GGTharos

You didn't jump the gun. The number of missiles launched generally resulted in very few kills. So what if engagement x used only two missiles, when your 2-3 aircraft shoot-down has required an overall expenditure of a thousand missiles? That's the point - they got lucky. In game the SAM hit rate is abysmal because the SAM logic (for when to shoot at, what to shoot at, etc) could be better - it could use a major dose of 'acquiring track memory' to make its decisions, but even without that there are some interesting changes that could be made IMHO.

Which HARM?

You can look into GAO reports, they usually have yearly reports reporting in very general terms P3I goals stated, missed or met for AMRAAM development. These are not classified and are publicly available.

Much newer versions - probably starting with 120C7 have had 'high off boresight improvements' which means whatever you want it to mean, no details are given

AIM-7's are tuned to a specific channel as well (otherwise you'd have trouble guiding more than one on the same target) and AIM-120's are tuned to a specific m-link as well deconfliction between missiles own active radars. Not sure what FLOOD does exactly, but given that it will function as a backup mode in case of dropped lock I expect it repeats the expected STT signal/channel that the last launched missile was tuned to (n/a DCS of course)

They aren't classified, just hard to find. A 120 isn't going to scan its entire gimbal space, that would take too long. The scan/search patterns are mostly classified, with few details known.

Each missile is tuned to a specific guidance channel. Once the lock drops the radar abandons this channel - it doesn't know that the same target you locked again is the same. The way to guard against this is radar memory modes, attempting to recover that lock - but it that fails it's done.

Anything that's 'AIM-120D' related, or older than AIM-120C5 does not relate to our in-game AMRAAM. And yes that's correct, AIM-120 radar will not be powered while it's on the aircraft. You have to launch it and then it turns on. Same with AIM-7. There are some SARH missiles that are 'active on the pylon' such as the 530, but most aren't like that.

Most people in DCS do their dogfights at low level and clean, and assume that reality resembles this. You're not going to be pulling 9g at altitude, or if you do it won't be for more than a few seconds since it can't be sustained up there. So no, 30 seconds at 9G are not needed.

It's a dogfight mode, intended to be used when you are in a visual fight (thus the name, VISUAL) and you don't have a radar lock. The missile is launched without target data other than your own aircraft's motion - ie. where your lift vector is pointed and how much G you're pulling - in order to initiate its own search once launched.

This is why the missile to hit ratio for SAMs is abysmal.

It doesn't allow me to over-g it, so, no. But sure, overspeed has a specific meaning and I'm not using it that way; yep, I can accelerate while holding a 4g turn, no problem. Just have to be in the rate band or above. I can accelerate at 9g after exceeding a certain speed also. Anecdotes don't make FMs and have no bearing on performance for obvious reasons.

You can send them to ED.

Just flew a simple rate game against the 21bis. Nothing special, full fuel +2 9Ms on the viper, clean MiG-21, again full fuel. It was not able to out-rate me.

No, I won't. Studies on g tolerance are far more valuable. Pretty sure I can hold 8 in the viper, but maybe I'm not remembering right. I can overspeed the viper at any time, just need to be at the right speed. Show it's wrong against the charts, then ED will take action.

G modeling is fine; not sure why you'd want to be at a gazillion g at all times. You can turn very well in the viper anywhere between 360-440, depending on gross weight and stores and what your opponent is doing and you won't g your brains out. The MiG-21bis can sustain some 6g at M0.8 on the deck, 6.5 at 0.9m. Not comparable to viper, eagle, or even hornet ... until it plugs in emergency afterburner and adds nearly 0.5-2gs (depends on speed) to its sustained capability. Yes, the AI does cheat, but all you need to do to defeat it is add a little vertical and force it into a fight it doesn't want to do - it will choose one or two circle depending on which aircraft its flying and what it's opponent is, and it will never change this decision - it's also really slow to reset itself into the desired fight, so there are plenty of ways to defeat it.

The reason it took you only a few tries and a few minutes has some, but little to do with what you described and mostly to do with the fact that you're a trained pilot, already have been trained to fly formation and so on and so forth. Point the finger where it needs to be pointed, squarely at pilot formation flying skill. There's no real mechanism in DCS to instruct people in how to fly an aircraft, something you had the benefit of receiving before you ever tanked. Even if that mechanism existed I imagine a lot of people just wouldn't spend the time - it seems like most people link 'mastery' of an aircraft to operating the systems, not flying. Tanking is pretty easy for me in any aircraft in DCS; but I've spent the time to learn how to fly formation. Also, if your equipment sucks ... well, what can I say? You have VR, get a better stick - why skimp on that now?

