Grundar

Sure you could! Only take offs are optional! :thumbup:

:D Yes the F-21a Aggressor aka Kfir! Sadly the Grumman F-21 was nothing more than design ideas and as bullettweak stated was to have thrust vectoring as well as being able to supercruise. All things that ended up in the F22 strangely enough!

I think that I read somewhere the Fox 3 was reserved for AIM-54's though if the pilots were shooting AIM-54's in tests and it was the only weapon they were carrying then maybe they just defaulted to Fox 1. Lets face it they all fired Sparrows much more than they ever fired the Phoenix. The Phoenix certainly does have an active radar that is, funnily enough activated, in the terminal phase of flight. So the F-14 could either slave it and do initial guidance or an E-2C could guide an AIM-54 onto target without the F-14 having to guide it at all. The AIM-54 was also potent in heavy ECM environments making it a big threat - enough that the Iraqi Airforce seemed terrified by them and that the Iranians loved them. The F-14A RWR is a very basic, early functioning form of threat warning. Essentially it would light up a quadrant light around a depiction of the aircraft on one of the display panels - it would kick a navigation display into the RWR threat display and the detected radar position would be via vector strobe which isn't overly detailed - this was partly due to low processing power in the threat computers and possibly locaiton of the crystal antenna on the F-14A itself. There was also an audible tone played in the headphones of pilot/rio. The original RWR the ALR-45 would get a lot of false positives and some RIO's would pull the circuit breaker on the noise The ALR-45 was in the F-14a and the F-14B's were upgraded to the ALR-67 iirc - which featured improved RWR components and was a digital based system with better processing and filtering power.

For trials/tets there were F-14's that would carry AIM-120's but systems integration was never carried out and they weren't used as a weapon for the F-14 IIRC.

Yep whenever I think of the F-14 I think of the V-84 markings specifically the early ones though I do like the lower vis with the black tail, looks great and I've never seen that one before! Back when TopGun came out it was the F-14 poster-boy movie though I remember seeing The Final Countdown and VF-84 being in that. Not to mention around that time Robotech/Macross was on TV and Roy Fokker flew a very similar livery to a VF-84 F-14 as "Skull Leader". One of my early model kits was a 144 scale F-14 in VF-84 livery. I still get delighted when i see that livery about. I do like the Aardvark one too though, my dad got me a 1:48 scale F-14 model kit from the Red October movie (i think) and that Aardvark just looked cool - would make a great T-shirt image lol and less threatening than a skull and crossbone one.

For me..

Well The F-21, which was an upgraded F-14 and apparently quite the powerhouse in design, was to be equipped with upgraded F110 engines and would supercruise at around Mach 1.3 with a load, I believe, though I cannot link to a source for this and may be something I just misunderstood when reading about it's design. As for actual operational F-14's. The F-14A+ could supercruise, but in what configuration I am unsure, it would have to be clean to a light load of A-A missiles I assume. This was thanks to the introduction of the F110 engines over the old TW's. Presumeably this meant that F-14B's and D's could supercruise as well. Supercruise was at Mach 1.05. Any supercruising would probably be done without AIM-54's on the craft (lots of weight and drag) and possibly maybe just some underbelly Sparrows as IIRC glove mounted AIM-9's produced a lot of drag. Of course I could be completely wrong on this, I have no inside information or any rabbit out of the hat links to support it. Technically you will get arguments that the only aircraft that could/can "truly" supercruise is the F22.

While it may not apply to your case, in my experience, don't skimp on a good PSU. A good one will take itself out before everything else and an average or cheap one will take itself out and your components making that cheap PSU a now very expensive, experience. In my time I have seen people build a lot of high end PC's and then skimp on a PSU - they just look at the wattage it outputs as opposed to the overall quality of delivery and safety of components. An UPS is also great to have if you have critical data on your PC.

I see there are no emergency vehicles deployed for your Mig there, possibly because they are trying to resuscitate your aircraft mechanic who watched the landing happen :D Great job on the landing, the Mig-21 is just an entertaining bird to fly overall it can take a bit of a rough up quite well.

Generally, available video memory and clock speed of the GPU/video memory are the "most" important, DX 11 compatibility is up there as well for DCS. Obviously as you know the higher performance/specs of the card the better the overall result. I currently run a nVidia GTX 750 2gb and it does the job fine for me in DCS 1.5, though I would love a newer and better card for more eye candy and to run DCS 2.0 much better. There is a gentleman here who has a performance list for various CPU's and GPU's that might help with your thinking on this matter. For the budget conscious gamer you will want to spend some time browsing various reviews to hit that performance/price point match. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=157374

Very much seemed to have been deliberately designed as strike aircraft - in and out, rearm and back into the conflict. As the Cold War going hot was envisioned to be masses of Soviet armour and weaponry flooding across Europe. Getting them on a boat is much easier than letting them land and establish a foothold - Can get men off sinking boats easy enough (well of the options it's "easiest") but not a tank or aircraft (or other equipment).

To be fair Nick is an F-14 enthusiast and not a Leatherneck Employee so he wouldn't have any in game progress screenshots... ....unless it's not really "Nick" but actually Nicholas Dackard aka Cobra847!! *attempts to rip off Nick's fake mustache* *not a fake* *flees* ;)

Welcome to the forums! :thumbup: Some great info there, love the stuff about the Phoenix. That ROVER 3 footage must of been damn impressive it sounds impressive on paper, to see it in person... very cool. The stuff re: f-15 and f-14 for the first Gulf War doesn't surprise me, infact it reminds me of complaints that the RAF leveled against the RN in terms of Harrier deployment/use in the Falklands War.

I think you mean USURP their identity.. ;)

I'll second The Final Countdown. Includes F-14's versus AM6's in a time travel story, it's a great movie.

That would be cool. In real life though pilots and RIO's most often flew F-14's that didn't have their name on it. This was because they flew what was available rather than having their own personal aircraft assigned to them.

I'll agree on Force Feedback, i've sorely missed since the theft of my MS FFB2 stick and though my X55 is fantastic, i do miss the feedback. I wish MS would make that stick again, albeit with better/more buttons. There are some on ebay but you never know what you are going to get. In regards to point 7, The X 55 does have a twist stick and can be used for rudders, the Warthog doesn't have a twist. I guess the "problem" with your list is you will never get a "cheap" joystick with all those inclusive functions (at present) such as a Logitech or Thrustmaster T-1600. Even the expensive ones won't cover it all. The Warthog is top of the line and has no FF or twist stick - it could be argued that that improves the reliability of the stick and is a selling point rather than a detraction. I would love to see a HOTAS setup that has all those features and is reasonably priced.

The thing with missiles and missile probability kills are that aside from the actual missile performance it also has to include: Is the target even aware that the missile has been launched at them. Not every encounter is a head on engagement or one where the opponents are even aware of the other aircraft. The Aim-54 was primarily a bomber killer that would have to operate in a heavy ECM environment - it could also destroy smaller and more agile targets though, including cruise missiles launched at the carrier. The American launches of the Phoenix in combat were very limited and of an insufficient sample size to truly gauge it's accuracy to any meaningful extent. Was obviously a hell of a deterrent during the Cold War though.

Yep agree 100% on all of that. The AIM-54's were getting old and cost around $500,000 USD each to buy and a fair enough amount to keep maintained and only one aircraft could utilize them in the fleet and that was getting retired. ROE is a big thing to, visual identification is often required making many BVR missiles less useful than they could/should be.

Got mine from PC Case Gear in Melbourne near a year ago and had nothing but enjoyment with it. The Warthog is too pricey for me to seriously consider for the same reason you list, it's not feasible to outlay that much when I have young kids in school etc.. I haven't had any problems that you see listed around the net and it works great for me. It's a plastic stick, but tough you won't break it easily. Just keep it wiped down with a microfibre cloth to keep the dust out and she'll be fine. The Madcatz software is pretty un-intuitive to use and I just tend to avoid it and assign everything through DCS. I really like the option to change springs as I can switch the stick between props, jets and helo's and have it feel right. The stick is large though and the hat positions are just ...special (ie poorly placed). The Throttle is beautiful though, I really like it. The stick and throttle are prone to sliding around if you just start shoving things around, they come with holes you can bolt them with though, I just don't shove things forward or back overly hard and rarely have an issue with sliding.

The X55 is great if you can tolerate the price point, you get what you pay for though - it's plastic (albeit pretty bloody solid plastic and you are only going to break it if you want to). The Warthog is the pinnacle of joysticks but she is a steep, steep price + you'll need to buy separate rudder pedals (X55 has a twist stick, nowhere near as good as pedals, but she does fine) The X55 has no deadzone settings on the stick and has adjustable springs to cater to how you like the stick to feel - that's good or bad depending on how you like your joysticks. The Stick itself is big though and the hats in un-ergonomic locations - I have no idea why they did that - it has no two stage trigger either if you must have that sort of thing. Plenty of bad reviews out their for X55 problems (you'll find those for every joystick though), never had a problem with mine though, very pleased with it (and also the only joystick I can comment on as I current own it) :P

[ame] [/ame] Is a great video of Dave talking about his F-14 training and TopGun.

I tend to agree. Missile modelling in this game is quite poor as it stands - it's a persistant problem with DCS overall (at least with the jet modules it is) - add on to that the poor ECM features of DCS and it makes the BVR environment quite boring and rarely achievable. SPAMRAAMS are short range use in this game as are the Russian missiles. I'm hoping that LN pull a trick out of the bag and get the Phoenix working at it's intended range - though I can see big implications for multiplayer if that is achieved. I'm more on the side of lets use what the Tomcat really used and not what it was tested with (though it would never hurt to have an option to use those extra things)

Yep, there is plenty of space on the runways in the game at the moment, plenty of space to gently let her down and roll her out - you don't need to hit the very front of the runway. Not sure how I'm going to fare when WW2 maps come out with their much shorter runways - guess I'll be on those brakes quick :P

Lolz whateva! I've never hea... My mistake. Thanks! Going to go browse for that! :thumbup: