correct as-is F-16C and 1st LT

[Caldera]

Hey All,

Just starting out on the F-16C and it is amazing to me what things can trip me up.  I have gone through the training missions (the ones that actually work) and I am still get FUBAR'd.

First on my list, I put the jet in A-A.  Me and my two targets are at 15000.  This is the set-up and it is pretty darn simple.

With my finger on the fire button in hot anticipation, this is what I see.

What am I doing wrong?

Caldera

[Rongor]

I see nothing wrong

[Willdass]

Just give it time. Your radar is set up to scan a very large area and the bandits are still pretty far away. If you reduce the azymuth or just wait until they are closer the radar will pick them up

[Caldera]

Thanks for the replies,

15 minutes and counting up, no change in FCR display.

How long should it take?

Caldera

Edited January 8, 2022 by Caldera

[Deano87]

You will have passed each other by then? I presume in the mission you and the migs are heading towards each other? 

[Frederf]

What are the waypoints for the red flight? RWR indications? Maybe they finished their flight plan and went home. I would expect to see them at 45-50nm if they were approaching head on.

[Bunny Clark]

In the screenshot it doesn't look like you've given the MiGs any instructions at all. They may have flown off in a different direction, or landed at Creech out of boredom. 

Set their task to "CAP" and give them a waypoint to fly at you. Then you'll for sure encounter them. 

It also looks like you've created two groups of one MiG-29. If you want to fight two bandits, you can just make a single group and set it to be two aircraft by increasing the "OF" number at the top. Then you only need to program instructions for a single group instead of two. 

EDIT: it also doesn't look like you've given yourself any waypoints. In that case you will default to spawning facing North, so if you didn't turn left you would not have even been facing them yourself. 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Bunny Clark

[Caldera]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Below is the more complete mission picture.  I set this up purely, as a first pass, to familiarize myself with radar modes.  The MIG's ROE = Weapons Hold and their only purpose is to fly along happy happy sipping vodka as they can be to let me practice radar modes.  However, the radar is not working...

Attached is a short track that I made.  Sorry for all the look downs, but I use two monitors and the one below is for the MFCD's.  I am in the habit of looking there.  Other than the crazy autopilot, which I am sure has a dedicated AI just to mess with me, I hope this is enough for you to work with.

Caldera

 

F-16C NO RADAR.trk

[Lee1]

Which way are you heading? If your radar is not pointing its' cone at them you won't pick them up.

Please don't take this the wrong way but is the radar set to radiate? (ie not on "quiet" or "silent"?

[Caldera]

Lee,

Hard for me to take anything the wrong way....  As of yet "quiet" or "silent" is unknown to me as to how to turn it on or off.

I am following the MIG's direction of flight at 30 NM.

Caldera

I found the RF Switch.

MIG-29 stealth fighters maybe?

Edited January 9, 2022 by Caldera

[Deano87]

I see what the problem is. You are following them, At roughly the same speed, I'm not surprised you cannot see them at 30 miles.

For best results you want high closure rate between you and what you're trying to see with your radar. You can either do this by lighting the burner and accelerating to close on them. Or you can re-jig the mission to have them on the reverse of their current track and coming at you head on.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Deano87

[Caldera]

Deano,

Before I read you post I did make an AB run in just to see.  I eventually picked them up around 10 miles or so.  But I might not have had perfect tail alignment.  So after I read your post I gave it a shot.  It worked much better.

Methinks I need to understand RADAR a bit more.  With the average RADAR wave traveling at or about the speed of light it seems like it should be able to catch up to speeding jet, so it has to be a relative movement thing.  The jets in front of me still had relative movement in relationship to the ground, otherwise notching would never work.  So it seems another strategy to defeat RADAR might literally be flying straight away and at the very same speed as the pursuer.  Baffling really...

Thanks again,

Caldera

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Caldera

[Blinky.ben]

Add in a AWAC on your side. It’s good for starting with so you can see where they are but you will still have to manipulate the settings in the radar to acquire them. You’ll eventual get a understanding what radar settings work for different situations.

[Tholozor]

37 minutes ago, Caldera said:

it has to be a relative movement thing.  The jets in front of me still had relative movement in relationship to the ground, otherwise notching would never work.  So it seems another strategy to defeat RADAR might literally be flying straight away and at the very same speed as the pursuer.  Baffling really...

Exactly this. This is basically the zero doppler filter. The closer the contact is to 0 relative velocity, the radar return is rejected as clutter. For example, the Tomcat's AWG-9 has a notoriously bad zero doppler filter, being that contacts within roughly ±133kts of ownship velocity are rejected (at least in Pulse-Doppler Search mode). The Mirage also has a similar filter problem (or had, not sure how it behaves now after the big radar update recently), where cold targets outside of ~15nm basically couldn't be detected.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Tholozor

[Caldera]

Tholozor,

10 hours ago, Tholozor said:

Exactly this. This is basically the zero doppler filter. The closer the contact is to 0 relative velocity, the radar return is rejected as clutter. For example, the Tomcat's AWG-9 has a notoriously bad zero doppler filter, being that contacts within roughly ±133kts of ownship velocity are rejected (at least in Pulse-Doppler Search mode). The Mirage also has a similar filter problem (or had, not sure how it behaves now after the big radar update recently), where cold targets outside of ~15nm basically couldn't be detected.

Hmm...  OK!

Is there a chart some where of Russian designed aircraft and their RADAR types as these are the ones often trying to put holes in my canopy.  This knowledge could come in handy at times.

Caldera

[Caldera]

Hey All,

This RADAR thing got me to re-thinking stuff.  I am not understanding filters.

 

For example:

Say that two aircraft are traveling at the same speed, altitude and heading.  One is behind the other and using AN/APG-68 pulse Doppler RADAR.  So the return has no frequency shift (doppler effect), true.  But yet, the RADAR pulse indeed goes out and indeed there is a return that the antenna picks up.  I would think that the RADAR designer could easily extrapolate one thing.

Like:

• We know the distance, because we have the pulse return timing
• We know the direction, because that is where the array is pointed
• We have no frequency shift, because why?

We need to get the full picture.  How...  AHHAAA AHHAAA!

The target is at XXX Range, YYY bearing and it has ZZZ relative speed.  But because, ZZZ is zero then ZZZ is equal to the speed of the aircraft.

 

I mean that in essence, the RADAR system computes where the target location is by knowing the pulse return time and the direction the array is pointed.  It computes movement direction based upon differences in location from subsequent scan cycles.  It computes the target speed by the frequency shift of the return compared to the pulse and the speed that the antenna is itself traveling.  And it computes the targets direction of travel based upon the direction of travel of the antenna itself and all of the above.

Whew...  That is allot to do and it has to be harder than just that.

 

The targets in my test mission are invisible to me.  Why...  AHHAAA!  AHHAAA!

It is the effect of a filter.  This filter probably has to do with ground scatter.

Do I have the ability to over ride or peek around it?

 

Caldera

[Tholozor]

33 minutes ago, Caldera said:

Do I have the ability to over ride or peek around it?

AFAIK you can't turn off the filters in the 16.

[Kilo]

Usually, aircraft radars take their own speed into account when applying the doppler filters. So, when flying towards an object that's flying perpendicular to your flight direction (i.e. the ground speed relative to you), your plane won't know whether it's seeing the other guy or the mountains/clouds behind him. So it'll just filter it out. If you turn off the filter while in a dive your screen will light up like a Christmas tree because your radar will display the ground (look up the MiG-21 effects in DCS, if you're curious to see this. Here's a MiG-19 with the said effect. This one doesn't have such filters).

The only plane I know that can turn the doppler filter off is the F-14. Actually, you could shuffle through some of the RIO tutorials to understand some of the radar concepts, since it's less automatic (the pulse/pulse doppler and speed gates are the interesting parts for this.)

The filter filters (lol) out things moving on the ground within limits. Say, anything moving faster than +/-50km/h will not show up on screen. For example, F-15Cs based in germany had those filters moved up to +/-180km/h because cars moving on the autobahn kept showing up!

Targets moving towards you are easier to see because, well, let's make an analogy: Seeing aircraft is like playing tennis. If you serve a ball and the other guy hits it hard it will have a lot of power on the way back. Targets moving away are as if the other guy moves the racquet backwards  after the ball hits. The ball might return, but it won't have too much power and it might stop short of reaching you.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Kilo

[Northstar98]

On 1/9/2022 at 3:11 AM, Caldera said:

The jets in front of me still had relative movement in relationship to the ground, otherwise notching would never work.  So it seems another strategy to defeat RADAR might literally be flying straight away and at the very same speed as the pursuer.  Baffling really...

The reason why your RADAR can't see objects with very low closure rate (i.e travelling at your aircraft speed, in the same direction as you), is due to the zero doppler filter (ZDF).

The reason why this filter exists is to filter out ground returns from below your aircraft (which will have a low closure rate) due to sidelobes.

Hopefully this image somewhat explains it:

The notch filter/MLC filter is there to filter out mainlobe clutter (clutter from ground returns within the main lobe), and the ZDF is there to mitigate sidelobe clutter (focusing on that peak at 0 relative velocity).

Edited January 10, 2022 by Northstar98

[Bunny Clark]

5 hours ago, Caldera said:

I mean that in essence, the RADAR system computes where the target location is by knowing the pulse return time and the direction the array is pointed.  It computes movement direction based upon differences in location from subsequent scan cycles.  It computes the target speed by the frequency shift of the return compared to the pulse and the speed that the antenna is itself traveling.  And it computes the targets direction of travel based upon the direction of travel of the antenna itself and all of the above.

Whew...  That is allot to do and it has to be harder than just that.

Yup, Radar is a deep deep rabbit hole that gets very complex. 

For example, in MPRF and HPRF radar systems (which are used by nearly all airborne fire control radars), the radar will transmit multiple pulses before the first one has the time to return to the antenna with any reflections. This means to figure out the range of a reflected contact, the radar needs to be able to identify which pulse created it. This is done by changing the frequency of each pulse and then comparing the frequency of the reflection with a memory of the frequency of transmitted pulses. But the frequency of the reflection is also Doppler shifted by the moving object it reflected off of, which means you can't be sure of the frequency of the original pulse that created it. This leads to ambiguity problems, and the radar system will look at multiple reflections from the same contact and run the numbers to see what possible solutions to the problem exist. Once it has narrowed down one solution that falls within its parameters of being physically possible, it will display that as a contact to the pilot. It's entirely possible that in some situations the radar "sees" a contact but can't determine its range or speed with certainty, and so it is not shown. 

[Rongor]

16 hours ago, Gypsy 1-1 said:

Set it to 20 scope, leave it there. Welcome to the APG68.

No, absolutely don't do this.

Datalink targets visible in the HSD also "carry over" on your radar screen. So regarding airborne threats you can gain and maintain the same situational awareness as with the HSD. This might not be a thing in calm self made SP 'try out something' missions. But it will in campaigns and of course in MP. Reducing the scope to 20 by default can make you lose track of stuff going on way ahead of you.

A threat heading towards you, when you both fly with 400kts, only needs 3 minutes to come from 80 NM distance to 40 NM. You don't want to not be aware of this. Below 40 NM, there is a chance to target and get targeted. You will receive RWR warnings and probably be defensive against incoming BVR attacks long before enemy is within 20 NM...

If you enjoy datalink contact, leave it at the higher ranges, 40 or 80, consider to keep your RF quiet or silent until you commit to a target closer than 40 NM. Only then reduce scope range accordingly and after adjusting antenna elevation concentrate on catching the target with your own radar emmissions.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Rongor

[Caldera]

Hey All,

Let me say that I can have realism issues.  I mean, I can forget (temporarily) that DCS is a simulation.  And I have to say, that it cracks me up when I notice and stands as a real testament to the perceived realism levels effected unto the player.

 

The whole RADAR filter thing I am sure is a requirement IRL and a huge success for Look Down Shoot Down (LDSD) capabilities.  But at least for DCS, it shows a crucial weakness in that capability.

The LDSD / ground scatter thing and the requirement to filter it out, I pretty much get.  But, with two aircraft both at 15000 feet traveling at the same heading and at the same speed leaves a pretty big weakness in that very same capability.  All we need is reverse firing medium range missiles slaved to the RWR and it is game over for the aircraft behind.  They would think that a stealth fighter (or a Klingon fighter with cloaking device) had taken them out. 

 

I can only wonder why IRL there is no filter off override or something else built in to the radar system itself.  Just for checking to see if this situation is happening.  But, as have many of the above posted have related, that is the job of AWACS.

I am almost sure that AWACS controllers get a few free beers after actual engagements...

 

1 hour ago, Rongor said:

No, absolutely don't do this.

I don't know how Gypsy actually does this, but couldn't you just use the HSD for SA?

Caldera

Edited January 11, 2022 by Caldera

[Rongor]

32 minutes ago, Caldera said:

I don't know how Gypsy actually does this, but couldn't you just use the HSD for SA?

You do. So what?

Still why reduce the radar screen to not be able to use this one too? Do you want to corellate contacts with your HSD visually all the time? Why not following the datalink target with your radar antenna early instead of constantly crosschecking both MFDs until the target comes within a fixed range of 20? Your radar doesn't have a fixed range, nor does the enemy's.

KISS concept applies.

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Rongor

[lmp]

I may be reading this wrong, but I think it may have been just Gypsy's way of saying "the APG-68 has a pitiful range" rather than serious advice?

[Tholozor]

1 hour ago, Caldera said:

All we need is reverse firing medium range missiles slaved to the RWR and it is game over for the aircraft behind.

RWRs in reality are very much more ambiguous in regards to actual azimuth. They operate way too well in DCS, with the one on the Tomcat probably having the best one simulated. The other thing about RWRs is that they only provide azimuth, so a slaved missile has no idea in regards to the elevation difference of the contact if it's above or below.