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Television Camera Set lock on when radar is off and slaved to TCS


Slice313

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Hello, I have been hitting the manual and Chuck's Guide but I still have trouble using purely the TCS to lock on an enemy.

 

I turn on the TCS, acquisition mode AUTO, Slave Radar, put an aircraft in the middle of the tracking dots of the TCS but nothing happens. Although I have been successful locking with the radar (Slave TCS) and then turning off the radar (My TCS lock remains).

 

What I really want to do is to slave the radar to the TCS, lock a target using the TCS with the radar off, FOX 1 to a target with a little bit of lead and finally turn on the radar to guide the missile on its last seconds. But for whatever reason I cannot lock using just the TCS.

 

Anyone know how to?

 

 

Much appreciated

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55 minutes ago, Slice313 said:

Hello, I have been hitting the manual and Chuck's Guide but I still have trouble using purely the TCS to lock on an enemy.

 

I turn on the TCS, acquisition mode AUTO, Slave Radar, put an aircraft in the middle of the tracking dots of the TCS but nothing happens. Although I have been successful locking with the radar (Slave TCS) and then turning off the radar (My TCS lock remains).

 

What I really want to do is to slave the radar to the TCS, lock a target using the TCS with the radar off, FOX 1 to a target with a little bit of lead and finally turn on the radar to guide the missile on its last seconds. But for whatever reason I cannot lock using just the TCS.

 

Anyone know how to?

 

 

Much appreciated

 

You can lock with just the TCS if you know where to look. (Or rather your RIO can). However you can't launch a FOX 1 with the radar off. That's not how it works. The TCS can be slaved to radar, I don't know if it can even work the other way around. 

In any case, FOX1 launches on the TCS lock without a radar lock are a no-go. What you can do is get a slave TCS lock, then turn off the radar, sneak up on the enemy and then launch a Phoenix with the ACM cover up (hot-off the rail). Should do the trick. 


Edited by Lurker
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1 hour ago, Lurker said:

 

You can lock with just the TCS if you know where to look. (Or rather your RIO can). However you can't launch a FOX 1 with the radar off. That's not how it works. The TCS can be slaved to radar, I don't know if it can even work the other way around. 

In any case, FOX1 launches on the TCS lock without a radar lock are a no-go. What you can do is get a slave TCS lock, then turn off the radar, sneak up on the enemy and then launch a Phoenix with the ACM cover up (hot-off the rail). Should do the trick. 

 

 

Thanks for your answer 😃

 

Regarding FOX 1, I understand what you are saying, but I already satisfactory launched with radar off and turned it on a few seconds later, missile got on path and still got the kill. I get what you are saying, TCS cannot feed any info to the AIM-7 and the TCS, if anything, would only be useful to calculate an approximate lead prior the missile launch. Mad dog Phoenixes should work about the same way (well much much better), thanks for the tip. 😍

 

However I still cannot get the TCS to lock on anything with the radar off. The only way I get a TCS lock is when the TCS slaved to radar and I get a radar lock.

 

If the acquisition is on auto, only putting the enemy on the piper and tracking dots should start the lock inst it? or there is anything else I am missing? In this case, the manuals are not helping me. 🤔


Edited by Slice313
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12 minutes ago, Slice313 said:

 

Thanks for your answer 😃

 

Regarding FOX 1, I understand what you are saying, but I already satisfactory launched with radar off and turned it on a few seconds later, missile got on path and still got the kill

 

This is incorrect behavior and should not work with any FOX1 missiles. It is possible that you launched the Aim54 with the radar off, in that case it launched in Active Fox3 mode, and guided to the first thing it's seeker sees. (So the radar being off or on, didn't matter)

 

Quote

However I still cannot get the TCS to lock on anything with the radar off. The only way I get a TCS lock is when the TCS slaved to radar and I get a radar lock.

 

 

 

Are you flying solo or with Jester? AFAIK Jester will not lock to anything with the TCS unless it's slaved to the radar. You need a human RIO to lock anything with the TCS with the Radar off. (At least so I've been told, I might be wrong about this)


Edited by Lurker
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@Slice313 Whatever you try to do here is poor tactic, but let's continue.

Fox1 - when properly launched and lost the lock - reverts to flood mode to look for any radar reflections. Pilot has to keep the target in the flood area by maneuvering the aircraft. Idk if you can Fox1 without radar lock and then turn it on later, only relying on the flood mode, which is pretty unreliable anyway, but it may well be what happened to you.

 

On TCS lock:

gyrovague said:
According to the NATOPS we have, in the absence of STT it requires half-action HCU to move the TCS LoS and initiate so-called semi-automatic acquisition (in AUTO or AUTO SRCH).

