and all of them are early SARH missiles that are carried on jets without proper symbologies for them
R-3R does for example bc the Mig-21 didnt have any indication of showing the quality of a lock thats why they “reused” the IR lock tone
Well. Most Sparrow carriers also have no way of knowing quality of lock. And different from the others that simply refuse to shoot if there there is no lock, the sparrows don’t care, they shoot anyway, which I think is one of the biggest reasons people complain so much about it. Its like the other early missiles have a lot of guard rails to help players, while sparrow doesn’t.
might be the case for the front cockpit
but the guy in the back probably had some way of telling
I am not sure how Gaijin coded this all, so I can only really answer from the physics itself.
Idk if you’re referring in the first case about CW or pulse. So idk how to answer it.
Okay so this is about CW seekers. This makes sense depending on what the target aspect was. In look-down, against a single target against ground: the target has doppler shift of own movement + target speed, ground clutter only has doppler shift caused by own movement. Because the missile is far from the ground, sidelobe return is very weak, so only mainlobe return is of concern. And as metnioned, ground has quite a different doppler shift from the target, so easily separable: target can easily be locked. If the target is notching however (target closure rate is similar to that of the ground), then the target can not be detected.
In look-up, where the missile is close to the ground at least, sidelobe return from the ground is significant (because it’s close nearby). Target doppler shift = own movement + target speed, mainlobe ground clutter = own movement only (in look up, this is pretty much zero because there’s no ground in the sky), but sidelobe clutter closure rate = ~0 m/s (distance to the ground underneath stays constant). Which means in cases where target closure rate = ~0 m/s, because own movement and target speed work out to be near 0 closure rate, that sidelobe clutter from the ground and target blend together. This is why if you fly at similar speed as the target in a chase, CW SARH seekers will not lock well when sidelobe clutter plays a role. Notching targets should maybe on the other hand be able to get locked in look-up, while close to the ground, but actually sidelobes may still cause returns from the ground at ~own velocity, which may obscure notching targets still.
Idk still how sidelobes are modelled, but they do cover many angles, so you can kinda think of it as a sphere almost when it comes to the ground.
Example of radiation pattern:
Spoiler
This is for a theoretical antenna array of isotropic elements and approximated dipoles. Only the front hemisphere, but rear is just a mirrored version. In reality the rear side would be heavily attenuated in most cases as there will be things blocking it.
With larger antennas, we have a finer spread of sidelobes and also more. So you can kinda just imagine they are everywhere.
WT often uses -20 dB sidelobe attenuation value as per the datamines for most SARH missiles. This means the sidelobes are 100x weaker than the mainlobe. But power scales with range to the fourth power. So if the target is only ~3.16x further than the ground, the ground return is at the same level if you assume the ground RCS is the same as the target, which it isn’t.
You can see how much of the outer ring is filled.
1 Like
Sorry, I meant from inside the cockpit in Sim mode. The only thing we get is Betty saying “Lock”, which she says at whatever distance and not when there is an actual lock.
Well the first think to know is the AIM7 is an SARH not an ARH so the missile isn’t the one tracking, only your radar is. Side shots are horrid for a lot of SARH missiles and notching your radar is a very real possibility/probability.
2 Likes
This a great point tbh. In sim there is zero way to know lock quality in any aircraft with any missile
I think that depends on how well each specific planes cockpit is modeled, some of them have some sort of indicator. I’m not very knowledgeable with the cockpits and HUDs for sim i’m afraid, so i can’t really help you there. But a lot of the time i see players not know that there are indicators that are modeled after their IRL counterpart so might not be obvious at first.
Makes sense.
But then shouldn’t the missile still see a cold target when fired from a much faster mother ship?
Also, wouldn’t doubling the altitude, which I guess reduces ground sidelobe return by about 1/4, also allow to lock a target with 1/4 of the main lobe return, thus double the distance? So if it can lock a cold target 6km far at 2500m high, then it should be 24km at 10000m, no? Maybe a bit less if we consider atmospheric scattering.
The SARH missile only sees the radar return from your planes radar that has bounced of the enemy plane. It’s seeker doesn’t seek the plane itself, it just looks for a strong CW radar return from another radar that has bounced of something.
Think of a radar as a big flashlight, the missile looks for something bright that is illuminated by the flashlight, the further away the target is the less bright it will be and the less bright the return will be.
It’s been a while since I’ve played a MiG-21, so…
the mig-21 was just an excample
most early SARH missiles will give you a lock tone
I’ve never payed enough attention. Keep in mind I have about 3 tech trees to top tier.
Interesting, is it really most or is it just a couple? i honestly didn’t know there were any that gave tone before i saw this thread.
from my memory its:
- R-3R
- R-511
- R-530
not sure about the Aim-9C
but that would be more or less it
As far as I know, all SARH Matras, the Aim-9C, the R-3R. All of those give Sidewinder Tone. There might be others, but I don’t have all aircraft available to test.
and they all have one thing in common
they are used on planes that werent build with radar missiles in mind
not all of them
the R530D dosent