After a week in the pilot seat it’s time for me to learn RIO stuff and its major difficulty, maintaining lock until pitbull for the Phoenix. The awg9 training missions are pretty solid but I was wondering about a couple of things:
PD lock loss, can the awg9 reestablish guidance for the Phoenix after losing track, using pulse to find the target again and then switching back to PD TWS/STT or is the missile lost in the process like the aim7?
Flying lower than the target to avoid notching seems like brute fix to me, any other ideas in terms of maneuvering to avoid this? I expect to use different tactics maybe for TWS vs STT due to the difference in gimbals limits.
I thought the numbers next to a TWS would count down in a time to target mode but then start to flash when pitbull? Is that working for anyone? I get the countdown but no flash.
I don’t have an answer to all questions but I can say that on pilot’s view of the TID, I can see the missiles as they head out. I assume they go active at 10nmi or Chester makes them go active by that point.
My understanding is that they currently go active at 10nm. There is no feedback when this happens, it’s pending an updated API that will allow this and proper maddog behavior.
Well not to worry, after doing some calculations the missile should be active approximately 20s before impact against a fast mover (~M=1). This is for a missile fired from 20nm; a slower target or larger launch distance will increase this TtT so I’ll work with 20s for now to be on the safe side.
Any cranking maneuvre by the pilot or the opponent shouldn’t be a problem for the AWG9 +/- 100kts filter; if both fighters would be cranking at 60 degs off boresight this filter will be in effect at a relative groundspeeds of both aircraft of less than 200kts which is not a likely scenario in BVR combat.
Notching/splitS defence is still a puzzle assuming the AIM54 can’t reaquire the target from the WCS after losing a lock, time to experiment.
thanks, easy