Organising flights in a multisquad campaign.

[csThor]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

No, Kodiaks system covers what you tell it to. I think they were like the third example but more elipse and over lapping like you said... I dont intend to use 20 radar to cover the South East like real BoB, as you reds will have to switch channels constantly and with one shot every four minutes that would not be much good. Also there was Chain Home high and low for different altitudes. So its simpler and better to use high and low combined with say 4 radar operating... Covering an unrealistic area...

Otherwise one radar might only be high or low and only cover 40km wide and 120km long... So you would check in with that radar and be locked out for 4 mins! There would in all likelyness be nothing in that slim sector and therefore the radar would be useless.

So, in clonclusion its better, faster and simpler to let one radar cover a bigger area both high and low... You might argue its unrealistic but any gap in the field is still a gap and an entire air armada can be sailed through a 40km gap! So its more realistc to fudge it. Also Kodiak has included Air Obsever Corps, so any inland grid sqaures can be set to them. Think Ill go with something like picture 2. - but wider with AOC taking up the slck near the cone point.!

Actually - as dictated by logic - any kind of emitted wave with a finite range will form a cone with a circular edge just as in the second sketch (IIRC - the darn proxy at work blocks your picture host ). I don't know exactly whether CH stations covered a 180° cone but IIRC they did so you would get what was almost a half-hemisphere where it could detect aircraft (but of course with a minimum altitude due to earth curve ).

As for gaps and detection or not: A player should register with a Sector and not an individual radar. Each sector (IIRC No. 11 Group had six or seven) had access to several radars and of course the Observer Corps. There's a nice overview available here: http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/fightercontrolsystem.cfm

[FG28_Kodiak]

You connect to a sector HQ, with several radars and Observer Corps in my script

[csThor]

Oh, then I misunderstood. Gotta have another coffee.

[Osprey]

Kodiak, this really is epic. This isn't just one RDF setup for one campaign, this really is the kind of immersion required for servers generally. It will be very interesting to see how this works, particularly post patch, and I think it is something that can also be extended on those experiences. In the longer term I can see this being part of a library which includes new sound recordings from pretty English WAAFs which can be installed to clients and accepted on servers to give realistic direction to flight leaders, if Steam allows it all. Still, i'm getting ahead of myself........

@Farber, I agree, we can't have the complexity of the real system. My only concern is the 'realism' of knocking them out, but still, you can't knock out observer corps personnel can you?

[5./JG27.Farber]

Nope

The OC is everything from little school boys, police men and enlisted men sitting in trenches with binoculars... AAA guns, barrage balloons, etc etc... It would be very hard to knock that out.

Hmmm maybe the observer should only be able to see low aircraft, like upto 4000m's... It would also be interesting to know if there could be a chnace the AOC didnt spot anything?

[Osprey]

Well they would see them, reckon at least bomber or fighter, and perhaps count numbers, heading and height but it would get harder with height, it would be worth investigating the kind of work they did for the sake of accuracy. They used apparatus to help them and may have been hooked into the network of RDF or passed information about incoming raids in order to help gain more information.

With regards to knocking out radar, the RAF system had mobile units with a shorter range which could be moved to plug the gap. I believe this happened on August 12th and the screen was back up inside an hour as a result. On that day they though they were more successful and decided to test with Stuka's off North Foreland. 501 got stuck into them and slaughtered them.

[5./JG27.Farber]

It was kind of like a hand over from the radar. They reported to the sector plotters. I think it would be easier to see large formations at any height. However 4 109's at 5000m's - I think very hard.