Hi all,
Been trying to get back into FC2 and I have a simple question.
When flying an interceptor, say the F-15, what radar do you use to just sweep the areas in front of you out to 30 or 40 miles ?? And am I correct that you have to constantly move the scan up above you and then down below you to get full coverage of that area ?

I have a terrible time as I fly along and all of a sudden I'm being lit up, locked, and then dodging missiles and I never saw the enemy plane(s). The F-15 is supposed to have this fantastic radar package if used right, but obviously I am not using it to its full advantages.

Any help appreciated...

Thanks,
Tracy

There is no such thing as "what radar" because you only have one. Or at least you have control of only one.

Not familiar with the F-15 radar or FC2's implementation of that radar, but a basic air-to-air radar works like a cone that scans out in front of your aircraft, with the tip of the cone at your fighter's nose. Whether that cone is pointed straight forward, slightly up/down/left/right is controllable by the pilot, as well as how wide/narrow the cone is up to a certain limit, called the gimbals.

Simply put, the enemy fighter may have been outside the scan area (cone) of your radar that is why you didn't pick him up on radar. It is for this reason that tactics have been developed such as flying low to get lost in ground clutter, or stacking the wingman or second element high/low so that one fighter/group might be able to evade the radar scan, etc etc.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Ice,
Yes that helps a bit. You are right there is only one radar, what I meant was the different sub modes, like tws, boresight, rws, etc.

It just seems like, going 40 miles out and scanning the sky constantly while flying to the assigned waypoints, no one should be able to catch me off guard like that. And I know I am not supposed to just fly with ecm on as that alerts everyone to my presence.
So when real F-15 pilots are flying and searching for bogeys, I was just wondering what technics they use with their radars to keep their situational awareness at its most effective.

Tracy

I see... well, like I said, I've little-to-no idea about the F-15 but my knowledge is from the F-16 and Falcon 4 Allied Force (a little) and Falcon 4 BMS. Having said that, the "switchology" may be different but I'd wager that the "principles" are the same, so here goes....

There are different Master Modes, in the Viper it can be A-A, A-G, Nav, or other modes. As the F-15 modeled in FC2 is the "C" version, it doesn't have any A-G capabilities. Switching from TMS, RWS, etc should either be at the press of an OSB button or should be mapped to a HOTAS switch or hat, especially the dogfight radar modes. I guess the best place to check this would be the FC2 manual.

As for "covering the sky," you have to understand that it is rare for a fighter to be flying alone. A 2-ship is the smallest formation, and a CAP flight may be a 4-ship or more depending on the situation. With more radar, the sky can then be divided so that the flight scans more airspace. For example, in a 2-ship, one can be scanning high and the other scans low, preventing any low-flying aircraft from sneaking "under" the radar. In a 4-ship, one and three can be scanning high and two and four can be scanning low, but the first two can be scanning front-and-left and the other two can be scanning front-and-right, thus they cover more airspace without losing much effectiveness of their radar.

However, even with the 4-ship example, if the bandit happens to come at you from or behind your 3-9 line, there's a very poor chance of you picking him up. That is why it's always a good idea to keep an eye on the RWR --- it may not tell you distance or altitude, but it will tell you that someone is out there outside your scan area.

This also highlights the importance of having AWACS support.... these guys have one hell of a radar dish on their aircraft and have a bigger/better picture.

Obviously there is more to this topic than the generalizations I have made in my example, but that's the main idea. Try to scan efficiently in your forward sector, call AWACS for a better picture of the nearby threats, then turn and try to find those threats with your radar, and engage if you see him or bug out if you don't.

There is plenty of learn about radar operation. FC2, despite having simple avionics, has a fairly good radar physics simulation (though the radar avionics themselves are simplified and there are things missing. Let's just say in RL that APG-63 will do a lot of stuff for you. The less manual operation, the better).

In any case, as I said there is plenty to learn and understand about radar.

First, the coverage of your radar. In FC2 the radar gimbals of the F-15C are modeled at 60 degrees in every direction. This means you can scan up to 60 degrees to the side (for a total azimuth of 120 degrees) and 60 degrees up or down, for a total of 60 degrees in elevation.

