- Yes
- No
A- At high tiers, radars are used not only for guiding radar-guided missiles, but also for the detection of enemy aircrafts (at any range in air SB, and at long ranges in air RB).
To make radars more usable and make their operation more realistic and convenient by implementing their historical features in the game, “Controls for changing the elevation of the radar antenna” was implemented in one of the previous major updates:
Spoiler
And to make radar operation easier for people who don’t want to have too many keybindings (or just didn’t want to bother with manually controlling the elevation of the radar antenna), a new option was added to cycle between the manual elevation/tilt control of the radar antenna (which scans in planes parallel and relative to the horizon), and the previous behavior of the radar antenna being simply fixed at a pre-set elevation relative to the nose of the aircraft:
The issue however is that both behaviors/control methods are useful in certain situations:
1- Manual tilt/elevation control is useful for when you are flying at a certain altitude and want to search the airspace below or above you (e.g. flying on the deck and trying to search for high altitude targets without pointing your nose up, or flying at high altitude and trying to search for low altitude targets on the deck without pointing your nose down).
2- Fixed antenna position relative to the nose of the aircraft (i.e. the old behavior) is useful when you are in a dogfight and want to point your radar antenna at an arbitrary direction (i.e. direction in front of the nose of the aircraft) quickly, either to fire a missile, or to IFF the aircrafts in front of you in a furball (in SB), rather than scanning in planes parallel and relative to the horizon.
So it will be very useful to have a keybinding to cycle this option (“Constant elevation of radar antenna”) between On & Off.
B- Furthermore to make this suggested keybind/feature fully useful, the behavior of the “Constant elevation of radar antenna” game option has to be changed:
Instead of just fixing the antenna to be level with nose/axis of the aircraft when this option is on, this option should actually turn the pitch stabilization of the radar antenna off.
The difference between the current and suggested behavior is that currently, when the “Constant elevation of radar antenna” game option is on, the elevation of the radar antenna is “constant” or fixed as the name suggests. But if this is changed to switch the pitch stabilization of the antenna on and off, then you would still be able to use the “Radar/IRST tilt control axis” to change the elevation of the antenna, even when this option is toggled on. The difference being:
1- With the pitch stabilization of the antenna turned on: The antenna elevation would be adjusted and maintained relative to horizon.
2- With the pitch stabilization of the antenna turn off: The antenna elevation would be adjusted and maintained relative to the nose/axis of the aircraft.
This will also enhance the game’s realism, as IRL virtually any aircraft that has pitch stabilization for its radar antenna (basically any aircraft with a half-decent radar set) (which allows to adjust and maintain the antenna elevation relative to horizon), can also turn the radar antenna’s pitch stabilization off (to be able to adjust and maintain the antenna elevation relative to the nose/axis of the aircraft).
For example, from F-4E Aircraft Aircrew Weapons Delivery Manual (NONNUCLEAR) - T.O 1F-4E-34-1-1 - 1979 change 1986, page 1-54 and page 1-55:
So, similar to how it is implemented for e.g. wing sweep control (which has a “Switch wing sweep control mode” keybinding below “Wing sweep” axis), I suggest adding a:
“Switch/Toggle constant elevation of radar antenna mode” below “Radar/IRST tilt control axis”:
Spoiler
Which will simply toggle “Constant elevation of radar antenna” game option (which is already implemented) on and off.
And also changing the behavior of this game option, to instead be an on and off toggle for antenna’s pitch stabilization system, and allow changing the elevation of the radar antenna even with this option turned on, though in this state, instead of adjusting and maintaining it relative to horizon, it would be adjusted and maintained relative to the nose/axis of the aircraft.