I remember the D radar having about 20-25% better range than the E.
the E wasn't all that bad; ran about 50-60 miles on other F4s over
water. Our 390TFS Ds could pickup tankers at 75 miles over Thailand.
(Cherry anchor) I had a USN F4J pilot in my back seat one night
gunship escort mission ( can't for the life of me remember why)and he
marveled at the radar pickup. I asked him why he thought it was soo
good when he was flying the J model. He told me after about 4
'standard' carrier landings the radar wasn't so hot anymore. One
problem we had with th E was overheating on the ground at DaNang in
the summer trying to run bit checks taxiing out. So we left it in
standby and did them airborne.
AFIK we never took a gun pod North. The O6s had an E with a CL drop
and 2 SUU23s on the wings but I don't think anyone below full bird got
to fly it. We did hang SUU23s on our Ds for in-country work. Going
North it was CL, mers, ters sometimes, AIM9s and AIM7s and a jammer
pod, usually in the rt fwd Sparrow well. Ed's on the money on the
36/37 RHAW gear - I monitored the audio and kept an eye on the AZ
strobe when the audio sounded interesting.
As for over-all radar performance TAC blew it when they went to the
storage tube instead of a straight CRT. They threw away at least 3 db
performance. AMAF the average D was about equal to our F102As at RG
AFB. (We had the best radar people I ever met in the USAF). We could
pick up 135s and B52s well over 100 miles over land. FWIW a CRT will
let a trained eye pick up a target as low as minus 3 db compared to
the average noise level - because it's there all the time and the
noise jumps around. In the storage tube the average noise level
becomes the cut-off level and you have a nice clean scope and threw
away maybe 10% of your range capability.
Also - dropping IRSTS was really dumb. I used the Deuce's IR system
and while it had bugs (LN2 leaks, usually) when it was working it was
superb. Very flexible, very sneaky, very good at low level - TAC F100D
low level.
BTW every fighter I flew except the F86F had AI radar in it so I was
no cherry when I got in the F4 - by then I had about 3000 hours
pushing a TV around the sky.
Walt BJ