What does all this mean? Your radar scans just past the canopy rail on either side. For elevation, visualization might be a little more difficult but the radar help out out: It tells you the altitude scan limits at the TDC range.

So let's talk about the TDC: That's your 'captain's bars' or Target Designation Cursor. The altitude limits are always shown for the range that the TDC is positioned at. So if you position it at 20nm, it will tell you how tall the slice of that cone is. Try positioning it at 40nm as well. Since your radar scan zone IS a cone, and the only part of the cone that is directly represented is the azimuth and range, you have to sample the cone's altitude limits with the TDC.

You can also use various PRF's for the radar: High, Interleaved and Medium PRF.
High is best for head-on target, Medium for receding targets (tail on) and is much shorter ranged than HPRF, while Interleaved is a mix of the two. Until you are more comfortable with scanning with your radar, you might want to leave PRF changes alone. The radar is in Interleave by default.

A fair technique for scanning is as follows: From an altitude of about 20000', Make your display 80nm. Position the TDC right in the middle, or 40nm. Scan from ground to your altitude (slew the radar down until the top altitude marker is at your altitude). Let it scan while you do other things. It should have scanned the entire airspace in about 10 sec. If you see nothing, move the antenna up until the bottom altitude marker is just below your altitude. Do other things. Glance at screen. Go back to scanning low as previously. Avoid staring at the radar, do other things, like checking your surroundings visually and doing your navigation.

Note that this simple technique is for finding things that will generally end up being in front of you and can be found a relatively longer ranges (beyond 30nm). You have to change methods if you're looking for something much closer, and inside about 15nm, scanning your radar manually becomes almost useless.

Now all this said, a bandit could close with you (or rather you with him) without you ever seeing them on radar if they park in the notch. Yes, you can dissapear from radar IF you are forcing a look-down situation (so lower altitude than your opponent) AND you put them on your beam accurately (perpendicular to their radar beam). This is called the doppler notch and it is the price you pay for being able to have a look-down-shoot-down radar.

And again, this is merely scratching the surface. The key is to have a very good understand of how your radar works first. You have to understand and manipulate the numbers, you have to understand how bandit aspect, relative altitude and speed affects what you see on the radar display, as well as other factors such as your own altitude (fly too low, the radar jams itself). This also leads to a lot of pilot math for intercepts and navigation, as well as certain techniques for those.

The cone means it's quite possible that while you'll see a plane at say 20k ft below you at 40 miles away, if they're only 10 miles away you will NOT see them because the cone is much smaller close to you. Changing your range will be irrelevant because it only extends the length of the cone, not the diameter of it at 10 miles. Some older sims didn't model the cone, you got to see everything above and below you as long as it was within range of the fighter, so a plane 30k ft above you 1 mile out would show up (totally inaccurately).

You can tilt the radar scan zone down and perhaps you'll catch them, but then again perhaps not.

One thing that I know many older sims have a problem with is the radar doesn't take into account the fighter's actual orientation. So while you can tilt the radar up or down, moving the nose up or down will not affect it (even though that is contrary to physics). You can't point your nose 70 degrees up and keep scanning 20 degrees above and below the horizon! It would mean, if modeled correctly, you could point your nose down to look below you while you dive or you could climb and look above you. There is the issue of ground clutter when looking down, but most modern radars are pretty good about that.

I don't recall if FC2 does this or not, I've not flown the AA stuff in that since release, sticking mostly to the non-radar equipped ground movers.


The Jedi Master

Wow, lots of great answers. Guess the first thing I need to do is learn more about how the radar works in FC2 ! For instance, does it model different PRF's, I have played the various Lock On games for quite awhile and never knew about that.
I also have other aircraft in the air with me on missions, I just never really paid attention to the Comms and did not know you could order the different planes to scan different areas with their radar.

All in all I need to do a better job getting re-acquainted with other parts of the game besides just going up and trying to take out bandits by myself !! You get out of it what you put into it, as every coach I ever had endlessly told me !!

thanks for all the responses.

Tracy