Explanation on radar elevation at distance

Hey folks and devs.

Just flew Defend the Fleet mission the entire afternoon, experimenting with different altitudes, air speeds and intercept vectors, trying to figure out the best way to employ Phoenixes against high altitude fleet threats, i.e. bombers. I found i could get the most reach out of the 54's by lobbing them supersonic (duh) with an altitude advantage (another duh) in a look down situation. However, this means that as the range decreases the bandits slowly creep in below the radar cone, so i tried to anticipate by setting the radar elevation at a certain range where i estimated the missiles would intercept the target. The problem is, if you do this too early, or too late, the bandits will leave the cone again.

My question, once you set your elevation at some altitude, say 25000ft and at some distance, say 100NM, does Jester try to keep the radar centered around that point in space-time at all times? Or is it a fixed setting? As in if i climb or dive, my radar will now be centered above/bellow the set point.

My experiments lead to me to believe it is the second case, that is, the elevation angle is fixed and as you change altitude the scan elevation changes as well, but i'd like to know if it really is so. Hopefully some of you here have more experience with Jester :thumbup:

Cheers and safe flying! :pilotfly:

He just sets the angle and that's it - it stays the same. So either play the game of angles to keep bandits in the cone or start high, fire and then go to the bandits alt keeping the angle straight forward. Yeah, we need this TWS auto and Jester's skills.

He just sets the angle and that's it - it stays the same. So either play the game of angles to keep bandits in the cone or start high, fire and then go to the bandits alt keeping the angle straight forward. Yeah, we need this TWS auto and Jester's skills.

We're waiting on TWS Auto, to see how much of gaps are to be filled in after that.

He just sets the angle and that's it - it stays the same. So either play the game of angles to keep bandits in the cone or start high, fire and then go to the bandits alt keeping the angle straight forward. Yeah, we need this TWS auto and Jester's skills.

Yeah, i agree with that. Meantime i'll try working on my 4D visualization and guide Jester as much as possible. Ain't gonna be easy though, especially if we add the azimuth into the mix.

We're waiting on TWS Auto, to see how much of gaps are to be filled in after that.

Good to know Mike! Looking forward to it :thumbup:

Karon made a wonderful job, I made a brief table based on this data to find the elevation faster. Its as not as precise but a lot easier to read.

https://karonshome.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/k-f-14-awg9-elevation-model.pdf

https://flyandwire.com/2019/05/18/f-14-rio-awg-9-antenna-elevation-study-part-i/

https://flyandwire.com/2019/05/18/f-14-rio-awg-9-antenna-elevation-study-part-ii/

Edit: sorry I thought you were talking about managing the elevation yourself and not jester. Jester atm is very lazy and doesn't search nor track targets.

Karon made a wonderful job, I made a brief table based on this data to find the elevation faster. Its as not as precise but a lot easier to read.

 

 

https://karonshome.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/k-f-14-awg9-elevation-model.pdf

 

 

https://flyandwire.com/2019/05/18/f-14-rio-awg-9-antenna-elevation-study-part-i/

 

 

https://flyandwire.com/2019/05/18/f-14-rio-awg-9-antenna-elevation-study-part-ii/

 

 

Edit: sorry I thought you were talking about managing the elevation yourself and not jester. Jester atm is very lazy and doesn't search nor track targets.

Yeah....it's ok though, those are very good reads! :thumbup:

I thought of hopping back in the RIO seat (at least in SP), but it just felt wrong. As Heatblur themselves have said, too much reach-back kinda breaks the purpose of the F-14 and the RIO function. Sub 30NM it's all the same anyways, but long distance and intercept missions...... i guess we gonna have to wait for TWS AUTO. And work with what we have in the meantime

You can reduce it to a simple rule of thumb that holds at small angles - 1 degree is 1,000ft difference at 10 miles. But you need to be in the RIO seat to see the degrees elevation, the "high-medium-low" orders for Jester are far too coarse to be used for this kind of purpose.

An additional question though, for RIOs. I know the TID tells you upper and lower bound of your scan area at the current TID range setting. That's often not very useful though, especially if the lower is 0. Is there any way to see the centre of the scan pattern elevation at a known distance e.g. at the TID cursor or hooked target?

You can reduce it to a simple rule of thumb that holds at small angles - 1 degree is 1,000ft difference at 10 miles. But you need to be in the RIO seat to see the degrees elevation, the "high-medium-low" orders for Jester are far too coarse to be used for this kind of purpose.

 

Indeed. That's why right now i'm working on doing trigonometry problems in my head and trying to estimate the required elevation at distance at a predicted missile interception point. It seams more articulate then scan low-high orders for Jester.

EDIT:

Just logged in again, after a thought came to me. Regardless of all other features, it would be useful if Jester could actually use data link and AWACS calls (when available) to manually steer the antenna towards potential contacts.