LoudHoward

Hi all, I believe the PL-5EII seeker is bugged when slaved to a radar lock, most of the time it won't get a tone. I've seen this discussed on the forum previously: and The older thread has people discussing how old the missile is which explains the poor seeker performance, while the newer thread seems to more accurately show that there is a problem, and this hasn't yet appeared to have been resolved based on my experience. I started playing the JF-17 a day or two ago for the first time, hopped on Contention and have noticed that it's near on impossible to get a tone from the PL-5 when you uncage/slave the seeker to the radar lock, the HUD shows the seeker doing it's search pattern over the target but I very rarely get a tone. I put this down initially to the age of the missile, perhaps the target aspect, maybe they weren't in burner etc. Two things make me think it's actually bugged, first of all when I'm in Air Intercept mode with the PL-5 just boresighted but no radar lock on a target the thing will pickup good tone on aircraft randomly crossing my HUD from many miles away. Secondly, I came up behind an afterburning F-18 about 2nm away, sun was behind me, he was bugged in TWS and the missile was doing it's search pattern over him and I couldn't get a tone. These two things made me put together the most basic mission I could think of, which is attached. Attached mission is an F-18 at mach 1 in afterburner with a player controlled JF-17 ~4nm behind and a little below. I hop in and lock him up, the PL-5 seeker starts it's search pattern and I got no lock. I went above mach 1 and closed the distance, I passed him on his left wing a little low, and during the entire time I was closing in on him and passing basically in formation distance I got no tone. I repeated the mission and this time kept the missile caged, at 4nm as soon as I moved my boresight over the hornet I got an instant tone from the missile. Breaking it I slowed down and let him pull away from me, I was comfortably able to wash the seeker head over the F-18 at 5, 6, 7nm and instantly would get a tone. It got a little harder from there, but even at 10nm holding the boresight on the target for 1-2 seconds let me get a tone. I didn't bother going beyond that. Online I don't find this particularly useful though unless I find someone completely by surprise, it's very hard to get the boresighted seeker head onto a maneuvering target and if they launch flares it'll just lock onto that and maintain that lock. Basically to be competitive you need to be able to use the radar slaving mode, work hard to get a good position and you can't use it because the missile won't get a tone. In a Fox-1 environment I'm able to get a head on tone on an afterburning target with a radar slaved Aim-9m pretty comfortably within 10nm which is handy as people will often just run into it as they track their Fox-1 in on you. With the JF-17 I find this impossible so far, and that is unfortunate given the disadvantages you already have. Attached the mission, and two track files showing this. JF17_Slaved_NoLock.trk JF17_NotSlaved_Lock.trk jf-17_ple5_test.miz

Just to note I've been having the same thing from time to time, crashes about half a second after launching my second 'winder. I did have it happen once on the Caucasus map though.

I've been having it do the opposite much the time, whenever I move the cursor to the top half of the radar screen (from the bottom half) it zooms it out, so after a couple of attempts to bug a target I seem to end up at 160nm

+1 for this request, we can hide the stick it seems reasonable we could hide this.

LoudHoward

I'll give that a try, thanks!

Not sure if this is the right place for this or not, but I'm wondering if any others have any issues with the alignment of the HMD when doing the 2nd step (didn't put in bug section as I'm not sure if it's just me). I find it very difficult to align the cross when doing the AZ/EL alignment (FA DX/DY), the cross seems very touchy when I use my TDC. I have a STECS and find the mini-stick accurate and comfortable to use otherwise. I've lowered the sensitivity of the TDC as far as I'm comfortable with, to the point it's starting to get annoyingly slow when using the radar cursor, and this has helped a bit. But even with doing this, trying to get the cross right in the middle is pretty infuriating, it feels odd that it's this way given it's meant to be the fine alignment. I might be trying to get it a little "too" perfect but I feel I should be able to do this, especially since it helps with spotting when the target is actually in the target box if I have them bugged, not off to one side because the HMD is misaligned. The sensitivity on the 3rd step (FA DROLL) feels much better, it never takes me more than one or two nudges of the stick to line it up perfectly. Could we get the sensitivity on the 2nd step to match the 3rd step?

*Flies into the ocean* Don't suppose there's an update here?

I tried it a couple of times and have given up, have moved on to my landing patterns lol. With the Viking I can do alright for a short bit then he starts turning and I'm stuffed. Is the AAR easier with the other tankers?

Thanks for the link recoil, my boss unknowingly hates you ;)

I'm in!

Very cool, thanks!