streakeagle

I don't use the AIM-7M with the 1970s/1980s F-15C, so no problem for me. Just like the Heatblur F-14A 1970s skins that use the white body, which absolutely looks great and was the inspiration for me to figure out how to do the same with the F-15C. I have a lot of F-15 books and most of them were published prior to 1990. Almost none of them have photos with AIM-7s with the gray bodies. So, if you are trying to recreate a "cold war gone hot" NATO vs Warsaw Pact mission for the Germany terrain, AIM-7Fs in the old paint scheme are the way to go. Customizing the AIM-7 for old skins doesn't affect the AIM-7M of other skins.

I can create a mission with supercarrier and place an F4U-1D on the supercarrier without issues. However, when dynamic spawning is enabled on the supercarrier for the F4U-1D, the F4U-1D remains grayed out on dynamic spawn drop down list for the supercarrier. Dynamic spawning works correctly with the new Essex carrier.

The AIM-7F uses the same textures as the AIM-7M, so the lines and files added for AIM-7Fs do not appear to be doing anything. The lines for the AIM-7M can be used for a custom skin shared by both the AIM-7M and AIM-7F. As I am primarily interested in the early AIM-7F with white bodies, it is easy for me to chose: overwrite the AIM-7M files with my AIM-7F preference.

@SOLIDKREATE I think the AIM-7F dds files you provided in your skins are being ignored. The default AIM-7F uses the 3d model/dds files of the AIM-7M. When AIM-7Fs are loaded, they are using the AIM-7M files.

You don't need to go to the trouble, but if you are willing to do it, the A models need the full red frame on the front windscreen and the AIM-7Fs should be the white body/grey nose/steel fin skin. But I am perfectly happy with what you have already released, so don't waste any time on early A skins unless it is trivial and/or fun for you.

Outstanding. I will try these out tonight. I will add them to the early cold war 1973-1977 server missions, particularly the Fulda Gap mission which already has AI flights out of Bitburg.

I copied the dds files from one of the stock early F-14A skins, then added the lines that overwrote the default AIM-7M model dds files with the copied F-14A dds files. So, if you could make your own dds files or get permission to use/edit Heatblurs dds files, you would just add them to the skins. One of the skins with missile skin files is Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\CoreMods\aircraft\F14\Liveries\F-14A-135-GR\VF-1 Wolfpack NK100 (1974).zip the description.lua needs these lines added to the "livery" list to use them when located in the same folder as the skin: {"AIM-7M", 0 ,"aim_7f_Diff", false}; {"AIM-7M", 13 ,"aim_7f_Diff_RoughMet", false} {"AIM-7M", 1 ,"aim_7f_Diff_Normal", false}; The other skins pointed to those files: {"AIM-7M", 0 ,"../VF-1 Wolfpack NK100 (1974)/aim_7f_Diff", false}; {"AIM-7M", 13 ,"../VF-1 Wolfpack NK100 (1974)/aim_7f_Diff_RoughMet", false}; {"AIM-7M", 1 ,"../VF-1 Wolfpack NK100 (1974)/aim_7f_Diff_Normal", false}; I don't know if you can point to these zipped up core files in the F-15 skin lua files, but if you can, that would be better than the default AIM-7M gray body/white nose skins.

I did a test last night: I imported the early F-14A AIM-7F skin into the F-15A/C skins. It looked great. If the fins on that skin were repainted a dark steel color, it would look identical to USAF AIM-7Fs in 1980s F-15A/C photos. I don't know if Heatblur would give permission to edit their skin, but it really completes the look of the 1970s/1980s Eagle skins instead of the light gray body with a white nosecone. Light gray nose, white bodies, dark fins is the way AIM-7Fs were born to look:

I now have: 22nd TFS by @EricJ 53rd TFS AF 76 015 and 79 074 by @SOLIDKREATE (by the way, you marked 76 074 completed instedd of 79 074 on your list) 525th TFS AF 75-0076 by @Awacs_bandog Off to a great start after years of having very little to choose from proper 1970s and 1980s Bitburg skins. What I really need now is for ED to release the F-15C module complete with a checkbox for adding/removing turkey feathers (which would not only provide for early F-15Cs, but would look a lot more like F-15As) and preferably with the option for CFTs.

