TacticalOni

Yeah, I'd believe the spur wheels are to tune the STARM to a specific signal, maybe its only a manual control thing to override the missile's desire to go kill something else

I have some photos of the back seat of the F-105G 63-8336 at the American Heritage Museum (Formerly of the Flying Heritage Collection) The intent was to figure out how to maybe wedge the AGM-78B panel into the back of the HB F-4E, as a possibility of how the IDF might have allowed for the AGM-78 to be fitted to a Kurnass before they got Weasel F-4s sent to them. Here's a link to the album on imgur (to keep the photos from clogging this thread up needlessly) I will add my notes here though because they will be mildly interesting to the reader. Picture 1: closeup of the AGM-78 button control panel. "ACQ" (top left) and "HEAD" (upper mid right) appear to be amber lights. The remainder appear to be backlit in green, or have green shades. Also this is a good shot of the thumbwheel controls that let you manually input PRF and Freq, there's a better shot further down. Picture 2: This is the side wall on the EWO's right hand side. If Occam's Razor is true, then this would show the EWO what the AGM-78's seeker head is pointing at, and he can correlate this via the RWR to the intended threat. Picture 3: Just an interesting shot of a blanked off gauge, with hand-drawn notes by a former EWO. Picture 4: A lot of panels and instruments have been pulled from the jet, judging by what's known to be missing, probably related to the AN/ALR-31 ECM system. This was either stripped to be fit into some other aircraft that was still using the system, or pulled so that curious museum personnel (like myself) couldn't share something secret. Picture 5: The ECM control switch, like found on the F-4E. Picture 6: The missing AN/ALR-31 ECM panel, and more of the AGM-78 control panel, including the target alt knob. Picture 7: A fuller picture of the AGM-78 panel including a manual target azimuth knob. Probably for manual guidance override, this has a soft center that fixes it at the 0 position and requires some force to get out out of that position. Picture 8: The elusive double shrike pylon (From Thunderchief by Dennis Jenkins, ISBN 978-1-58007-259-5) Picture 9 and 10: From Thunderchief by Dennis Jenkins, a pair of pictures of the EWO's panel, including the missing ALR-31 panel and the center indicator panel which was so blanked off in the museum jet that I didn't even bother getting a picture of it. I think the only thing left was the Band switch.

So I've had a long ponder about this as well, and I even spent some time looking around at available documentation from the F-105G's systems and even got to look through the AGM-78 system as present in the back cockpit of that aircraft to get a feel for what it may actually require to make a weasel airplane in DCS. Here's what I found and potential caveats or solutions. 1. The RHAW/RWR system on an F-4G -Caveat: It's super classified and anyone that knows how it works would tell you but then have to kill you. -Solution?: The HTS pod exists on the F-16C using a single-player "lite" version of the APR-47's logic. You zoom around, you detect radars, the system does some mathing and triangulating, and voila, your solution builds to a degree of accuracy that allows you to fire on it, you pick it out, and Magnum. In my mind you can fudge a fairly decent F-4G just by making an invisible HTS Pod attachment with a goofy little FS2004 2d screen popup that lets you as the player use it. It's not going to make the savant syndrome realism purists happy but nothing ever does. I mean, come on, we can work with this: null 2. There exists online a single photo of an IDF Kurnass with an AGM-78 strapped to it. -Caveat: the IDF is not super keen to share if its an actual functional weapons system or if they tacked the bad boy onto the pylon to scare the bajeebus out of their neighbors post 1973 and it actually doesn't work. -Solution: In the discussions I've had with other people who sincerely despise radar dishes and their associated missile systems, the "throw it on even though it doesn't actually work" idea is the most logical, but there is hearsay anecdotal reports we've found (totally legit) say that the IDF figured out how to make an AGM-78 processor that didn't need any further input from the pilot other than treating it like a Shrike, pointing it at the radiation source, and making 1400lbs disappear from your wing. OR The IDF in the spirit of kitbashing all sorts of stuff from one thing into another (Like the M-51 Sherman, or Sho't Kal, or Tiran) perhaps they fit an AGM-78 panel into the backseater position by ripping out a bunch of stuff they felt the GIB didn't need like the engine instruments or whatnot. This is why I was looking at the F-105G's back cockpit to get an idea of what the system needed to function, and the AGM-78 is a pretty slick piece of kit. 3. IADS Simulation in DCS is about as deep as a puddle. (Currently) -Caveat: Well, its a video game, nobody needs to actually know and learn what the PRF of a Fan Song versus a Flat Face is, all we need to simulate is the beam hitting the player's aircraft, locking onto it, and the little bloopydoop sound the RWR makes when that happens, there you go, mission accomplished. -Solution: It's a video game, nobody needs to actually know and learn what the real PRF of a Fan Song versus a Flat Face is. All we need to do is provide some numbers that are either guesstimated to a reasonable degree of believability, or completely made up so we aren't selling state secrets. So with that in mind the question becomes -What can we make of what we know and already have? and -Can we reasonably simulate an F-4G? Here's my proposal: -Using the logic provided by the HTS pod's sheer existence in DCS, it seems one can pretty fairly model the APR-47 into DCS in terms of purely threat detection being projected on a HSI-type display. Instead of having a cursor, one would have to then model in using the Next/Prev switch the 47 system uses to determine which emitter you're looking at. Ok, you're looking at a radar. Now what? -According to the workflow Starbaby was really kind enough to establish, the EWO/WSO/Bear would then classify the radar based on PRF and frequency, which as I mentioned before are either guesstimated or completely made up so the secret squirrels don't find our nuts. They could also listen in to the radar's raw tones, which is already kind of present in the F-4E's RWR system using (at least a few months/a year ago) the Handoff button, to listen to the tones being emitted by the radar, it wouldn't be a huge leap to me to put together a small soundfile library of raw radar pulses if your WSO is into that kind of celestial music. It's not a requirement, just a nice to have thing. -For the AGM-78, you then have to dial that info in using some spur-style thumbwheels on the panel (That's how it is in the F-105G anyway) both PRF and Freq, configuring the system to tell the missile exactly what it's "listening" for, there's some other dials to set the target height and azimuth. A couple of gauges have needles that will point at the emitter so you can verify it's looking at the same thing you are. Then you press TGT-HO, and tell the pilot it's good to go, Magnum. -For the HARM you just select the stupid radar, press TGT-HO, and Magnum. At that point the backseater's only job is really to determine what is the biggest threat, verify that threat, and point the missile, then the pilot, at it. -From there to finish building an F-4G, you have to put the little diamond marker on the HUD up so the pilot can see it on the glass (which IRL was just a little secondary projector separate from the gunsight) -I feel like the APR-47's system in total is actually not too far removed from many systems we already have in DCS, and that the only thing that needs to be done is massaging all those parts into an engaging simulation. Part of me wants to think that one could even build Jester to have "phantom panels" that only he can see and operate. He is supposed to be community moddable to a point, so why couldn't there be, perhaps, a "Weasel Script" for Jester that turns him into the APR-47, gives him that capability, and you, as the pilot, just have to follow his guidance like he's a WSO turning knobs and hitting switches. I've brought this up before and was basically told that Jester is not some kind of panopticon and he doesn't have the ability to manipulate switches that aren't actually in the cockpit or magically see and track radars like an RWR can, but an Oni can dream, and I wasn't specifically told no. I'm not one of those pie-in-the-sky guys who goes "hurr durr its easy to code why hasn't it happened yet" and I would love to pick up coding myself to try and make it work as a mod or as part of a "Weasel Script" for Jester. I know it would take a fair amount of work and its not easy or maybe even possible. But as we get further removed from that level of technology I feel like we are only getting closer to it being a possibility.

