Naquaii

Not really, it's never mentioned. That said, turning gently and cranking is probably fine. Doing barrel-rolls and going upside down, not really.

Like P-STT in all other cases, it tells the AIM-54 what direction to launch in and then it's on its own.

No, all transitional "quick-lock" modes get you into P-STT due to the short range.

Yeah, the real world DLC thumbwheel was stepless and springloaded to center. IRL they were taught not to use it like that though as it was intended for momentary corrections of position in the glideslope. So normally they'd just bang it fully in either direction a couple of times to correct, not hold it partially in either direction continuously. That said, using it gradually would absolutely work, either momentarily or continuously. But not how it was done IRL. Yes, and that's all well and good. All I'm saying is that it wasn't intended do to this IRL unlike your conclusion and it might not be exactly true. But if it works for you, why not use it like that.

No, PD-STT in a look-up situation is the best solution, not P-STT as that doesn't guide the missile after launch. The reason being that PD-STT in a look-up situation above 3 degrees above the horison turns of the MLC and when the MLC is off you can't notch the AWG-9. Close in you can use P-STT as the non-guided AIM-54 is more likely to hit even though only being told what general direction to launch at.

The thing I got hung up on was your wording that it referenced the real world, and in a HUD that means that the symbology matches up with the outside world, which the pitch ladder on the HUD doesn't in the F-14. The thing is that if you look at the pitch ladder on the HUD like it being a digital ADI displayed on the HUD it's completely intuitive. The reason for it not being so is that many people expect it to behave like a modern HUD when in this case it's just a display device like the VDI. The aircraft wings on the HUD does represent the aircraft nose when used in conjuction with the pitch lines, that's true like on an ADI guage and it's designed to show pitch relative that. That's not a calibration, it's just showing attitude from the INS. The ADL is not designed to be anything other than an indication of weapon boresight, anything else is co-incidental. So yeah, 2 out of your 3 observations are correct as the pitch ladder wouldn't be of much use else and are kinda inferred by the pitch ladder and aircraft wings indicator being designed as an ADI display. And yes, the pitch ladder on the HUD is designed to work like an ADI and thus also a SAI but like I've said multiple times now the resolution and update rate weren't good enough for it to be considered a primary flight instrument.

Because of the crude nature of the TWS in the AWG-9 combined with the INS in the F-14. They simply weren't good enough to allow for excessive maneuvering. The reference materials specifically advise against this.

Still not as good as a manual, hands-on, controlled super search. Both due to the resolution on TWS tracks and the fact that movements of own aircraft upsets the TWS, it's the same reason why maneuvering during a TWS launch isn't recommended. That's not to say it doesn't work and shouldn't be used, but an experienced RIO is as quick or even quicker manually and has less chance of failure.

I think we're talking about different things here. If you place horizon line on the HUD on the wings the aircraft will be in level flight. That's exactly it's purpose and also how an ADI works. Saying that it's referencing the real world like a modern HUD isn't though. If it did the horizon line on the HUD would always exactly mark the real horizon in the outside world, that the F-14 HUD can't do. You can trim it to be at the horizon in the real world but a change of altitude or even a roll will change this and make it not so. This fact is what makes it not reference the real world in the HUD sense. The ADI function will always work and show aircraft aspect though, as long as you only check the pitch ladder against the other HUD symbology, not the outside world. In a modern HUD you would always be able to use all these symbols against the real world outside as well and the lack of this in the F-14 is what disqualifies it as a primary flight instrument. This coupled with the lack of granularity/resolution and speed of update is what made the real pilots turn it off and not use it as many preferred to just use the VDI instead as it was less confusing and also how many were used to if they transferred from older aircraft. The lack of an in detail description of the HUD in the manual is on my todo list and will be added.

The fighter to fighter datalink is the same, cannot be used for engagement. The priority numbers will never be assigned to a datalink only target, if you get a prio number you have it on your own radar. You can also not hook them to lock them and the AWG-9 will not point the radar towards them either. The datalink contacts just aren't taken into consideration by the WCS, they're just additional information. And that's correct as far as we know. TWS manual would be the preferred mode until you have the tracks you want, yes. Otherwise you can't point the scan zone. The reason for the hooked target on TID to STT transition not being as good is because it's automated and the TWS track isn't as precise as a manual lock-on. When you hook a track and press an STT button you tell the WCS to focus the antenna att the assumed target position and then it will go there and try to find the track once and then give up. When you use the DDD manually you can fine-tune and make sure the track is locked on the DDD. Once the STT is established there's no difference.

It does not reference the outside world though and like I said it’s not supposed to. The fact that it’s offset proves this as you need to trim the display for this to happen. And the pitch ladder is not calibrated to anything and wasn’t in the real aircraft either, it simply wasn’t intended to. That said it still correlates to the outside world, an ADI that didn’t do that would be useless. Imagine holding up an imaginary ADI in front of the HUD, the ground and sky would be in the right places but you would need to reference the wings on that instrument for exact information, not the real horizon. This is the same as the pitchladder on the F-14 HUD and why it wasn’t considered a primary flight instrument. In addition the granularity and update rate simply wasn’t there either and no effort was made to have it correlated to the outside world like the weapons symbology was. IRL there might even have been a slight positional error as well in the display that’s hard to model in DCS adding to this problem. If you like to use it and find it useful that’s great but you’re trying to find explanations that need none except that it wasn’t constructed to do what you assume. All this is detailed in the real F-14 manuals and is what we used as sources when we modelled them.

