Did Jester pass WSO school?

[BLUEmako]

I am currently struggling to wonder how Jester 2.0 has kept his seat as WSO in the Phantom. Don't get me wrong, I love flying the F4, however I'm finding it very frustrating whenever I need to rely on Jester. Jester is family, I don't want to speak badly about him, we've spent a lot of time together in the Tomcat, but I feel like he should have been held back in school a bit more to just get the hang of things better.

Some of the frustrations:

- Jester menu opens but then I can't select anything for several seconds as the radial selector doesn't come up immediately. Even the simplest command becomes way too slow for combat.

- Jester simply cannot use the radar effectively. I have not been able to get him to lock onto anything for BVR before I am in visual range and in the merge. I may as well not carry sparrows and leave the radar off. This is true even when I can see the bandit I want him to lock.

- Jester is so slow calling targets in a dogfight they are long gone from the direction he indicates when he makes the call

- When he calls contacts he doesn't give the complete call, he usually says something like "5 miles, 10 degrees" but doesn't indicate friendly, hostile, type, altitude. I'm left guessing what it is he has forgotten to tell me.

- Jester hates the IFF and refuses to touch it when I ask. I can't shoot at anything until I have visually ID'd it.

- In multiplayer I may as well not have a WSO at all, he's so slow and can't be trusted to call out threats.

 

Hopefully these frustrations can get ironed out pretty fast and Jester and I can be friends again. The relationship is pretty strained right now.

[ricktoberfest]

54 minutes ago, BLUEmako said:

I am currently struggling to wonder how Jester 2.0 has kept his seat as WSO in the Phantom. Don't get me wrong, I love flying the F4, however I'm finding it very frustrating whenever I need to rely on Jester. Jester is family, I don't want to speak badly about him, we've spent a lot of time together in the Tomcat, but I feel like he should have been held back in school a bit more to just get the hang of things better.

Some of the frustrations:

- Jester menu opens but then I can't select anything for several seconds as the radial selector doesn't come up immediately. Even the simplest command becomes way too slow for combat.

- Jester simply cannot use the radar effectively. I have not been able to get him to lock onto anything for BVR before I am in visual range and in the merge. I may as well not carry sparrows and leave the radar off. This is true even when I can see the bandit I want him to lock.

- Jester is so slow calling targets in a dogfight they are long gone from the direction he indicates when he makes the call

- When he calls contacts he doesn't give the complete call, he usually says something like "5 miles, 10 degrees" but doesn't indicate friendly, hostile, type, altitude. I'm left guessing what it is he has forgotten to tell me.

- Jester hates the IFF and refuses to touch it when I ask. I can't shoot at anything until I have visually ID'd it.

- In multiplayer I may as well not have a WSO at all, he's so slow and can't be trusted to call out threats.

 

Hopefully these frustrations can get ironed out pretty fast and Jester and I can be friends again. The relationship is pretty strained right now.

I agree with almost all of that 

 

for the jester  wheel, have either head movement or mouse control, not both. It seems to wait for the mouse before actioning with head movement. 
 

IFF is supposedly fixed now- haven’t tested myself though  

 

Edited June 5, 2024 by ricktoberfest

[=475FG= Dawger]

I don't own the F-14 so this is my first experience with Jester.

It turns out he is named appropriately because he is a clown. 

Unprofessional and useless.

And his unprofessional demeanor was obviously on purpose.

He doesn't do what he should do. (call airspeeds and altitudes, look for additional bandits, etc)

What he does do is done badly " I got, uuuuuhhhhhh, <pause> Nails, 11 O'clock". 

Comms Brevity is a thing, even on the ICS.

I would rather just have key binds to stuff in the backseat.

Or a key binds for trained, professional WSO/Clown mode.

[Frosty2124]

15 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I don't own the F-14 so this is my first experience with Jester.

It turns out he is named appropriately because he is a clown. 

Unprofessional and useless.

And his unprofessional demeanor was obviously on purpose.

He doesn't do what he should do. (call airspeeds and altitudes, look for additional bandits, etc)

What he does do is done badly " I got, uuuuuhhhhhh, <pause> Nails, 11 O'clock". 

Comms Brevity is a thing, even on the ICS.

I would rather just have key binds to stuff in the backseat.

Or a key binds for trained, professional WSO/Clown mode.

Comms brevity is why he says "nails"

jester is designed to be as human as possible, humans aren't infallible.

wait until Jester makes a mistake.....

Edited June 5, 2024 by Frosty2124
sentence corrected

[ricktoberfest]

Just now, Frosty2124 said:

Comms brevity is why he says "nails"

jester is designed to be as human as possible, humans aren't infallible.

wait until Jester makes one of those.....

Some people have absolutely no sense of humor. It’s strange but to each their own I guess 

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 minute ago, Frosty2124 said:

Comms brevity is why he says "nails"

jester is designed to be as human as possible, humans aren't infallible.

wait until Jester makes one of those.....

You don't understand Comms brevity.

 " I got, uuuuuhhhhhh, <pause> Nails, 11 O'clock".  should be "Nails, 11 "

[Frosty2124]

Just now, =475FG= Dawger said:

You don't understand Comms brevity.

