Hey, I think it's more of a "you are doing it wrong". In primis, co-alt matters little. Depending on the altitude and radar settings, the MLC may intersect and draw in a ton of clutter. Where you be able to see the contact yourself? If yes, record a video where you reliably can and Jester can't and send it to me. Hop in my Discord, we can have a look at it there. In this case, for a co-alt, I would raise the antenna to match the bisector of the radar cone, this would limit the returns a bit. I personally don't use Jester and fly from the back as if I were in IFR conditions, basically. Also, you said you don't have friends but also play as a WSO? Which one it is?

@@FlyAndWire you know people that I occasionally fly with. No one that I particularly care for. This community can be pretty toxic. I'll upload a video and show you what I'm doing later. I'm going on vacation!

Yeah, I know what you mean. Enjoy your vacation; we can check where you struggle when you are back :)

It's not easy at all. The lack of PD plus a serious radar representation makes A/A challenging. In a sense, the crew must help the radar to see, not vice versa.

Yup, there are a few more videos covering different periods and methods of employment.

@@FlyAndWire Thanks for replying i will check them out!

I don't use scripts, especially when testing or practising something specifically. I prefer ad hoc solutions that get straight to the point since it takes no time to make them anyway.

Not sure I follow. What do you want to do? Select which group is spawned?

@@FlyAndWire it’s in response to DCS AWACS not able to handle basic intercepts yet

Ah, I see. Yeah, both GCI and AIC are poor at best, same as JTAC and FAC(A).

Oh bummer. Fixed, thanks!

I don't have the time or proper conditions to record my own voice nowadays. That's why Ghostdog668 kindly helped me in the previous video, and the AI is a workaround.

​@@FlyAndWire Oh, I understand. Well, I hope time and conditions will improve. I personally find it difficult to follow AI-generated voice. The pacing is off. A person speaking slows down when going to nitty-gritty details, puts emphasis on important words, etc... AI just monotously plows through. As a non-native speaker, that makes me rewind the video multiple times to understand what it is saying.

@@pavelgrussmann3314 I have this issue as well, though I can tolerate the generator FlyAndWire uses better than most. I have also heard videos using Eleven Labs generator and that isn't so bad either. It's understandable and actually really handy for people who don't have the time or equipment, or are not as good at speaking publicly, so they can contribute in their own ways. That being said, I really appreciate the effort already put into these videos and lessons on DCS.

Doesn’t bother me, quite nice actually

I'm OK with your voice. I found it easier to follow.

The F-15 is a fantastic aircraft, but it is personally boring and one of the most overrated aircraft in history.

For your own mental sanity, never step in a MiG-21 :D

@@FlyAndWire WHAT!! I love the mig-21 they both have not such great visibility, but my point was more for the rear seat. The RIO in the f14 has a completely different idea of visibility then the f4. so back when they designed this jet I'm thinking they must have thought the back seat guy would never need to really look outside and keep his head down in instruments 100% of the time, kinda like they thought there wasn't a need for a gun, I think this thinking is all related

To be fair, "holding a lock" is fully automatic. There is nothing Jester can do here. If you drop a lock, its on the pilot.

Oh, I agree with that. The Phantom is not the problem; that's the point of the whole video. Both FFalcon and Hornet radars are poor at best. I don't remember when, but the Hornet used to update *between* TWS sweeps. Like.. how?! Better not to mention the RWR. Apparently, my silly video about making intercepts with the RWR only is still valid. These modules, and the lack of modern redfor opposition, are some of the many reasons why my favourite setting is late 70s, early 80s. There are more info around to make better modules, and the crew is still the fundamental part of the equation. But it takes some effort to get there. I have probably spent a couple of hours top in the SE. It's very well made, but I am not sure how it can suffer in BVR against a FFalcon: the sheer endurance is more than enough to give you all the separation you want. Basically, invite the FFalcons to make the same mistakes early F3 crews made when they first got the AIM-120 (there are a couple of interviews in Aircrew Interview or 10% true about it, I don't remember which ones though).

@@FlyAndWire I do like 70s 80s tech as well thats why I always say variants for the modules themselves will make a huge difference like 15A 16A and 18A. The fact that the F14 came with an A variant gave something good for redfor scenarios. Those will be more or less good oponents for upcoming Mig29 or even the Mig23. When it comes to the F16 vs F15E in DCS the superiorty is more in theory than in practise. For instance the 16s airframe is not limited it can dive to hell and keep its wings, so while notching it can evade everything. The 15E on the other hand will have its wings break if you exceed 805knts in level flight. Theres many other examples as well. Thats why on every server wichi is centered around BVR it will have the F16s on top of the scoreboard.

Why would a 90s F-14A (due to the 90s LANTIRN and 80s ALR-67) be a Redfor aircraft? Even the -95 would fly with basically only AIM-9s in any post-80s scenario: no more 54s, and there's no 7E-4 in-game. The FFalcon is a better Redfor aircraft in this regard due to its availability, and it is also easy to justify with a NATO country breaking away from the alliance, for example (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon_operators). I'm a bit confused. I would love to see the F-15/16/18 A. It would even out scenarios for PvP players and make missions more appropriate. I see the point about the SE vs 16. I tested it up to M1.6 and it was fine, odd. Notching should be a non-issue with MPRF or STT, but we know how DCS works.

@@FlyAndWire What I meant with the F14A is the fact that the Iranians posses it. IRA F14As dont have the LANTRIN as far as I know so a server owner could make it so that it cant equip it if it was supposed to be a realistic scenario.

I understand that, but they don't have the -67 either. The -95 will be a bit closer to the alicat, but it is not out yet. Also, according to the same logic, F-4E and F-5E are redfor, and the MiG-29 is blue. This is why I never liked this approach. On a similar note, it is like having FFalcon and Hornet in an '80s server by removing some weapons. No, it does not work nor it makes any sense.

Glad you liked it. Say thanks to @ghostdog688 :)

Thanks, I see your point, and I agree with most of it. Besides the fact that the front seat is more enjoyable :P As always, it depends on what you are looking for. For instance, I refuse to fly with a wingman with Jester. I prefer no wingman, as I don't want to babysit them. Same with the AIC: if only the AI is available, I change the frequency. It is too bugged to be useful. Call them "first-world problems" but again, it depends on what you are looking for :) Regarding the third-generation aircraft, the radars of the F1 and MiG-21 are either FC3-level placeholders or very outdated and overperforming. I have already talked about the AI GCI issues in another video. SA is too easy in the current servers, but it is understandable, given that they are casual. The campaign I made a couple of years ago ended up in chaos and blood since crews were solely responsible for their SA. I am looking forward to playing the updated version. ETA 2035, or ROLEX 5256000, if you prefer :S The Phantom has the best radar in DCS so far, and most fourth-generation players think they can easily move from an FFalcon to the Phantom, but that's not the case. As I said in the video, a huge switch in mentality and approach to operations is required. They probably don't understand that the controller should position them, and then they engage. The APQ-120 reminds me more of the F-8's radar, which had a range of a couple of dozen miles, IIRC, rather than the AWG-9 / AWG-10. Instead, they try to make Jester do what the hardware itself hardly can without crew cooperation (e.g. adjust geometry) and, as you said, they get distracted. To go pure FOX-2, you need to know where the targets are, and, at the moment, I don't see any way of doing this without a human controller specifically handicapped to increase realism.

@@FlyAndWire realistm is a server setting - and there are many servers to pick from. If people manage to find and fight each other on WWII servers - notably, without radars - they can manage in a CW setting, too =). Either with some sort of GCI/script, word-of-mouth or map knowledge. I might be wrong, but I don't get the impression that the big issue is _not_ being able to find people or not knowing where to go, but rather that weapons employment sucks because the radar is "useless" (read: hard to work, particularly in a pinch in a fast-moving environment). People also seem to have been swept up in romanticised propaganda, such as "Most produced and successful fighter ever", "Greatest distributor of mig parts", Pre/post Top Gun kill ratios in Nam, etc, and have built this idea in their heads that the Phantom is a competent BFM machine, when it really is not. At most, it's an interceptor, and it owes its success in Nam to multi-ship tactics and numbers, more than manoeuvrability, all of which means it's definitely _not_ the best single-ship BFM machine in the roster! Mind you, my first impression of it, when ripping it around the circle was _shockingly_ good compared to what I was expecting! Then I did a few side-by-side comparisons in formation with an F-14 with a buddy and reality set in, when the F-4 had completed three quarters of a circle by the time the Tomcat had made the full circle. So.. far more capable than I anticipated, but still a bit of a brick, comparatively. Performance, in the same regime of sustained turn, was _very_ similar to the Mirage F1, however, and people successfully fight that in all sorts of regimes... so I'm puzzled why they would struggle more with the F-4. Again, only thing I can think of is the radar being the limiting factor, more than anything else. F1 and Mig 21 definitely have easier radars, but people still successfully engage with the likes of Mig 19, Mig 15, F-5, A-4, AJS37 and F-86, all of which either have no a-a radar or very rudimentary, near-sighted ones.

