Best practice guide on getting jester to lock BVR targets?

[Mr_sukebe]

I’m gradually getting my head around using the various systems.

My biggest area of lack of understanding is how to get the best out of jester for finding and locking enemy aircraft.

 

Has anyone seen a good vid tutorial on the subject?

[imacken]

I would like to see that as well!

[Senchay]

 

 

[Banzaiib]

 

 

 

none of those help with getting jester to do his job of pointing the AWG-9, IFF'ing, and launching 54's.

[Nealius]

I've had the most luck using "lock specific target."

[backspace340]

The AWG-9 will automatically prioritise contacts that appear in TWS (which Jester puts it in by default), you do not need to do anything to 'lock' a target in TWS - once a number appears to the right of the contact you can fire a missile at it (assuming you have master arm on, missiles prepped and phoenixes selected) - each missile fired will attack the top priority target and the priority shifts as you fire, so if you have three targets with '1', '2' and '3' next to them, you can fire three missiles and they'll each go for the three different targets (if you fire another three, it'll fire a second missile at each of them).

 

Jester will separately, and sometimes quite slowly, IFF the contacts as they appear on radar. If he IFFs a friendly, that contact will be removed from the AWG-9's missile priority order. That does mean that before he IFFs you might have friendlies in the missile priority order who appear as unknown staples.

 

Those are the very basics, right now Jester uses TWS Auto and doesn't move the scan volume unless you tell him. TWS Auto isn't working properly yet - it's meant to auto-adjust the scan volume to maximise the number of targets being tracked (so if you only have one target on scope, it should track him all the way in). Because that isn't working, it means that Jester is essentially not moving the radar to keep targets in the scan volume and as targets get close to you they tend to disappear above or below where Jester is scanning (as it's a cone which gets smaller at the source). You can manually tell Jester to adjust where he is scanning, but the adjustments are fairly crude and I'm not sure how useful it is in the heat of battle to be digging through the Jester menu.

 

Personally with Jester my tactics have been to either take TWS shots from 40nm or so (so that by the time they get to a distance to drop out of Jester's radar scan, the missiles have already gone pitbull), or I've been getting him to STT the contacts from 30nm or so, then closing to 15-20nm before firing a shot (they know that one's coming because of the STT launch, but if they don't turn away they're dead and most people only seem to realise that too late). If they do go evasive and notch the radar, I normally pick them back up on PAL for a subsequent shot (or the first one impacts).

Edited March 22, 2019 by backspace340

[Rhinozherous]

The AWG-9 will automatically prioritise contacts that appear in TWS (which Jester puts it in by default), you do not need to do anything to 'lock' a target in TWS - once a number appears to the right of the contact you can fire a missile at it (assuming you have master arm on, missiles prepped and phoenixes selected) - each missile fired will attack the top priority target and the priority shifts as you fire, so if you have three targets with '1', '2' and '3' next to them, you can fire three missiles and they'll each go for the three different targets (if you fire another three, it'll fire a second missile at each of them).

 

Jester will separately, and sometimes quite slowly, IFF the contacts as they appear on radar. If he IFFs a friendly, that contact will be removed from the AWG-9's missile priority order. That does mean that before he IFFs you might have friendlies in the missile priority order who appear as unknown staples.

 

Those are the very basics, right now Jester uses TWS Auto and doesn't move the scan volume unless you tell him. TWS Auto isn't working properly yet - it's meant to auto-adjust the scan volume to maximise the number of targets being tracked (so if you only have one target on scope, it should track him all the way in). Because that isn't working, it means that Jester is essentially not moving the radar to keep targets in the scan volume and as targets get close to you they tend to disappear above or below where Jester is scanning (as it's a cone which gets smaller at the source). You can manually tell Jester to adjust where he is scanning, but the adjustments are fairly crude and I'm not sure how useful it is in the heat of battle to be digging through the Jester menu.

 

Personally with Jester my tactics have been to either take TWS shots from 40nm or so (so that by the time they get to a distance to drop out of Jester's radar scan, the missiles have already gone pitbull), or I've been getting him to STT the contacts from 30nm or so, then closing to 15-20nm before firing a shot (they know that one's coming because of the STT launch, but if they don't turn away they're dead and most people only seem to realise that too late). If they do go evasive and notch the radar, I normally pick them back up on PAL for a subsequent shot (or the first one impacts).

 

Thank you

[rikkles]

TWS at 40nm most often will result in Jester losing lock on the planes before the AIM54s go active. It also helps keep lock if you're slightly below the enemy altitude.

In my experience the ideal is to fire off the sauce at around 25-20nm, still in TWS.

[Decibel dB]

I’m gradually getting my head around using the various systems.

My biggest area of lack of understanding is how to get the best out of jester for finding and locking enemy aircraft.

 

Has anyone seen a good vid tutorial on the subject?

