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The Mirage F1 Info Thread


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One of the many things I cannot figure out about the F1CE is its RWR. It looks like it has similar (thus very limited) capabilities to the spo-10 found in the MiG-21; however, its got some indicators that confuse me... anyone know what the TWS, CW, and sinusoidal square-wave symbols all mean?

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The RWR (also called "BF") indicates the origin of the threats on 4 sectors of the aircraft (front, right, left and rear):

CW: for Continuous wave: I think it is medium long range detection radars

TWS: for Track While Scanning: the RWR detects the radars of planes hooking the Mirage F1

and the "square wave" : I don't know... maybe it's the hard lock of a radar (air-to-air or ground) on the mirage F1

No doubt that an enthusiast with the F1CZ manual will be able to tell us more... 🙂 


Edited by M F1
correction
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3 hours ago, M F1 said:

The RWR (also called "Eagle" or BF) indicates the origin of the threats on 4 sectors of the aircraft (front, right, left and rear):

CW: for Continuous wave: I think it is medium long range detection radars

TWS: for Track While Scanning: the RWR detects the radars of planes hooking the Mirage F1

and the "square wave" : I don't know... maybe it's the hard lock of a radar (air-to-air or ground) on the mirage F1

No doubt that an enthusiast with the F1CZ manual will be able to tell us more... 🙂 

I just finished looking over the F1CZ manual (provided by Rudel - thanks again), it mentions the BF RWR, and shows the panel, but it seems that it doesn’t go into any details into what the symbology means… guess we’ll have to wait till release 

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Regarding the presence of the RWR "BF", as surprising as it is, the Mirage F1C (French version) were not equipped with it right away... only from the 80th copy.
Similarly, the Greek and Moroccan F1s were not fitted with the "BF", but a little later with the RWR (AN/ALR 66 also fitted to all other Greek aircraft of the time).

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Come to think of it, I think the three symbols are in order of severity of the radar looking at you. CW would be some sort of illuminator to guide Fox-1s, so for whatever reason the square wave would be a tracking radar and the TWS thingy some sort of lock? Seeing as the whole cockpit is in French it's very unlikely it stands for track while scan (and RWRs can't really tell whether they are being looked at in TWS or not, especially these old ones...).


Edited by TLTeo
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21 minutes ago, gnomechild said:

Screenshot_20220214-191041.pngExplanation of the RWR symbology from the weapons manual of a Libyan F1ED. Same model detector as our CE

 

Awesome, thanks for sharing with us gnomechild.

Apparently this RWR can distinguish between TWS and search radar modes? Or does it just mean that your aircraft is being painted by the radar of another aircraft?

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All of the information I have seen suggests that it does not have an interrogator. Both the F1CZ flight manual and the F1ED flight manual and weapons manual and Cyrano IVM manual make no mention of any interrogator device or mode or instructions for using it. Apparently some late model Iraqi F1EQs had interrogators, but both they contained entirely different IFF equipment than the CE and EE and most other (all?) export models. 

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On 2/14/2022 at 5:10 PM, M F1 said:

You're right : there is no IFF interrogator in the Mirage F1C or CE

here is what I could find on a well-documented review on the cockpits of the mirage F1 ;

https://dogfight-editions.com/fr/hors-series/2-cocardes-digital-hors-serie-n01.html

"Different IFF equipment is present depending on the versions (of Mirage F1) and modernizations.
These facilities are still only IFF answering machines (with their modernization, the Moroccan examples have
benefited from the addition of an interrogator IFF), the larger footprint IFF interrogators prohibited their installation in combat aircraft.
You have to wait for the Mirage 2000 RDI and beyond to see interrogators – including size decreased – finally integrated in fighter planes"

 

But the Moroccan F1 were equiped with an interrogator... later (90s)

I have no information with F1M (modernized spanish aircraft)

 


Edited by M F1
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8 minutes ago, Criticale2orr said:

I don’t know if this has been answered before but, what is the Cyrano IV’s look-down/shoot-down capability?

I have a book which talks about the F-1EQs which have the Cyrano IVQ/C 'Ramadan' radar which I am not sure how similar it is the to the Cyrano IV, but according to this book I have called "Iraqi Mirages in Combat" By Miguel Garcia it could look down -4 degrees at 4,000ft and -32 degrees at 25,000

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3 hours ago, Criticale2orr said:

I don’t know if this has been answered before but, what is the Cyrano IV’s look-down/shoot-down capability?

