Advanced RIO Techniques

[lucky-hendrix]

Hi all,

 

I want to talk about more advanced tips & tricks to be better as a human RIO. I have questions and some tips of my own.

 

1st the questions :

-how do you guys do to give a quick BRA to the pilot ? hooking the target gives the 'R', and 'Alt', but only gives the bearing in a relative bearing. So you need to mentally subtract/add from the airplane heading. Pretty difficult when plane is maneuvering also.

 

-For IFF : the way I understand it, when you press IFF, the radar goes in PULSE MODE for the duration of the IFF button press. When you press the IFF, a range will appear in the range window above the DDD. You need to be careful to have the right range there because it will reset(if the pilot uses PAL mode, for instance, it will set itself to20nm). I have seen this window show "+10EXP" what does this mean?

 

-I have trouble to understand well the velocity vertors of contact on the TID. in A/C stab mode they are relative velocities to ownship ? and in Ground stab they are the actual velocity. Is there a way to quickly tell the contact speed and if it is hot or cold? I often find myselft in groundstab mode to have a better view

 

-The radar can scan from 1bar up to 8bars. Is there any case where you had to use 8bars? I usualy only stick to 1bar or 2bars. Unless the contact is closer than 20nm, it will cover the whole airspace from 0feet to 40k feet.

 

Tips :

-I like to use one waypoint (for instance surface target or another). And put it near where I see a contact/or group of contacts. you can hook it with TID cursor and move it with TID full action.

This way if you temporarily loose the contacts, or if you need to pump, you still have an idea of the last location of contacts. Also, you can put the "dest" to that waypoint, and have BRA to it on the HSD.

 

-Using the Range above the DDD in IFF mode, you can more easily filter out friends/foes contacts that are on the same/close bearings.

 

 

Best regards,

Fellow RIOs

[legearre]

1. Since there’s no course on the HUD, keep it simple for the pilot and use clock face refs.

 

2. IFF. I use the TID to grab track info or read range right off the DDD.

 

3. Since I’m running intercepts, pulling bandit absolute speed isn’t the primary concern. Most intercept geometry is first built in geo stab and then refined in attack

 

 

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[Home Fries]

1) Since the TID is analog, give quick relative approximations. For example, if you're in 20 degree azimuth (that's 20 per side) and your contact is halfway to the left bar, call for 10 degrees left. Same with range: approximate until you can refine. In cases like this, timeliness is more important than accuracy.

 

2) A technique I use is to match my DDD range with the TID, so when I don't have a target bugged the IFF compares directly to the TID. +10EXP is when you have a target bugged (either in TWS or STT), and it centers the bugged target in the DDD and gives you a view of the surrounding airspace. +10 refers to the 10 nautical miles surrounding the bugged target.

 

3) EDIT: Sorry, I just re-read your question. You are correct in that the ground-stab vectors are absolute/true heading and aircraft-stab vectors are relative.

 

4) For bar scans, the answer is "it depends." If I have a datalink picture, I can reduce my azimuth and bars to a combination that gives me a shorter time between contact pings, but if you're pretty much the biggest radar out there you may need the wide azimuth 8 bar scan. Also, based on your altitude you should point your radar elevation to maximize the bars you have to the likely altitude bands of your threats.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Home Fries

[WindyTX]

Hmmm a few thought fwiw ymmv.

 

 

Limitations of the F14

 

DDD is vel azimuth in PD modes It has no range.

The rel vel vector in the radar display is tits on a bull for a quick interpretation of the picture.

BVR vs WVR calls are completely different for me just the way we always did it.

 

Run ground stab 90% of the time, drag the marker to the middle of the intercept and HCU offset it so it's the center of the screen. Now you can just adjust the range scale to keep the picture nice. If in doubt just offset halfway between you and the target unless it's an A10 it will normally work.

 

 

Now you can see the geometry I call the heading to the front seater or give him the turn "come 20 left" etc this depends on my capacity. If I am MCO then he gets the minimum, if he is good he can do the geometry while I commit my other flights on different groups it's easily done from the front seat in ground stab, just make sure to coord the radar slew if you have a big offset to get rid off.

 

I run TWS MAN I 40 2bar as I like to shoot early and this covers enough sky as long as I have a link.

 

Shooting 54 is academic right now untill we get a missile fix I won't even talk about that.

 

In the visual environment I always use clock code. As an academic exercise get a buddy to fly towards you above and offset, lock him and talk your front seater through the angles above and the clock code of the tgt. It may sound a bit boring but if next time he sees a tgt he tells you it 1oclock 15up it makes your radar work way easier rather than 1oclock high hmm how high?

Not sure this works in TIR but is perfect for VR. Most Aircraft you can just use the HUD degrees as a guage but the F14 is not that user friendly.

 

I am gonna stop there before it get TLDR if it's not there already.

 

 

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