Bad Idea Hat

Oh. Sounds quite Vindictive. There was someone who was supposed to release their FAA Tomcat skins, but I haven't heard anything from them since.

Yes. (Think of it like flying the F-15 with commentary, sometimes helpful, from the back).

This got me in a turning fight last night. Was wondering why they wouldn't drop, leveled off...KLUNK....alrighty then. Makes sense at least.

Stephen King wrote it, Morgan Freeman said it and provided the inspiration.

"I hope Heatblur is building this. I hope I can buy it when it comes out. I hope to see my fellow Hoggiteers and watch them crash. I hope the flight model is as good as it has been in my dreams. I hope." - Stephen King

I fall into the Chuck Yeager camp, that whoever is the better pilot in their airframe is going to win the fight. Hell, I've seen great MiG-21 pilots knock down average F-15 pilots online. Strengths and weaknesses and wisdom.

After almost two months in this Tomcat, I don't think I can be killed unless I do something criminally stupid, like fight four Su-33s while not having my full attention on the situation. It's just a beast in the air, and despite me coming to ignore Jester most of the time, it's in those merges where he becomes the most helpful. As for A2G, if this thing had an A2G radar, we'd be able to do absolutely everything. I now wish they had full explored expanding the D capabilities from the start, because it really can do almost everything, being limited only in low cloud and by not being able to carry HARMs or Harpoons.

Viper pilots are weird, man.

Reading the book Flight of the Intruder made me learn that my only useful reference would be the internal gauges. I'm strictly head down on launch, and almost completely head down until the ball call on recovery. I've even started turning the flashlight on and pointing it at the backup horizon.

Whoa, it says today is the expiration. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5742278A/en

This might earn me a beating, but I at this point am too wrapped up in the F-14 to care about what comes next.

The conclusion I've come to, thanks to Victory, is that the B does not like to be power off anything. If you try to do crazy manuevers with power at MIL or better, you're going to have to work hard at departing it. If you take the power off, you will find yourself in an unrecoverable situation. That makes me respect the GE engines even more, the idea that those things were apparently enough to save all but the dumbest of moves.

Haha, I did this and finally got the thing to flat spin on me.

Given its mission, I'm surprised it can do more than two waypoints 1) Home 2) Target

My only gripe is that I wish we the radalt was more accurate, because that would have been immensely more useful to have up front. edit - Which I know is a Tomcat, and not HB limitation

What I think needs to be discussed, is that the Soviet doctrine was less focused on the aircraft using their radar as a search tool, and more as a tracking tool. Their strength was using ground based radar to search for, and guide to contacts. Once the aircraft was in place, it would use its radar in the final stages of attack to prosecute the target. Further, the aircraft only existed as a supplement to the air defense coverage. It was a very large supplement, and some would say it was equal to the SAM systems in place. Once the idea of Soviet air doctrine being primarily defensive in nature, a lot of what looks like being "behind" comes into focus as being specific to their needs. I would say that their air defenses, and radar control of aircraft, was far superior to the US's for many years. It's because their strategy was of full-on defense, no matter what the propaganda of a Soviet invasion of Europe would show.

I think the correct release speed is Mach 0.8. Other than that, I think you want to fly a profile so that it crosses the SAM's engagement zone at the perfect altitude to be a nice, juicy target. My tactic is to go range in nautical miles x 1000 feet, and then drop 10 miles outside the SAM's rMax for safety reasons. The TALD has about a 10-1 glide ratio, so I want to drop at about 6,000 feet above the altitude it needs to cross into the SAM's range at. So, a sample mission would be SA-15 (Tor) Range - 6.5nm Altitude at rMax - 6,500 feet Drop Profile - 12,500 feet, Mach 0.8, at 16.5 nautical miles, within 10 degrees off the nose on either side of the SAM I've been going with 1 for short range sites (SA-8/15), 2 for medium (SA-2/3/6/11), and all four for the long range sites (SA-10). Also, given the extreme distance involved for the SA-10, it's probably acceptable to halve the altitude needed for the TALD to cross into its engagement zone at, so you could get away with dropping at 25-30 thousand feet. This whole strategy is moot, however, if you don't have an equally capable SEAD aircraft shadowing you and your TALD swarm at all times.

Once on speed, configured, and on glidepath, it seems to basically let you move the ball up and down with instant result.

The E bracket seems to have a finer movement than the airspeed indicator, where a jump of 5 knots is small on the ASI, but makes the E bracket fly off the chart.

I use the E-bracket, but wouldn't if I had some sort of visual reference to stand-in for me being unable to feel the motion of the aircraft slowing down. It's primarily there for me to figure out if I'm slowing or speeding up beyond what I want it to do.

You basically want a Hornet or Su-25T pilot (or Harrier if they're crazy enough) to shadow your little swarm, and let the TALDs eat missiles while they launch HARMs downrange. It's going to work better with preplanned HARMs in the Hornet.

Gonna be a while, I'm going to FCLP my way into getting used to this one.

I was wondering if anyone has a blank texture for the Stennis (just the deck and other base textures, no lines). I've attempted to modify the original textures for something I was trying to do, only to have it not work too well.

Listening to an episode of The Fighter Pilot Podcast, it sounds like the Navy wasn't using bullseye as much (or at all? Not completely sure) as the USAF during the Gulf War. They changed at some point after, but Nick Mongillo said they had a bit of confusion with bullseye calls, given that Navy standard at the time was BRA. I'd be interested to find out how the F-14 incorporated an update to show bullseye.

It takes me more than 8 minutes to get airborne in the Viggen. No, alignment is much shorter than that 1) Get in 2) Connect power 3) Power up, engines off 4) Go to F10 map and check situation. Look (and listen) for what mission is needed 5) Pick a loadout 6) Plan mission in F10 map, enter it into the computer 7) Start engines and taxi Usually I'm 10 minutes down the clock by that point. Get your initial checks done, then do the startup procedure. Plan a mission, load up, and do your last checks, and I can guarantee Jester will be in the back twiddling his virtual thumbs with an aligned INS system. 8 minutes isn't that bad, given all the stuff you could do to prepare (and be prepared).