Flanker 2.51 question..Sorry

[Cherokee]

Sorry to ask this here, but this is the only place I know to ask this question that is regularly patroled by Flanker heads. Like a lot of people I bought Lomac the day it game out in great anticipation, but was intitially turned off due to the bugs and returned to other realistic flight sims. But I eventually returned to Lomac after 1.02 and found it to be quite stable, and fun, except for a memory leak of some kind. I had never been a big fan of the flanker series, but after playing Lomac I caught the desire to try the earlier version of the Flanker. I found it in a bargin bin at the local software store and thought, what the heck. Well after loading it up and spending some time with it I found the flight model to be subperb, and the graphics were actually quite good. It doesn't compare to Lomac, but what does. My initial impressions were that the missiles were too hard to evade, but instead of complaining, i downloaded some tracks and started practicing. I have become pretty good at avoidance now, but I have a question that maybe someone can answer. I noticed in the tracks I downloaded that there seems to be 2 different tactics to evade the Aim 120 and the Aim 7. The 120 seems to be easily spoofed by chaff, but the 7 seems to require a hard break at the last minute. My question is: can both missiles be defeated by the same tactic? Also how do you go about determining which missile is in the air headed your way? I can pretty much determine when a heater is inbound by the range and AOT, but not so with radar missiles. I hate to resort to the hard break (which usually puts you in a deeper defensive posture) when I could just pop chaff and then reacquire. And as a follow up question, does the lauch warning sound even if a heat seeker is inbound, and if the answer is yes is this a realistic feature of the flanker? Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance.

[EricJ]

I would say no. The AIM-120 is easy to evade, roughly by jinking, and some chaff. It's also easier because it's an active-radar, so it doesn't have too much of a strength. The AIM-7 can be defeated by diving down, then pulling up and re-acquiring, so either way, you have to jink and re-acquire. It's a pain of a missile, since it's guided by the fighter's radar.

 

Usually the best way to determine what's fired first is to understand Russian engagement philosophy. Funny I should mention this right? But usually an IR missile is fired first, to get the enemy to jink, into the path of a SARH missile. Then the AI coding is sometimes it will maneuver to get within IR missile range, not radar missile range. Except for the MIG-31, or F-14, which will definitely try to pick you off at extreme range. Sometimes the AI will fire the ER missiles, but even then, expect an R-27TE, other than an -27RE. As for the American aircraft, it will fire an AIM-9, fired by either an AIM-120, or worse, an AIM-7, which will get you while jinking, if you're not careful.