Avionics Question

[gbnavy61 1]

I've noticed on a few aircraft that one can scroll "up" through radar ranges and loop back to the lowest setting. However, on a few jets (A/A mode in the F-4E ARN-101, A/G mode in the F/A-18E/F) one cannot do the opposite - scroll "down" and loop back to the highest range setting. The missing link is the "it won't loop back around" because you can scroll down to the lowest setting but then you're stuck there (until you manually increase the range setting).

 

Not a big deal, but I was wondering if anyone might know what causes this peculiarity, and what a fix might be.

 

Personally, I have one button on my throttle mapped to "decrease radar range" so that I can adjust the range down as I close with a contact, but my other 3 available buttons are set to "switch radar mode," "select target," and "acquire target." There's just not really a good spot to put the increase radar range function.

Edited March 7, 2009 by gbnavy61