Course to intercept?

I’m reading a book about F/A-18Cs right now (Raven One).

Thought they haven’t yet mentioned which block they are flying, at one point he mentions a “course to intercept” on his HUD while he has a contact locked in STT. I’ve often wished for this when trying to chase down enemy aircraft bee lining for my tanker or AWACS... is this available on the Block 20, and if so, can it be used in DCS right now?

Yet to be implemented is an STT contact’s heading on the top left of the B-scope, but if you can get a hostile’s heading, you can make the “bearing sandwhich”:

- take the difference between the reciprocal of a bandits heading, and add/subtract that to his current bearing to you. This is to heading to fly for intercept. Eg:

Bandit bearing 330, bandit heading 180: reciprocal is 360. Difference 30 segrees, so fly heading (330-30)= 300deg.

Caveat: this is assuming bandit is flying same speed as you. If a hostile was racing to takedown a tanker/awacs, you would just make the intercept as ‘hot’ as possible and buster/gate to save the day

Yet to be implemented is an STT contact’s heading on the top left of the B-scope, but if you can get a hostile’s heading, you can make the “bearing sandwhich”:

- take the difference between the reciprocal of a bandits heading, and add/subtract that to his current bearing to you. This is to heading to fly for intercept. Eg:

 

Bandit bearing 330, bandit heading 180: reciprocal is 360. Difference 30 segrees, so fly heading (330-30)= 300deg.

 

Caveat: this is assuming bandit is flying same speed as you. If a hostile was racing to takedown a tanker/awacs, you would just make the intercept as ‘hot’ as possible and buster/gate to save the day

Thx! I know one can compute the intercept manually, but after reading about the solution being computed for us in the HUD, I thought it would be worth asking. I’m lazy! ;)

Yet to be implemented is an STT contact’s heading on the top left of the B-scope, but if you can get a hostile’s heading, you can make the “bearing sandwhich”:

- take the difference between the reciprocal of a bandits heading, and add/subtract that to his current bearing to you. This is to heading to fly for intercept. Eg:

 

Bandit bearing 330, bandit heading 180: reciprocal is 360. Difference 30 segrees, so fly heading (330-30)= 300deg.

 

Caveat: this is assuming bandit is flying same speed as you. If a hostile was racing to takedown a tanker/awacs, you would just make the intercept as ‘hot’ as possible and buster/gate to save the day

I'm drawing a blank on when you would add the difference?

A GCI controller would be awesome to have... just a few weeks ago I stumbled across an old flight simulator for the Amiga (Jet Pilot) that had a pretty useful GCI controller that gives you steering directions to end up either right behind your target, straight in from where you come or even headon. Same for landing approaches. Really was astonished of how well it works in such a dated piece of software (1996), this thing basically was what we'd call DCS grade nowadays. And you can fly F-104 and EEL there... a dream to have those as DCS modules with proper GCI comms and guidance. The latter would also clearly improve any MiG experience...

It is worth noting that if you are heading directly for a moving target, its relative direction to you is fixed. So if you have a radar fix, just turn as required to keep it constant on your scope.

A common contributory cause of mid-air collisions is that an aircraft on a collision course will not move in your windscreen, which will make it less likely to be spotted.