AIM-7F lock, is notching useless?

The Academy - Players helping Players
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1

Hello, I was wondering if someone could explain what happened here? You can see the video from my and attacker side.

It seems that the AIM-7F had two radar cones, one wide and one very narrow, which can be better seen in the attacker (bottom) video. As far as I understand SARH missiles use return signal from the plane which is illuminated by the attacker.

  1. So what are the two cones?
    You can see that after I chaff the narrow one losses lock but then reacquires soon after, does this mean that the big cone is the return signal?
    But then what the hell is the narrow one, is it just and indicator if current active missile lock?

  2. I use chaff at 11 second and the missile starts tracking the chaff but then locks me again. Why it starts tracking chaff if it is CW and why it reacquires again?
    My answer - This probably because I’m still in the overspill of the F-4 radar cone (you can see that he is trying to lock me as his radar cone is scanning small area) the AIM-7 has a return and the AIM-7 uses Continuous Wave thus its immune to chaff as its too slow compared to my plane speed therefore it reacquires me again. Is this right?

  3. My final question - is notching useless?

As you can see I was notching the missile, and it is still tracking. And even if I chaff and it losses the lock on me it soon lock me again in the notch.

Should I just have used all 11 chaff? (It looks that I have 22 but the plane uses 2 for single pop) In this case even if I use 3 or 4, I have for one missile and I can’t defend anymore.

Should I have turned even more to be away from the missile?

2

depends on the aircrafts radar and mode as notching is only useful against Active radar homing missiles and pulse doppler radars if

3

So there’s no way to avoid aim-7f?

4

if its locking you with PD yes you can notch it if not use chaff and pull evasive maneuvers

5

You have to notch the missile itself, not the aircraft’s radar.

Since the seeker is PD only, you don’t even need to use chaff

6

So in this case I was not notching it?

Also then why one of the missile radar cones briefly lock on to the chaff?

7

Does not seem like it

It can do that but it will usually reject the target and resume tracking if you aren’t notching it

Chaff does make it easier to defeat a missile in a notch but it’s not strictly necessary