Probably my favorite IA mission out of the bunch, it feels tense, and I've enjoyed being put on the spot by a mig a couple times!

its absolutely a bug, but at least its a bug that lets me kill just about every emitter with one missile thats surprisingly not the Mk50 that does make more sense upon reading your description, though one can admit that a seeker that works in the H-I range having a "G-bias" one could conceive the seeker might be tuned to look lower in the bandwidth, but that's a pretty big assumption. I like the Shrike, it puts the fun back in SEAD for me, I can only hope that maybe in the next patch or two ED can work out what these missiles are supposed to do according to what they say it should do, then the testing process begins all over again

I can't say I've gone too into the weeds on bands and everything else except I read somewhere in this thread that the Fansong-E does work in the G-band, and that the 49/1 has a G-bias, I figured "why not, I'll try it, I've done dumber stuff on shakier reasoning." Set up the SA-2 template in my test mission, flew at about 1-2k feet, let it grab me and start shooting, foxed the guidelines coming at me, and while he was still tracking, lofted the shrike at as close to max range as the WRCS AGM-45 lofting cues would let me, imagine my surprise when it started bang-banging on the SNR-75 and hit it dead on.

I've been dealing with folks telling me "it shouldn't work" for the last couple days, all I know is that it guided, but without tone, on an SA-2 that was tracking and firing at me. Actually I haven't tested against an SA-5, that was a typo on my part I meant to say SA-6, fat fingers. But the rest I can vouch for. The 49/1 seeker doesn't tone on every set, I think the SA-11 and SA-2 don't tone, but its guided on all of them. Also, as an aside, I've had a Mk23 track on a SON-9 Firecan, just not from a loft attack profile, I've only had direct hits firing the missile with a direct seeker head from just a couple nm from the emitter at a fairly lethal height, well within range for both 100mm and 57mm guns to potentially smack me around

Hey Yall, I've been sharing this where I can, might as well throw it in here, but so far it seems the Mk49 Mod 1 missile is essentially universal, I've got it to track SA-2, 3, 6, 8, 10, and 11s fairly reliably, for killing fire cans I haven't tried yet but the Mk49/1 seems to take the cake for angriest shrike seeker head.

It's also huge because you can still close in and the missile will carry more energy to the target, which I feel like would add to the PK. Upgraded warheads would obviously be a boon for that as well

Can do! I'll shoot a DM your way once I've put some stuff together

and here I was thinking I was breaking ground by starting to convert it myself I'd like to help contribute in any way I can, I can provide voice lines, research, or at least beta testing!

Well yes, but it would be prudent for them to work with reasonable consistency upon arrival

I'm getting crashes when I try to fire Shrikes, missile doesn't leave the rail, as soon as I hit Weapon Release the sim crashes. I'm not sure if its something on my end or if there's something up with the F-4 mod itself EDIT: PEBKAC. I deleted FXO and metashaders and suddenly everything works!

After some discussion on other channels, I have realized that I have been the victim of a negative learning curve :V Also stepping away from the bird for a month or so didn't help matters, as it seems a lot of the changes to the pedal logic happened while I was out So what ended up happening was that occasionally I'd have the yaw AP on before the HSI had oriented itself, which was tossing the pedals to one side, I wasn't connecting the dots on that. Then I finally settled on what you put above but I set the microswitches to the pedal neutral setting and I leave the Yaw AP off until I'm airborne and that seems to leave the chopper in a state that I most closely recall handling it!

Correct, but there used to be an option to bypass the whole thing which was the "Pedals with no springs or FFB" option, which used to be available and isn't now. Now, no matter what combination of microswitch logics and pedal trimmer modes, I can't actually get rid of my pedals being trimmed away from what my peripheral is doing.