RWR is really bad design?

[Dirty Rotten Flieger]

When the RWR is detecting radar scans I get limited direction information... the four quadrants.

But when they lock on me, all four quadrants light up and I now don't know which direction the lock is coming from. Is there a technical reason for the RWR losing the direction the enemy radar is coming from or was this simply a bad design choice by the original soviet designers

[King_Hrothgar]

My guess is bad design. It can tell direction (sort of) without a lock and there is not a technical reason for it to lose that ability once locked even considering the extremely simple analog computers of the time. My guess is they wanted to make it as obvious as possible that the plane was locked, but didn't take into consideration that the pilot might not know where from. The plane does hail from a time before BVR combat, so medium and long range missiles may never have occurred to the designers.

[Luzifer]

The plane does hail from a time before BVR combat, so medium and long range missiles may never have occurred to the designers.

 

Dude... Dude you could have set up a sweet pun by saying "medium and long range missiles weren't even on the radar of the designers at the time", but you didn't.

 

You blew it, man, you blew it.

[Justin Case]

He didn't see it coming, just like me when locked and fired upon in my 21.