 

gyrovague said:
The manual mode has a much smaller area that it searches for contrast lock, the NATOPS recommends to use that for ground targets that may be in close proximity to other contrasty items. The AUTO mode searches a much larger area of the screen (70% of height and width, i.e. 50% of total raster area), and AUTO SRCH adds a bit of a search pattern to that to increase the effective area that it can find objects. That said, I don't think we support locking onto ground items with TCS in DCS F-14 yet, as well as a few more missing features like ability to be knocked out of alignment, requiring a boresighting process onto a co-operating radar locked target (wingman) and the trim knobs.

 

Another reason for the semi-automatic nature (i.e. requiring half-action) is so that the RIO can slew the TCS onto the desired area of interest using the HCU first, and not just always lock onto things dead ahead.

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35 minutes ago, draconus said:

@Slice313 Whatever you try to do here is poor tactic, but let's continue.

Fox1 - when properly launched and lost the lock - reverts to flood mode to look for any radar reflections. Pilot has to keep the target in the flood area by maneuvering the aircraft. Idk if you can Fox1 without radar lock and then turn it on later, only relying on the flood mode, which is pretty unreliable anyway, but it may well be what happened to you.

 

On TCS lock:

 

 

This pretty much solves all my doubts 🙌

 

Thanks to @Lurker and @draconus for your help

 

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I’m not even sure that’s possible in real life. If I remember correctly, the missiles will un-tune with the transmitter off, certainly with the AWG-9 off completely, and your station status flag will go black and you will not get a hot trigger. 

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3 hours ago, Spiceman said:

 the missiles will un-tune with the transmitter off

Is that true? From what I understand missiles can be tuned on the ground where the radar does not transmit. 

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On the deck, yes. But if I remember right, they don’t tune with the rails armed without being in XMT. Tune on deck and the stations go white, but once armed they go checkerboard until you get airborne and tune again in XMT. I could be wrong, but that’s my memory. 

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Thanks for the information, thats very intersting! In DCS the missiles don't untune if you put the radar in STBY, perhaps HB should add that.

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Yeah, and I’m still thinking they wouldn’t tune on deck without being in XMT. I seem to remember that the status of the radar missiles would not be known to the crew until they were airborne when we were at EMCON and they couldn’t go to XMT on the deck. Even with the dummy load, it leaked too much RF. And without being in XMT, I don’t think the transmitter generated the CW to the MOAT antennae. The missiles run a self-test which is reported in BIT sequence 4, so you’ve got that, but they would not be tuned. 

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I've seen an on deck missile prep checklist which explicitly states to check for white indications on all SP/PH stations after succesful tune. After the rails get armed, fuselage station should show checkerboards. This indicates that missile tune is indeed possible on deck and is checked by aircrew during poststart. That is for non EMCON procedures. 

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I've looked through some old stuff. I can't share it, it's colored yellow, but it has a note that says "NOTE: During EMCON, status of radar missiles (PH/SP) will not be known." which reinforces what I remember.

 

Edit: In another place it states that if the AIM-7 fails to initially tune, cycle the AWG-9 from XMT, back to STBY, then back to XMT. So more validation there as well.


Edited by Spiceman

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Yep.....

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On 5/28/2021 at 6:31 PM, Spiceman said:

I’m not even sure that’s possible in real life. If I remember correctly, the missiles will un-tune with the transmitter off, certainly with the AWG-9 off completely, and your station status flag will go black and you will not get a hot trigger. 

 

What about if the radar is in standby? (For the mad-dog PH launches?) So the Heatblur implementation is incorrect? It should not be possible to launch Phoenixes if you've cycled the radar to standbye mode, even with the ACM cover up? 


Edited by Lurker

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I may be wrong but for launching PH in active mode this should not matter, as missile tuning is there to ensure the radar can properly communicate with the missiles. 

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13 hours ago, Lurker said:

What about if the radar is in standby? (For the mad-dog PH launches?) So the Heatblur implementation is incorrect? It should not be possible to launch Phoenixes if you've cycled the radar to standbye mode, even with the ACM cover up? 


Like sLYFa answered, it might be. These are hard questions to answer because engaging enemies with the AWG-9 in standby isn’t a real thing and wouldn’t be mentioned in any real world documentation HB may have. So anything they’ve implemented is just as good/accurate as any other thing they could implement, because it’s squarely in the realm of “make something up”. 


