Raisuli

Sorry for the (temporary) hijack, one of our watch officers claimed he was in the F-18 pipeline but the vision in one eye went to 20/25 and he got booted. At the time I thought he was full of <waste, nuclear, 1 ea>, but I'm still curious if that's the sort of thing that would get you dropped from the pipeline. In the early/mid 80s. About the time the 18As were coming on line. I got reminded of this from Mover interviewing Gonky, who said the recruiter tried to get him into the nuke program. Once a nuke, always a nuke. There's no escape. Ever. If you die and your GPA is close enough they send you to the fleet anyway. If your GPA isn't close enough you get a commission first.

Mine always starts with flaps up, and there are no issues going up and down with them. I have them set to a switch on the throttle. If they start down look at your flaps immediately after spawning and check if they're in motion. Agree with the people who say controller binding. I get in trouble if I don't make sure my gear switch isn't up when I spawn...

FNAEB. (For reasons having nothing to do with anything here I needed to learn what happens to troubled Naval Aviators and spent way too much time digging into MILPERSMAN 1610-020 and COMNAVAIRESFOR Instruction 5420.1B and other sleep inducing regulations. No, I've never had anything to do with Naval Aviation other than applying for NFO with my 20/400 vision, so anything I think I know is purely academic) In other news, my vision is 20/10 now, decades too late.

I do believe (correct me if I'm wrong) the P-38 was chosen for fleet air defense on D-Day because it didn't look anything like a German aircraft. Twin booms, invasion stripes... ...of course none of that mattered to the naval gunners, who operated on the theory that they shoot everything down and sort the wreckage later, but at least someone tried.

FNAEB?

You mean I don't have to do the standard 3xaltitude and manually calculate TOD anymore? That's a 3 degree rate of descent; I'd be shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you!) if the military did 10 degrees.

The shuttle could handle launch bars or bridles. IIRC some of the older carrier aircraft had hold-backs attached to the same pivot as the hook, but that might be my imagination. I know they used frangible dog bones in the hold backs. Different technology than we see on the SC. In any event, we get back into 1960-1980 and there was very little standardization. Different aircraft launched differently, and they just knew who was next and were ready for it. Says the guy who never stood on a carrier deck during flight operations.

Last time I checked (been a while) the French still use them. Toss 'rm into the ocean; they don't have bridle catchers.

Slosh is designed into the bits that matter; we draw nice little ovals when teaching the NUBs, but everything is baffled half to death. There's just not enough mass moving to cause a problem with stability, and the structure is...beefy. Submarines are more fun, especially since they change size. Maybe rather than being more experienced with your inputs you needed more awareness of the scram parameters? If you're dumping a reactor like that maybe you need a new hobby? :thumbup: :pilotfly:

In what way has this changed any? Serves the British right for establishing a standard before we were around to set them right. So to speak. :thumbup: :pilotfly:

Season 4, Episode 42. Yes, I have the whole set on DVD. And the movies.

Oh. Yeah. That...well...no, you really don't want to know. It's...tricky. Overheard someone on a pay phone telling their parents we take the cores out of the reactors and store them in the little fenced in electrical substation on the pier from which shore power is supplied because they're too dangerous to keep on board. This made me less guilty about taping up a fluorescent tube and waving it around the deck at night to catch the side lobes from the radar, then telling the nearby topsiders I was looking for radiation leaks... As for the manual, the RPMs (Reactor Plant Manuals) are a surefire cure for insomnia. Unfortunately there's no cure for the RPM. Startup is easy; I've done it in my sleep. A couple times. 72 hour days suck.

Not sure if this is Channel map or not; it went away when I switched to Normandy. DCS was not a happy bit of software this afternoon. Sent at least once crash report in, will continue to investigate, but just a heads up if someone else ran into any issues. Ran Channel just fine yesterday and this morning, incidentally, so it's not a slam dunk either way.

Bastage planted a tree on his way out the door. Took the wing off my jug without losing so much as a leaf. Maybe an ironwood tree.

Beta has its quirks; if you can appreciate what's there without getting worked up over what isn't it's worth the trouble. I had some issues with DCS not wanting to run today; switched to the Normandy map and they went away. Haven't taken the time to nail anything down, but this map isn't exactly cheese on toast; I'm expect there will be some tweaking as it matures. The Channel map finally got me flying warbirds, though. That's a boatload of fun, too.

So I can cut down the tree someone planted right in front of pad 25 at Hawkinge.

Flew from Folkestone to Framezelle, up the coast past Calais to Dunkirk (landed on the Dunkirk runway because there's aren't many things that can), over Dunkirk and back to Dover. This is a seriously beautiful map. Frame rates for me are pretty descent, but I'm not entitled to an opinion about frame rates. Whoever managed the details has OCD in the best possible way. Flying over this at 300 kts and 20,000 feet should be a crime. It would be icing on the cake to have more era-appropriate shipping available, but that's a different discussion and I imagine they've already got some plans for it. I can make videos, but lack a good place to post them.

Already crashed once trying to land at Dover Castle. Not the map's fault; my Huey landings are graded by CEP. Did land on the docks at Dover, delivered mail to the Chain Home site, spied on more than a few gardens, finally know that those thingys are called (groynes), brought the *cough* evening's entertainment to Manston. Who says Hueys don't belong on a 1944 map? The thing was designed for a Huey. Too much detail to leave it to fixed wing aircraft. I second the

Perfect! Just hoping to eliminate a possibility :thumbup:

Good way to quantify "very fast" is www.speedtest.net. There are several sites to benchmark bandwidth, since the marketing silliness telcos use to sell products only tell part of the story.

If it helps channel and P47 combined are roughly the same size as the patch.

I was going to do exactly that, but that NDA I signed when I left the Navy made it difficult. The paperwork is extensive, but otherwise it's pretty easy. Calling up to the quarterdeck to tell them reactor (insert number here) is critical can be entertaining to hilarious. Doing initial crit out of a shipyard availability is a nightmare, though. You DO NOT want to be the RO for that. Watched a guy take a leak in the [drinking fountain] after 12 straight hours on watch. It was another six before they let someone relieve him (figuratively and literally).

It's the whole complex systems thing. What seems easy in the conference room when you map it out on the white board (or chalk board) suddenly turns into the precursor for baldness when you try to implement. The rule of thumb we used, and I doubt it has changed much, is 95% of the code take 10% of the time. That last 5%? The day before you finally figure it out you're ready to quit and take up baking. Then you figure it out and walk on air until someone in the forum points out that launching the MAV off the right wing station makes the Moskva sink.

Someone said they hired a code monkey (and I mean that in only the nicest possible way) specifically for the F-16. It generally takes a month or two to get up to speed and churning out code when you're standing at the bottom of the learning curve. Much like the F/A-18 FanBois who said exactly what you just did a few months ago (the F-16 is getting all the love and they will release the Boulton-Paul Defiant before the F/A-18 is complete) you'll get your goodies in reasonably short order. For reasonable values of reasonable. In the meantime, if it helps, progress on one generally translates into progress on the other since they write APIs and not dedicated code for the most part.

I was able to buy it in the online store while I wait for the update to download. About bloody time ED gave me something else to spend money on. I was missing that great big sucking sound you hear when you play free games... :thumbup::joystick: