F-14A: A very small but important Question to Heatblur

[Southernbear]

I was watching a video featuring Dave "Bio" Baranek, an F-14 RIO from the 1980s and during this he brought up a very important bit of information.

 

As someone who has had limited time in the RIO pit but loves every second of it I must admit I rely on the read outs from my displays very heavily.

 

My question is, apparently, the AWG-9 Radar only received the Elevation Scan Pattern limitation read out (Highlighted in Red in the picture) as a modification in the mid to late 80s.

Before that as far as I can find the RIO would have to use geometry and the angle of the radar to work out what altitude he was scanning.

 

TL : DR, If you were to just look at the TID in a Tomcat before the modification there is no way to know what altitude your scanning unless you do that math.

 

If Heatblur wants to create this kind of experience deliberately for realism thats fine but its a very small detail that might have quite a large impact for Human RIO guys so I want to know what HB is planning in that regard to the F-14A in DCS

 

[Victory205]

The F14A had the altitude references, but RIO’s coming out of Training Command were so used to figuring it out in their heads that many didn’t reference it too much.

 

Early on in RAG training, the RIO sim instructors would bash the FNG’s about not using the altitude read outs, but the salty RAG instructors put and end to that once they got to the airplane. The AWG-9 displayed altitudes used the same displayed data to compute the altitudes, so it was stupid for a human to waste brain cells doing it.

 

Either way, even in the early 1980’s, the readouts were there.