Aim-7 Sparrow in WOV

[Lt. James Cater]

I've been wondering about this for a while....

 

In a few weeks i'm going to get my computer back up and so i'll be returning to action. While i was flying Thuds in campaign, i used to mess around with other aircraft in instant missions just to get a feel for different things. The one thing i noticed is that Sparrows seem to be rather more lethal than they were in reality. It's to the point where i can get a bogie dead on in the pipper, go boresight, lock, fire and be guaranteed a kill.

 

Do they work that way in campaign as well?

 

Sidewinders seem to be more realistic, i've had them fail to guide or have had enemy fighters break hard enough to cause them to overshoot. But Sparrows? One shot one, kill everytime.

 

Any comments?

[+JediMaster]

I've not seen that. It may depend what model you're using, but I flew some missions with AIM-7E's the other night and on average I was getting 1-2 missiles out of 4 to hit. Usually 2 would fail to track, with 1 kill and the other one sometimes getting a kill and others just missing.

[Heck]

I fly on all hard settings. My pk with Sparrows runs slightly higher than historical, maybe 20 percent, but that's because neither myself nor the AI fires them the way many Sparrows were fired in Nam ie: to make the damned Mig turn, so I can catch up with him and whack him with a Snake. I've never noticed the behavior that you mention. I usually get a higher pk with the Sidewinder, but not that much more, maybe 25 percent. I've seen a lot of good lock missles go sailing, so I must be a lousy shot, or something else is going on. I fly Navy Phantoms almost exclusively (sorry USAFMTL), with no gun pods, so it's an all missle war for me.

 

I usually fly in earlier years, 1966-68, so that might account for it, since the early missiles weren't as good as later models.

Edited September 20, 2007 by Heck

[Wolf65]

I depends on the situation and when i fire it, they sometimes miss, sometimes hit.

[+Fubar512]

It depends on the target's aspect while the missile's in flight.

 

Targets that are heading towards, or away from you, present a simple tracking solution. They do not pose the additional challenge of a (rapid) change in bearing to the missile's seeker head, so you will experience a higher PK under those circumstances.

 

Targets that present a beam-wise (side) aspect, are much more difficult to kill with early AIM-7s, as their relative motion makes for a tougher tracking solution.

[TeTeT]

If you feel that the Sparrow is overpowered, you might want to mod your weapondata.ini and change the chances and reliability values. I think quite a number of missiles failed due to high G maneuvers up front and probably less than perfect maintenance in the war zone. While the later can be expressed by a probability, the first limitation can not really be addressed in the game.

[Viper6]

It depends on the target's aspect while the missile's in flight.

 

Targets that are heading towards, or away from you, present a simple tracking solution. They do not pose the additional challenge of a (rapid) change in bearing to the missile's seeker head, so you will experience a higher PK under those circumstances.

 

Targets that present a beam-wise (side) aspect, are much more difficult to kill with early AIM-7s, as their relative motion makes for a tougher tracking solution.

Rgr that! I only fire the aim 7 when the bogie is coming towards me or when he is trying to beat feet out of the fur ball.

[+Typhoid]

Rgr that! I only fire the aim 7 when the bogie is coming towards me or when he is trying to beat feet out of the fur ball.

 

a beat feet out of the furball shot with an AIM-7 would have been almost sure to fail. Do you have many successes in that setup?

[+Dave]

I fly Navy Phantoms almost exclusively (sorry USAFMTL), with no gun pods, so it's an all missle war for me.

 

Don't bother me my friend. When I fly Navy F-4's, no GP either. I fly any F-4's, F-4's of anyone country are all good, because they are....F-4's.

 

When you play with the AIM-7 on hard settings I find you get accurate results if you do not shoot it using the right parameters. I get about 1 to 2 misses for every 4 I fire. Its slightly better with the later model Sparrows, but not much. They didn't call it the great white hope for nothing.

[+Typhoid]

Don't bother me my friend. When I fly Navy F-4's, no GP either. I fly any F-4's, F-4's of anyone country are all good, because they are....F-4's.

 

When you play with the AIM-7 on hard settings I find you get accurate results if you do not shoot it using the right parameters. I get about 1 to 2 misses for every 4 I fire. Its slightly better with the later model Sparrows, but not much. They didn't call it the great white hope for nothing.

 

in both airwings I flew in, we had Navy Phantoms (is there any other kind?) and our guys would not dream of flying without a gunpod. So I always load it in the sim. Still one of my favorite planes in this.

[+Dave]

in both airwings I flew in, we had Navy Phantoms (is there any other kind?) and our guys would not dream of flying without a gunpod. So I always load it in the sim. Still one of my favorite planes in this.

