brettt777 Posted June 25, 2023 Posted June 25, 2023 Like everyone else, I recently purchased the early access F-15E. I also recently purchased the F-1 Mirage, which has a ground mapping radar. I was flying that over the Sinai Peninsula and I was a bit confused about how it was working. Then I discovered that the M-2000C Mirage apparently had an update that gave it an A/G function on it's radar and when I flew that one I noticed something about the way it works that is similar to the F-1. Now, I'm flying the F-15E and I notice the A/G radar in this one doing the same thing. When I'm looking down at the ground from 20K feet on a 20 mile scale, the radar only gives me this relatively narrow band of returns that is only several miles wide instead of covering the entire sweep. Is this normal? I went and looked again at the A/G radars in the FA-18, F-16 and JF-17, and they don't work that way. They show returns on pretty much the entire sweep except for very close in. Is this just because the Mirage radars and maybe the F-15 radar are older technology or are they just modeled different? I am a retired aviation maintenance technician that specialized in avionics. I spent most of the last four decades in the aviation community both military and civilian, plus about a dozen years in the marine electronics industry so I know how a radar works. That being said, I have never really seen a modern military radar operate IRL. At least not airborne. I worked on EA-6B Prowlers in the US Navy. They had a search radar in them but that was back in the 70's and 80's so it was very low tech compared to this new stuff. It had very little targeting functions; only a very basic HARM target link of a thing. Anyway.... I never got to see those radars work except for occasionally on the ground when we could point the thing over the side of the ship. So, is this actually the way these apparently older radars worked? Are the radars in the Hornet and Viper that much more efficient? Or am I just not using the F-15E radar properly? AMD Ryzen 9 5900X @ 4.4ghz, 64gb DDR4 @ 3200mhz, GeForce RTX-3060ti 8GB DDR6, Three KTC 32" QHD monitors @ 165hz, Rosewill 80plus Bronze 1000w, Corsair Hydro H100i, 2tb M.2 SSD for OS, Two 3tb HDD, 2tb SSD for DCS, P3D, Star Citizen, Sound Blaster Zx, Thermaltake Overseer RX-I, Winwing Orion 2 HOTAS F-15EX throttle and F-16EX stick, Winwing 3 MFD MIP with FA-18 UFC and F-16 ICP, TrackIR 5, Surround Speakers & Subwoofer, Oculus Quest 2 VR. :joystick::pilotfly:
Rainmaker Posted June 25, 2023 Posted June 25, 2023 The radar returns are only as wide as the radar beam is, so yes, what you are seeing is likely correct. Elevation to compute the best sweep for the given range is set by the base altitude of the current steerpoint, but can be adjusted manually, and may need to depending on terrain elevation
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