Hornet MIDS performance

[raus]

Hi,

I have been experiencing the following behavior regularly in online Liberation missions. I don't want to opn a report, as I am not sure if this would be a bug happening to other people as well, or related to our setup.

The issue is that our datalink contacts come and go at intervals. All of them. I have thought several possible sources, but ruled them out:

• AWACS turning cold and losing contacts: to my understanding this would be nonsense, with the big rotating antenna of the AWACS, should not matter if he is hot or cold on the contacts, right?
• Contacts are on the beam, and are lost to either the AWACS or the contributor fighters. I see some heavy issues with this, as:
  • I don't think we should always, 100%, lose all contacts that are turning, regardles of their relative altitude, size, speed, RCS... We even lose contact with tankers when they slowly enter a turn. And it is not only on fighter radars, also for AWACS (!). This would, anyway, be a radar problem
  • We are not losing only the beaming contacts. Also datalink contacts that are hot are lost. And they are, suspiciously lost all at the same time. So we go from having 3 bandit groups (some hot, some cold, some entering beaming aspect) to suddenly, at the same time, having none. It is as if somebody swiched off the datalink completely

It feels like we are having 1minute of MIDS followed by 1 minute of no MIDS (not measured, I don't even know if it is that regular, as same duration.... just the feeling)

While this is adding tension to our BVR engagements, it is indeed very annoying. It also leads to a lot of broken radio calls, as the contact disappears from our SA page while we were reading the B/E position to coordinate.

I would like to hear opinions on this issue. If it happens to more people, and it is considered a bug, but not yet reported (I did not find it, but might have been a bad search-fu on my side) I could try to create a track. Our online tracks are very large, and sometimes this starts happening mid mission, as we take off from a long distance. I would need to research if this also happens offline.

 

BR

raus

[BIGNEWY]

Hi,

spoken with the team,

Point 1, it is correct. When the AWACS turns, the bank of the dish can place contacts outside the coverage area

Point 2, targets on the beam in a look down environment can and should have reduced tracking.

thank you

[raus]

Hi @BIGNEWY, thanks for the reply

- While I can understand point 1, and I am not an AWACS expert, it seems odd that it is not covered in desing of the AWACS... anyway, thanks for the feedback.

- I could accept the point 2 if it wasn't, as I mentioned that ALL datalink contacts disappear at once, not only the beaming ones. Is there any explanation for that?

 

Thank you!!

[MARLAN_]

As far as I know, BN is correct about #1. It was a long time ago, but as I recall my community's resident E2 NFO mentioned about how they would sometimes rudder turn to avoid tilting the radar dish. You could also set up long race tracks perpendicular to the expected threat direction to reduce time in turn in DCS.

[Digitalvole]

I recently plopped an AWACS in my training scenario mission set up to orbit at a waypoint.

I was losing all data link contacts every few minutes so regularly that I suspected it must be the orbit of the AWACS obscuring the dish.

Changed it to race track and problem solved. It can deffo obscure it’s own radar like BN said.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Digitalvole