HB needs to really continue to improve jester

@@riman8493 > If people manage to find and fight each other on WWII servers - notably, without radars - they can manage in a CW setting, too Not necessarily. I played Il2 for 6-7 years, and my signature aircraft were the Zerstörer and the A6 (I even got the bk 3.7 banned in one of the bellum wars successors. But this is another story). I used to navigate with a printed map and a goniometer. The issue here is the speed. The briefing mentioned a certain town or place, and the two sides tended to converge there. Given how long it took a He-111 to climb and get there, for example, and I remember spiralling in a corner of the map for 45 minutes to build altitude, it was hard to miss each other. However, in a CW setting, I can get to the target at M.9 or even supersonic, depending on the loadout, throw the bombs and ride home at M1.5+. You immediately see the issue here. Unless you are playing some free-for-all mess, then who cares, really. About your other points, I think the Mirages are the greatest distributors of MiG parts, but I never checked the numbers :) On a more serious note, I more or less agree with your other points, and some are the driving factors behind this video: try and help people understand the Phantom a bit better. A final note about the radars, it all depends what you expect from them. The F-4J, with its AWG-10, will be closer to the modern expectations.

@@haackhaack4217 The thing is, there is only so much the AI can do. Take the Tomcat: you should listen and follow the RIO's instructions. How many players would do them? Not many, and that would defeat the purpose of a monumental effort code-wise. Also, the ones that complain the most about Jester are also the ones that do not know the peculiarities of the backseat at all.

Fun fact: IRL there were kills made in boresight and ripple-firing AIM-7. So, your tactic is actually acceptable, although a better usage of the APQ-120 would increase your flexibility.

@@FlyAndWire I mean manually locking bandit with boresight mode, rather than waiting for jester to sort out all the clutter the radar gets on low altitudes (he can't do that anyway) in search modes. And if that doesn't work, ripping a sparrow in flood mode indeed

Say thanks to @ghostdog688 :) Let's say that an AI VO video take t = 1 unit of time to complete. With human VO takes probably t=3 or 4 ut. If I were to record myself, it'd take t = 3² or 4².

The voice work is a small offering to the community. If it stops people being distracted by the AI voice, and lets people focus on the content, I’m happy to help where I can. Karon’s great to work with and I figured sometimes you have to be the change you’d wish to see.

@@ghostdog688 That's awesome stuff, lovely to see some collaboration in the community. Thanks guys!

I have a bunch of videos already about the APQ-120, mostly controlled from the backseat. There are more in the queue. However, I think the biggest issue is the implementation of tactics, rather than the WSO tool themselves. I don't use Jester, though, since I am a dedicated backseater, and unfortunately, I can't help you with it.

@@FlyAndWiregreat! I mostly have interest in multi crew specifically wso. I’ve watched all your recent videos and they’re eye opening. Thanks!

I cringe about swapping seats

@@haackhaack4217 it’s great in single player on active pause or autopilot for familiarization but it’s cringey in MP

@@Wheelman_PCAS And why would that be? In the Tomcat, for instance, I'd die of boredom without the DDD. The alternative is flying primarily from the backseat. Besides AHRS and a couple other things, it is entirely doable.

Not necessarily. Not many RWR detected CW, and depends on which update we are referring to. Same for other guidance methods. I need to check the Russian docs again, but IIRC, either the SPO-10 or -15 got an update specifically mentioning the AIM-54 Phoenix, for example. The Mirage F1's RWR during the Iran-Iraq was not capable of detecting incoming Phoenix either, for example (source: Cooper). Aside from reality, DCS is DCS. It can be a bug, the AI, or both.

Not necessarily imo, as the jammer is a massive, loud, beacon of noise. However, during the tests, a bunch of times the AIM-7 passed a few meters from the target without exploding. I did not mention this here as I did not keep track of the occurrences and the testing was not thorough. I plan to do an ad hoc video later to wrap up the ECM topic after I have covered standard HOJ as well.