Oh boy, no, PD HDN is the high PRF pulse Doppler search more, using FMICW for Tornado. Pulse is the non-PD mode without chaff rejection.
Pulse is only really to be used in the notch, because its chaff resistance is poor.
So PD HDN is the TWS mode and Pulse is the SRC mode?
Pulse is the SRC mode, Pulse Doppler is the PD HDN mode. TWS is a separate thing I wouldn’t really work about.
Yep, okay that makes sense.
In that missile shot [0.37] , im in normal ACM mode, so pulse (at least I assume thats pulse), the target doesnt appear to drop an CMs. It’s rear/side aspect. So I imagine ideally I’d use pulse not PD in that situation.
Why does my Skyflash decide to go on strike or is this just a “WT moment”
Here it says TRK, this means the target is locked in pulse mode, which means it has no chaff resistance.
If it says TRK PD, the target is locked in PD mode, it can be notched, but is resistant to chaff.
You will want to set a key bind that can switch between TRK and TRK PD.
PD is the mode you will want to stay in unless/until you get notched. (Admittedly until the hud radar indicators are added it’s abit harder in SB to know when to switch)
Important thing to note is, although you may have a solid lock, in skyflashes current state; it might not be able to track the target. This has been reported:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/tkBEwJJFViYj
Yup. That pretty much sums up 99% of SB right now. CCRP with GBUs, Radar indicators in the F3, Flight directors in Gr1.
My usual radar operation, is that I sit in TWS when looking for targets. This is because it seems to detect a target no matter what its orientation and will display its heading, ideal for intercept. I’ve found the SRC can’t see targets at low alt (I assume ground clutter) and SRC PD only does something coming at me. PDV never use because no IFF
When I get close/closer, I’ll either lock on in TWS, or switch to ACM PD for the head on. If/when that fails, Im usually shot down before I get much of chance to do anything else. But if Im in the situation where I’ve survived long enough. If I find that ACM PD can no longer lock on, I’ll swap to pulse (Yep, got it bound) where it can then lock on, though then I have issues with Skyflash just not tracking.
I do think I need to refine my bindings and some settings, like I still need to figure out the whole, radar elevation setting stuff and I think I might go back cyclic selection, especially now the bugs been fixed with that
Glad im not going entirely crazy then. I know Im making mistakes and doing things wrong, but even when I think i’ve done everything right, it doesnt work usually.
Had a 9L on my Gr7 that I set up perfectly for clean shot down the tail pipe of a Mig-23, it went for a cloud instead. no CMs involved, just decided to ignore the reheat plume from the Mig-23 and hit a cloud… that though is apparently some issue with missile in SB going haywire after an hour or so of match length, at least thats what the Mig-29 on the other team was saying. he had a number of similar moments
TWS and PD use the exact same detection mode and therefore have the same capability roughly btw.
Ah good to know, though it displays on the screen very differently. PD just shows a line, TWS shows a dot with the direction of travel.
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Right now we can see something. And it looks like MIG_23M has it right here, most if not all of these were expected behaviour or very poor shots.
Felt myself saying “don’t shoot” a bunch of times watching the videos as you’d gotten too close and the target was either side aspect heading into a notch, or just kinematically was going to miss.
If you want to take shots at very low altitude you need to be careful the target isn’t in multipath. Secondary to that you need to account the missile will lead itself into the ground if the target dips their nose as the intercept path is now in the ground.
To help mitigate this you should pitch up 15-20 degrees and “lob” the missile, roll over, pitch down and roll out to level. Naturally a “pop up” like that exposes yourself to SARH missiles but if you’re skimming the ground the odds your missile will hit the floor is pretty high so you need to do something.
You can see here even with AIM-9L I’m lobbing it to avoid the autopilot sending it into the ground (1:04);
You should also do this with Skyflash and other SARH when you are firing from very low altitude.
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So for anything at extreme low altitude, which is 99.99% of the time in SB, I need to loft every missile.
what about that SF3. That target was climbing slightly, so not near the ground, so I imagine multipathing and ground clutter weren’t an issue, no CMs were observed and the fact I didnt loose lock tells me that is likely, and yet it just flew off in the opposite direction. Is this an unavoidable “WT moment” or did I do something wrong there too? Missiles do things like that is actually quite common I find
Target was cold and manoeuvring which is a dice roll in WT if it will track properly. It also looks like since you’re in Pulse Lock (TRK) at the time, you can see your Skyflash aiming reticule after you’ve shot is aiming at the chaff the target dropped and isn’t centred on the actual target.
Cold target, manoeuvring with chaff, zero chance that Skyflash is going to hit.
If you’ve both low altitude skimming tree top I would yes.
Partially that’s because the ability to account for leading (Hot) / receding (Cold) / abeam edge targeting isn’t implemented in WT, I’m not sure if the Tornado had something similar IRL, but a number of aircraft have such a capability which should let it ignore chaff by using an edge of the returns as the reference not the centroid, for the radar’s array alignment.
And is further compounded by the static RCS values among various other simplifications that currently exist.
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Agreed but in this instance working within the current implementation these were bad shots to take.
At the moment, it does appear im extra handicapped in SB
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/3RfYpaIYLu4c
That does seem to explain some of the issues I’ve been having, looks like im not the only one experiencing missiles doing things not intended. Just had one chasing a Tornado IDS on full reheat.
had a 9L decide to crash into the sea.
(main missile confused about is the one fired at 0:45 seconds)
Does explain some of the behaviour I’ve seen recently. Either that or the F-14 behind me also firing missiles at the IDS was resulting in my 9Ls going for his missiles instead of the reheating IDS. Though if that is the case, then 9Ls are in even worse condition than I thought.
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That’s unfortunate. Explains some of the issues you’ve described in the past.
Yep, some kind of server D-sync when the match length gets really long. At least thats what people reckon on the thread. One of those “will never be seen in RB and thus never noticed” bugs
@Morvran I happened to see a Reddit post today where several people are saying they have noticed that as the match goes on (typically past an hour or so) missile performance decreases until they start doing really stupid things. It may just be confirmation bias in the comments, but if it’s true then that may explain why it affects you more than others (as air RB matches tend to be short in comparison to SB matches). @Gunjob are there any reports in about this?