Brit_Radar_Dude

RedHammer - I think you misunderstood my meaning, it was not a hit against you. You asked for help with a sensible question and sadly :( the thread turned into many pages of a big argument which was no help to you at all. My meaning was that it would make you think it would be a complete waste of time to ask another question since you would not get a useful answer. Also, I'd like to think I might be missed just a little....;)

chardly, check out my answer in this thread about finding the moving trains. http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=13665&highlight=trains+run+from+station+A Lockonfiles is a great site - Thomas does a lot for the Community. Also check out these. One or two you may need to register to d/load, most you wont. Ironhand site (for extra Lockon training tracks, you are guaranteed to learn something useful from all of them) http://flankertraining.com/ironhand/index.html Chappies site http://missions.redirectme.net:81/LO-MAC/index.htm Lock on skins http://www.lockonskins.co.uk Lucas's site http://www.lucas-digital.com/gaming/lomac/ ZoomBoy's mission advice (scroll to end to see links to missions and his very useful beginners guides) http://www.geocities.com/jzoomiethomas/a10_missionadvice.htm CombatAce http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?automodule=downloads&showcat=1 Konnkussions site for Lockon setup hints and tips http://www.freewebs.com/konkussion/lockonmac.htm Durchstarten site http://www.the-eighth-art.com/8thArtCamList.htm Flanker562's site http://562.50megs.com/LOMAC/index.htm Lockon checklists and maps http://users.skynet.be/F4Checklists/LomacDownload.htm Evil Joe's site http://www.erbseweb.de/lockon Check-six (French site) http://www.checksix-fr.com (side menu - click on Lockon) Alas Rojas (Spanish site) http://www.alasrojas.com/Descarga/lomac/ficheros.htm JaBoG32 (German site, but much also in English) http://www.virtual-jabog32.de/?lang=en Here is a cut and paste of my standard target / mission goal spiel.... What is the Diamond? The diamond is your Target Designator. It simulates that some forward observer has pointed a laser at the object to designate it as a target. Imagine we have some forward troops or recon that is on the ground and has spotted our target. They put a laser on it, and then we see the diamond in the HUD because our A-10 carries the Pave Penny laser tracker. That's the idea anyhow. Why is it there in some missions and not others? If the mission designer has set up an ATTACK waypoint and used the TARGET button to mark a particular target(s), then you will see the diamond as soon as you change to air to ground mode (7). If the target is out of the field of view of the HUD it will have an X through it. If you kill the target and there are multiple targets are set up, the diamond moves to the next target, and finally dissapears when you have killed all the marked targets. Some mission designers might only mark some or none of the targets you need to kill to get mission success, other targets may only be mentioned in the mission briefing. If there are multiple targets in a mission, you can swap the diamond between them by pressing ' key (depends on your keyboard - anyway it is the same key that swaps airfields when you are in nav return mode). Be aware that if you set up some vehicles or ships in a group then the Mission Editor treats that group as a single item when you use TARGET button. Once you target it and then try to target another item in the group the mission editor will latch to nearest thing (usually a building) leaving you wondering what is going on. I still get caught out by this with ships as a group of them by default are quite spread out and they dont look like a group. I then try to target a second time and it latches to target a building on the coast a 100km away! When you have a group targeted then if you kill the 1st in the group, the diamond will move to the next in the group etc until all destroyed then moves to next TARGET'ed unit/group. If there are multiple targets in a mission, you can swap the diamond between them by pressing ' key. But remembering what I said earlier about a group of vehicles being regarded as one target, then if you had two groups designated as targets, it will swap between the 1st in each group. you can't move the diamond along the column of vehicles. Doesn't stop you bombing them, but the diamond will always point to 1st in the group. This can be kinda confusing until you get used to it. Is it necessary to lock on by pressing TAB? All the diamond is doing is showing you where the target is located. You still have to attack it yourself with whatever weapon you choose. If you choose a Maverick then you have to lock it on, but if you use gun / rockets / dumb bombs, then obviously you dont. What is the ATTACK point? It is a type of waypoint, shown on the map as a triangle instead of the usual circle, in the Mission Editor(ME) . As you fly your route it does not appear any different to other waypoints to you as a pilot. But used in conjunction with the TARGET button in the ME, it will cause targets to be diamond'ed. If the aircraft is an AI(computer flown) one, then it tells the AI when to begin an attack and what to attack. Do you have to reach a particular waypoint before you can lock on? No, but generally the mission designer will have chosen a particular waypoint (nearest to the target) as an attack waypoint. Some missions might have several attack waypoints if there are several targets. Before you fly a mission, look at the map, remember which waypoint is the attack waypoint (triangle) so you know where to start looking for the targets you are tasked to destroy. You might find there are enemy SAM/AAA defenses or enemy aircraft you have to kill simply to be able to get through to your actual mission target, keep your eyes and ears open for threats - the RWR (Radar warning receiver) can help. In one of the A-10 training missions there is the diamond to show you where to drop your weapon load but in the other using cannon and rockets there is no diamond. As I said above, sometimes the mission has been designed so there is a diamond, sometimes not. Is there a difference between targets and mission goals? The SUCCESS / FAIL at the end of a mission is caused by having used the Mission editor to set MISSION GOALS with the icon on the left of the screen that looks like a sniper sight. Also not all goals are that some target be DESTROYED, some goals are that a unit, group or target SURVIVES, this enables misson designers to make missions where you have to protect friendly units or defend a base. Having these as seperate actions means that a mission can have SUCCESS/FAIL goals set without necessarily having targets diamond'ed. Two examples - mbot's recent UrbanThunder which has an attack waypoint, but no TARGETs assigned. http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=9039 also my Smerch Hunt mission, which has no attack waypoint at all, and has both DESTROY and SURVIVE mission goals... http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&cid=61&lid=36&ttitle=A-10_Smerch_Hunt#dldetails

D'Oh, I am an idiot! It is a German jacket, so of course I should have been looking on Ebay.de (not Ebay.co.uk) and for "Fliegerjacke" or "Pilotenjacke". Thanks zenTera, I found a used jacket on ebay.de as an example (at about the price that Woodstock suggested). So now both my friend and I will feel OK about € 60 being a fair price.

Peterj - thanks for that link. New jacket for 318USD (172GBPounds, 253Euro) - man, that's insane! Cosmo - I looked on E-Bay but could not find one. My friend had looked over the past few months but no joy.

I got a German Air Force grey leather jacket about 20 years ago, it cost me 40GBP (60Euro). It is in excellent condition, slight damage to orange nylon inside near the collar that is all. No German flags on the sleeves but it does have an MFG2 pin. It no longer fits me and one of my friends wishes to buy it from me. I have no idea what is a good price, he doesnt want to rip me off, I dont want to rip him off. I have not seen one of these in the military Surplus stores for many years now, so I dont know if the GAF even still uses them. German Lockon Community friends - maybe you can give me an idea of what would be a fair price?

From me a big thanks to RuGGBuTT - he put himself out to help me (a total stranger from 5,000 miles away) not once but twice. Also TekaTeka for thinking outside the box when designing Mods. Simple yet useful Mods that make you wonder why you didn't think of it first....

Zaelu - I know for sure that the moving trains that are generated by CIVILIAN TRAFFIC ON are not random, they always consist of the same number of wagons and always start in the same place at the same time in the mission and endlessly travel between two points (usually train stations). Now I never actually checked the road traffic to the same degree but I always assumed it is programmed the same. So that would explain why you always see the same type of jeep moving along the same road at the same time. I dont believe the radars on the airfields are handled in the same way as civilian traffic as they always seem to be there whether I have CIVILIAN TRAFFIC ON or OFF. Neodark - I dont know of any way to increase the density of civilian traffic other than you use the Mission Editor to put in your own mix of moving vehicles and static objects.....

Lovely stuff Birdy, nice use of those little cranes - will really add some life to the airbases, but you'll have to help me it those last 3 screenies as I'm not familiar enough with those locations to actually figure out what you added :helpsmilie:

Flanker has 3 pieces of music according to the credits:- 00:00 - 00:31 Russian Red Army Choir - Carmina Burana - O Fortuna 00:32 - 06:40 Chris Raven - I know you love me too 06:42 - 08:52 Pink Floyd - Marooned The details I gave were for the 2nd piece of music (by Chris Raven) which is the piece I understood that NeoDark was interested in. Would love to get hold of it myself on 12" vinyl but it was deleted years ago.....

Kula66 - how much were the old BTR's, I'd love to own one!

Nice skin! IMHO, I'd expect that the NK air force fighters are of little real threat. They never seem to fly. Did some work on radars for South Korea 5 yrs ago, got several days worth of recordings to look through as part of the testing. Loads of military traffic over the South, 2-ships, 4-ships and more - practice dogfights etc. Only ever saw one slow (turboprop) flight in the North. You could tell where the border was as there was absolutely nothing flying up there, nada, zip! I always assumed it was because they just can't afford the fuel to let their pilots practice. Heck, the average village over there gets electricity for only a few hours each week, from what I hear.....

Yep, we have no contro over the civ traffic except ON/OFF. Dunno if the Devs will ever bother to make any changes to the Civ traffic, eg a density control. I am guessing it is a low priority consideration for them right now.. As to your point of only showing the traffic in your area/preload setting to save FPS, there would be the problem that you press an Fxx to change the view, eg several F2's to look at the view from one of your AI opponents 100km away. Now Lockon would have to calculate which of the civ traffic is within viewing distance of that point, check how long has elapsed into the mission and move them to where they should be and then they would pop into the view. Might look poor....

Also a David Guetta song called "Money" from the 2004 album Guetta Blaster.

That track is quite old now (1998?). It is from a Sasha and John Digweed compilation CD called "Northern Exposure: Expeditions" on the Ultra US Label, catalog number CDUTA 001040. (They released a series of Northern Exposure CD's, you would want the Expeditions one, hence I quoted the catalog number). Best online mail order places in the UK would be http://www.htfr.com or http://www.juno.co.uk, dunno about elsewhere in the world.

warthogmadman987 - what you gotta remember is that, whilst you can only see the occasional civilian traffic where you are on the map, that density of traffic is all over the entire map, thus is taking up processing power and if you increase the density, you'll get a big FPS hit. The other minor point is that you might expect very little civilian traffic in a war zone as the civilians sensibly stay home (except in Iraq from what I saw of news footage). Yeah that movie was Flanker by New Republic productions (Poko24 and Kivi21), great work for their first movie, link below for those who haven't seen it. http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=16695

Heh heh - Gelendzhik Runway 22...... Remember it well, I discovered its perculiarities during a night mission with (accidentally set) appropriate wind direction - quite a W T F moment - LOL.

Ghostrida9 - this technique of humancockpit=yes was introduced in FC v1.1 to assist movie makers and screenshot makers. Don't be surprised that any particular aircraft (they are not flyables remember!) then has an inaccurate flight profile. It is because they are not flyables. You will get the behaviour that Hungarojet said, it is because they are not flyables.

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=15869 sumoscouse - check out this thread regarding movies by IronHand that introduce you to the Mission Editor. They are very nicely done as you would expect from IronHand - he goes through everything at an easy pace. First few minutes are for total complete n00bs (which I know you are not as you've been around a while so you will have to be patient). Well worth the time to watch them - I'm sure they will save you a bunch of wasted time if you just jumped into the ME and floundered around. As G_A said you get the same weather all over the map. However you can get some nice effects at sunrise and sunset with a little effort. Of course you only get rain BELOW the cloud level, so if you put in low clouds and fly in the mountains you effectively get different weather as you fly higher into the mountains. Also careful use of fog/mist in hilly terrain can give a nice effect with lower valleys being totally full of fog, higher ones being fog free and some being partly filled. You should feel free to check out how the expert mission designers make their airfields come alive by judicious use of static objects and a few moving vehicles. One of the top people at this is a guy called MBot - check out his stuff eg Urban Thunder using the Mission Editor and see how he does it without killing the FPS with too many units. http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&cid=120&lid=389&ttitle=LockOn_FC_MissionPack_by_MBot#dldetails

...or quite large parts of Africa. Also take note of the difference between Primary radar and Secondary (or Beacon) radar. Large parts of the worlds radar coverage is Secondary radar only, ie. no transponder in your aircraft and you are invisible. Apologies for going slightly off (F-15) topic....

http://www.lazygranch.com/red_audio.htm Poko24 - radio chat? This site has lots of recordings of radio stuff during RedFlag exercises in Nevada. I use them for background when I'm flying Lockon.

Weta43, lockonfiles.com is one place you could upload it, lockonskins.co.uk also has a missions area, combatace.com (although it may still be down due to a recent hacking attack) ditto.

Good find Mustang!

Suntrace1 - good find.....

It was the official celebration of the Queen's 80th birthday today including a huge RAF flypast. A beautiful sunny day, they form up over the East coast then head into London at 1500 ft and lucky for me, fly right over my house :pilotfly: Just spent a delightful 5 minutes in my garden with a beer watching them go over - Lancaster, Spitfires, Hurricanes, C-17, E-3D, TriStar, VC-10, Jaguars, Tornado GR4, Tornado F3, the finale being the Red Arrows in formation with a Canberra (thats a B-57 to you Yanks :smilewink:). Likely my last chance to see a Canberra flying, entering RAF service in 1951, they finally retire this year after 55 years service.