Joe Kurr

Have a look here ;) I put two versions online of every picture, one 600x400, the other 1600x1067. Enjoy!

The A-100's image quality could be better, it's a bit grainy sometimes, but this could also be the result of some setting in the camera. I really like the image stabilizer, which lets you take sharp pictures with shutter speeds as long as 1/15 seconds if you have a steady hand. The image stabilizer also doubles as an anti-dust system, which shakes the sensor when the camera is switched off, removing most (not all) dust particles on the sensor. The main reason for me to choose the A-100 was the price, as my previous set was stolen, and I didn't have the money for a new EOS-20D. For about 850 Euros I got the body plus two lenses, one 18-70mm and one 75-300mm, and it feels better than e.g. an EOS-400D, which I think is too small and too light. The colors on some pics might be a bit off, that's because I edited them a bit to compensate for the less than ideal light conditions, but I'm color blind, so keeping the colors right is a bit difficult for me :)

@Laud: Actually there were two JaBoG32 Tornados, the one on that picture left in the afternoon, just after the other came in. @Invicta: Nice pics! Did you only go on Saturday, or also on Friday? I have finished processing all my pictures, here are some from Saturday: The French C-160 Transall, which provided the support for the Patrouille de France People from Cross-Service remove a liquid oxigen tank from the Mirage 2000 The Swiss F-18C has folded its wings to fit on the picture :) Close-up on a PC-7 from the Swiss PC-7 Team This F-16, wearing the 55 year anniversary paint of 312Sqn, took part in the Airpower Demo The Blades performing their "Crazy Formation" Formation fly-by with 13 F-16s A Mirage 2000 can also come in handy if you need shelter from the rain :) The Dutch F-16 Solo Display comes in for a touch and go Smokin'! "The Last Whistling Turtle" has landed on Dutch soil for the very last time The Turkish Stars take off for their demo Watch out for oncoming traffic! The latest addition to the Dutch Historical fleet is this Hawker Hunter T8C Click here for more pictures from all three days

I think you mean Saturday ;) Apart from some departures, there were no flights at all on sunday. I found it a weird decision to give the PdF take-off clearance in the first place, with such an active thunderstorm just around the corner.

Here are some pics from Friday, the first of the two official open days. The weather was quite bad in the morning, with a very low cloudbase, resulting in rather dark and gray pictures, but lots of vapour coming off the aircraft. The Belgian F-16 pulls some 9G turns, generating clouds of vapour above the aircraft Paul Rorive shows one more time how to take off in a Fouga Magister Dutch F-16, reg J-018, seconds before it suffered a birdstrike and performed an emergency landing Two Hawker Hunters, flown by the Swedish Hunter Flying Group An Extra-300L of the excellent demoteam The Blades is refuelled for its next flight Over 60 years old, but still going strong, the DC-2 'the Uiver' Two Breitling Team L-39s cross in front of the crowd The Swiss PC-7 Team, with the Swiss F-18C Hornet behind them The RAF CH-47D Chinook performing a wheelie, backwards

This weekend I visited the RNLAF Open Days at Volkel Airbase, in the Netherlands, and afterwards I drove to Geilenkirchen for the NATO Open House there. I'm still sifting through all 1468 pictures I made this weekend, but have already finished the ones from last Thursday, traditionally the arrival day for the RNLAF Open Days. KC-135R, US Air Force Tornado ECR, German Air Force F-16AM, Belgian Air Component F-16AM, RNLAF (Royal Netherlands Air Force) Hawker Hunter T8C, in RNLAF colors E-3A Sentry, NATO AEW Component An-26, Polish Air Force Su-22, Polish Air Force Hope you like them, there's more to come :)

Hi Laud, Yes, we have thought of that, and will come up with an extension some time, when the grip is done :) We're even working on an option to have it rotated 10 degrees like in the real Su-27, or straight if you want to have the stick next to your keyboard.

Yes, we plan on producing at least a small series, have a look at earlier posts from HPO and me in this topic on what our plans are. I'll put up a web site shortly where you can find all info about the progress of our project.

