Even in that very podcast. The barbs about jester ejecting were meant to be funny, but I could just feel Cobra cringe at the constant ribbing.
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I told my Wife…I’m Planning our next trip!!
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From the online manual:
However, since the aircraft is fully suitable for arrested landings, extremely adverse meteorological or operational conditions may warrant consideration of landing into a suitable approach-end arresting gear.
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FWIW, field arrestment doesn’t work quite the same as the carrier.
For one thing, the rollout is longer IIRC. I know some AF aircraft have arresting hooks, but it was always my understanding that they were designed for longer pullouts. I’m not sure if the AF Phantoms bothered swapping the hook as they did the gear from the naval variants.
Secondly, the only requirement for touchdown is to land before the gear.
That being the case, and since either end gear is usually well past the approach end (respectively), landing “in the wires” is neither necessarily required nor strictly desirable.
Which is why, while Air Force fields will often have A-gear, they won’t have a ball. 
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I keep reading that from various people but quite frankly I don’t see where this is coming from. Other than disabling the MLC filter when having a PDSTT (a filter which exists for a reason), I don’t see what the RIO, Jester or Human, can do to affect the quality of a lock. At least in DCS where things like gain control and fiddling with anti-jam features are not modeled (at least for the Tomcat, the Phantom seems to have some of it). When people describe Jester as losing tracks or locks, they are in fact most often referring to technical shortcomings of the AWG-9 itself, which manifest regardless of the RIO.
The most significant function of the RIO is management of the search volume (azimuth and elevation), which Jester does not do at all autonomously (automatic search volume management in TWS-A again is an AWG-9 function itself). Fiddling with the elevation commands to Jester is cumbersome but at the relevant ranges there is sufficient time to do it. Of course handing it over to a human is more efficient, but I don’t see it doing a big difference. When the range drops below 20 NM Jester handling the radar becomes unfeasible and a human might do a better job, but at that point as the pilot I will always assume control of the radar and use PLM anyway.
Admittedly I don’t fly with a human RIO, but I don’t feel that I am missing out a significant capability when using Jester. And in MP, a slight increase in efficiency with a second human crew-member is insignificant compared to the huge boost provided by a second human pilot in a second Tomcat 
I guess for the Phantom it will be the same, so for me the choice will always be a human wingman instead of a WSO.
I don’t know exactly why but with jester I often do lose lock when I am sure I wouldn’t have with a human RIO. The best explanation I can provide is maybe this: With jester you have a subsystem that you have to manage
that can’t think on its own, with a good RIO in the back you have someone that works with you and can tell you what he needs you to do in order to achieve a task. He can utilise the different radar modes much better - for example he can interpret a radar image that is mostly ground clutter and pick out targets with pretty high confidence without actually achieving a lock, he can set up a radar intercept and help you make the correct maneuvers at the correct time and keep an eye on airspeed and closure. He can tell you what he needs from you as a pilot and that team aspect is enjoyable and more efficient than Jester
In short, having a good Rio drastically reduces workload for the pilot and as a huge plus is also a lot more fun. I easily get frustrated with jester but when you make mistakes with a RIO in the back I can talk about what went wrong and work on doing better as a team.
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I don’t want to sound rude, but I think this is purely placebo. A lock is a lock. I am not aware of anything a human could manipulate to affect it, other than the MLC filter. And as for tracks, they are entirely built and maintained automatically by the AWG-9.
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Its was crazy. I worked with a guy in the early 80’s who’s dad did that (pretty sure it was ‘Disco’ and not ‘Red Crown’), the gist of it was: some/all/most? info was, as dictated by bureaucracy, relayed and not communicated directly. Think this did improve over time though.
Game players are gonna hate this; the Sparrow used back then had a terrible success rate [given the conditions]. The Ault Report << link is still an interesting read (yeah, I’ m a geek).
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I don’t think so. The Tomcat requires a lot of attention from the pilot and having someone to remind you of things like that the target is changing aspect while you are busy doing an instrument crosscheck or looking at a new RWR contact that just popped up can make the difference between losing lock or doing a slight course adjustment to keep the lock. It’s really the little things that make the difference and some people are wizards with the radar which jester definitely isn’t.
Edit: we once did a fun helicopter hunt where one team got into gazelles and the other team had to keep them away from our airfield. No symbols on the F10 Maps.
The guy I was flying with told me roughly where the helicopters were 25 miles out. We didn’t have a radar lock he just found them in the clutter. They were below tree top level, really just blips that changed position. He was confident that there were helicopters and guess what he was right.
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But can you point me to the actual technical function that the RIO can perform to keep locks?
Of course as the pilot I am responsible to maneuver the aircraft within the limits of the radar, which means I also have to know the technical limitations myself.
Of course you have to know this stuff but my point is that Jester doesn’t help me as a pilot, on the contrary it’s something I have to take care of while flying, a good RIO is not just someone who is good with the systems, it’s someone who can act independently, set up things for you without having to remind him or command him and he can help avoid mistakes. And I know from experience that when I have to manage jester I make a lot more mistakes than when I have someone in the back that I know and trust that he tells me when I am doing something wrong.
I don’t know the RIO seat and the radar well enough to comment exactly what it is. I know the basics but the RIO I used to fly with was extremely good with it. The only situation where I sometimes feel that Jester is good (maybe even too good) is keeping eyes on the enemy while you’re in a dogfight. Anything else and a good RIO is much more useful to have
IIRC it is at both ends of the main runway at RAAF Amberley… Useful in an emergency:
Thanks for giving me the excuse to post another photo 
And. @Bogusheadbox
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There is no doubt that a human RIO is better, but the point I was attempting to make is that most of the criticism for Jester is actually aimed at the Apollo-era design that is the Tomcat itself. If you know the capabilities and limitations of the aircraft and its systems, I think flying with Jester is no significant disadvantage.
And if only two humans are available, two aircraft let you do things that no RIO can do
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Yes of course but I will be honest, if I want to fly the Tomcat in the air to air role and there’s not enough people for a two ship - I am not flying the Tomcat. The simple truth is that I am spoiled by having flown with a great RIO and I don’t want to deal with jester.
Instead I will fly an F-16C, F-15E or even Mirage F.1 as two ship.
Looking at the trailers and what I have read in the manual so far, the F-4E will be similar in that regard. I will do joyrides, a little bit of training but unless I can team up with someone you won’t find me flying missions in the thing.
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My recollection (late 70’s & 80’s) at USAF bases was; while it wasn’t an everyday thing at all, it wasn’t unheard of (shut down the runway for a while of course; if possible they’d use something other than the ‘active’).
Departure end cables were snagged more than approach end in my [very old] memory. I think due to brake issues. Man, been a long time. Being I was at fighter bases these were Eagles, Phantoms, the odd Voodoo (they came to play); T-38’s had to take the ‘net’ IIRC (only saw maybe 2 of these).
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the human vs jester is something we will have checkout, also what intrigues me abut jester is how it will use the targeting pod, if for example can you tell it which target to hit out of a group with a maverick, like you can with george or petrovic
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Nice shot!
It depends a lot on the service but a field might have one or the other up and in battery at any given time. Some are recessed into the runway to pop up when needed. Some are actually not even connected until requested. Some have both an engine based set and overrun gear which is connected to a chain of increasing size as a last gasp measure.
Generally, if one is up for operation, it will be the long field gear since low speed aborts aren’t usually an issue. When they put up the short field gear, it’s usually either for an emergency or
because wind or rain pose a real risk of jets sliding off into the grass.
On Navy/Marine bases, both gear is usually left up since the tires are thick and designed for that kind of abuse.
Harriers usually landed between the gears at bases where they had it, having no hook, but tiny outrigger gear that could be ripped clean off if it caught the gear accidentally!
@jross, yep, that was my memory as well, though I usually was only visiting USAF bases. I forgot about rigging it on the non-active runway…I remember that as well!
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That’s something that I imagine would be much harder to do in time compared to a helicopter. I have been flying the Apache with a CP/G last week and it was so cool. We were four Apaches, three with a full crew, one with George. This week I am planning on playing as a CP/G. Should be fun!
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There’s some possibility we may have ‘chatted’ 
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But on the subject of AI vs analog/raw RADAR…
First, I’d imagine this took up a SIGNIFICANT amount of dev. time, especially as it has to be performant.
I can only relate to looking at surveillance RADAR before they added all the ‘doodads’ to the screen; watching little ‘grains if rice’ move around was what I called it [when giving tours]. They had ‘things’ (software of the day?) that would manipulate the returns; filter non-moving targets (MTI); knobs to allow you to tune it (likely a gain-like thing, don’t recall the label on the knob); etc.
SIDEBAR: I recall when we finally got ‘doodads’ (labels, if you will - data blocks) on the screen - with a keyboard. Talk about a distraction! We all grew up with QWERTY keyboards (and mandatory typing classes in HS) but some genius decided to put the keys in alphabetical order! So, you’re looking down, hunting & pecking, when you should be watching what’s going on.
Anyway, you got pretty good at deciphering the blobs on the scope (before the data-bocks; that skill was lost pretty quickly afterwards) - most of the time we did have the transponder code displayed, but only 4 numbers. And I’m quite sure it was easier than trying to do it on, say, a [small] Phantom RADAR scope; while being jostled about; the thing you want to ‘lock’ is trying not to be locked; etc.
Lastly, the goal of the AI is, IMO, to make the player believe it is doing something intelligent.
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