 

You have the experience Typhoid and I am sure it was done. However I have talked to pilots and read that Navy didn't use GP on a regular basis on F-4's because of catastrophic circumstance's on carrier landings. Our IDO here a TAFB is a retired Navy F-4 jock and he said he would never fly a Rhino off a carrier with a GP on it, on purpose.

[Viper6]

a beat feet out of the furball shot with an AIM-7 would have been almost sure to fail. Do you have many successes in that setup?

As a matter of fact yes. most likely I'm out of winders so I let the target run til he is a bout 2 or so miles away then I let fly the sparrow and whamo! He is down in flames( well about 30% to 40% of the time) if I'm out of missles, I just chase him down and put some rounds into him.

[Pappa Goat]

Put the weapons setting to hard to try and get it more realistic. I was getting an Almost 100% AIM-7 hit ratio by planning the shot- no high Gs. Now in hard so far have a hit ratio of 0%... ... ... makes me want to ask, what's the procedures on locking and firing the AIM-7? I lock onto the Mig in the radar, it goes into boresight, keep the pipper over the Mig, make sure it's not a high G shot, fire... and the Sparrow just kisses dirt, doesnt track most of the time, maybe tries a little some of the time. I heard in Nam the Sparrow had around a 10% success rate.

[macelena]

You should also consider that we know the limitations the Sparrow had, and we are more restrictive with the fire parameters with the wich we would fire. Since we are not putting our lives on the line, we take it much easier. Also, remember that you can fire it BVR, while in Vietnam the pilots had to engage quite closer, cutting down a significant portion of the missile envelope.

 

About the GP on the Phantom, i´m kind of obsessed with range, i use to load as many tanks as possible. I loiter longer, and pick more carefully the targets for Sparrows. The increase in performance of the Sparrow is worth what i would do with the guns in a Phantom. That being said, i usually prefer to fly a Navy Style Phantom (i like the RAF versions a lot, indeed) than an F-4E

[Slartibartfast]

Must admit there are times that I can fire all 8 off the rail in perfection and still not get anything... but on other days all 4 get a kill I think though my average is about half of them fail either dont guide or overshoot and the others are peach shots even in look down mode... I am trying to setup my shots as per the book but sometimes I take a shot thats so out of parameters and it takes down the mig that I am thoroughly amazed... even now after all these years... though it gets freaky when a missile comes of the rail and turns right in front of you and jinks back within 500yards or so...

 

saying that I think the Radar Range set up for the F-4 is over done so I have edited down to roughly whats correct on my last setup max range 50 miles tracking at 20 miles (Slightly more than what I should get need better data on the bent winged one) to get it correct.

[Lt. James Cater]

I forgot i even did this thread!

 

As it turns out, i must have been getting either near perfect setups or just very lucky. As one could see by checking out my experiences flying an F-4 in DiD, i've missed plenty of times with Aim7s even with textbook setups.

[Siddley]

I get a reasonable PK with Sparrows, but I don't employ them realistically - the setting is 'Hard' , but I pass up shots which a real pilot would no doubt have taken. I'll only launch if everything is in the missiles favour.

 

I also pretend I have Combat Tree installed and don't need a visual ID before firing.

 

Thinking about it, I'm not actually sure that I can say I get a reasonable PK - if the missile never leaves the rail because I don't trust it to track then that's as good as a miss.

[Romflyer]

 

I also pretend I have Combat Tree installed and don't need a visual ID before firing.

 

 

 

In the keyboard assignments there is a command called "visual current radar target" (or something close to that ) I'm not sure of the default command, but you can assign it to whatever key you want........ anyways, when you get a lock on a BVR target hit that button and it will highlite your radar target in either red or blue.......I call it IFF

[Siddley]

In the keyboard assignments there is a command called "visual current radar target" (or something close to that ) I'm not sure of the default command, but you can assign it to whatever key you want........ anyways, when you get a lock on a BVR target hit that button and it will highlite your radar target in either red or blue.......I call it IFF

 

Thanks for that. I'd seen the assignment but the description didn't really make any sense to me.

 

I almost always fire Sparrows head on with the radar in boresight so that will save some frantic messing around at high closing speeds while getting an ID using the visual targeting box

( I do always ID the target - what I wrote in the previous post wasn't what I really meant - I just don't ID using my own MK1 eyeballs. The limitations of computer graphics are my excuse on that score )

Edited January 26, 2011 by Siddley

[Pappa Goat]

Ok been back up in the air in a F-4C doing Rolling Thunder and am getting kills with the sparrow now. I fly with the ROE's in mind, so no BVR. So far Sparrow PK of around 25%. Little higher with the Sidewinder.