In regards to the datalink it's not something that can be used for missile engagement, you need to find them using your radar. You can however use the datalink information as guidance for how to point your scan zone. TWS Manual is probably better to start in as in that mode you can manuall point the scan zone towards the targets. You can then switch into TWS Auto to keep the radar on the targets or just launch as the WCS will automatically transition into Auto anyway at launch. The IFF works like you say, the DDD switch to azimuth vs range as IFF can't read rate like the pulse doppler modes. This can be confusing, you need to reference positions on the TID to make sense of it, not the contacts you previously saw on the DDD in doppler mode. What you can do however is hooking a track on the TID and then press IFF, that will center the DDD IFF readout on that target and show it and +/- 10NM only. You can transition into P STT or PD STT from TWS by hooking a track on the TID and then pressing the respective buttons. This is not as sure of a lock-on method as doing it manually with the HCU on the DDD yourself though. The only indications in regards to likeliness of hit/kill is the range markers on the TID, these are detailed here: http://heatblur.se/F-14Manual/general.html#tid-symbology under launch zone vectors.

The reason for you having trouble with understanding how the pitch ladder on the HUD references to the outside world is simple to be frank, it doesn't. The times it does is coincidental, it was never constructed to be. In the F-14 the HUD is not a primary flight instrument unlike later HUDs and the pitchladder needs to be viewed as simply being an ADI moved up onto the HUD, like having the pitchladder from the VDI on the HUD, which in fact, is exactly what it is. The pitchladder only references the aircraft wings displayed on the HUD, nothing else. You can trim it to be somewhat correct but it will only be correct for that specific situation. You are right in that the HUD displays the pitchladder differently while in landing and take-off modes while compressing it in others, that was done to declutter the HUD and as they don't reference the outside world it doesn't matter much. As for the HUD being difficult to read it's likely because you're used to modern HUDs. The F-14 on the other hand had a very advanced HUD for its time but lacking in other regards. This is one of the reasons for the HUD later being upgraded.

Pulse search would be the suggested mode for that. In PD with the MLC off you'd risk massive ground returns so not reliable.

A rumour saying that (true or not) is still a far cry from a missile actually guiding on a ship. For the AWG-9 to actually track on a ship you'd have to be in pulse meaning that the missile would happen to find the correct target on it's own, a target that it's not designed to track. If this is actually true I suspect what we're talking about is actually launching them dumb along the ADL more or less.

There wasn't really a function to do this from inside the aircraft as far as I know. What our SMEs told us was that they used to just stick a screwdriver into the right location on the gear to bypass it. The way it's done in the tutorial is that some special commands are called using a script, at mission start "X:SET COMMAND" is used and 10005, 10007, and 10008 are called. I don't remember from the top of my head which one it is, the other two set up the specific aircraft configuration, lite wings swept. Feel free to have a look at those missions, they're located in the main DCS folder under /mods/aircraft/F14/missions/tutorials.

That's more about the AIM-54 not being designed for anti-ship use.

The INS align should run regardless of Air Source but it should be set to Both as soon as the engines are up and running as it's needed for electronics cooling in general.

Only thing you can really do is to remove the MLC filter by being in a look up situation, in that case it's only the zero doppler filter that affects the radar and for that to occur the target has to have a radial speed the same as yours moving away from you, i.e. a chase. The zero doppler filter is not removable as it's kinda inherent to being a pulse doppler radar, i.e. zero speed = no doppler. Blind speed depending on PRF is a totally different thing, that's regarding the existance of blind speeds as a function of PRF and frequency (https://www.radartutorial.eu/11.coherent/co13.en.html). Those blind speed zone are much smaller and not something modelled in DCS as it would need exact knowledge of PRF amongst other things. In the real aircraft the solution for those were to just wait for the target to reappear as the blind speed zones are small and as nearly no target has a constant radial speed they would reappear quite quickly. Chirp is a type of pulse-compression that's used with pulse radar, not pulse doppler radar. I guess modulation of CW radar can be called chirping but I'd just say that it's frequency modulation in general and that's used for some pure CW radars to kinda simulate pulses in the CW emission to get range. My guess would be that very few airborne radars use this as they use CW almost entirely for missile guidance illumination, not as a means of tracking. The AWG-9 as an example has a separate TWT and antenna built into the radar for AIM-7 illumination, not tracking. The CW illuminator is piggybacked onto the normal radar and illuminates what the AWG-9 tracks with it's normal radar. So no range information needs to be extracted from the CW, in fact the AWG-9 doesn't even listen to the CW, it has not receiver for it.

No, the MLC will always be the same as your own speed as that’s how fast the ground is coming at you and the zero doppler filter will always be at zero as it’s filtering out non-moving targets. The gain is what it sounds like and adjust gain (i.e. a sort of amplification setting), some of them not really making sence to implement in DCS as it is atm.

All systems are developed out of their own specifications. You tell me! All I know is that our data say it was like we've currently modelled it and we're quite sure of the veracity of our data. It's quite possible they upgraded the AWG-9 later on in it's service life as our information is about the earlier Tomcats. But we're not going to change it without any evidence of it.

No. Afaik the data we've modelled the AWG-9 on are correct.

The problem is that IRL these are things that would depend on atmospheric conditions, target rcs and target aspect. And atmospherics in regards to radar and radio emissions as well as target RCS depending on aspect are not something that's modelled in DCS currently.

Generally spoken the F-14B and F-14D differed loads in avionics and weapons systems but the general airframe, flight control and engines were very similar if not identical.

Basically the indication on the HUD only works in A-A while those two indicators aren't used for anything else. So with Gun or Sidewinder selected they won't show as an example. They will still work however. The reason I'm asking is that we've had people saying this in the past and it has turned out to be them assuming it doesn't work because they're not seeing the indications. Not saying that is the case here though, just making sure.