LanceCriminal86

Interesting, first I'd encountered it. I've been skinning not flying lately so hadn't encountered it myself. In the past if I got hit that bad and landed I didn't know how to properly get Jester to redo the INS alignment so I never did a repair. Realistically if you get all shot to hell the bird's done but that sucks for the persistent missions or MP.

During a strafe run, I took a few hits to the fuselage and it appears lost primary FLT hydraulics. On the right needle it was zero but the left/comp hydraulics were still good, tried to flip the hydraulic bypass on as soon as I saw it but I guess the system was completely drained or dead already. Aircraft flew as normal, landed it at Kutasi. Parked the aircraft, turned off the engines, and requested repair. 170 seconds later, bullet holes all gone. Go to start up the aircraft, and the right hydraulic needle stays dead. Shut down, request repair again, nothing. Start back up, still dead. Hyd Press light still illuminated and FLT HYD still pegged at zero with both engines running. Tried doing the hyd bypass switch, nothing changed there. Nothing with emergency hyd in high or low either. I tried to save a track but got an error about how it couldn't read the temp file for the track. Mission log shows these failures after the hit: INS : Total INS : Nav Computer RWR : 315 quad receiver/antenna

So, cross-checking those: 163227 - VF-102 07APR97 AB-103 APR97/APR00; to FITWING 07SEP00; to VF-11 17OCT02 AG-214 MAR03, Looks like that FITWING was missing it coming back to the squadron? It shows VF-11 in Oct 2002, so that would seem to be post-cruise. 162917 - to VF-102 20DEC96 AB-107 MAR97/APR98, W/O 21MAY98 near MCAS Cherry Point Written off in 1998? crashed 23.05.1998. The two-man crew of the Tomcat ejected safely after take-off from MCAS Cherry Point, N.C. 163219 - to VF-102 23FEB99 AB-110 MAY99, AB-113 SEP99/MAR00, W/O 17MAR00 off USS John F. Kennedy 17.03.2000: The F-14B was lost during operations from USS John F. Kennedy. Both pilot and RIO were rescued. Not trying to undercut your efforts here, I've been trying to do similar for VF-201 and it has not proven easy. They took on many of VF-202's aircraft but there were gaps in MODEX, and some may have been moved off to other squadrons before usage by VF-201.

So going from "CVW US Navy Carrier Air Wing Aircraft 1975-2015 Volume One by Mike Crutch" book, I think 110 may have been 163407: VF-102 24AUG00 AB-110 SEP00/MAR02; March of 2002 it showed that aircraft going to VF-143, and the cruise ended in March 2002. I couldn't find any matchups for 101, 103, 107, or 113. It's possible those MODEX weren't in use at the time.

There's another nice document out there matching BuNO to MODEX. If you can find me the MODEX you are missing, I can take a look and see if I can find them.

But Big John was generally assigned to the Med, which means it is a historical carrier for both the Caucuses and Syria maps, plus she launched strikes during OIF/OEF. She's just as important for A and B model history and scenarios. I know they're not going to change anything, they already have their hands full. But it would be nice if, perhaps along with the Intruder (if that becomes a reality), they threw CV-67 on in there.

Dude everything is apparently "needed urgently". Right now trying to make sure the existing stuff works well enough that the playerbase doesn't bounce from DCS in the next ~30 days while ED cleans house is probably the more important driving focus. I haven't even looked at the DCS icon in about 2 weeks due to the issues, and I'm taking a break on skins because I can't motivate myself to work on something I'm not even using at this point. Not HB's fault that the code keeps bucking underneath them, but there are some immediate things to work on that are actually "needed urgently". Hell, I'd say the Kennedy would be a "must have" addition but guess what, it's not happening. Big John was there all the way from the beginning (VF-14 and VF-32 on their 1974 cruise) to the end (Final Tomcat cruise with VF-103), and in-between (1989 Gulf of Sidra incident). But they are doing the Forrestal, so that's that.

Heatblur has stated they do intend to add the HGU-55/P helmet at some point. There's a few skins of the -33 that look alright as a -55 but better to just wait.

I have seen similar issues as well, where a stack of 4 Tomcats in the pattern will have issues with jamming up in the landing pattern so both keep getting waved off. It's an endless cycle, and basically one is nose to tail with each other trying to land. I'll re-try the mission I had the problem in and see if it is persisting but it really seems like the Supercarrier had a LOT more work that needed to be done. Like aircraft spawning inside each other.

Would very much like to see this as well, though not as pushy as it being with the "A". I'd just like to know if it's actually coming at some point here.

@ It's a year or so late probably but you'll be getting your wish soon. Finally getting VF-201 nailed down:

I appreciate it, I'll give it a whirl. Also just saw you had templates for the pilot suit and HGU-33 as well, I'm not sure if those were recent but I passed them over to the other skinners as well. Also, is there any reason the RIO pilot body doesn't have a separate LUA callout? Is that something that can be done? Pilots and RIOs often had different patches and their wings are different as well. It would be appreciate for us detail nerds.

@ensamvarg the UVWs around the tails as well, or just the wing root flipped textures? I'll keep my eyes out for more. One thing I did notice is that typically, the ext 2 and ext 4 are the left side of the aircraft and have the text "normal", while 1 & 3 are "mirrored". However, looking at the wing glove vane areas on the 3 and 4 textures, it seems like the lettering is the opposite. On 4, the wing glove area is backwards text, while on 3 it's regular.

I also found some weirdness in the UVWs along the back of the aircraft around the vertical stabilizers, it messes up the red stripes when you do high vis style liveries:

Testing my VF-201 skins and some different Reshade settings:

VF-201, just waiting around for the -A to happen at some point.

While extending the red stripe up to the top of the aircraft as seen in older late High-Vis schemes like that of VF-201 and VF-202 (prepping for F-14A), I noticed some oddities when the definitely straight line in my texture was NOT straight on the back of the aircraft: I recall some issues with a flipped vertex being reported a loooong time ago, but couldn't remember if this had been reported. While the A model we're getting is supposed to be later than the late 80s timeframe VF-201 wore this scheme apparently into the 90s at least on their CAG bird and even alongside the lo-vis with other line aircraft. It's one of those things many would overlook but once you see it exists, it's hard to ignore, especially after spending a lot of time trying to replicate this squadron.

Damn, that was a no kidding hot-shit pass!

Welcome to skinning the Tomcat. All I can say is I have not found an easy and consistent way, no.

When he announced a family emergency I believe in the same statement he said that update would have to wait, as that was primarily his role to do it.

Those were A models, I think some folks are holding off on some of those schemes until we see how different the A model is to paint. I saw claim that B skins will work on the A with minor differences so we will see.

I paint Tomcats however I feel, historical and non-, and I am working on templates for other skinners to use. I don't give a flying crap HOW they use those templates, because they were also kind enough to help me with mine. I have worked in mods and modding teams (Roma Surrectum 2/3 for RTW) for many years and have almost never seen the attitude you display about the use of *your* template. We knew that people would go and flavor the mod to taste, add non-historical units in on their own, etc. So I'll just make my own I suppose, just like I did with the E-2D. And I'll let folks use it and paint My Little Pony schemes or whatever the heck they want with it. If you just put a solid template out there, people will use it. Some would be fictional, yes, but plenty will be historical. But since that's the attitude you choose, good riddance.

I don't understand the dude's stance when the Navy LITERALLY did exactly what I was planning to do with their CoNA schemes:

Why? I have never seen anyone release a skin template with the condition "Don't use this for fictitious schemes" Is this an "official" stance of the Military Aircraft Mod, that no skins shall be made that aren't of a real aircraft? So the guy deleted his comment now, I take it this was someone's personal template?

I completely understand. But my thought was that if your Tomcat is inverted or rolled 90 degrees, that TARPS pod isn't going to be able to *see* the target. Does the mission builder allow for any parameters like aircraft roll or pitch attitude for triggers?