@SOLIDKREATE I forgot to comment on the new skin: excellent! Keep 'em coming. Can't beat matching historical photos with such high detail and color accuracy.

It appears the end of the double red frame may have started with F-15C production: aircraft delivered from the factory with only the red along the sides, not over the bow or in front of the windscreen. This is F-15C No.1 78-0468 with only the side red frames on the front windscreen.

The time frames for the 1983-84 Red Flag EG scheme and the 1984 TAM BT scheme seem to overlap. I am not sure how to resolve the conflict. The airfighters.com red tailed EG photo is captioned as June 21, 1984, 60TFS/33TFW paying a visit to Soesterberg AB while on deployment to Bremgarten AB in Germany. The AirHistory.net TAM 1984 is dated May 1984 to June 1984 in the Netherlands Was 76-0015 with the 60th TFS in Nevada Red Flag from 1983-84, then deployed to Soesterberg AB where it was repainted/reassigned to the 53rd TFS? I think the AirHistory.net photo has the wrong date and might even be from the 1978 Tiger Meet or anywhere else up to the time the aircraft transferred to the 60th TFS. Correction: I am certain it is mislabeled because of the "turkey feathers". The EG photos show the aircraft circa 1983-84 with no "turkey feathers". The AirHistory.net photo claims 1984, but has "turkey feathers". To the best of my knowledge, once they were removed or the engines were replaced with ones that didn't have "turkey feathers", they never reverted back. All I know is that I would love to see 76-0015 in all of the above schemes. It would be amazing to have the complete history of paint schemes from delivery to destruction of any given airframe.

@NRG-Vampire and @SOLIDKREATE , I see a unique opportunity to showcase the minor and major variations in paint scheme of F-15A 76-0015. The AirHistory.net photo NRG-Vampire posted of 76-0015 with the nosewheel retracting is noted as being from a NATO Tiger Meet on 23 June 1978. This is an interesting variation: note the partial yellow stripe at the top of the stabilizer. Also, the gun port looks like it is dirty from recent use. Unsurprisingly, it still has the "turkey feathers" on the exhaust nozzles and double red canopy frame. Aircraft Photo of 76-0015 / AF76-015 | McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle | USA - Air Force | AirHistory.net #777476 The JetPhotos.com photo of 76-0015 posted by NRG-Vampire is also noted as being from the same NATO Tiger Meet on 23 June 1978. So, the red dot appears to have been used in 1978. Notice the full-length yellow stripe at the top of the left stabilizer. 76-0015 | McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle | United States - US Air Force (USAF) | Walter Van Bel | JetPhotos The other AirHistory.net photo of 76-0015 posted by NRG-Vampire is noted as being from Tactical Air Meet (TAM) from May to June 1984. So, 6 years later it still has the "turkey feathers" and double red canopy frame. Aircraft Photo of 76-0015 / AF76-015 | McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle | USA - Air Force | AirHistory.net #382609 The live.staticflickr.com photo does not have a date. It retains the red dot on the national insignia but has a full-length yellow stripe of the top of the right stabilizer in addition to no longer having the double red canopy frame. I cannot say for sure, but it appears to still have the "turkey feathers. This is photo of 76-0015 repainted for Eglin in at Red Flag in June 1983. While it isn't obvious from this photo, the other photos of F-15As in the unit at this event clearly did not have the double red canopy rail and were gray across the front. Red Flag 83-4: 60th Tac Fighter Squadron - Aviation Photography - Britmodeller.com Here is another photo with the partial yellow tail-stripe. This is June 1984, still in the Eglin scheme, but presumably about to be repainted back to its yellow-tail BT 53rd TFS scheme.

