Elf1606688794

You could learn on the E while you wait for a naval variant, and a naval variant is coming.

I forgot to mention, the livery for the wing commander's plane would be pretty sweet indeed.

The Phantom depicted from SJ is the wing commanders plane, note the multiple colored tail stripe, one color per squadron. There is no red tail stripe so this pic was from before or after the existence of the 337th TFS. I can't read the tail number either and that's important to the following story. In Sept 81 I arrived at Seymour Johnson fresh out of tech school at Lowry AFB in Aurora CO. (It's been shut down for a few years now.) About 2 weeks after I arrived I was going through AGE training (to the left and behind the aircraft depicted). We were learning how to operate the various power units and such that we'd be using on the flightline. Two flights of 4 Phantoms each was preparing to sortie. Our instructor stopped the class and told us, you guys have to see this, it's cool as <profanity>. The ground crews cart started the first flight and 40 years later, I have to admit, the memory is still impressive. You'd hear a loud boom when the cart fired, and about the time you saw a plume of smoke coming from the aircraft, you'd hear that engine spooling up. It was pretty impressive watching 4 fighters being started like that in quick succession. The 2nd flight had some issue that I don't recall except that the aircrew stopped it's preflight and went to a spare. That spare was the wing commander's aircraft and by the time that aircrew and his wingman (or maybe it was the other way around) were ready to start engines the other two F-4's in their flight had already started taxiing to the end of runway operations. When they fired the cart to start the starboard engine of the wing commanders jet we heard a boom and then almost immediately another, much louder, BOOM!! And that's when the feces hit the rotary oscillator. The aircrew abandoned ship immediately, the WSO jumped down onto the port wing and from there to the ground. The pilot went over the windscreen and slid all the way down the radome and fell off the pitot tube to the ground, both of them ran across the red line (some of you know what that is lol) to safety. When his wingman saw what was happening he gave an order over the comm headset to the crew chief, they kicked the chocks and the pilot didn't wait to be marshalled out of his parking spot. (He was in the parking spot right next to the wing commanders jet.) Ground crew folks were grabbing CB fire extinguishers and pulling them to the stricken aircraft and by this time, you could see the flames. One guy was using the extinguishers as fast as they could get them to him and he used 9 that day. Coleman tow vehicles with towbars attached showed up seemingly from nowhere and started towing Phantoms that were within two rows of the burning aircraft. I never saw that many Coleman's at one time ever again. A fire truck showed up with the "cannon" mounted in the top front and before it came to a stop the airman manning it started foaming the aircraft and the fire finally went out. The damage was pretty severe, titanium panels on the underside had drooped from the intense heat. When they fired the impulse cartridge (a really big one) to start the engine the cartridge retainer failed due to a hairline crack. When the retainer blew apart, among other things, it cut a fuel line and the fuel ignited instantly. The aircrew in their zeal to exit and escape a certain death trap failed to shut off either the fuel pumps OR the onboard battery. In fact, they didn't shut anything off. The fuel pumps kept feeding the fire with fuel making a bad situation much worse. That was the only time I ever saw the Phantom get cart started and it turned out to be a pretty memorable event. A depot team showed up a few days later and disassembled the stricken aircraft, crated all the pieces parts and flew the entire mess to a depot in Ohio. Incredibly, about a year and a half later that Phantom landed back at Seymour Johnson looking all brand spankin new, like nothing ever happened. We all stopped working to watch it land and those of us who saw it burn explained why we were in awe, so they could be too.

Can we get this please? 336th or 337th fighter squadron preferably, ie green OR red stripe on the tail.

The F-4E's I worked on had dive toss, ARN-101 birds and non ARN-101 so I'd expect Heatblur will have it on the Phantom at some point.

I'll take a Vietnam terrain to go with this, thank you very much.

I loaded weapons on the F-4E from Sept '81 -Aug '83 at Seymour Johnson AFB. If someone promised an E model with a skin from SJ AFB I'd give them my coin right now. Especially if that tail number was from the 336th or 337th Fighter Squadrons. I spent time in the aircraft maintenance units for both squadrons.

I loaded AIM-9P's on F-4E's.

Folks keep mentioning later F-4E's, if you want a later one, get one with the ARN-101 system as it greatly increased the bombing accuracy. If you're a Phantom pilot you're not only going on air to air missions you're also going to be trucking a lot of freight. The Phantom was capable of carrying up to 24 500 lb bombs, 6 each on stations 1, 5, and 9, 3 each on 2 and 8. The later E models I worked on could carry anything in the USAF inventory. They could carry Sparrows, Sidewinders, Mavericks, Shrikes, GP bombs, Snake Eyes, cluster munitions, laser guided weapons, chemical bombs and two different nukes. I probably missed a few. (They were restricted from carrying 2.75" rockets when it was found that plastic pieces on the back end of the rocket were being ingested into the intakes during the firing sequence causing damage to the turbine blades.)

The E model was Vietnam era as well, we had birds at Seymour Johnson that had MiG kills to their credit. One airframe was credited with three kills and had 3 red stars painted on the port intake ramp in addition to "MiG Killer" stenciled on the inside of the nose gear door. I forgot to add that I'd prefer the F-4E since I was a weapons mechanic and worked on them for a year and a half. For nostalgia reasons. Take the fuel, the gun pods were very inaccurate.

I'd be a buyer also but I'd also like "someone" to do the F-4 Phantom and since Heatblur did such a nice job on the Tomcat I think they'd be a prime candidate for any two-crew aircraft. I'd also buy the Rafale, Gripen and other European models as well as more Soviet/Russian models. Oh and a Vietnam map! :P

I have an X56 and I can't seem to get profiles I create using the Logitech software to work in DCS. When I test the programming via the Logitech software, all the button presses are correct but the game isn't seeing them. I "could" program the stick/throttle via the DCS mapping utility, and it does work there but the mapping utility only tells you "button 42, throttle" and doesn't show you which one it is. I'm probably doing something wrong, I just can't figure out what it is. :)

I'm on a Windows 10 machine, just so you know. The game intermittently sees the controllers and just yesterday it quit seeing the rudders, again. I had the CH software set to startup when the computer starts and I made sure the DCS profile was loaded before starting DCS. (DCS profile was just controller calibrations.) Load the appropriate aircraft profile in DCS and go fly and see what isn't working today. :p I bought my CH gear back when I was flying Aces High with GMan109 and honestly I was never as impressed with the stuff as many other people were. It still works fine for everything except DCS.

I have a CH Combatstick, Pro Throttle and Pedals that all work fine, except I can't keep them working in DCS. They work fine in every other game. If you'd like to purchase them shoot me a PM and an offer. I just purchased an X56 to replace them.