 " I got, uuuuuhhhhhh, <pause> Nails, 11 O'clock".  should be "Nails, 11 "

it should. but you don't understand how stress works.... 

aviation is a high stress environment, military more so.

when talking to another callsign, you're correct you should avoid "uhhhh" as much  as possible, but under combat conditions, its get the message across. 

Jester is designed to simulate human behaviour as much as possible, please don't eject him when he miss Idents an aircraft or tells you to "just jam it in there" he's trying his li'l heart out.

 

[Raisuli]

1 hour ago, BLUEmako said:

I am currently struggling to wonder how Jester 2.0 has kept his seat as WSO in the Phantom.

I am currently struggling to understand how I keep my seat as a pilot in the Phantom.  We make a good team; neither of us know what we're doing or do it well

 

9 minutes ago, Frosty2124 said:

it should. but you don't understand how stress works....

 

As I understand it allowing stress to show in comms is a hangable offense in Navy ready rooms.  Maybe the air force is different.  I do know, having had to communicate through stressful situations in the military, that 'uhhh' is still dependent on the individual.  I know a few people who can't get a sentence out in non-stressful situations without two or three of those.

In a perfect world I'd have a sit down with Jester and we'd work on that.  It's not something you fix right away but with a little effort you can get past it, stress or no stress.

[Frosty2124]

1 minute ago, Raisuli said:

I am currently struggling to understand how I keep my seat as a pilot in the Phantom.  We make a good team; neither of us know what we're doing or do it well

 

As I understand it allowing stress to show in comms is a hangable offense in Navy ready rooms.  Maybe the air force is different.  I do know, having had to communicate through stressful situations in the military, that 'uhhh' is still dependent on the individual.  I know a few people who can't get a sentence out in non-stressful situations without two or three of those.

In a perfect world I'd have a sit down with Jester and we'd work on that.  It's not something you fix right away but with a little effort you can get past it, stress or no stress.

Which is what i mean by "human" hes a human, fallible backseater

I've both civil and military RT Certs so i know how it should be done, the "human" aspect of jester makes him easier to integrate with as a crew

[Kalasnkova74]

28 minutes ago, Raisuli said:

I am currently struggling to understand how I keep my seat as a pilot in the Phantom.  We make a good team; neither of us know what we're doing or do it well

Yup. Anything bad I could say about Jester (right now) could be easily said about his nose gunner (aka me).

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, Frosty2124 said:

it should. but you don't understand how stress works.... 

aviation is a high stress environment, military more so.

when talking to another callsign, you're correct you should avoid "uhhhh" as much  as possible, but under combat conditions, its get the message across. 

Jester is designed to simulate human behaviour as much as possible, please don't eject him when he miss Idents an aircraft or tells you to "just jam it in there" he's trying his li'l heart out.

 

Having flown professionally for thirty years, I know that trained professionals don’t deviate from training and suddenly start blabbering like an idiot just because death seems likely. 
 

His verbosity is but one example. 
 

His stupidity during critical phases of flight (takeoff and landing for example) would get him booted off the flight roster. 
 

I know you guys want to pretend he is some sort of relatable character but it is just tiresome to have to deal with the same easily correctable errors repeatedly. You can’t teach him to be better. You can only tell him to shut up. 
 

A buddy of mine, former F4 WSO, calls Jester an embarrassment so I know I am not barking up the wrong tree. 
 

If you like him, great, but there is no reason HB can’t make him more like a real WSO and less like a caricature. 
 

Make it an option as I said. I don’t care if clown mode stays available if I have the more professional version as an option. 

[Gunfreak]

Anyone listened to the coms from the Gulf of Sidra thing. The plot in one of the F14s doesn't sound very professional. He sounds panicked. He also select wrong weapons etc. 

[Raisuli]

3 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

 

If you like him, great, but there is no reason HB can’t make him more like a real WSO and less like a caricature. 
 

 

Make it an option as I said. I don’t care if clown mode stays available if I have the more professional version as an option. 

This.  Same issue with the F-14; the F-4 version is a little less annoying, but without any experience flying military aircraft I still feel he's more like a Hollywood caricature than an actual professional, and I have heard and experienced, universally, that military aviators are professionals.

Just to make bad worse he ejected in the middle of a training mission (right on top of the BadGuy^(tm) base).  I completed the last couple passes of the mission, landed at the forward base, tried a repair to see if I could get a replacement Clown, which requires a shutdown. Nope.  No can do.  Refuel, restart, but now I can't get the INS aligned.  Flew back to the rear base by dead reckoning, landed, had a steak and lobster tail while Clown was being tortured at the BadGuy^(tm) Motel 6. 

Not even classy enough for a Hilton, but it served him right.

4 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

Anyone listened to the coms from the Gulf of Sidra thing. The plot in one of the F14s doesn't sound very professional. He sounds panicked. He also select wrong weapons etc. 

Was he rattling off snarky comments?

[Phantom711]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb BLUEmako:

Jester simply cannot use the radar effectively. I have not been able to get him to lock onto anything for BVR before I am in visual range and in the merge. I may as well not carry sparrows and leave the radar off. This is true even when I can see the bandit I want him to lock.

Have you tried with the Jester Context button. Works for me...at least in the Instant Action and Training missions I´ve flown so far...

 

[ricktoberfest]

1 hour ago, Gunfreak said:

Anyone listened to the coms from the Gulf of Sidra thing. The plot in one of the F14s doesn't sound very professional. He sounds panicked. He also select wrong weapons etc. 

not a pilot, but every account I’ve heard described of combat in north Vietnam was about radios being so over used  as to be nearly unintelligible.  Doesn’t sound so cool calm and collected to me. 

[Czar66]

1 hour ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

His stupidity during critical phases of flight (takeoff and landing for example) would get him booted off the flight roster. 

I know you guys want to pretend he is some sort of relatable character but it is just tiresome to have to deal with the same easily correctable errors repeatedly. You can’t teach him to be better. You can only tell him to shut up.

Disable Jester landing call outs on special tab. I have zero of that. He just calls out 80 and 100 kts on take of and that's it. A few jokes rarely when taking off, while on landing he is mouth shut.

The plane is 100% flyable with him 100% silent.

Done it in the cat multiple times when not in the mood to hear the RIO. On the Phantom, his calls are less critical, but you have to keep an eye on the radar cursor.

Bind jester IFF to your hotas, as well the majority of the radar pilot-wso interactions.

You won't need to open the wheel unless is for navigation.

Peace is achievable.

[=475FG= Dawger]

15 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

Disable Jester landing call outs on special tab. I have zero of that. He just calls out 80 and 100 kts on take of and that's it. A few jokes rarely when taking off, while on landing he is mouth shut.

The plane is 100% flyable with him 100% silent.

Done it in the cat multiple times when not in the mood to hear the RIO. On the Phantom, his calls are less critical, but you have to keep an eye on the radar cursor.

Bind jester IFF to your hotas, as well the majority of the radar pilot-wso interactions.

You won't need to open the wheel unless is for navigation.

Peace is achievable.

Oh, I am there already. I dug up my VoiceAttack registration key specifically to be able to tell him to shut up.

And I don't bother with the radar outside of Flood mode shots.

However, that doesn't fix the underlying issue. Fuel would be more useful.

 

[Gunfreak]

28 minutes ago, ricktoberfest said:

not a pilot, but every account I’ve heard described of combat in north Vietnam was about radios being so over used  as to be nearly unintelligible.  Doesn’t sound so cool calm and collected to me. 

Same during ww2 and also as late as Gulf War. Dan Hampton in the book Viper Pilot motions something about airwaves being flooded at times.

[Raisuli]

4 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Fuel would be more useful.

 

Meh.  It was a two seat aircraft and it has two seats.  I'm not a fan of Clown, but I can work with it.  I didn't like everyone I worked with while I was in the military, either, and it's safe to say quite a few people didn't like me, but we muddled through anyway. 

As HB improves the code in theory Jester will have more utility and function better, but it's not going to slow me down in the interim and statistically they'll write code faster than I improve as a pilot.  Before long Jester will submit posts wanting to kick me out!

[Longiron]

Jester is alright, you need to fly to put him in advantage positions, helps with the limitations of the radar too.

My big issue is he is in the back seat there just huffing on 100% O2 getting high as a kite. Thought he stopped doing this in the tomcat long ago, old habits I guess.

[Comstedt86]

6 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

 Fuel would be more useful.

 

There's no fuel gauge for the WSO pit, he does periodically ask you about fuel state after a while however and depending on what you answer him he can do flightplan/ WP back to selected airfield for instance.

[primus_TR]

My only gripe with Jester is his inconsistency in detection performance of radar contacts. Sometimes, he can make out a target 45 miles away at 1000 feet, and in others, he cannot detect a Mig approaching head on until visual contact. I appreciate that the radar on the F4 is archaic, but still. In most cases, I am able to detect a target in the WSO seat while he cannot. May be he needs to undergo retraining in radar use lol 

[=475FG= Dawger]

6 hours ago, Comstedt86 said:

There's no fuel gauge for the WSO pit, he does periodically ask you about fuel state after a while however and depending on what you answer him he can do flightplan/ WP back to selected airfield for instance.

It a reference to an old complaint/joke. 

When single seat fighter pilots transitioned to a two seat aircraft, many were skeptical of the usefulness of a second crewman. Many voiced the opinion that instead of all the weight of a second cockpit and the extra man, “Fuel would be more useful “

And y’all think I am the one with no sense of humor. 

[Comstedt86]

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

It a reference to an old complaint/joke. 

When single seat fighter pilots transitioned to a two seat aircraft, many were skeptical of the usefulness of a second crewman. Many voiced the opinion that instead of all the weight of a second cockpit and the extra man, “Fuel would be more useful “

And y’all think I am the one with no sense of humor. 

Ah I see, I'm merely a flight sim enjoyer and in the context of Jester complaints I thought that the conversation / complaint was Jester not calling out fuel state.