Edited by Spiceman
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19 hours ago, Spiceman said:


Like sLYFa answered, it might be. These are hard questions to answer because engaging enemies with the AWG-9 in standby isn’t a real thing and wouldn’t be mentioned in any real world documentation HB may have. So anything they’ve implemented is just as good/accurate as any other thing they could implement, because it’s squarely in the realm of “make something up”. 

 

 

Yeah, the AWG-9 and it's weapons weren't really designed to allow for missile launch with the radar in standby as the transmitter is needed for the missiles to know what frequencies to look for. There is however a marked difference between the AIM-7 and the AIM-54 in that the AIM-7 uses the actual signal to tune the receiver in the missile while the AIM-54 only needs this information for launches that use semi-active illumination afaik.

 

So without the WCS set to XMT the AIM-7 wouldn't be able to track a target at all as it wouldn't know what to look for. Actually the WCS shouldn't even allow for launch in standby, if it does it's probably something that slipped us by and needs to be looked at. The AIM-54 on the other hand is still able to launch in the ACM active modes that aren't supported by the AWG-9.

 

The only non-standard STT or TWS launches that exists for each missiles are:

 

AIM-7: Flood (which is used in the absence of any STT-track) and radar slave to TCS mode. When you slave the radar to the TCS the radar still transmits like normal but is guided by the TCS in azimuth and elevation. This is mostly useful for keeping the radar on a track even with heavy jamming and the radar can still be locked to allow for range information. This also keeps the CW illuminator on the target so is usable for AIM-7 launches. The radar will still need to be active and the target will get a launch warning but you can at least have the radar in standby until you want to launch. This all should work except for that I don't think we have the functionality in yet for allowing the range lock with the radar while slaved to TCS.

 

AIM-54: Pure maddog launch (go straight ahead and kill the first target found) and launch along TCS line of sight. When launched along the TCS line of sight the missile launches like a maddog shot but is told what azimuth and elevation to fly away at so directly after launch the missile will execute a turn to follow that line of sight. This should work currently and should not require the radar to be active.

 

As for locking the TCS manually you'd need to have the slave switch set to INDEP or RDR or not having a STT track as that can interfer. Then you use half-action to control the sensor pointing and then full-action to initiate track. All acquisition modes require full-action, even the auto modes.

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8小时前,Naquaii说:

 

Yeah, the AWG-9 and it's weapons weren't really designed to allow for missile launch with the radar in standby as the transmitter is needed for the missiles to know what frequencies to look for. There is however a marked difference between the AIM-7 and the AIM-54 in that the AIM-7 uses the actual signal to tune the receiver in the missile while the AIM-54 only needs this information for launches that use semi-active illumination afaik.

 

So without the WCS set to XMT the AIM-7 wouldn't be able to track a target at all as it wouldn't know what to look for. Actually the WCS shouldn't even allow for launch in standby, if it does it's probably something that slipped us by and needs to be looked at. The AIM-54 on the other hand is still able to launch in the ACM active modes that aren't supported by the AWG-9.

 

The only non-standard STT or TWS launches that exists for each missiles are:

 

AIM-7: Flood (which is used in the absence of any STT-track) and radar slave to TCS mode. When you slave the radar to the TCS the radar still transmits like normal but is guided by the TCS in azimuth and elevation. This is mostly useful for keeping the radar on a track even with heavy jamming and the radar can still be locked to allow for range information. This also keeps the CW illuminator on the target so is usable for AIM-7 launches. The radar will still need to be active and the target will get a launch warning but you can at least have the radar in standby until you want to launch. This all should work except for that I don't think we have the functionality in yet for allowing the range lock with the radar while slaved to TCS.

 

AIM-54: Pure maddog launch (go straight ahead and kill the first target found) and launch along TCS line of sight. When launched along the TCS line of sight the missile launches like a maddog shot but is told what azimuth and elevation to fly away at so directly after launch the missile will execute a turn to follow that line of sight. This should work currently and should not require the radar to be active.

 

As for locking the TCS manually you'd need to have the slave switch set to INDEP or RDR or not having a STT track as that can interfer. Then you use half-action to control the sensor pointing and then full-action to initiate track. All acquisition modes require full-action, even the auto modes.

Thanks for detailed answers, what about missile preparation in WCS standby mode? Post this question in team but still but I haven't found the answer yet

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14 hours ago, Alphabet_Ghost said:

Thanks for detailed answers, what about missile preparation in WCS standby mode? Post this question in team but still but I haven't found the answer yet

 

I think AIM-7 needs XMT while AIM-54 only needs STBY, i.e. not off. I don't think this is currently modelled.

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The AIM-54 will run MOAT in STBY, but it won’t be tuned.....

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