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
Yes I think, as long as the target is just not able to blend with clutter. A sufficiently fast target flying target either towards or away should do. Own speed only matters for the sidelobe clutter, where you want to avoid flying at similar speeds as the target, so if you are significantly faster, you just shift that clutter. Mainly only a problem with HPRF (like F-14) and CW radars, MPRF radars don’t have this issue really, as they can measure both velocity and range unambiguously well enough.
As long as the ratios hold yea. Things change during flight though, as in this case the missile does not provide its own illumination. But it should only improve I guess, unless the missile dives to the ground much quicker than it goes to the target for some reason. But this is all assuming absolute returned power from sidelobe =~ mainlobe, so an edge case. Like if we of course consider real values, the ranges and altitudes are probably different, probably much more target range. You also have to consider antenna noise too, which is independent of range, so that ultimately limits your range.
Checked the MiG-21, yeah, just realized that, that is odd.
@skuva @Necronomica regarding some SARH missiles having a growl noise and others not, I expect this again comes down to the difference between pulse and CW missiles. Pulse missiles lock onto the target before launch so produce a growl. CW missiles don’t look on until after launch so don’t produce a growl (the red rings you get around the target with CW missile are just the game estimating how good the lock will be a couple of seconds after launch)
By that logic, shouldn’t the Aim-4F also make the noise?
AIM-4F is also lock after launch by the looks of it.