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Uxi

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Posts posted by Uxi

  1. On 8/24/2022 at 4:21 PM, ShinyMikey said:

    There is no pressing need for a hotfix. The only thing that I know of that is "broken" is the visual effect for fuel dumping (which doesn't effect actual flying). Everything else is working fine.

    Also the Emer and Oversweep flags pop up even if you man mode (with throttle bind)  the wings to 68 and DON'T pop up when you put the emergency lever back after any period of time to actually over sweep after trapping, for example.  

     

    Both are more just visual than broken in functionality, though you see it entering every break and after every trap.

    • Like 1
  2. Seems much more standardized for line birds in the time period of our cats with TPS, etc. CAG and CO birds could be one offs as it is now while the mid-late 90s line birds to early 00s could be dynamic. Anything earlier than 92 or 93 or after 2002 are out of scope of our configuration. 

    Generic line bird probably easiest low hanging fruit. Maybe Grumman test livery and add popular squadrons to demand as HB's copious free time allows.  

  3. 7 hours ago, Spurts said:

    Right, wasn't he the one saying you could do all these tricks in the A but once you had the B and D you didn't need them?

    Yeah the extra thrust from the GE 110 made it unnecessary and he couldn't cheat the G's because they had things that would "tell."

  4. 9 minutes ago, WarthogOsl said:

    I'd take that with a grain of salt, as plenty of other pilots have said they kept in auto most of the time in most of the other interviews I've heard (not counting trying to fool people about your energy state by tucking the wings back on the merge).

    Also, he mentioned immediately sweeping the wings back manually when disengaging and running away.  The thing is, I don't see how this would be the best thing to do, as at less then transonic speeds, you're actually going to have more induced drag then with the wings more forward (I suppose if you were unloaded the entire time that would negate the induced drag, but I dunno if that's possible).  It almost seemed like a case of "well, it seems like it'd be faster that way."

    I took it as a "in BFM, I'm 20 degrees" or otherwise am "running away at 68 degrees" but also seemed to be something he was referencing only when he was in the F-14A but not presumably in the F-14D.  He definitely didn't seem as...  sea story type like Shoes and Snort sometimes did but is presenting this more matter-of-fact of how he learned from his mentors to maximize his aircraft...  

  5. Puck is a great interview.  
     

    Very interesting how he talked about wing sweep being manual all the time ("on or off") and all the circuit breakers he was pulling, backing up Snort with mid compression bypass, again, etc. 

  6. Everything from that era is pretty maintenance heavy.  It really needed the ASF-14/Super Hornet treatment.

    Reading that study, once it became political the heels got dug in.  It wasn't partisan on the usual party line the way it was for F-22, though.  It was mostly the New York Congressional delegation fighting for it because once the production number went so low,  it actually WAS a jobs program as the argument the NY delegation made was not on affordability but national security grounds to keep Grumman open. 

    The end of the cold war abs the "peace dividend" killed many programs, the Strike Cruiser and never got to 600 ships,  either. The Forrestals were retired earlier then planned as well a the recently refurbished Iowas amongst others. 

  7. The F-22 did sort of play out like the F-14D though.  Lowering the initial order increased the price per plane to amortize development. That was done twice with F-22, which made them individually so expensive that it was politically vulnerable.  Like F-14D there was also a political fight to keep it going but the administration shut it down after that.  Like the F-14D there's no peer replacement that has the same capability.

    Now they're talking about reducing F-35 orders because of the price which we should know that will only make the remaining order more expensive (and again gets nothing to replace it with).

  8. That same study indicates the main justification was NATF.  Without that, Super Hornet just can't match the capability and no one signed up to reduce capability.  They did pull a fast one by convincing Congress it was essentially an upgrade when  there was really very little parts commonality. The only way Grumman could have matched that was with ASF-14 which would have been the "Super Hornet version" of the Tomcat where it looked kinda the same but had modern less maintenance intensive internals, access panels, etc.  Even so, the cost factor is the biggest issue and hard to get around even if maintenance is the same.   