I don't quite agree. In the tailslide the Raptor does, you can clearly see the elevons deflect fully in opposite directions (ie one up, the other down). This is the same in other extreme maneuvers it does, such as the vertical take-off. This looks like the computer doesn't know what to do, or it needs such extreme deflections to keep the aircraft stable. In the Flankers and the MiG-29OVT, you don't see this kind of deflection, the control surfaces seem to be almost neutral throughout the maneuver.

To me this F-22 demo looked a bit sluggish and slow, but maybe that's because I have seen my share of MiG-29(OVT), Su-30MK and Su-37 demos over the years. The Russians are still figuring out what their aircraft can do, they haven't reached the limits yet, resulting in many unnamed new manouvers in their demos each year. I also heard of the Indians doing stuff with their Su-30's which the Russians haven't done before. There is a video out there which shows an Indian Su-30K (without TVC and canards) doing a Kulbit.

Does anyone know what the white letters on the black trigger housing (indicated by the arrow) say? My first idea is something like "ГУ-б" or "ГЧ-б", but I'm not sure.

Since this board doesn't let me use my thumbnail script, I'll just post links. All images are 3072 x 2048, so a bit too big to include directly. Here are two of the Flanker's eldest ancestor, the T-10-1. This aircraft is now on display at the Monino aviation museum near Moscow. T-10-1 #1 T-10-1 #2 Some others I made during the same visit to Moscow, these are taken at MAKS 2005: Some of these photos are a bit blurry, because the weather was too good, resulting in lots of heat-waves from the ground. Russian Knights Su-27 throwing flares MiG-29M-OVT flying backwards during a very impressive Kobra Pavel Vlasov takes in the applause from the crowd Vyacheslav Averyanov lines up his Su-30MKI for landing Moments before touchdown This pic shows how big an Su-33 really is Su-34 armed to the teeth The Su-27SK looks good from just about any angle MiG-29K I have several more, about 500 or so, use the following link to see them all. For more photos have a look here

Another option we're investigating is to use the rudder connector on the stick for our microstick. This gives us three more axes. Only drawbacks are: - External cable from the grip to the rudder connector - Only one axis left for the rudder This seems to be the neatest option though, as people can just screw on the grip, plug in the external connector to the base, and start flying. At the Lowland Tiger Meet, last week-end, our friend JaBoG32_MightyM took these pictures of our display: (I placed them as hyperlinks because images of 2576 x 1932 px would severely screw this forum's layout) Image 1 - Cockpit panel Image 2 - Grip prototype and parts

The aircraft in the movie are Alpha Jets, and the cameraman (or someone standing next to him) sounds like he is from Belgium.

