Stealth choppers invisible on radar

Your manual says 8 bars +/-20° out to 15Nm for PAL :smilewink:

If the situation is not in favor for TWS sanitization and detection of the target, use PAL. But remember, you only have 2 bars in PAL, so you need to sanitize well, it can miss it even on either the lower or upper sweep, so you wanna make sure you sweep the sky properly.

 

How are you being made aware of the choppers? I cant remember anymore. Does it give you a general direction? Ofc you need to know a bit where to look at with PAL.

 

What I do in my missions is that ground troops call in rotary contacts, when they spot them, so you have a limited search area.

 

Else I go low, switch to backseat, use Pulse, and that is that. There is 2 Mi8s I train with in the free flight caucasus mission, about 40nm out on start. If you increase your speed and help with closure rate, you can sometimes detect them also in TWS (you need to tell Jester where to scan ofc). You can try that, too.

I know they’re there from the Tacview replay, as the Helos are the mission objective for the first mission in the campaign Persian gauntlet. AWACS doesn’t detect them either. I’ve run the mission about five times and got Jester to scan the exact height and direction that they’re in. He also doesn’t detect them regardless of range.

I don’t know how to use the RIO station at all...

I know they’re there from the Tacview replay, as the Helos are the mission objective for the first mission in the campaign Persian gauntlet. AWACS doesn’t detect them either. I’ve run the mission about five times and got Jester to scan the exact height and direction that they’re in. He also doesn’t detect them regardless of range.

 

I don’t know how to use the RIO station at all...

In this case, use PAL. AWACS should detect them though, are they in a valley or so? In the Devildog mission awacs spots them even behind a mountain.. So they must be put in there very unfavourably. In this case PAL is your pal.

EDIT: I was wrong on the 2 bars for PAL, our manual has it correct, it indeed scans 8 bars, +/- 20°. That said, sanatizing well still applies, one bar going in the opposite direction lower or higher than the previous bar can always mean that you just miss the target, you have to help it, to sweep over it.

Your manual says 8 bars +/-20° out to 15Nm for PAL :smilewink:

Thanks, dunno why my memory failed me there. Corrected the post.

Thanks, dunno why my memory failed me there. Corrected the post.

You probably forgot more than I ever learned about the Tomcat :D

You probably forgot more than I ever learned about the Tomcat :D

Well, some of you surprise me every day. The community is strong! :)

I read multiple times that metallic rotor blades should give some Doppler returns.

Yup, but it's more complicated than that. Rotor blades return a really weird doppler signature, with a strong shift coming at the radar right next to a strong shift going away from the radar. Since all medium and high PRF radars have speed ambiguity to some extent, it means that the radar has a really hard time figuring out how the return could be a flying object. This frequently results in the contact being rejected by the radar.

Many modern radars have software that can specifically recognize this type of doppler return. I've no idea if the AWG-9 is one of them - but based on the trouble you're having and the fidelity that Heatblur seems to have modeled it I would guess it does not.

Yup, but it's more complicated than that. Rotor blades return a really weird doppler signature, with a strong shift coming at the radar right next to a strong shift going away from the radar. Since all medium and high PRF radars have speed ambiguity to some extent, it means that the radar has a really hard time figuring out how the return could be a flying object. This frequently results in the contact being rejected by the radar.

 

Many modern radars have software that can specifically recognize this type of doppler return. I've no idea if the AWG-9 is one of them - but based on the trouble you're having and the fidelity that Heatblur seems to have modeled it I would guess it does not.

Very interesting and it totally makes sense if you think about it. Thanks for the insight :thumbup: