Raisuli

I've finally concluded (after working on CQ) that this is really a problem with the turbulence on the water being single order. There's wind ripple, and five or six orders of other waves, ripples, and swells going on at once in a dynamic environment. If you watch videos of aircraft around the boat you can really see how the multiple order turbulence blocks the kind of mirror-like reflections we get. Is it 'realistic'? Maybe, but those reflections down low sure aren't. People are pulling out pictures taken at 40,000 feet just to get close to our waterline reflectivity. Since I don't think they're going to change the fluid dynamics model my vote would be 'unrealistic' turbulence and more realistic reflections. Well, that and when you look at the wake of the CV doing 27 knots you can't not laugh. Even the Pegasus had more wake than that.

The answer hasn't changed, but I thought this was interesting given the OP: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nellis+AFB,+NV/@36.2267336,-115.0516239,104m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c8dd979f1a4539:0x890a4a296fadb5ef!8m2!3d36.2406295!4d-115.0542759 Google maps, Nellis, switch to satellite. There are a bunch of hornets, and several have their wings folded. Let nobody say they never fold them at Nellis!

The enterprise was the last carrier to lose the bridle catchers, I believe. Those were the big things that stuck out in front of the flight deck and 'caught' the bridles so they could be re-used. As far as I know, and I am not a SME, any carrier could launch a bridle. Once. Because the bridle ends up at the bottom of the ocean. The French do not re-use theirs last time I checked.

Heatblur == $instantPurchase This would also give us a reasonable stand-in for the Deuce and Dart (F-102 and F-106) in cold war scenarios, but I want an AIR-2B if we're going that route. On the other hand, we're missing so much Soviet iron it will be pretty lonely in those cold war scenarios...all fueled up and nobody to fight... Incidentally the 'muricans bought a handful; pretty boring livery, but can do the Century Series stand in liveries, and the Draken is MUCH sexier in the air...

Yes

I'm almost twenty-thirtynine, and I still get bummed out when I park my I-16 in the nuke hanger in Incirlik and they won't mount up those two B-61s. I know the I-16 carries bombs; I've seen 'em under the wings! Bloody ground crew takes off for lunch and leave a pair of purple meanies in the hanger and I have no way to hang them! It would be cool to have arresting gear (air force style) on runways. It would be even cooler to have IFOLS and a box painted on the runways. The ROI on these kinds of things is vanishingly small, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be cool. Just like it would be cool to have those B-61s. Totally useless, but cool.

The last time I saw Cell Block 70 we were both home ported in Alameda. Been a little while. The Enterprise was ported in Alameda as well in those days. In classic California fashion I overheard someone say they would never permit a nuclear anything in San Francisco bay. Well...Enterprise: 8 reactors. Vinson: 2. California: 2. Arkansas: 2 (all of those were visible). San Francisco (not visible): 1. Let's not talk about the sub base in Vallejo, or all the purple meanies that might or might not be on board any or all of those aforementioned vessels, including the boomers... Last time I was in San Diego was boot/beep at NTC before reporting to Great Mistakes for A school.

It's worth noting that this is the group that announced they were working on an AI A-6, and some time later also said that, eventually, RealSoonNow in geologic terms, they will build a full fidelity A-6. Oddly enough, that same company has said they were working on an AI Draken. Does make a person wonder what next gen project(s) might be in the pipe...around the time the Pacific Ocean is narrower than the Atlantic, but RealSoonNow...

Oh, I never take the picture's color as given; I've been there, seen that (taken the pictures), got the sea service ribbon to prove it, and I have seen the ocean that over saturated. On a grey day the ocean is dark blue, on a sunny day it's bright blue, in the middle of the north pacific in 40' waves on the way to Petropavlovsk it's still blue, but more of a grey blue. Pictures do NOT do blue water justice; you just have to see it to appreciate it. 12 (*cough*) miles off the coast of Kamchatka it's greener; at least that was the color of the water breaking over the bows of that Soviet patrol boat and drenching the poor sods manning the forward 40mm gun mount. At least until our CO politely-ish asked them to turn off their fire control radar. (They picked up our garbage, and we made sure to put in some...entertainment when we tossed ours, but my wife has since told me the officers would have kept all that...things are different on that side of the curtain). I can't argue too much with color; particularly near any coast. Off Hvar and along the Dalmation coast the water is crystal clear, off California it's kind of green, off Virginia it's just icky. In the Indian Ocean you can see the bottom (no, not really). It's the reflectivity that gets to me. I've only seen the ocean reflect like that a couple times. At 40,000 with the sun shining it's close, but there's always chop and rarely are there never any whitecaps at all when you're down low. I've had to use radalt to figure out how far I am from the water, which needs some tweaking. Not convinced I've ever been near a large land mass and there was no wind, leaving no whitecaps... Better than 2.5? Oh, yeah. Work in progress, though. They'll get there eventually, or I'll just keep using radalt...as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Ugh. The gulf. 120 degree wind blows off the desert and hits 90+ degree water. No wonder the people who live there are cranky. Not exactly Hawaii, where at least the breeze is refreshing. Seriously, depth and content of the water is everything. The gulf is a bathtub, and full of all kinds of sediments and nastiness. Hawaii is a sea mount, and all you get is ocean water flowing freely all around. This is why the ocean is less clear anywhere near a large land mass (other than Croatia, apparently).

This is so fake! Tom Cruise was NEVER that young (he's 15 days older and a whole lot nuttier than I).

Navy pilots don't need ILS; ICLS is something completely different. At least that's the thinking in NAVAIR, which has steadfastly refused to put civilian precision landing equipment in Navy fighters forever. Nobody knows why, but apparently it's cheaper to train a new pilot than add $150 worth of electronics to the jet. That there have been so few deaths from Naval aviators trying to land in bad weather is a testament to the skill of the operators.

On a cruiser (DLGN) we kept a white stern light and the port and starboard lights on, otherwise it was always darken ship. If life was likely to become more exciting the white stern light would be a blue convoy light. Red lights on the bridge; hugely visible on the forward deck at night. I read a book sitting on the aft missile launcher on a moonless night; the stars are that bright in the middle of the IO once you adjust to the darkness.

I spent three and a half years at sea, and I've seen water like this...maybe twice. First thing I noticed when I finally came out of the clouds, and was half-hoping it was part of the 'work in progress'.

I don't see any chatter about this, which makes me wonder if this isn't a local problem, but two out of my three Cougar MFDs have stopped working. They show up in Thrustmaster's software, they light up, they appear everywhere but DCS. All modules, incidentally; those two devices simply don't show up in the controls any more. This is fairly recent, and the only change I made was adding a half keyboard to slaughter SOC auditors Zombies in CoD. If I unplug the extra KB and reboot I get the same behavior. I know modules like A-10 II really screw with MFD controllers, so I wondered if something changed. In the short term I'm going to spend more time with aircraft that rely on the stick and rudder and less on the piccolo.

Now, about the UGM-133s on the wingtips...

When I caught up on campaigns I skipped this one because, to be perfectly honest, I don't really want to know what her ambush tastes like. Obviously voiced by a professional, because a mere amateur would never get a line like that out. I have to say I'm heartened by the comments above, however. Might make a nice change of pace. ...says the guy who owns every module, all but 10 campaigns, and has NEVER FLOWN A CAMPAIGN. Got to start somewhere...

saved games is the big one. I don't think you need to de-activate the modules, but I've heard it's better to log out before you blow the old copy away.

Have no fear, this is Microsoft. There will be headaches. The last time I had to do this with DCS it was pretty painless, apart from the download which was expected. They've really put some polish on their set up. As was already mentioned your ~\saved games\dcs folder is golden. Don't forget to back that up. Otherwise, unless you have fifteen or twenty USB control devices that the new OS is going to re-enumerate you should be good to go.

The cool thing about DCS is airplanes are stocked like Linus kept extra pianos. No re-alignment needed...just pull a fresh F15 out of stores and here you go! Have fun with it! I've broken more F-18Cs than were ever made and never got so much as a whiny-gram from the DoD.

Given Heatblur's performance with the F-14, and their ability to deliver on that hype, they could model a piper cub and I'd buy it the same day. A-6 would be a no-brainer. I have no idea what plans they have in the works, but I'm betting there's at least a rough outline on a white board somewhere. Really looking forward to what they come up with next. Whether it's a home run or they stumble a bit they've earned an enormous amount of credit.

The AI F-16 taxis with both taxi and landing lights on. Almost as much of a game stopper as the B1 afterburner effects not being aligned with the engines, eh?

First module I successfully crashed was the Su25. First one I successfully landed was the TF51. Yeah, surprised me, too. It didn't happen twice. You can learn what you need to know without buying any modules. A stick, on the other hand...you can get one on ebay for next to nothing.

Thought I'd with all those people who celebrate their holiday today a Merry Christmas! Hope all your wishes come true!

Maybe...I'm still wrapping my head around menus. :Refresh() didn't do what I wanted and I ended up deleting and recreating a menu item that changed based on user input. Not as pretty as I like. At the end of the day the menu allows the pilot to set up an A2A engagement, and I wanted the pilot object (whoever that might be) to use as a reference for spawning the bandit. A Fox3 engagement will need to be farther out than a guns-only fight. There's a menu item to "Engage <plane type> <loadout> <skill level>" that changes as you select all of the above, but the sticking point is where the spawn happens and what the AI aircraft does once it spawns. Really it's just a coding challenge since I decided to learn .lua and mission editing. Until I solve this there are other things to do, such as the logic that an F-5E can't do a Fox2HOBS loadout, or Fox1, or Fox3...and the user should be so informed. I should just change the way the menus work...

I'm having fun playing with moose lately, carving my initials with the sharpened end of a toothbrush and doing all those things... Now I want to change the local environment, but to do that I need to know who I am, or more specifically an object handle for whoever opened the communications menu and selected F10->MENU_MISSION_COMMAND:Whatever. I've found ways to step through every client, figure out if the client is controlled by a player, then checking the player name. Is there no function to identify the unit that triggered the menu command?