Retu81

I recommend Suomen Ilmavoimien Lentokoneet: Mig-21 in Finnish Air Force. It's a bilingual book, both in Finnish and English, mainly about training and use of Mig-21 in Finland, but touches some technical aspects of the plane as well. What makes the book interesting is that the author is an actual test pilot with about 1500 hours in different Mig-21 variants. The only problem is that the publisher went bankrupt recently, so actually getting a copy might be difficult.

Interesting

I just added a new task to Windows Task Scheduler this morning. Runs the updater once an hour. :)

I'll just have to be adult about it:

Sounds pretty complex. What we did with Hawks was just check the required amount in kilos on the cockpit fuel gauge and then multiply that with 1.3 to get the required amount in litres. Of course if one wanted to be really accurate, then one could have just climbed in the cockpit, turn on the battery and watch the fuel gauge during refuelling. Though that would have been against the regulations and no one did that, of course. :music_whistling:

Good luck taking the chocks off, if the plane is leaning against them. :)

Transporting F/A-18C on the road: It was going to a local defence and security expo in Tampere. Source (in Finnish) and more images: http://www.stara.fi/2015/09/07/fa-18-hornet-havittaja-hammastytti-moottoritiella/

Finnish Air Force F/A-18C solo display in Royal International Air Tattoo on July 2015

It works surprisingly well, even on a budget card. I have a GTX 750 Ti and, on default settings, I seem to get around 30 FPS. Haven't actually checked the numbers though, just my gut feeling. Perfectly playable, in any case.

I have used a program called SymMover to move my DCS World installation to SSD. It just moves the files and folders, while making symbolic links from the original folder to the new one, thus making sure there are no missing paths. You can also reverse the migration by just clicking a button. Pretty handy tool.

I'd say that's a curtain for practicing instrument flight. They draw it across the canopy so that the trainee can't see outside.

Looks a lot easier process than in Mig-21. With Mig, you'll have to remove the whole rear fuselage: (Image from warbirdsnews.com)

Hawk has a free castering nose wheel (spring centering to be precise). It doesn't have nose wheel steering, so the pilot has to use differential braking to steer the plane on the ground. It also causes some pretty hilarious situations when there's ice on the taxiway. :)

Oh the sound is pretty loud in real life as well. Here's how it sounds on Hawk during shutdown. Listen at the end of the video:

Yep. Here's a good video how the blades are fixed and why they might rattle a bit: The locking pin prevents them from moving fore and aft, but there's still a bit room to move up/down and sideways.

We still continue to use that convention to this date: Mig-21s were MGs, Drakens were DKs, Hawks are HWs and Hornets are HNs. :)

Thank you for correction. Though red is a bit hard to make out from a black and white photo. :)

Actually, in this case it is a German swastika. Here's the Finnish one:

Anecdotal, but I remember reading an article about an exercise between F-15s and F-14s. I can't remember what article it was but this part stuck to my mind: One F-15 pilot was asked what it was like fighting against a Tomcat. He answered along these lines: "F-15 will beat Tomcat in a dogfight 9 times out of 10. But if you get into a slow turning fight, he (Tomcat) will eat you alive and keeps asking for more."

Best way to try new altitude records is to climb to 10000 meters first. Once there, accelerate to Mach 1.8 or thereabouts then start climbing while maintaining that speed. The result:

Single player. Cold Start in Instant Action IIRC.

I don't know if this has already been reported, but yesterday I encountered this: I was practicing touch and gos, when I accidentally extended my landing gear above the speed limit. The nose wheel failed to extend. I managed to retract it and landed on main wheels only. Still the nose of the plane doesn't quite reach the ground. :)

Nothing wrong with the HUD itself. Your virtual pilot just sits too far back. Numpad 5 resets the view position to default. HUD graphic is projected at infinity, so it always remains the same "size". When you lean back from the HUD glass, the graphic seems to get too big to fit the frame, when in reality the apparent size of the frame is the one that is getting too small. :)

We used to test R-60s' (not the M model) seekers by shining a regular flashlight on them 5-6 meters away. That was enough to generate the tone for the pilot.

Might be a bit difficult, since the edition has been sold out. Not even the publisher sells it anymore. The aviation museum at Vantaa has an event on 8th of November where people bring out their aviation books out for sale. That might be your best bet. Yes, I did watch that documentary. Very interesting.