The BEST TIP For BVR Air to Air Success in the DCS F-4E Phantom II!

[@Spudknocker]

Hey guys! Today's video is all about showing you guys how to best engage in a BVR Fight in the DCS F-4E Phantom II with the limitations of not having a Look-Down-Shoot-Down Radar in the AN/APQ-120. The First Demo 0:01:40 Is with Bandits at a Lower Altitude The Second Demo 0:05:39 Is with Bandits At A Higher Altitude The Third Demo 0:07:55 is with Bandits At Co-Altitude

I don't have the F4 (and don't plan to) but I've already started training against it with the Mirage F1. Even in BVR, it's still a serious threat and I have a hard time winning engagements with only 530EMs. Of course, with Super 530Fs it becomes easier but Mirages didn't have them until the 90s. Iraqi Mirage pilots sure had balls of steel going against Iranian F4s and F14s !

[@Arashenstein]

They had no balls they were bailing out as soon as F-14 was showing up on their RWR, carried to first Gulf War (Desert Storm) the American F-14s almost never managed to get into fight with Iraqi jets because of the PTSD Iraqis had from Iranian F-14s. Unfortunately by the time that war happened our government in Iran was fully overthrown and replaced by Iraqi + Pakistani + Lebanese born ayatollahs and they allowed all fleeing Iraqi jets to land in Iranian air bases and that is why we have Mirage F-1s and MiG-21s and other old Soviet fighters. None of these were bought by Iran they got acquired after they flee from Americans.

[@dcsheinlein]

Considering the F-4 is the merge of all quintessential 60s technology, just imagine how revolutionary it was back in 1970

[@a_s_mikael]

imagine how Iranian still fly with that 😂

[@ItsDburch]

This thing was the F35 if it's day. It completely changed air warfare.

[@odysseus9797]

I love the "wouldnt change a thing" line, especially with the knowledge how big of a deal the lack of internal gun ended up to be

[@Spudknocker]

Well I would say the lack of an internal gun is an contentious issue, the biggest problem was the lack of ACM training for USAF, USN and USMC F-4 crews, so I dont necessarily think that adding a gun made the F-4 magically better. This is evidenced by the USN creating Top Gun in ‘69 and their kill ratio skyrocketed without a gun. But the USAF added a gun in the F-4E and did not change their training or tactics and only Very marginally improved in Linebacker I and II

[@Monarch683]

@@Spudknocker I gotta agree with this one. A lot of people have this belief that the F-4 was limited by not having a gun, and that's simply not true. The lack of proper ACM/BFM training for Phantom crews was the biggest limiting factor. Like you said, nothing shows this better than the USN's success after the establishment of their Top Gun program.

[@xevilpetex]

Considering the USAF had a grand total of 5 F-4E gun kills in Vietnam I’m not sure it was the complete game changer people think it was. There were more than double gun pod kills in the Phantom than internal gun kills.

[@gotanon9659]

What ironic is that the after the F-13 variant of the Mig-21 never had an internal Gun until later models brought it back

[@Pantadeusz17]

Will be interesting to see once Heatblur do a Navy Phantom (like a F-4J ) how much BVR will change considering it had lock down capabilities.

[@kblackav8or]

Even better would be the F-4S because it even had further updates and smokeless engines.

[@debbiestimac5175]

One note for the guys struggling with the Phantom's radar is to know that the program was designed in the 1950's to deal with Bison's and Bear's coming over the pole to gravity bomb the United States, like we did in Germany and Japan in WWII. The profile was to be vectored to the bomber stream/units and then do a shallow dive to gain energy while painting the heavies against the cold blue sky and then popping up for launch and then over the top of the stream away from their defensive gun positions, then rinse and repeat. That radar was never designed to deconflict ground clutter, especially over the cold barren wastes of Canada during the early days of the Cold War. It's why we put the B-52's on a low level penetration profile after the SA-2 threat popped off, we didn't have look down shoot down at the time, let alone the Soviets. Vietnam was a nightmare for cold war trained radar operations in fast jets. Clutter.... clutter everywhere.

[@christianyoung1575]

Appreciate this as a WSO

[@gotanon9659]

We had look down shoot down modes designed in the early 60's for the USAF F-4 they just threw it away for some odd reason but we implemented it in our interceptors. And the Navy deployed theres in the late 60's with the F-4J

[@FJFuentesCO]

Makes me appreciate just how much technology has advanced.

[@PaddyPatrone]

In the F4E?

[@debbiestimac5175]

@@christianyoung1575 Sorry I'm so late, I'm more of a Rumble girl now. KZbin is just too restrictive, no real freedom of speech. Have a wonderful 4th of July!

[@PSNGamer]

Really good video! I've really enjoyed flying the F4E and wondered if you ran into the same bug as I have? My problem is that when I restart my created mission, Jester seems to not be able to lock the ground. What I mean is he just continuously says things like "I got it locked" and I can tell he doesn’t. Since my reticle doesn’t fill up with orange like it does when he actually has the ground locked. I'm sure it's a bug, but I just wondered if you have seen it and maybe have a fix? Anyway, keep it up, and I love flying the F4E. It's 5 out of 5 good! I highly recommend it!! Oh and I've asked a few other KZbinrs cause I love the plane and want the bug to be fixed.

[@gunschel]

Seems like it's impossible to do this in the Instant Action BVR vs Mig 21s. In general I think it makes more sense to do these demonstration in a mission that is included in the module so people can follow easier what you did.

[@Andrew-13579]

If the MiG-21s come from a nearby airbase, they can probably afford to stay low and pop up behind their prey for a hit-and-run attack, as directed by GCI controllers. However, that can be a challenge when the F-4s and F-105s are doing around 500 kts ground speed. And GCI controllers are not looking at an F10 map. (Although, I know you used it here to present the situation clearly). They have a late 50’s early 60’s technology analog surveillance radar display with no alphanumeric data tags on targets…not in the Vietnam era, anyway. They’re looking at a screen full of dots and dashes, too. Dots close to the antenna and longer and longer dashes as range increases. And if jammed, it could look like thousands of dots/dashes randomly changing positions with each sweep. Or with chaff, clouds of dashes hiding aircraft targets. It would be really cool to have realistic vintage surveillance radar displays in DCS, and be able to command flights of AI aircraft.

[@yogiparashara4016]

It would be helpful if we could have a tutorial on how to setup both the Sparrow and Sidewinders in the F4E please 🙏🏽

[@preflightops]

How are you getting your clouds to look this nice? I would love to have the settings for this! Also the ground textures look really nice! Do you have any mods for this? 🤘🏼

[@Spudknocker]

Hey there no mods all 100% vanilla dcs!

[@kblackav8or]

Needs to be a Navy F-4S model.

[@sheila9358]

Need some keybinding for HOTAS. if you can

[@RADIOACTIVEBUNY]

What I do is I look at the HOTAS in the game and just bind whatever fits with mine. Should say "POV hat up" rather than "trim up", least I remember it saying that in the modules I used.

[@PeterMatthess]

very helpful thanks

[@WilliamBrothers]

I honestly don't see what I'm looking at on the radar. In the Mig-21 it's clear as day for me, but not with the F-4. Can you be more specific what I'm looking at? Thanks for the video

[@PSNGamer]

How do I use the guns? Like what control is it? I have them selected, but they won't fire.

[@mikeg2092]

The master arm has to be on AND the gun has to be armed. The gun Button above the plyons arming button. Left side of panel, above left knee.

[@PSNGamer]

@@mikeg2092 thank you!

[@zbeen-ah-lah]

so quick question, why won’t the sparrow track half of the time? ( basically how do I get it to consistently track what I’m locking

[@hybridscout0134]

count to 5. takes a little time for the sparrow to receive firing solution. usually jester will say 1 potato 2 potato etc to 5 then shoot

[@zbeen-ah-lah]

@@hybridscout0134 yeah I wait till jester says that but it still has problems with tracking

[@UWfalcin]

@@zbeen-ah-lahyeah it’s like it’s tracking something else vut on f10 map there is nothing in that direction

[@SuperiorAutocraft]

That's the neat part, you don't! Sparrows of the era were..... troublesome.

[@KernitTheFont]

@@SuperiorAutocraft See, these are the little bits of info that make learning this jet really interesting!

[@chrisparmelee3823]

I’m on the fence still, however, loved the video series and the vid on should I buy. Great info. My question is what server would this be best in for MP? Feel like it will struggle in a server with several gen 4 aircraft.

[@cowansimstudio]

Heard of enigmas cold War servers? They sre nearly always full of cold War era modules 😉

[@timothymorgan8254]

Tempest blueflash SARH

[@gotanon9659]

Are they going to add the Aim-4D Falcon

[@travistolbert2647]

I’m not sure if the E model Phantom ever carried them consistently as they were more or less withdrawn and left in storage when the Air Force started fielding the much superior Sidewinders. From what I’ve read they put the ‘Miss’ in missile!

[@Majima_Nowhere]

​​​@@travistolbert2647As far as I know, the Aim-4 guided even worse than a 9B. The 9B had a hit ratio of 18% over Vietnam. Plus the Falcon only had 2 minutes of coolant for the seeker, after that it's just dead weight.

[@travistolbert2647]

@@Majima_Nowhere yeah, the only way you’d ever put them on a jet is to be an enormous masochist. Kind of like putting the Matra 530s on the F1! lol

[@IHeartLasagna]

It's impossible for me to get a lock farther than say 5 miles. I dont know what i am doing wrong

[@c1500kx1]

hey quick qeustion what hotas setup do you use , also do you use VR or eye tracking?

[@louhodo5761]

I am over the intro already.

[@Rhinozherous]

Soon we cant hear this speech anymore xD It will become the same annoyance like the song "Sail" in aviation/flightsim videos :)

[@nurolkurt]

it looks easy

[@subjectc7505]

That's what I'm saying, the F-4 doesn't look as complex but Spud had some time in the phantom so his pretty experienced

[@Spudknocker]

@@subjectc7505 Haha I dont know for sure but I think you may have replied to a bot haha

[@subjectc7505]

@@Spudknocker oh lol

[@debbiestimac5175]

@@Spudknocker Definitely. When my husband and I visited the air museum in Virginia, the one with the HABU and Shuttle exhibits, he noticed a Soviet probe/lander from their Venus program, tiny little armored thing. Him: "Look everyone... A Russian Bot!" The horn rimmed glasses, blue hair leftists standing next to us rolled their eyes and sighed. Love that guy, always looking to ruffle uptight feathers. Lol.

[@joseblanco3873]

@@debbiestimac5175I bet “ blue haired leftists” live rent free in your head. What a wing nut

[@valuedhumanoid6574]

One really good trick I figured out is to turn on LABLES and you'll see big red letters that says MIG-21 BIZ and their range. Best radar boost in DCS. And, that trick works on all DCS aircraft. Other than that, I got nothing.

[@Pwnzistor]

It'd be a lot cooler if your videos weren't super widescreen

[@qwerty85620]

garbage aircraft

[@PaddyPatrone]

It`s an old aircraft with old tech, what do you expect? lol

[@KernitTheFont]

@@PaddyPatrone Yeah, that's half the fun!