EL Indicator & Antenna tilted down 0.5° - Bug or intended?

[Karon]

TL;DR: I noticed that the "physical" antenna in EL indicator is tilted downwards 0.49° even then the manual setting is 0°. At startup, it is matching the RIO's input but, once power is applied, it moves down.

 

SITUATION

Whilst doing some tests, I noticed that the "RDR" part of EL indicator was not matching the sensor status in the right column. I did more tests and this appears to be normal. I am wondering if this is a bug or it is intended.

 

TEST1: Visual Bug

I tested whether this is a visual bug or not. To prove this, I set up a simple scenario:

• client F-14 at 25,000ft;
• first F14 (F14_H) at 27,000ff;
• second F14 (F14_L) at 23,000ft;
• range between client and the two others is 20nm;
• aircraft are co-speed and heading in the same direction.

Using maths, at 20nm, the radar looks at ±0.9°. By setting 1 BAR, the radar covers 2.3°. If the "physical" antenna was centred, when manual setting equals to 0°, it should be able to see both contacts. However, once in-game, only the lower contact appears, which seems to confirm the -0.49° offset:

2.3°/2 + 0.9 = 0.65° as upper limit, and 2.05° as lower. F14_H is +0.9° and hence not seen.

I was wondering if this is intended, perhaps there's a technical reason for it.

The following images show the steps:

2 Bars, both F-14s are visible:

Switching to 1 bar. The higher F-14 disappears:

Turning the antenna up 0.5°:

 

TEST2: Air spawn bug?

To remove another possibility of being a bug induced by spawning hot in the air, I tested on the ground. Surprisingly enough, the EL indicator is aligned with the sensor input. However, as the aircraft comes to life, the antenna moves down ~ 0.5° even when the radar is set to 1 bar.

The EL Indicator moves down at 1'16", right as the DDD illuminates.