Ok, forget radar returns for this discussion, they're irrelevant. In fact, everything but this is irrelevant: Your radar has a beam width of x degrees which is fairly narrow, so it will scan several 'bars' in elevation ie. every sweep will more the antenna up a certain amount (let's say, one beamwidth) for each bar. Knowing the bottom and top altitude of your scan pattern then becomes simple trigonometry, ie what is the the distance represented by a 1.5*4 ( 4 bars) angle at the distance of the TDC. That's all there is - the center of the pattern is known because you've set it by manipulating your scan pattern elevation (we say antenna elevation but in reality it's the scan pattern). PS: Yes, it's just a calculation. PPS: Further returns aren't ignored. If your VSD is calibrated to 160nm and the radar is calibrated to 'listen' up to 160nm, a strong enough return to be detected at range x>160nm will be displayed at x mod 160 range. False returns ftw PPPS: But yes you can code each pulse train so in fact it can be ignored after a certain amount of time, you code the next train differently.

I did address it. It's just reading the dimensions of the cone at that distance, that is all. It has nothing to do with timing or returns or anything like that. Why would the altitude increase if the returns are 'later'? I mean yes, these returns come later, hence they are shown as being further down range but that will happen no matter where the TDC is positioned. Go to the site posted, it makes everything clear.

The eagle radar is FC3 may be cut-rate compared to the real thing, but it still simulates a bar and azimuth setting, and paints targets according to that. I'd like to see proof of that statement . Show the work. This shouldn't be hard - all you need is a stopwatch and do each method 10 times under identical conditions other than TDC placement. If what you say it's true after all, this is a bug.

RWS will give you a higher search volume if you want it. TWS requires a constant time to scan its volume in order to work correctly and IIRC there might be some automated things happening with the beam size definition and PRF that aren't modeled in DCS, but would potentially differ between RWS and TWS. Also, TWS has automation to maintain a search volume with as many targets as it can fit in it given the circumstances, RWS just looks where you told it to look. And yes, you should keep the lock until pitbull. If you launch and crank according to a good timeline, a crank is all you need in order to get your missile into pitbull range before you defend. If he defends really hard too, there's also no need for you to take unnecessary risks, so at that point you can cut the missile loose.

The volume a radar covers is a cone/wedge/slice of pie or whatever similar shape works for you. The further you are from the aircraft, the larger the size of the cone at that distance. It's basically an angle translated to altitude, nothing more - it's just literally telling you 'the height of the cone at this distance is x, the low end is at x1 and high end at x2'. Check out the site posted for understanding the radar and you'll get it. It has nothing to do with filtering - it is literally the limits of the chosen antenna scan pattern. The radar 'beam' is considered to be conical (or well, if you look at images of a radar/radio mainlobe, more like a really elongated water droplet) and as such you can simply consider it to 'open up' the further out it goes.

Four things affect how fast the radar volume is scanned as per the real F-15 radar manual: The radar mode (eg. VS scans the antenna at 35 deg/s, while most RWS/TWS functions scan it at 70 deg/s) - there's no VS radar mode in our FC3 eagle The number of bars selected for the scan The azimuth selected for the scan The selected VSD range (at 20nm or less, the antenna is scanned at 90deg - I forget if this is implemented in DCS. At that range the bar also gets redefined to be ~ 3 deg wide instead of 1.5) What's missing from the above, ie. does not affect the search speed? Any mention of the TDC Any mention of the altitude indicator bars Also, note that TWS has a fixed scan time of 2.2 sec for all submodes except high data-rate TWS which is 1.1 seconds ... all that is not represented in the FC3 eagle. But to conclude, given the above parameters, the search volume speed is always constant for a chosen combination of mode, bars, azimuth and VSD range settings. Moving the TDC has zero effect on any of this. None of that is correct, see above. I refer both you @Nahen and especially @skypickle to the resource that @draconus posted: https://tawdcs.org/radar-f15/ Go there, use the daylights out of it and understand how the radar works.

You're welcome. Those very things that you see also have a direct effect on aerodynamics.

No, because you can use fewer squadrons overall. No, just physics. F-15Es are different in where the CG/CL lies, the nose force arm is much larger (consider it's a much heavier nose, check accident reports for F-15Cs involving departure under high AoA caused by deformations of the nose cone - there's at least one that's public), different airflow because of the CFTs etc.