Frostiken

The best you'll get in that regard is a hot pit.

Also if you actuate the switch on the right side of the cockpit, it can supplement the lack of ECS control to the cockpit on the ground. Most A-10 pilots use this feature until takeoff. ... okay this is getting dumb :p

I think I know what IrregProg is talking about. There was one time I was flying at night, everything was set up as it should, and I couldn't see the pointer beam. I checked, double-checked, still nothing. I tried at a later flight and everything was fine. It may be just one of those tiny bugs that pops up now and again.

What are you getting at? Look at the history of air warfare since the Korean war and tell me that any of them were really balanced. There were some good dogfights from Vietnam but for the most part the US maintained control of the air through most of the conflict. The only real air engagements that occurred that I can recall that could have any basis in air-to-air combat in reality would be the Six-Day War and... the Lebanon War of 1982? Even still the Israelis had superior training, equipment, and intelligence and completely rocked the shit out of their adversaries so it's hard to call those balanced either. There's a reason modern flight sims don't bother trying to recreate real conflicts. We talked with ops (briefly) about the possibility of flying the F-15Es without conformals... we have all the TOs for it, but we probably don't have any of the equipment to plug the drains and panel it all back up. I highly doubt you'd ever see an F-15E without the CFTs, but it's possible, and an F-15E without CFTs is still, at its heart, the best air superiority fighter ever made... with a spectator! If ED does do F-15E it should be an option to remove the pods and CFTs. It may not really be a serious option, but rather for better flight characteristics for air engagements, such that for multiplayer, you're somewhat getting two different aircraft for the price of one - one is a highly competent bomber with modest air attack abilities, and the other is a highly competent fighter with modest ground attack abilities.

Good job with the wavelengths. Didn't even occur to me, but we used to have to manually change the laser from combat to training on the pod itself on the LANTIRNS, totally forgot about it :) I would imagine it's entirely unlikely a laser warning system would be set off by an infrared pointer. For one, it would make the system so vulnerable to spoofing that it'd be useless. Second, I imagine the laser warning is not only looking for directed laser energy, but also for it to be received in the proper coded pulses that is a laser designation. A pointer/marker is a solid beam of energy, the designations are rapid flashes. Regardless, yes, the laser designator is IR, as as far as I know all the pods are Nd:YAGs. The fact that it's highly concentrated and of a higher intensity than a mere pointer, it's quite hazardous not only for people on the ground, but for munitions on the aircraft itself - this is why masking was implemented, so you can't fire the laser into your own bombs. I did hear a story from OEF where a Talib was being tracked on LANTIRN, hoping they'd lead him back to his buddies, and he got his eyes cooked out since they were accidentally designating, as he kept turning to see if there was still an aircraft in the sky.

What? Wrong. It's simply a longer wavelength, one outside the ability of NVGs to see. I can't even guess what you thought the laser energy was... microwaves? Compared to the entirety of the infrared spectrum, NVGs can barely see into it.

Dammit Ethereal, you're sabotaging my attempt at making a point against irritating font "styles".

Amen to that. WW2 flight sims are probably more insipid and boring than WW2 FPS games.

The only thing I can think of is in the Navy, where I think it's common to take off a carrier with a low fuel load and then tank in the air.

The speed brakes shouldn't even open all the way at those speeds.

I've actually been thinking about this... maybe it's because we don't need tons of munitions, but I've never seen a crew chief only fuel an aircraft partway. Maybe it's different on the A-10 because it can hold so damn much fuel, but on the F-15Es they're always fueled up all the way, even for OOD where they carried about 10,000 lbs of munitions. Maybe the difference is that external tanks on the F-15E go on the mostly unused stations 2 and 8 so if weight / fuel is a concern they simply don't carry them...

JTAC type is how much control the JTAC maintains over your attack. Type 3 basically means that there's nothing but bad guys out there so go nuts. Type 1 means there's friendlies or civilians very close and you will have to maintain communication and report your roll-in and approach. Also stop with the stupid fonts. We aren't going to pay any more attention to you because you want to use some lame 'style'.

Yes, which is why you would turn off the pointer aspect. Besides, there's also laser warning systems on tanks but they're more than happy to ignore it in-game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roki_Tunnel Ground units set to 'stay on road' will drive through the tunnel (though seemingly by way of driving through the terrain). There should be an actual model for the tunnel mouth, though your graphical settings are apparently extremely low so maybe not for you. You can also destroy the tunnel sections at each end, though I don't know how to make doing so a mission goal...

I think the side-radar and missile bays was more a reflection on how dubiously useful such features were. An impressive aircraft, sure, but I think you're making a bigger deal out of it than it really is. Pure fly-by-wire is really just a method of control, not some sort of special performance upgrade. Just about every aircraft made since the Korean war had some sort of stability / control augmentation system and thus a sort of 'fly by wire', even if it still involved manual linkages. Seeing as how they fit most of a landing gear and the servoactuators themselves in the wing, I'm guessing no. I don't think this would also make the best choice for a DCS aircraft. Though I have to say, holy shit that thing is a monstrosity. It's like if an F-4 and an F-111 had a freakishly huge baby.

Uh, and why couldn't it?

I've also never seen overheads in-theater.

I like the paint job. I don't like everything else featured there. Apparently they've invented FOD-free motors. Fly through explosions and landslides like nothing!

That's okay, I still want your meatbabies, Blue

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Since it's not obvious what it does, some people may be setting the 'Birds' slider all the way up thinking it's a graphic setting of some sort. If you're having excessive birdstrikes, I suggest toning it down to no more than 200%.

To answer the question in a less useless fashion, you can press F-10 to view a map. Additionally, the divert page on the CDU lists the nearest airports by order of proximity.

May not have noticed since, generally, you don't lock up friendlies with the TPod... :p

A crew chief who called his job 'fun'? Now I've seen everything.

True story from two weeks ago from E-models: Pilot: "Hey, our UFCs aren't working... well his in the back wasn't working but now it is." Me: "Alright, I have to ask - is it turned on?" Pilot: "Yeah, it flashed briefly, but now there's nothing on it." WSO: "Mine did that but it came on later." Me: "Can you turn it off and on again?" <Pilot reaches up, turns knob. UFC flashes to life.> Pilot: "Oh. Uh. It's working now." Me: "Yeaaaah.... uh, was that all?" On the topic.... I just push the throttle and listen for the vroom.