Well I’m well on my way to completing the event and i’m very interested in the f106 itself, but after taking it for a test flight I’d like to point out some things that need to be corrected before the plane makes it to multiplayer.
Starting with the issue raised above, the F106 “shooter” wasn’t simply equipped with a radar ranging, gyro gunsight; when they replaced the AIR-2 genie with the vulcan gun, they reprogrammed the rocket fire control computer to account for the ballistics to the 20mm vulcan, and calculate the optimum firing angle given the position, velocity and altitude of both the F106 and the radar locked target to produce what they called snap-shoot gunsight, which is equivalent to what the game calls EEGS (or rather, the EEGS is the f106 gunsight program developed for the F-16 - both planes made by the same company). Thus, the F-106 must be given EEGS.
That’s a separate issue unrelated to the gunsight (they are in fact entirely separate systems); unlike the vast majority of aircraft, upon achieving radar lock the F-102 and F106 didn’t simply display the relative position and speed of the radar locked target, they also calculated the fastest trajectory to intercept the target aircraft, and through a stering dot inside a circle directly showed the pilot where he needed to point the nose of the aircraft to be able to attack the target (now doesn’t that sound REALLY useful for sim).
How much ya’ll think this is going to go for on the market? Because I have no interest in another non-premium event thing. I have plenty of backed up planes and vehicles to finish spading out so I’m going to sell this thing.
If they could lock onto long distance targets, they would prolly be pretty useful for early BVR, but from test flight testing, I had to be under 2 miles to lock onto Mig-15.
Also when I say lock, I mean the SARH seeker, not the plane radar.
Edit:
I just realized, we can’t test the radar Falcons. I mistook the IR missiles with radar slaving for radar missiles.
There is maybe option for another F-106 in TT. There was experimental version with another AIM-4D missile under right wing. Also was tested on this plane Polhemus Helmet-Mounted Sight which is also shown on video same as mentioned missile:
You can see that it use same one piece canopy as Six Shooter from 1972.
So we are 2 days away from the F-106A being released for multiplayer, and there are a few things that need to be fixed to implement the plane properly. The report that stated that missiles should be launched in salvos seems to have been accepted (Community Bug Reporting System), and it remains to be seen if it’s a good thing or not; IRL launching them in pairs increased kill probability because the odds of both missiles misfiring at the same time were lower, and provided for a proxy fuse system of sorts since both missiles converged on the same target and could hit each other if they narrowly missed, but in warthunder it’s just less usable missiles.
The various reports pointing out the plane isn’t fast enough at supersonic speeds vs real life seem to have been accepted (way too much wave drag), but it remains to be seen if the flight model is adjusted properly. Right now it still has a Mach 2.1 never exceed speed when basically every convair proposal stated the engine/airframe was limited to mach 2.5, and that in real life it STILL holds the speed record for a single engined jet fighter by flying in a straight line at over mach 2.39.
The report pointing out that the gunsight doesn’t look as it should, is too innacurate and that the plane basically had EEGS seems to have got a lot of attention (Community Bug Reporting System) but it remains open without confirmation is it’s gonna be accepted or not.
The report I opened regarding the weapon bay doors not closing automatically (Community Bug Reporting System) being innacurate from an historical point of view, and extremely annoying from a gameplay point of view, didn’t get as much attention but also remains open.
The other thing i noted is that the IRST seems to be underperforming a lot; it only seems to detect a mig-15 from the tail aspect within 5 km, comparable to the AN/AAA-4 irst fitted to the F4-D phantom (A PbS seeker like an Aim-9b). However, the very early 1960´s F106’s and F102´s were fitted with an hughes 90-C IRST, a nitrogen cooled PbSe seeker nearly identical to the AN/AAS-15 sensor (Fitted to the F8U-NE crusader) or the S71N sensor (fitted to the J35J Draken), and apparently later F106’s were upgraded with a liquid helium cooled, InSb 100-C sensor. This should have a performance comparable to the IRST proposed for the F-14A by hughes, and pilot accounts seem to confirm that the IRST was very good, but the problem is that I can’t find any primary references that say exactly which IRSTs were fitted, and what exactly they were capable off…
I’ve read that report, the problem is that (to my knowledge) even though they were proposed none of those 3 systems were actually fitted to either the F102 or the F106 in production, as they aren’t even nitrogen cooled or PbSe, and it shows in their very limited performance.
It’s been over a week since the F-106A was unleashed into the game, might as well sum up it’s current state:
There have been accepted bug reports for top speed/acceleration (at least wing rip speed should be mach 2.5), incorrect cockpit gunsight (also should have EEGS in 3rd person view), incorrect gun drum placement, AIM-4F/G being fired in salvos, AIM-4F/G missiles lacking thrust in initial boost phase, incorrect radar sweep parameters
Apparently unread bug report related to weapon bay not operating automatically, Radar/IRST switch, arrestor tail hook not working, speedbrake jerk when parachute is deployed, missing radar features like radar extrapolation, missile range estimation, missile optimal lead point indication, AIM-4F missing ECCM/chaff filter.
Rejected bug reports for AIM-4G seeker head sensitivity, Radar having IFF, wing mounted missiles
Seems like a lot of changes that are in the pipeline to be implemented already, but they’ll probably wait a month or so until they get solid data on how the current version of the 106 is doing. After that, there are still loads of features of the F-106 that aren’t still in the game but could be implemented in the future, like home on jam (anti radiation mode - uses the aim-4Fs as if they were shrike missiles), being able to manually point a beam to guide an AIM-4F to target, being able to lockon a target with the IRST while the radar keeps scanning and providing range information (IRTWRS), being able to lock both the radar and IRST on the same target at the same time (IR/Radar slaving - allows you to maintain tracking through either chaff/ground clutter or flares/the sun), or the Datalink functionality (Knowing the position of friendly aircraft on map, being able to target enemies locked by allied ground radar, etc).
A lot of evolution potential to be had, if gaijin plays this right.
Honestly, that would be amazing, especially with the upcoming CAS SP cost changes.
Imo, in a perfect world, Gajin would fix all the bug reports (resulting in massive buff to F-106A) and then move it up to 9.7 or 10.0.
Sadly, what really gonna happen is Gajin’s just gonna ignore the bug reports, as they always do, and move the F-106A to 10.3 and letting it fall in to obscurity, before forgetting about it and never touching it again.