It has some but it's an MTI radar than pulse Doppler one, which as far as I understand means it has a lower PRF and therefore a) it's generally worse in look down performance and b) it can't measure closing speed effectively.

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16 hours ago, TLTeo said:

It has some but it's an MTI radar than pulse Doppler one, which as far as I understand means it has a lower PRF and therefore a) it's generally worse in look down performance and b) it can't measure closing speed effectively.

It should be able to measure closure speed. MTI gets the speed of the target by detecting it over a train of several pulses and measuring the change of time intervals between the pulses in the series (actually measuring phase change). This allows the radar to reject targets that move at the same speed as the ground (relative to the radar). However the radar needs to be able to detect pulses over the background in order to measure their phase. So against the ground background MTI mostly achieves a reduction in false detections than an increase in true detections.

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“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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2 hours ago, Bozon said:

It should be able to measure closure speed. MTI gets the speed of the target by detecting it over a train of several pulses and measuring the change of time intervals between the pulses in the series (actually measuring phase change). This allows the radar to reject targets that move at the same speed as the ground (relative to the radar). However the radar needs to be able to detect pulses over the background in order to measure their phase. So against the ground background MTI mostly achieves a reduction in false detections than an increase in true detections.

Uh, interesting. My understanding was that MTI uses a low PRF so the ambiguity on measuring the velocity is huge. I guess interpolating between successive detections solves that, but it would still be more uncertain than pulse Doppler?

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Uh, interesting. My understanding was that MTI uses a low PRF so the ambiguity on measuring the velocity is huge. I guess interpolating between successive detections solves that, but it would still be more uncertain than pulse Doppler?

The low PRF is to reduce the range umbiguity. The radar sends multiple pulses before the signals return - when you get a return signal it is not always easy to tell if this is the 1st pulse returning from a far target or the 2nd pulse returning from a closer target, etc for the rest of the pulses in the train. The higher the PRF and the longer the train the more confusing this gets. Since MTI keeps all the returned pulses in a processing cycle and does not filter them out before the MTI processing, it can't handle a significant amount of this confusion, thus the PRF must be kept low enough.

Velocity is still measured via the doppler effect and quite accurately, except that the effect is not measured on the modulation within the pulse - instead, it is measured on the intervals between the pulses. The doppler effect compresses the time differences between the returned pulses (vs. the transmitted pulses) when the target is moving towards you. The MTI uses a train of pulses so the speed is measured over multiple intervals which increases the accuracy. Due to signal processing reasons this is not done by marking the "start" of a pulse and measuring the time to the "start" of the next pulse (the definition of which get umbiguous), but instead measuring the shift in the modulation phases of the two pulses. The meaning is the same.


Edited by Bozon

“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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4 hours ago, Criticale2orr said:

I wonder whether the F1 will favor 2-circle or 1-circle fights? Judging by the wing I’d say 2-circle…?

Thas depends entirely on its opponent.

Truly superior pilots are those that use their superior judgment to avoid those situations where they might have to use their superior skills.

 

If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

 

"If at first you don't succeed, Carrier Landings are not for you!"

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I remember a talk by a former Spanish pilot (C model, remember, but I guess somewhat close to hard wing E) and he mentioned that whenever they "fought" F1s they were kind of in a stalemate situation in the sentence, "For me to climb (to 30000ft) and you score a kill on me, you better descend (to 15000ft) and I score a kill on you", so I guess it was kind of depending on the situation.


Edited by Ala13_ManOWar
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"I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare for war, you get war."

-- Major-General Frederick B. Maurice

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On 2/25/2022 at 3:27 PM, Criticale2orr said:

Let's say F1 vs F-4e (Since both should be in DCS this year)?

 

(I completely forgot about how dependent BFM is on situation/opponent😅

 

From doing lots of dogfighting on the cold war server whether the fight is one circle or two is actually largely irrelevant. 90% of fights are not neutral merges, usually then the winner is the person that sees their opponent first, and after that it's who judged the energy state better and set up good geometry and maintained energy till they judged correctly when they needed to cash it in. Also weapon loadouts and even fuel will largely effect any turn fight. In the Mig 21Bis while fat on fuel I can't out horixontal rate a F-86, but once my fuel drops to below 1100 it's a different story.


Edited by CrazyGman
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