DCS: F-4E - Episode IV - RADAR Pt. 1 - Basics and Theory

[Q3ark]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

Ten times the effort for one tenth of the result.  Vietnam era pilots and RIOs had balls of steel, really. 

I didn’t realise the huge gap in performance between the F4 and the F14, the tomcat, with its radar and datalink is light years ahead. I can see why it was so popular with crews in the fleet. With a good RIO the old cat can give modern jets a hard time. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to get my hands on the phantom , I can’t wait to see what heatblur have in store for us.

[t_hedlund]

16 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

It is Jesters job to operate the radar, not the pilots. The pilot also has no controls for the radar in their pit. You can read about details here:

https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/jester/combat/radar.html

But the tldr is that you, as a pilot, do not have to bother with the how at all. You fly the aircraft and Jester finds the bad guys for you. There are of course options in the Jester Wheel to nudge him in a certain direction or change a few settings.

That said, it is important to understand that, in contrast to the F-14, the Phantoms radar is not a search radar. You wont be flying around in multiplayer, scanning the entire air space 100nm ahead of you, gaining full SA. At the time you realistically spot a bandit, they are already at around 25nm and you just have a few seconds until there is a heater coming your way. Everything is happening very fast with this radar. You spot the guy, you lock him, you shoot your Sparrow (which might miss, but forces the guy to go defensive) and then you are already merged and can shoot your Sidewinder or go for guns

 

Thank for taking the time to reply, Zabuzard. You brought several solid points, I think I got so focused on what need to be done to operate the radar, and wasn't putting it into context. Thanks for the link to the manual, I got some reading to do. 

[LG_Barons]

vor 22 Stunden schrieb Q3ark:

I didn’t realise the huge gap in performance between the F4 and the F14, the tomcat, with its radar and datalink is light years ahead. I can see why it was so popular with crews in the fleet. With a good RIO the old cat can give modern jets a hard time. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to get my hands on the phantom , I can’t wait to see what heatblur have in store for us.

Maybe far far down the road, Heatblur (or any capable Modder) gives us the German F-4F (APG-65, AMRAAM,,Laser INS and other fancy stuff). They give us already the German Liveries.

[felixx75]

On 4/25/2024 at 11:13 AM, LG_Barons said:

Maybe far far down the road, Heatblur (or any capable Modder) gives us the German F-4F (APG-65, AMRAAM,,Laser INS and other fancy stuff). They give us already the German Liveries.

The original F-4F, was an F-4E with significantly fewer capabilities...

Only the F-4F ICE would be interesting in my opinion. But that's already post Cold War and would be rather uninteresting for me. I hardly think it would be worth the effort (but I may be wrong).

[marmor]

If I'm correct, antenna nutation for tracking is modelled. Will the AIM7E's as well have this detail?

[aztec01]

On 4/24/2024 at 7:22 PM, t_hedlund said:

Thank for taking the time to reply, Zabuzard. You brought several solid points, I think I got so focused on what need to be done to operate the radar, and wasn't putting it into context. Thanks for the link to the manual, I got some reading to do. 

Suddenly all those pesky AWACS and GCI callouts become a lot more important!

[PhantomHans]

OK I want to ask about the radar.  Why can't Jester break out radar contacts beyond visual range?

I've been flying 1v1 against MiG-21, MiG-23, etc, and I have yet to see radar lock before I had the little dot of the enemy aircraft in sight.

I understand that the F-4E radar wasn't long range, but I was expecting to get contacts at ranges of something like 20 miles, not ranges of 5-10 miles.

@IronMike I wonder if someone from HeatBlur can weight in on this.  I thought I heard the radar was based on "true raycasting" which I thought was a graphics thing.  Is it possible that my low end graphics settings are screwing something up for the implementation of this system?

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Basically one was a pulse and the other was a Doppler with all sorts of filters installed, and the technology gap was more than a decade apart. For the last 2 days, if you think the F-14 RIO was bad, always refusing to lock that dot right dead and centre in front of you. Here, you can DIY but I can tell you it can be even more frustrating.

[FusRoPotato]

On 5/25/2024 at 4:32 AM, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

Basically one was a pulse and the other was a Doppler with all sorts of filters installed, and the technology gap was more than a decade apart. For the last 2 days, if you think the F-14 RIO was bad, always refusing to lock that dot right dead and centre in front of you. Here, you can DIY but I can tell you it can be even more frustrating.

Actually they were developed at about the same time. This particular Phantom (1969-70) was only about a year or two older than the first Tomcat. Block 48 (1971) received pulse-Doppler modifications at the same time the Tomcat with the PD updated AWG-9 (1971) came out, and shortly after the AWG-10 was developed, the APQ-120 was updated to incorporate similar look-down/shoot-down capabilities. In fact, I've been a bit confused as to why this block 45 doesn't have many of the upgrade features tested on block 37s that were later implemented for the block 38 that made locking of sidelobe clutter virtually impossible and enhanced a lot of performance aspects of CAA mode. I was speaking to one of the HB reps on reddit a while back and mentioned the modulator card and how it stored return gradients in memory to validate targets against sidelobe clutter during CAA scans. It was one of several components sometimes found on blocks 33-37 for various testing applications. He acted like he had no idea what I was talking about. Sounds like they modeled this block 45 to have the radar of the block 31/32 before they had started modifying it. That's very interesting considering the later model RWR and display that was implemented. Things don't seem to be matching up for their year.

Edited July 15, 2024 by FusRoPotato

[LanceCriminal86]

4 hours ago, FusRoPotato said:

Actually they were developed at about the same time. This particular Phantom (1969-70) was only about a year or two older than the first Tomcat. Block 48 (1971) received pulse-Doppler modifications at the same time the Tomcat with the PD updated AWG-9 (1971) came out, and shortly after the AWG-10 was developed, the APQ-120 was updated to incorporate similar look-down/shoot-down capabilities. In fact, I've been a bit confused as to why this block 45 doesn't have many of the upgrade features tested on block 37s that were later implemented for the block 38 that made locking of sidelobe clutter virtually impossible and enhanced a lot of performance aspects of CAA mode. I was speaking to one of the HB reps on reddit a while back and mentioned the modulator card and how it stored return gradients in memory to validate targets against sidelobe clutter during CAA scans. It was one of several components sometimes found on blocks 33-37 for various testing applications. He acted like he had no idea what I was talking about. Sounds like they modeled this block 45 to have the radar of the block 31/32 before they had started modifying it. That's very interesting considering the later model RWR and display that was implemented. Things don't seem to be matching up for their year.

 

The jet isn't really a -45 in whole, it was meant to represent the earlier block jets that were upgraded through the 70s but below the delineation where slats and TISEO were integrated off the showroom floor, ie 71-0238 or so. Obviously no -45 would have had the APS-107 antenna like most of the 67- and 68- serial jets. 

Like the Tomcat it's not a single block, specific year jet. Rather representative of the body of jets that got upgrades post Vietnam into the 80s with OFP-005 or so. Some of the really early serial Es never even got DSCG apparently.

[FusRoPotato]

33 minutes ago, LanceCriminal86 said:

Obviously no -45 would have had the APS-107 antenna like most of the 67- and 68- serial jets.

The only serials with the 107 were D variants, and they were largely temporary. Those things were so useless they just got discarded. Before the APQ-120's were available, they shipped the earliest E variants without any radar at all. They had originally planned for 107's to go in but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the weight.

Regardless, CAA was only useless on the first deployment of the 120. The 45 should have been long past numerous upgrades, especially a major one deployed standard in 68 featuring that card. I can't really think of a good reason one would want to model an earlier mismatched version of this radar that can't even perform its functions reliably. It's almost akin to throwing the 107 in for laughs.

[Dragon1-1]

I suppose because it's the starting point for both a more kitted out version and the variant our E was upgraded from. Remember, there are more Phantoms in the pipeline.

[flavnet]

I'll start by saying that I think the F-4 simulation is a masterpiece and not even the F-14 was made with the maniacal care lavished on the Phantom (which deserves such a commitment!).
The effort to simulate the radar's functioning as much as possible is appreciable, however, the playability suffers greatly! It's frustrating not even being able to track an enemy fighter approaching at 10 nm (let alone not being able to lock onto one at 5nm). It's frustrating especially because the F-4 is the only aircraft with this "feature". The Mig-21 has a radar that basically only works for targets at 10 nm, but at least it tracks and locks onto them within this distance. The Mirage F1 has a radar that is superior to the F-4 because it can track and lock onto enemy fighters approaching within 15-20 nm. Even the F-5 has an AA radar that works better than the F-4's!
Evidently, the radars of these planes (approximately contemporary with the F-4) have been simulated less realistically, but at least they are fun!
Surely, like the F-14, the F-4 would also need a human WSO. So, the single player will have to take into account that he is severely limited and he will have to follow techniques that rely as little as possible on radar (which was also likely in the 70s).

[Dragon1-1]

The F-4 is fun, too, you just have to use it right. Jester will probably get better if he can tweak gain and such, but the other period radars are too good, in that you can use them to search airspace reasonably well, without many of the issues that affected them IRL. In fact, you generally don't have to mess with gain and only drop lock from notching. Realistically, you should not be getting BVR locks on fighter-sized targets from any of those platforms. The primary method of acquiring targets in fighters of the time was visual and GCI/AWACS calls. Much of the time, they would not even turn on their radars until they had a good tally. This is why SPO-10 was a perfectly sufficient RWR for its era. If you were being painted by something that caused SPO-10 to beep, that usually meant it was preparing to shoot you.

The MiG-25 was probably the first fighter with a search radar that was worth a damn, followed by F-14 and F-15. Before that, the radar was primarily for guiding missiles and getting range for the gunsight.