Alicatt

Last night VTM in Belgium started a 3 part documentary on the F-16s here featuring the crew and aircraft at Kline Brogel and in Jordan. It was very interesting and featured one pilot's last flight, he was quite emotional when he came back from the flight.

yep, but the B we are getting also can carry the LANTRIN and that needs a controller too, looks kind of like a left hand version of the F18 stick

Difficult to find pictures of the lefthand console of the rear cockpit of the F-14, even in all my F-14 books there are no pics of that side :) It will be Thursday before I can re-install my HDD with the F-14 manuals on it to see what is on there, but they don't come with dimensions. The second pic I posted in this thread is of an upgraded B with LANTRIN by the look of it, so not only do I need a left handed stick for Star Citizen, looks like I will need one for the Heatblur F-14B too :D

Yep but they are operating the A model. Frustratingly there is not a lot of info about the WSO cockpit and it's evolution through the years, the other thread about the Stick project had me looking through my books but there is not much info about the backseat driver's position :) not a lot of pics of the lefthand panel layout either been a searchin but not a lot found, was looking for details of the Left hand control stick.

In the first 30 seconds he tells you that they went out to Akrotiri in Cyprus with a detachment from the Tornado OCU or Operational Conversion Unit, that's the Squadron you go to train to use your new aircraft after finishing your basic fighter training in the likes of the Hawk, so yes they are still students. At the 2 minute mark he informs you that they went out with a detachment of students in 1990 with Hawks and Tornados.

RIOs are so good they can give them 2 sticks ;) This is of the F14D

Thank you for the background to the incident. While I have been in helicopters numerous times they always seem to break down just before I am to get a flight in one, last time was a Huey when something in the gearbox failed and they had to get parts flown from Norway to get it repaired. They were dusting the forests with lime in Caithness to counteract the acid rain we were getting at the time. My younger brother was a Radio Officer/FISO/Network Technician on the Beryl Alpha and Bravo until he passed away on 8/3/2006. It was cancer and nothing to do with helicopters or his work. At this time of year I'm thinking about him and all those who work and have to fly out there.

@Alpha-87 I'm sorry for the loss of your friends and colleagues. I have never worked with the Strathclyde helicopters, only with Tayside's covering the T in the Park events at Balado, and that was to receive video from them as part of a mobile CCTV patrol.

This is what can happen when your engines flame out, AAIB finding was that the accident was a result of fuel mismanagement and the tanks that feed the engines were empty while there was still 73kg of fuel in the main tank but the transfer pumps were in the off position. The helicopter came down with the main and tail rotors stopped and crashed through the roof of the pub, the building used to be 5 or 6 stories high but the upper floors were removed in the 1960s so the walls and roof of the building were much stronger than you would expect on a single story building which probably helped save a lot of lives, still, sadly 10 people died related to the accident, 3 crew and 7 on the ground. This was a Eurocopter EC-135T2+ and had a Fenestron tail rotor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Glasgow_helicopter_crash When I had to go to Glasgow on work I stayed in a hotel that was only a few yards from that pub, I know the area quite well. :(

The EE Lightning is first on my list

Being Scottish I'm a bit biased ;) I lived close to Wick Airport which was a bomber airfield during WW2 and up until recently still had most of the WW2 infrastructure present, it was a diversion field for RAF Kinross and RAF Lossiemouth it was used a lot for touch n' goes and we got to see a lot of different aircraft there, Jaguars, Phantoms, F-15E, A-10, Buccaneer, Nimrod, Tornado, and every Wednesday the USN had a resupply flight come in for their basses at Forss and Murkle. Then close by we had the bombing range at Tain and Cape Wrath was just along the other coast too. For WW2 we had airfields at Skitten which was a couple of miles from Wick and held the fighter squadrons and also at Castletown which was also a fighter base covering the southerly approaches to Scappa Flow where the navy fleet anchored. To the south of Wick there was a dummy airfield to draw off the German bombers from the real airfield just to the north of the town, my farm was close to it. There are/were a few strategic targets there during the cold war, with the nuclear power station and HMS Vulcan naval nuclear training centre, plus the American presence at Forss and Murkle so if the cold war went hot we did not expect to survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay Pics of Forss http://pub34.bravenet.com/photocenter/album.php?usernum=2866148503####bn-photocenter-1-1-2866148503/90/1/ History of the site NAVCOMMSTAUK Forss https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/DSHF14/DSHF14028FU1.pdf Been on the base many times, and used to go train there every week with the US Marines playing American Football, ah happy days! and now sore knees :)

Now that is the area I'm hoping for in the upcoming Syria map, if not then I would like it to at least include Cyprus to give the Brits a toe hold on the map while still having some sea room to conduct naval manoeuvres. 600km per side: Now as for your Fulda Gap map area you just miss off the Belgian/NATO airbase at Kleine Brogel which is just south of Eindhoven, it also includes a couple of live fire ranges for aircraft in that area - I live close enough that I can hear the cannon fire when the local F-16s are doing target practice. Any map that includes Scotland gets my vote too :D

If you draw that western border slightly further west then it would include Cyprus and give the UK forces a forward base of operations too, which would allow us to deploy the likes of the Hawk + other UK aircraft there :) Especially as it would give a legitimate reason for one of the developers to include the EE/BAC Lightning :D :pilotfly:

Thank you for the update really looking forward to this F-14 module, the F-14 is my second favourite jet after the EE Lightning :)

Nooo, it was a hint about time travel and the F-14, remember back before the team split in two they were on the road to making a Zero as well? It all fits: F-14; Zero; aircraft carrier; time travel. We are getting a WW2 scenario where we have to defend Hawaii from attack of course this could all just be in my mind I'll get my tinfoil hat :music_whistling:

How many pocket manuals were there for the F14 series of aircraft? I have two, the NAVAIR 01-F14-AAA-1T(B) Tactical Manual Pocket Guide for the F-14A/A(PLUS) Aircraft and NAVAIR 01-F14AAP-1B NATOPS Pocket Checklist for the F-14B Aircraft There are a lot of F-14 manuals available but not for export outside the US so some are difficult to get for us Europeans :(

Not for the original TARPS that used film, it was recommended to use the TCS (Television Camera System) to help identify the correct target. You entered a series of waypoints and those could be shown on the pilot's HUD and gave him a steering cue to correctly overfly the target area If I remember correctly the later digital version of TARPS could display the image on the RIO's station in the F-14D, I'll have to go back and read the manuals again to say for certain.

Infrared in photography is a false colour representation of what light(radiation) is being reflected from the object of focus and can have some beautiful and weird results, most digital cameras today have an IR and UV filter built on to the CCD/CMOS sensor but a few manufacturers have models without the filters for scientific use. Near Infrared in imaging using the likes of CCDs is totally different, different materials have different absorption of the IR radiation impacting on them. Some paints are almost like mirrors to the IR and reflect the IR like a beacon while a lot of natural objects absorb the IR like a black hole, it was a fascinating work that I was doing back then, I was beta/field testing colour/monochrome/IR cameras for some of the world's major camera manufactures. Except an ex of mine with red hair, shine an IR light on her and her hair would shine like a light bulb in an IR camera, toning it down it looked like she had aged years and her hair was pure white when viewed on the monochrome monitor, I was told never to do that to her again :D One of the prototype cameras from the late 1990s I got to keep, it has a few flaws in it's CCD but still it performed very well and I have used it for imaging stars and nebulas through my telescope. It needs special software to communicate with it which was written for Windows 98 to access the more advanced modes of operation while basic switching can be done on it's menu.

Mine said 69GB and I have both NTTR and Normandy as well as 1.5.8 open beta and 1.58 release Only managed to clear out 65GB on the SSD so hoping for the best here... edit: says the download is 19GB and downloaded 15GB of that so far...

and so it begins! Thank you all at ED.

The Final Countdown confirmed: Time travel is a reality :D

I remember seeing the Yak-52 being offered for sale for around £32k, back then it was £1k less than I paid for my car, they were not expensive ... tho the running cost might have been a little higher than the car, but in hindsight not by much :huh: I did look in to it at the time, finish getting my PPL and then get the Yak, I was way to busy with work at the time and needed the car more so than an aircraft but I was tempted :) PS. on reflection the Yak gets better gas mileage than the car ever did :megalol:

There is a lot of info on TACAN and navigation in the respective manuals which can be found free on the internet, and goes into it in a lot of detail and is a lot more involved than what I have written below. For the F-14A Both Pilot and RIO have identical TACAN control panels, tho commands can only be entered by the panel that has control, there is a button to swap control between Pilot and RIO and the RIO has control of the INS system. In the early F-14B the TACAN is the same but in the later ones with the updated navigation systems and GPS the TACAN control panel was removed from the RIO position to make way for the CDNU (Control Display Navigation Unit) leaving control of the TACAN channels to the Pilot. Air to Air TACAN is available from the F-14 but it only transmits range, not bearing. Now as to what Heatblur is going to incorporate into the module... :dunno:

It has been discussed before and it is planned we believe https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=187910

Nope just for the small brain... :huh: :helpsmilie: