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How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#42So why don't they include two radars, one for sweeps and one for tracking? I know, I know, weight, power, etc. At the same time, isn't that the obvious answer?
No space. Take a look at this image, it's the standard AN/APG-63 on an F-15C fighter aircraft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:APG-63_radar_of_F-15_... Note how the radar's processing units and dish take up the entirety of the aircraft's nose and how large the system is compared to the technician working on it. There simply isn't enough space to add another radar. Nor would it make sense to split that into two…
It is important to note that the antennae in a phased array (TRMs) cannot be "steered" individually: it is the electronics that creates a beam by timing the transmit and receive signals to a number of antennae. It's similar to the way an array of atoms creates a pattern of beams in x-ray crystallography, if that makes it clearer.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#43Off Topic: Man! Reading this answer so makes me want to play those FlightSim games of the yesteryears like Apache Havoc, Commanche, Jane's F/A 18 Hornet etc etc. Does anyone have any suggestions for a modern Flight Sim game? Thanks!
Commanche was great. Strike Commander with a full Thrustmaster setup back in the day was epic. Games to keep an eye on (if you like combat) http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/9/5791924/e3-2014-marks-the-re... Been out of games for a while, but looking forward to Oculus and whatever today's Thrustmaster equivalent is :)
Yes, Comanche was awesome back in the day. First 386 protected mode game I had and it pushed my 486DX-50 to the hilt. I also had the Thrustmaster stick and throttle, and 8-bit sound blaster. Ahh, the good old days.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#44Hmmm, I was kind of hoping for an explanation of how the control system determines how to modify the highly directional antenna's orientation to continue to maximally "illuminate" the target once it's been selected from a general scan. Can anyone describe the solution to this? Example idea: Once selected for "lock," the antenna scans in small circles and migrates its central point toward the point on the scanned circ…
There is a book on it[1]. But suffice it to say that the radar is computing an "exit vector" when the target it moving away from center and applying a correction to the pointer. I built a similar system with LEDs when building a tracking system for two moving robots. In my case I used a parabolic dish (a solar cigarette lighter) and a line of LEDs (bar graph display) as detectors rather than lights. Since the target robot and the pursuing robot had their beacon and search dish in the same plane I could reduce the problem to a managable bit of 2D geometry. As the signal went off axis you could turn the robot to re-align by applying the opposite rotation.
[1] "Multiple Target Tracking with Radar Applications" - Sam Blackman (http://books.google.com/books?id=Ag9TAAAAMAAJ&q=tracking+mul...)
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#45Is there any way to view the rest of the answer hidden behind the "more" link without signing up for an account?
I usually just open dev tools and delete the div that contains the modal dialog and gray-out background (its ID is along the lines of "Modal_signup_wrapper"). You still won't be able to read past the first answer, but at least you'll get all of that answer's content.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#46Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#47After playing something like Falcon BMS you'll have all these radars memorized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3pmXvnc0k&hd=1
It acutally makes the sim quite fun to play, although you do have to get past that learning curve. I think for me it was the learning part that was kind of fun too
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#48Related anecdote - I worked with a coder a while back who was a naval aviator before he went back to school, flying carrier-based transports. I asked him once about whether he would have wanted to fly fighters instead, and he said that just flying transports was already a huge amount of work, as far as flight plans, training, practice, and such. Flying fighters apparently involved doing all of that same work, plus a…
believe me, flying fighters really is as much fun as it sounds. It is more work than the transport guys, but you get out what you put in. its all worth it coming in for a 450 knot overhead at 600', pulling six g's in the break, then catching the three-wire aboard the carrier.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
No space. Take a look at this image, it's the standard AN/APG-63 on an F-15C fighter aircraft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:APG-63_radar_of_F-15_... Note how the radar's processing units and dish take up the entirety of the aircraft's nose and how large the system is compared to the technician working on it. There simply isn't enough space to add another radar. Nor would it make sense to split that into two…
It is important to note that the antennae in a phased array (TRMs) cannot be "steered" individually: it is the electronics that creates a beam by timing the transmit and receive signals to a number of antennae. It's similar to the way an array of atoms creates a pattern of beams in x-ray crystallography, if that makes it clearer.
Yes, you're right, I shouldn't have simplified it that much. Upvoted you because your comment deserves more attention.
The steering uses amplitude and phase shifting to create beams through constructive or destructive interference. All very fascinating stuff, and it allows for additional uses like jamming and directional communications links.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember you used to see experts exchange or the like come up in search results and you could block it right there, in your search results without having to go to a separate page. Since they've hidden it, I honestly thought they'd removed the ability to block websites. Thanks for letting me know I just have to hunt for it. I wonder why they removed that option from search results?
No the option is completely gone, not just hidden. You have to use an extension (which is what Google Personal Blocklist is).
Pesonal Blocklist Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...