article may not be accurate, but it is about new/upgraded R-27 missiles that where already carried by Su-30s in Syria. For some reason the R-27P1 is refered to as an active fire and forget missile. While the 'old' R-27P is fire and forget, it is not active. But here it is described as a missile with an active radar and the possibility of having targets assigned by ground radar. Maybe this is one of the new R-27. Picture is from Syria, notice the green proximity sensors:

Considering how bad the seeker is ingame (going for chaffs when fired at a bandid "notching" 45° in a lookup situtation against the clear sky) we are propably using the very first prototypes that where ever built.

Su-33 please!