JB3DG

It's actually a pyrotechnic cartridge inside the F-4 itself. The expanding gasses from it are what spin up the turbines and usually accompanied by lots of black smoke.

Got mine in Thailand

For the sake of infodumping/geeking out, the differences are due to the PMP (Propulsion Modernization Program) upgrade and it had some intriguing results. They changed the intakes and I believe a few other engine components to improve low altitude acceleration and turn performance. The intakes however had a costly side effect. They dropped the top speed from Mach 1.6 down to barely Mach 1.05 in a very tiny altitude/weight window. So in short, you will be hard pressed to go supersonic in this bird.

The first time I sat in a full cockpit sim at Sheppard AFB along with the VR sims I worked on for the T-38C and got to try their super heavy active force feedback sticks was when I really realized how your average desktop simmer isn't getting anything really transferable beyond button pushing and number memories. Totally different experience when you have $20000+ hardware involved. I suspect most desktop sticks would snap if they had to deal with the actual stick forces in the real jet.

It's questionable whether they will be able to come to a stop without running out of runway though given the approach speeds required. Tires are likely to catch fire.

This is where I anticipate many users coming unstuck. I remember back in the FSX days with the Milviz F-15E and F-4E, people were complaining about the jets being impossible to land at 150kts. Yeah don't try getting down to 150kts with a full internal fuel load + weapons. Not gonna happen.

I would more likely believe this about the early F-15As than the E. The early E is PW-220s with increased weight, so it is more of a pig compared to a F-15C. The F-15A is considerably lighter than the C, and even with the lower thrust of the earlier F100 engines it still had a superior thrust to weight ratio.

As I recall though, to get actual A-G ranging into the system the WSO does actually have to go full trigger action on the A-G range return even though it is slaved to the gunsight. There's a chance he can end up locking a sidelobe return which will result in inaccurate ranging.

Almost correct. Root extensions are basically just the first few feet of a delta wing applied to a more regular wing. Delta wings and root extensions apply a common phenomenon. Large vortices that stick to the wing at high AoA. Read about Chuck Yeager's testing of the XF-92, the predecessor of the F-102 and F-106. He was able to land it at under 70kts thanks to this feature. Controlling how it develops is a large part of creating a delta wing design, which comes in the form of shaping the delta, or adding root extensions on a more conventional wing, or with the use of canards.

I do find targeting lasers from AI go through them, but not self lased. Had many bombs go stupid because a cloud got in the way of my self lase.

I recall seeing pics of Hornets carrying navigation FLIR pods on their cheeks along with the targeting pods. LANTIRN was a big favorite for a while until the early 2000s. I have a video somewhere specifically on the challenges of low altitude night flight, has a ride along in an F-16 out of KEDW testing the Digital Terrain System (DTS) as a replacement for TFR along with NVGs. Mentions the lack of depth perception in NVGs which caused 4 different aircraft in the Gulf war to crash into sand dunes.

Last I knew from the -1, there is no such thing as no selected steerpoint. Maybe it might not give distance/heading info if it treats a lat/lon of 0,0 as undefined, and exclude all such points from auto sequencing, but even the F-16 and F-18 have an initial waypoint regardless of the mission editor, be that 1 or 0.

Nope. That's just the jet's internal navigation system. You can set STR B to always take you back to starting point, but SP 1A is always going to be active (even if the lat/lon is 0,0) unless otherwise selected.

Actually the LO/MID/HIGH are the PRF indicators. HIGH PRF indicating that the SAM is tracking, not just scanning. While this is for the APR-25, not the 45, it gives a little insight into how the older RWRs work:

EA-6B prowler would be fun too....