FCR Scan Direction Logic?

[FalcoGer]

You can turn the FCR with the acquisition source by slaving, with cued search (later), with man track or with the arrow buttons on the FCR page, but only when the FCR is not currently doing a scan.

So there are a few questions.

1. From what I gathered, because the pilot doesn't have a slave button, so the FCR always slaves when the pilot selects an acquisition source, even if it's the same one that is already selected. And it will stop slaving when the pilot presses one of the arrow buttons. Is that correct?
2. When the pilot selects an acquisition source before selecting FCR as sight, will it slave or will it just retain it's current orientation?
3. If the pilot presses cued search, the FCR will turn towards the RFI detected emitter to correlate. Will it stay pointed in that direction or will it go back to the acquisition source and/or the previously selected heading afterwards? Will it return the scan cone size to what it was before?
4. With cued search, how does it interact with an already running continuous scanburst? Will it not work? Will it slave the radar while it's scanning? Will it stop the scan and do a single scan or a scanburst? What will happen?
5. Does slaving to acquisition source also change the elevation? Does it do so in automatic elevation also?
6. When the radar is actively scanning it can not be slewed. How does it react to the helicopter turning? Will it retain the heading or will it stay relative to the helicopter?
7. If it was previously slaved to a point acquisition source, will it keep pointing to it, even if you fly around it?
8. What does it do if it deems that it should be scanning behind the helicopter? Can it do that?
9. What's the scan cone angle vertically?
10. The radar elevation display displays the angle of the radar cone in 6.25° steps (in RMAP and GTM modes), with the big dash being 6.25° down. Is this the bottom of the scan cone, the middle of the scan cone or the top of the scan cone?
11. Not really on topic, but what happens if one crew member has selected FCR as sight, and the other one then selects it as sight? Will they both have it as sight and if not, what does the other crew member gets selected as their sight? does it default to HMD or does it go to the last one selected (ie. possibly TADS for CPG)
12. What happens when one crew member is currently scanning with the FCR and then the other takes it as the sight?
13. What happens when one crew member is currently scanning with the FCR and then they select a different sight?
14. When selecting LINK with TADS, the radar should slave to the TADS LOS. You can't select TADS as ACQ when TADS is the selected sight, so this is the only way of doing that (unless the pilot uses TADS as ACQ and FCR as sight). If you do that, does the radar elevation gets adjusted as well? If so, only in manual mode or also in auto?
15. If the pilot has FCR as sight and the CPG wants to get the TADS onto the NTS, is there a way other than selecting FCR as ACQ and slaving?

Edit

Here are my observations so far

1. It will always slave, until the manual slew buttons are pressed
2. See 1
3. N/I
4. N/I
5. No clue. Maybe?
6. It stays on a heading, never anything else
7. See 6
8. It seems to just turn all the way around, even scanning directly behind the aircraft. The manual turn buttons seem to get buggy sometimes with that, disabling the wrong ones or none at all. Also the tail boom blanking area is not being displayed.
9. No clue.
10. No clue. Probably center, no evidence though.
11. FCR in multicrew is currently buggy and not really working as is. Can't really determine. I think the correct action is to boot the other crewmember to HMD as sight, didn't check though.
12. I think it stops the scan. Didn't test, nor would I trust the test right now.
13. The scan gets stopped
14. No clue. Related to 5. Actually the same as 5.
15. You can use CAQ on the NTS to create a TG point and and slave. The PLT can also mark the target using the FCR page's TGT function.

Edited January 12, 2024 by FalcoGer

[NIGHTHAWK1]

very good questions.   maybe someday we will get a manual that tells us all about the FCR and have some drawings as well.   dream on dream on!!

[Amarok_73]

Definitely thread worth following if there's chance to get the answers on that questions. Thank's @FalcoGer for a neat synthesis of my doubts and questions

 

[Trettifire]

I agree, very well asked. I've experimented with several of the issues mentioned, but I'll wait for the official response and let my observations be just that. 

I'm so looking forward to getting the remaining functionality of the FCR. The AH64 is an amazing machine once you get to know it.