GreyStork

Ever since I heard that the DCS series intended to model radar realistically or not at all, I've been thinking about how it could be done, and done right. I finally gave in and started to write it all down, and the result can be downloaded here: http://greystork.com/resume/writing/Detailed%20radar%20simulation.pdf I will undoubtedly subject myself to a lot of flak about how I missed this and that, but it's a start. Any (constructive) suggestions are welcome. I should mention that I never intended this thing to be this 30 page tome, but that's how it turned out. My apologies to you poor souls who choose to actually read it. :smilewink:

Even if it were true, and the pilot would survive getting hit, if there are plenty of other places on the helicopter without that degree of armor, it would still fall out of the sky. All the armor does, then, is give the pilot an opportunity to disembark the smoking wreck before it turns into a crater.

Doppler misconception That one is a bit misleading, I think. It doesn't take into consideration that big Doppler generator over your head. Hovering isn't necessarily going to increase your chances of avoiding detection. If you're close enough to get a visual (Shkval) fix on a radar, hovering is only going to make a targeting radar's job easier.

Take another look at Producer's note #1. That should give you a better idea of how it's going to work. You can shift from side to side, as demonstrated, and the perspective will change. It is truly 6DOF.

I don't know if this will help, but as far as I know, the paddle trigger is normally used as a quick-disengage of the autopilot in US military jets.

You sound like a man on a mission! ;) As for ground resonance, I imagine that it would be less of a problem for a coaxial design, since any rocking would result in symmetric, but opposite, blade bunching in the two rotor discs. Hence, the kind of swirling imbalance you see in the Chinook video shouldn't happen. If you think about it, the increased lift from the forward-leaping blade in one disc would be countered by decreased lift from the lagging blade at the same location in the other disc. This didn't work for the Chinook, because the rotor discs were located on separate axes, allowing a dissymmetry of forces to arise. On the other hand, if you ignore lift and only factor in blade bunching oscillations from a swirling rocking motion, the Black Shark's taller rotor shaft would make it more susceptible to ground resonance. Then again, the lesser blade length, compared to a conventional tail rotor configuration, would result in reduced centrifugal forces during ground resonance. I'm beginning to feel like Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof. :ermm: On the other hand... Can I check both of the above? :)

It will alleviate your concerns that the acronym stands for Minimum Equipment List, i.e. a list of stuff that, if it breaks, means you can't fly - while the proper functioning of everything else doesn't really matter.

Evil vibes This topic suddenly has me wondering if it might be a bad idea to fire the Ka-50's gun in auto-hover. I assume there must exist a resonance frequency stemming from the delay between INS, radar altimeter, and/or attitude gyro input and actual swash plate actuation. Should the cannon firing cycle hit that exact frequency, it might pose a real risk. You can release the trigger, that's true, but who's to say the vibration won't self-amplify under those specific circumstances? Oh well, I'm sure Kamov's engineers have thought about all that. :smilewink:

As evident in my original reply to CAT_101st, I agree completely. :)

No hiding that rotor You would indeed, the reason being those two very significant Doppler sidebands created by your rotor head (and blades, if they're not made of a radar-suppressing composite). Anything that moves with any significant speed, relative to the ground, will stand out.

True. I was only putting things into perspective. I'm guessing one of the reasons there will be no radars modeled in any of the as yet planned flyable aircraft is that the DCS team wants to put some work into modeling radar capabilities realistically. If that happens, you can still look forward to an enemy who knows where you are when you're hovering just below their line-of-sight horizon.

Radar waves If you're hovering right below the tree tops, chances are the enemy will be able to pick you (specifically, your rotor head) up on their radars in Real Life. Radar does not behave like laser, which requires direct line of sight - radar can actually bend around corners to some extent. UPDATE: If you're interested in the technical intricacies of radar propagation over terrain, this paper illustrates the concept quite well, although this is of course by no means the only factor determining radar detection: http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/td1802/donohue.pdf

And now to something completely different... I appreciate that a great deal, I can assure you of that. It was perhaps just as much a 'tongue-in-cheek' suggestion. Seeing as we're all wanting the F/A-18, and both that and the Predator is depicted in the DCS banner, I thought it would be interesting to see if there were some kind of subliminal effect at play. I suppose I've just proven that there isn't. :smilewink:

Something different Perhaps someday this could be yet another addition to the family of 'flyable' DCS aircraft. :) If someone already thought of suggesting this, my apologies for the redundancy.

Home grown If you're the crafty kind of guy, you could try this: http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/howto/rudtoe.htm

Well, they explicitly say that the displays are 640x480. I'm guessing they're able to downsample input up to 1024x768. That still doesn't make the actual display resolution higher, though.

Apart from a few errors and omissions (for instance, the right secondary engine shaft appears connected directly to the chassis), it makes perfect sense. The counterrotation configuration isn't as I would have imagined it, but now the scematics on Kamov's site make a lot more sense.

That could be remedied with something like TrackIR. I don't know how disorienting that might be, though. It does have a resolution that is a bit too low, in my opinion, for a flight simulation featuring a virtual cockpit, though (640x480).

If we have to be absolutely pedantically correct (and I assume we do, since we're all realism freaks :)), radar is usually in the microwave spectrum. In the spectrum of visible light, such a device would probably be classified as ladar. But both microwaves and visible light is electromagnetic radiation. This goes for all radio signals and microwaves alike (including radar), light from infrared to ultraviolet, X-rays and Gamma rays.

I'm sorry to contradict you, but IR jammers do indeed exist. One example is the AN/ALQ-212 used on the Apache and Blackhawk helicopters. Perhaps more well-known is the older AN/ALQ-144 "disco light" used on the same platforms.

I used to be good at A/A, and perhaps I'd even agree more with you then than I do today. However, I'm afraid it's a bit more than 2-3 weeks ago I was into it a lot. My strategy today would be to simply climb like a chimp on helium to extend my BVR firing range. :) I think the reason for my shift toward A/G is that I did it too much. It got to the point where it was either too easy to win or too hard to improve myself to any significant degree. Perhaps it is more rewarding to see the more direct impact of my efforts, say, ground troops gaining territory because I pounded an enemy tank column or something. The allure of A/G may really be that you get to invent your own tactics a lot of the time, while with A/A there is to a greater extent a 'right' way of doing things, which may not necessarily be entirely intuitive. In contrast, A/G is very intuitive. Your first impulse is usually the right one. Whether you're skilled enough to execute whatever it is you want to do is an entirely different matter.

Now you've made me curious. Let's hear some of those quotes - or perhaps post a link to one. :)

I've repeatedly heard the expression 'perishable' about A/A skills. I'm curious - what is it exactly that perishes? Is it your spacial judgment or your reflexes or something completely different?

I believe that's from the movie 'Flight of The Intruder,' which would place it in the Vietnam-era. As perceived by Hollywood, that is. ;)

Can't really argue with that. :)