Jester in the A2A arena

[av8orDave]

Hi All,

Yesterday evening I was flying a Retribution mission in the F-4E. Most of my time in the Heatblur Phantom so far has been air to ground focused, but there were a couple of bandits reported by AWACS between me and the target, so I flipped over to the air to air sight mode, called up the radar missile mode, went master arm on, and started searching.

Jester was agreeable to changing to a 50nm narrow scan. Heck, he even agreed to going to a 20nm narrow scan, although the range indicator on my control panel continued to say 50nm (did he make the change?). 

However when I tried telling him to scan at specific ranges and altitudes using the Jester menu, he flat refused. I tried basically every range and altitude, and he would just say "unable", or "no can do boss", or whatever. 

What am I missing? At one point I could even clearly see the targets on the screen, but he refused to acknowledge or lock them either through the menu or the Jester context button. 

 

*edit: spelling

Edited Thursday at 03:48 PM by av8orDave

[Zabuzard]

14 hours ago, av8orDave said:

What am I missing? At one point I could even clearly see the targets on the screen, but he refused to acknowledge or lock them either through the menu or the Jester context button. 

Difficult to tell without a track or video. The vast majority of material I have seen so far turned out to be user error because the system is complex to use and not necessarily intuitive.

Generally, these radar settings you are talking about are for "general search". If Jester already found people, he leaves his general search pattern and focuses on the bandits instead. Also make sure you have not entered CAGE mode (Pilot controlled radar modes) accidentally, in which case Jester cant do much anymore at all.

When he sees bandits on the screen, he calls them out (dont confuse these callouts with the ones coming from the RWR) and moves his cursor over the bandit. When that happens, he will definitely lock them up if you tell him. If he says he cant lock them, he also didnt move his cursor on anyone, never called them out (through the radar) and did not see them on the screen yet (did you see them on the screen?).

Ive also seen people click the context actions too often, effectively commanding Jester to "Lock, Unlock, Lock, Unlock, Lock, Unlock, ..." within seconds.

It is crucial to understand the terrain ahead in order to position yourself correctly with respect to the bandits, in particular also to increase their RCS by choosing a proper angle (dont go head-on against a fighter). Otherwise they wont appear on the screen, or just very late.

Edited 23 hours ago by Zabuzard