 

This clears things up with my head regarding Jester TWS how here locks things

 

${1}

Beware low quality video but clear explanation

[USA_Recon]

On 3/21/2019 at 11:58 PM, backspace340 said:

The AWG-9 will automatically prioritise contacts that appear in TWS (which Jester puts it in by default), you do not need to do anything to 'lock' a target in TWS - once a number appears to the right of the contact you can fire a missile at it (assuming you have master arm on, missiles prepped and phoenixes selected) - each missile fired will attack the top priority target and the priority shifts as you fire, so if you have three targets with '1', '2' and '3' next to them, you can fire three missiles and they'll each go for the three different targets (if you fire another three, it'll fire a second missile at each of them).

 

Jester will separately, and sometimes quite slowly, IFF the contacts as they appear on radar. If he IFFs a friendly, that contact will be removed from the AWG-9's missile priority order. That does mean that before he IFFs you might have friendlies in the missile priority order who appear as unknown staples.

 

Those are the very basics, right now Jester uses TWS Auto and doesn't move the scan volume unless you tell him. TWS Auto isn't working properly yet - it's meant to auto-adjust the scan volume to maximise the number of targets being tracked (so if you only have one target on scope, it should track him all the way in). Because that isn't working, it means that Jester is essentially not moving the radar to keep targets in the scan volume and as targets get close to you they tend to disappear above or below where Jester is scanning (as it's a cone which gets smaller at the source). You can manually tell Jester to adjust where he is scanning, but the adjustments are fairly crude and I'm not sure how useful it is in the heat of battle to be digging through the Jester menu.

 

Personally with Jester my tactics have been to either take TWS shots from 40nm or so (so that by the time they get to a distance to drop out of Jester's radar scan, the missiles have already gone pitbull), or I've been getting him to STT the contacts from 30nm or so, then closing to 15-20nm before firing a shot (they know that one's coming because of the STT launch, but if they don't turn away they're dead and most people only seem to realise that too late). If they do go evasive and notch the radar, I normally pick them back up on PAL for a subsequent shot (or the first one impacts).

 

“Those are the very basics, right now Jester uses TWS Auto and doesn't move the scan volume unless you tell him. TWS Auto isn't working properly yet”

how many more dev cycles until Jester the RIO gets trained how to scan properly - radar 101...

[draconus]

4 hours ago, USA_Recon said:

how many more dev cycles until Jester the RIO gets trained how to scan properly - radar 101...

Maybe never. Read the FAQ:

 

TWS Auto works fine.

[Kula66]

TWS is very effective in the 14 ... just switch to TWS and position the target in the scan cone; let the WCS assign it a priority number and fire - works just fine.  When cranking, just keep the target in the scan cone (TWS-A will automatically keep the target centred) until the countdown starts flashing - I regularly get hits out to 75 miles in competitive games. The only thing that I can't do is launch a second missiles at the same target ... not sure this is as its supposed to work.

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Kula66

[Sideburns]

You need to first acknowledge the deficiencies of the AWG-9, it is the first TWS radar available and as such not as sophisticated as newer models. This means if you or the target manoeuvres a lot the track can be lost. As the radar has large doppler filters it is also easy to lose a target while looking down in the longer ranged pulse doppler modes. This leads to a bit of an conflict as you generally want to be high and fast launching your missiles to give them the energy but then below the target ideally to keep them tracked and also give their missiles thicker air to deal with (note above 3 degree the AWG-9 will automatically switch off the MLC doppler filter making it much more likely to track a target as it enters a notch type situation).

 

So ideally, high closure target (manoeuvre to make it high closure if needs be), launch missile high and fast (28k+, Mach1+, gives your stick a damn good starting push), give some time for TWS-A to engage as part of phoenix launch if not already in TWS-A, gently manoeuvre to be below target and keep them there to give TWS best chance of holding the track and then also crank (i.e. turn away from them but keep them on radar) to bleed their missiles if any and slow down to sub mach 1... in an ideal world. Of course people tend to not like being shot at and with an F14 RWR indication and a high fast track on their own radars may guess what you are up to, dive and notch to be below you and beat the AWG-9. Also this clearly assume a 1v1 situation which often isn't the case.

 

But with the right conditions you can get 70-80 mile kills or more on high closure, compliant (i.e. fly in a straight line) large fighter sized targets.

 

It can be useful to force Jester into specific radar modes, either TWS-M to keep the radar pointing forward or TWS-A to follow targets (note you can use Pilot Lock Mode to reset the radar to forward and level but this does reset your picture if TWS-A keeps pointing where you don't want it). Also it can be handy sometimes to do the "point radar at a height at this range" from time to time. I've heard people have success with "vaicomm"? and other voice command software but I just use the menus rapidly. Once the fight gets to 15-20 miles without a lock switch to the pilot radar modes. As ever Jester is not a replacement for a good human RIO. 

 

Inb4 people come in to rip apart this specific situation with their own examples.... of course this is ideal and contextual.

 

Edit: As I've explained before I would not use PLM to reset radar / radar picture with a real RIO, unless I had an potential pilot lock situation. But it is handy with Jester to reset things when they go off the beaten track too far.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Sideburns

[GunSlingerAUS]

Yep, a guide to using Jester would be amazing. I'm surprised nobody has created one yet.

[Donut]

I would like to see HB update their manual to an include a detailed section on Jester.