Interesting A-A radar's mode behavior

Hello Pilots!

Yesterday I tried to conduct several experiments on the use of AIM-54 and AIM-7 missiles against ships and A-A night refueling. As a result, several questions arose. I would be grateful if you could help me with answers to them.

So:

1. I started with dark night A-A refueling. I took off, contacted with the tanker, set up his TACAN frequency, rose to the flight level indicated by the tanker and began to get closer to him. Since the night in DCS is very dark when there is no moon, then as I approach the tanker, I began to think about how I can find it visually in the night sky.

Jester saw him perfectly on the radar, but it helped me a little, as a pilot. And then I decided as an experiment to try to lock the tanker as an air target in PAL. I activated the air-to-air mode (but did not touch the Master ARM on the ACM panel) and activated PAL mode for radar. After that, Jester locked the tanker as a target at about 20 miles and warned of the locked of a friendly aircraft. For me it was a complete surprise, because I remembered that the PAL mode can locks a target at a distance not more than 15 miles. And here it was clearly further. And I didn’t ask Jester to lock the target, but he did it completely on his own.

2. After a successful refueling, I tried to shoot air-to-air missiles at the ships (do not ask me why ????). For this, I activated the air-to-air mode and set the Master ARM to ON on the ACM panel.

Jester did not see any targets - this is quite logical. And then I activated PAL mode again. Again, Jester locked the target (this time the ship) at a distance of about 26 miles. But shouldn't the PAL mode lock a target beyond 15 miles?

3. Then I did the final experiment and discovered another feature in the work of the Jester-Radar cat pair.

During the air-to-air fight, when Jester, as usual, complained that he couldn’t locks any of the targets, I activated the PAL mode again and Jester again locked the target on his own at a distance of about 20 miles (although he had just shouted that he could not do this). And I even hit the target after this lock.

I apologize for the long introduction, but now the questions that arose as a result of these experiments:

- Should Jester independently lock targets without my instructions if I switched to PAL mode?

- But what is the real working range for PAL mode: 15 miles and closer, or you can use this mode for more distant targets?

- If Jester independently locks the target at distances exceeding the range of the regime’s application, then why doesn’t he do it in the TWS mode (although, it seems to me, I know the answer to this question)?

Thank you in advance!

There's a big misunderstand there: When using PAL mode (PAL = Pilot Automatic Lockon), then Jester has absolutly nothing to do with it! It is you, the pilot, who is locking the target in this case and not the RIO!

As for ranges, you are correct, that PAL is supposed to lock targets up to 15nm. At least that's what's the manual says. Why you can lock targets further out, that I don't know :dunno:

PAL - Pilot Automatic Lockon

The 15nm range is probably just approximation on some RCS given. If your target is big enough like a tanker or even ship you can lock from way further I guess.

Ad.1. Use NVG in the night rendezvous when close enough (<0,5nm).

draconus said:

PAL - Pilot Automatic Lockon

Thanks, I corrected my previous comment

It is 15 to 20 nm on fighter sized targets depending on aspect, etc, but bigger targets can be locked further out. It uses Pulse single target track and hence can lock certain ground objects like ships.

EDIT: This comment is wrong. PAL should indeed be restricted to 15nm max. It is currently a bug that lets us lock targets further away, we are looking into it. My apologies, I should have verified, before typing. Bug is tracked.

Interesting, but how it is possible that the tomcat radar can detect and lock ground/sea targets?how to do that?

Same way as the Viggen (minus the locking part). See thing with huge radar returns out of the background, focus all the radar energy on it. The radar doesn't know that the thing returning lots of radio emission is a ship rather than an aircraft.

Interesting, but how it is possible that the tomcat radar can detect and lock ground/sea targets?how to do that?

Pulse scan. It does not filter out ground clutter like pulse doppler, means it does not filter terrain but also makes terrain objects appear, although mostly lost in the ground clutter, over water the ground clutter effect is much smaller and hence objects like ships stand out and can be locked on.

^^This is of course a much simplified explanation.

Pulse scan. It does not filter out ground clutter like pulse doppler, means it does not filter terrain but also makes terrain objects appear, although mostly lost in the ground clutter, over water the ground clutter effect is much smaller and hence objects like ships stand out and can be locked on.

 

^^This is of course a much simplified explanation.

Thanks for the explanation, all clear.

I fly only in the front seat so never bothered learning how the radar works :)

Firing in Pulse STT is also really fun, especially when theres an enemy player above you, they'll try and notch to no avail, its a pretty funny sight to see, and they pay the ultimate price, I did it yesterday, and I was laughing maniacally as I got those kills.