    That said, SECNAV Lehman is the one who probably started the avalanche, though as he was the one who started the F-14D(R) program and had the initial build cut from 304 to 127 and was later quite critical of Super Hornet as not being a suitable replacement, but his priority was the 600 ship navy... 

    Part of the bigger picture is some hadn't forgotten that Grumman had to refuse one of the earlier orders in the 70s claiming they were losing money on each plane and tried to force the government to renegotiate the contract.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/28/archives/troubled-grumman-sees-f14-as-its-key-problem-troubled-grumman-sees.html

    https://nytimes.com/1975/01/19/archives/has-grumman-pulled-out-of-its-tailspin-grumman-saga.html

    They were projecting a 25-30 year lifespan for new F-14D though, which would have put the full procurement until 2020 or so.  More than enough to see parallel upgrades to F-15E on the radar, LANTIRN and nav pods, etc and if that was done, then almost certainly something like ST-21 as an F-14E.

  9. The Cheney thing is a meme at this point and not an accurate one.  

    Cheney wasn't the main guy in DoD opposed to the F-14D. He was mostly echoing David Chu who's job was to weigh the merits of major weapon systems and argued the low rate production was simply to keep the Grumman line open.  He was right but did want to keep the rebuild program going. This is where Cheney's "job program" comment came from.

    The issue was price and heavy maintenance requirement and diminishing  threat (and defense budget)  even before the Soviet Union fell so it would take the USSR getting much more aggressive to counteract that. 

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a282162.pdf

     

     

    Screenshot_20220717-180131_Drive.jpg

    Screenshot_20220717-180145_Drive.jpg

  10. On 7/18/2022 at 9:19 PM, Wingmate said:

    I wonder if the refueling probe removal will be a mission editor option, or controlled via description.lua similar to the helmet in the hornet.

    Should probably be a ground crew option.  It's all just for show unless we ever get the iron maiden in game as a wrecking ball cracking canopies and tearing off probes, etc.  Can the engines even be damaged by FOD in game?  Not sure there's anything other than SOP making me go to left air source when refueling, etc either.  Don't think we can suck down any vapor or droplets or anything like that....

    18 hours ago, sirrah said:

    awww... 😟

    we should be able to have it dangle from our helmet, so we can look cool in the camera 😎

    Dangling masks and cop caterpillars would rock. 

  11. 19 minutes ago, LanceCriminal86 said:

    If the pylons were modeled and just sunk into the mesh, that would be one thing. But if the area where the pylons meet the airframe wasn't closed off so to speak, then "cutting" the pylons means you're going to leave open polys/faces, which will screw the UVW maps up, the ambient occlusion maps, normals, all that stuff when you have to shift around or add new vertices to close the hole up. Same deal with adding dynamic MODEX from what I've heard. Potentially the same even with the TCS pod as well but there appeared to be geometry underneath it.

    Right.  Isn't there a duplicate or mirrored nacelle that isn't right? Maybe it was already corrected... or maybe there's no plan to, but if it were it seems some work still needs to be done in that regard beyond pulling out the D features we see... or maybe that got dropped and I missed it.  That never really bothered me that much tbh, though I understand some were and thought it was basically decided to correct but I might be remembering wrong. 

    WRT TARPS are you talking about the aft Sparrow slot that gets covered or something else?  I was kinda suspecting that be seen as minor  and it would just be mounted like a large piece of ordinance. Preferable to not getting it at all if it's too much work.

  12. 6 hours ago, RustBelt said:

    I mean, if someone really wanted it. They could make it happen as an unofficial mod. Wouldn’t be easy, but based on some of the mods out there, it’s doable.  

    Most of the mods are based on FC3...  and haven't seen anything touching the Tomcat unfortunately or someone might have done an ST-21 by now. 😉

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