For the record, I continue to experience "lost cabin pressure" calls. This was during multiplayer using dynamic spawning from a cold start. I don't know if I have the track file, but I was flying/fighting around 20,000 ft when I heard the call.

Did more testing and could not get rid of problem by eliminating scripting. If the mission had more objects, the cpu was working harder and therefore stuttering more. In fact, eliminating the SPAWN script and simply using late activation made the problem even worse! Hoping for a hot fix fairly soon because it is affecting my ability to fly typical DCS online server missions.

I was watching some YouTube videos on Bitburg F-15 operations. The resolution was very low in these old official promotional films. But I saw some interesting things. In one video, several F-15s were taxiing to takeoff and there was a mix of the newer schemes with tail stripes and the inner black band and one F-15 with no tail stripes or black bands, but otherwise same unit markings. So, there could be inconsistency even after F-15Cs arrived. I couldn't find a frame with good enough resolution to figure out if the colors were different because it was an old F-15A or a newly arrived F-15C.

+1

Every photo I can find with no colored stripe on the tails are F-15As. This implies fairly early in the F-15 deployment to Bitburg.

Here is a photo of another F-15A from the same unit in the same time frame: note the lack of the tail stripe.

I have finally isolated the problem: it involves mission scripting that is common to many multiplayer servers: I created a blank mission with just a single client F-5E-3. When I host this mission on a server and join it, no problems at all. I took my latest server mission using the Cold War Germany terrain and disabled all of the scripting calls. No problems at all. As soon as I enabled a function call that used the MOOSE script library's SPAWN function, I started seeing the periodic pulse. When I joined another public server and saw the same problem, I am going to guess they were also using MOOSE and its SPAWN function, as MOOSE is a commonly used scripting library for multiplayer missions and the SPAWN function is almost always used in some capacity. The offline single players I previously used for testing were not using any scripting libraries. Just typical mission editor created missions and/or default instant action missions provided by ED, which explains why I only observed the problem in multiplayer.

Whenever I spawn in an aircraft, I get a periodic spike in frame time every 6 seconds with a corresponding drop in frame rate. I have tried every recommendation I could find, but cannot reduce or eliminate the problem. When I am a spectator, there is no problem. As soon as I spawn into a cockpit, the problem starts. I do not have this problem in single player.

This is the one available skin that is early Bitburg with the correct red canopy frames and the red, white, and blue stars and bars: 525th Tactical Fighter Squadron "Bulldogs" F-15C

This was the 1/72nd kit I had. When I was finished, it looked just like the box photos.

I finally got to see how this looked in game. It is pretty amazing! Very few skins from this era are available, and most are less than accurate. This is a major upgrade for cold war F-15Cs. I only have two criticisms left. 1. The centerline fuel tank was untextured: green digital camo look. I didn't try the wing tanks, so they may or may not have the same problem. 2. The canopy bow is missing the red frame. If you look at the photo a couple of posts above, you can see there is gray on the bow, but a thin stripe of the red between the gray and the canopy glass. I love these photos. This is what the F-15s I saw in person and built as models looked like! My 1/72nd scale F-15A had the "FF" skin. My 1/48 F-15A had the classic Eglin "Gulf Spirit".

Looking good. You got the red canopy rail. But the front windscreen should have the same red-brown outline, as shown in several of the photos in this thread. I tried to find out why this was red. Some claimed it was some form of anodized metal that was a special non-magnetic alloy to avoid interference, others said it was a sealant. Google AI was interesting, it claimed that only certain F-15Es had the red frame and that it was that color so rescue crews could easily see it. I don't know where Google AI got that idea, but as far as I recall, only the F-15E prototype had the red rails because it was really the original F-15B prototype. I would have to look up my references to see if early production F-15Es had the red rails. I know the early F-15 paint schemes because I grew up with the F-15A/B and early F-15C/D: I saw their colors in person at airshows and built models that had the correct colors for 1970s/1980s Eagles. Real Eagles have "tail feathers" on their nozzles, too