Feature request: Keybinds/commands to order Jester to set radar to 10 and 5 nm

[Stickler]

Currently, there are keybinds and Jester wheel commands to set radar range to 50 and 25 nm. For radar trail procedures, these settings are too high.

I therefore recommend to add additional keybinds and Jester wheel commands for 10 and 5 nm.

[Zabuzard]

You can focus the "target" ahead of you and Jester will set the range accordingly.
(Jester Context Command SHORT or, especially for friendlies, Jester Wheel > Radar > Focus).

We want to get away from this thinking of using the WSO controls as Pilot. Instead, you would tell him your actual intention/use case and he does his job based on that.

If above doesnt solve the issue, could you elaborate on what you are trying to achieve. I.e. why exactly you need the display range to be that small.

[Stickler]

As stated, I would like to use the 5 or 10 nm ranges for radar trail procedures. For example, during a radar trail departure, Jester does not build SA on preceding aircraft quickly enough to use the focus feature (by the time the friendly aircraft show up on the wheel, you are most likely already out of the weather).

If an option to manually set 5 or 10 nm were available, one would have a much better chance of actually getting a radar contact.

This is also a factor during radar trail recoveries where you will initially be too close to your flight lead for him to show up on your radar. Upon flight split, it would again take too long for the radar contact to become available in the Jester wheel to effectively use the focus feature.

Currently, to fly radar trails without a human WSO, one has to manually set 5 or 10 nm in the back seat and disable Jester to prevent him from reverting back to 25/50 nm.

[Zabuzard]

1 hour ago, Stickler said:

If an option to manually set 5 or 10 nm were available, one would have a much better chance of actually getting a radar contact.

See, that is what I mean. The actual use case is that you want to follow your flight lead in bad weather conditions. So what you actually want is not "hey WSO, please put the radar on 5nm... now on 10nm please... now 5nm again...", but "hey WSO, can you put our flight lead on the radar please, I am having a hard time seeing him".

"Focus" sounds like a good choice for that. You are right ofc that the flight lead might not show up in the list for some reason and that is something we can change and influence.
I would be surprised though if merely changing the display range changes much on that regard, as it is just the range of the display, not "radar range". The radar capabilities are not affected by the display range at all. Whether an aircraft will show up on the screen or not does not depend on that setting at all. The return will or will not show up on your screen at the same moment, 5nm or 50nm - just at a different location. In either case, Jester would/should be able to identify it immediately and from there FOCUS should be available.

What we could for example do is to add anything in visible range or aircraft from the own flight or faction into the FOCUS/LOCK lists regardless of whether its visible on the screen or not.

This ties in with the planned addition of adding targets from AWACS and RWR into "Jester Radar".

Edited September 14, 2024 by Zabuzard

[Stickler]

Sounds like a plan. I of course wrote carelessly: It is not about "getting" a radar contact, but about "seeing" it to maintain positional SA on your preceding flight members. A smaller radar display range will simply help with that, since not everyone will be mushed together at the bottom of the screen.

Managed to fly a pretty good radar trail departure by disabling Jester, see the attached track. It is noteworthy that when re-enabling Jester at 12:06:25 with a crystal clear radar picture of just my flight lead ahead and hardly any clutter, Jester immediately switches to the 50 nm scale, losing the contact. He subsequently only spots the traffic visually, but not on the radar until the end of the track.

The method shown is, of course, only a workaround. If one were able to use focus for SA (implying that Jester somehow "knows" what your intentions are and sets the radar so he at least has a chance to get contacts on your flight members quickly), I would much prefer this over the current need for micromanagement. The other option being boresight which seems to work quite well, but which will only allow you to maintain SA on your immediate predecessor.

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