LLTM Lockon Report Last weekend Virtual Aero's Hangar 23 was the theater for the ninth Lowland Tiger Meet. In three sections participants battled it out for the European Championship Lockon, IL-2 and Falcon 4. Because I had little chance to visit the Falcon and IL-2 sections, I'll limit my debrief to the Lockon section. On Thursday afternoon, the door opened for the first participants to build up and have some time for free flight. We spent the entire afternoon setting up the network and configuring the servers for the competition. LigerZero also set up our demo cockpit, which only lacked the intrument panel, because Wasserfall wasn't there yet, and would take it with him on Friday. Build-up was quite slow, as usual, because many people stopped by for a chat, and so it got quite late before everything was working correctly. On Friday morning we arrived early, and had to wait for Ice to open the door He arrived half an hour late due to heavy traffic, so we decided to invade Viper's camper in the meantime. At 8:30 the door opened and the newly arrived participants could start building up. After a few hours of laying cables, helping people set up their computer for the network, and a few minutes of free flight, it was time for the first briefing. The first mission was a mixed SEAD mission, where two teams of 6 had to destroy each other's air defences. Main target was a command bunker deep in enemy territory. For this mission we had Su-25s, A-10s and a MiG-29A at our disposal, the latter for escort and to shoot down enemy attack aircraft. The mission was set up like a short campaign, where the server stayed online between rounds to simulate a real combat environment. Between rounds the teams could use their gathered intelligence data to plot their new strategy for the next round. After the SEAD mission, where I found out the hard way that an S300 is an enemy to watch out for, we had a chance to regain our breath in the next mission: The Airrace. This was a challenge which was inspired by the Red Bull Airrace, where we had to fly under bridges, through narrow valleys and between gates marked by antennas with an Su-25A. The race started at Sochi-Adler, and went through the Kaukasus range, along the eastern boundary of the map, over Kerch, along Crimea over Simferopol, Belbek and Sevastopol, to finally land at Khersones airbase. We had two hours to complete this route. A nice extra challenge in the airrace was that there were no waypoints. We had only the maps we received during the briefing to find our way around. This made flying the track a lot more difficult, especially since there were SAM sites everywhere, which were ofcourse not on the map. Unfortunately the server got progressively slower during the mission because of the number of SAM radars and all the data it had to export for the competition, so in the end precise flying got nearly impossible. After the airrace it was time for the Nighttime BVR mission, with two new teams. For this mission, both teams had five pilots and one GCI controller to guide them. The GCI was an interesting concept I hadn't seen before, and tried my skills as a controller during the first round (which we won!) Just like a reallife night mission, we had to cope with sleep as well, since the mission started at 8pm, and lasted until 1am. The first mission on Saturday was a daytime BVR. This was basically the same as the last mission from Friday, except we had no GCI controllers this time, so now we had to rely on our own radar, and radio calls from our fellow team members. To make our lives more miserable up there, the ground at the frontline was littered with medium-range SAMs, which took me out in all three rounds. Next up was a CAS mission, where we had to clear a corridor to an enemy ammunition bunker well beyond the front line. In this mission I scored my first (and only) kill, of which I'm rather proud since it was also my very first combat mission in an A-10. I didn't have much time to celebrate my kill, since I was hit by an Osa missile from the same site I was attacking, and lost a wing. When the CAS mission was done, we entered the head to head Dogfight Knockout contest. This was a guns-only competition, where the first to win two out of three fights was on to the next round. As our team has never done dogfight practice, none of the Dutch Flanker Display Team pilots survived the first round. We used the extra spare time this gave us to do a crash course in aerial combat. During the lunch and dinner, there were two online formation displays. The lunch demo was flown by the White Ravens, with four of their Su-27 Flankers. During dinner, people could watch the Virtual Blue Eagles perform their show with six P-51C Mustangs in IL-2. This left only one mission for Sunday: the already famous LLTM Airshow. The airshow started at 12pm, and until that time all participants had time to practice a 5 to 8 minute solo display with their favourite aircraft. This gave the audience a nice two-hour airshow, with a variety of aircraft performing, including the Su-27, Su-33, MiG-29, F-15C, MiG-29S, Su-25A and A-10. To mark the end of the competition, all participants still at the event performed a mass take-off and fly-by, before leaving the virtual airspace of Belbek. After the airshow it was time for the closing ceremony, where we had some kind of luxury problem, because there were too many prices. This 'problem' was easily solved with a lottery, after which the winners of each section were announced. When the closing ceremony was over, it was time to pack up, and go for a drink at Virtual Aero. Frazer and I took the opportunity to book a flight in the full motion simulator, which earned me another drink :) At 8:15pm, Scudslaker, Frazer and I were the last to leave. All in all it was yet another perfect event, which went by way too quickly. I've met a lot of interesting new people, on top of the many ones I learned to know in past events, and exchanged lots of information and experience. I would like to thank the people from Virtual.Aero and Tobit for the excellent location and supply of food and drinks for the entire weekend, and of course Jan 'Ice' Hilt for organising yet another wonderful event. Many thanks also to the sponsors Linksys, Saitek, NaturalPoint, Tecpoint24 and the RNLAF 323 Squadron, for their generous offer of prices and making the whole event possible. In a while we will announce the date for the LLTM 2008, which will be the tenth edition of one of the most popular military flightsim events in Europe. To close off this report, here are the results of all competitions flown during the weekend: Skills competition Il-2 FB 1. 1.JaVA Erretje - Keben 2. JG-154 Klaus – Dietrich 3. 88.IAP Adam – Andre Dogfight competition Il-2 FB Finale round was between JG-154 (Bruno – Emiel) – 88.IAP (Andre – Adam) Winner was 8IAP. F4AF 1. 49th Black Diamonds “Invaders” 2. Belgian Virtual Tigers 3. Campground 2 LockOn competition 1. vJaBoG32_Pjotr 2. vJaBoG32_Prinzartus 3. vJaBoG32_Laud You can find some pictures made by vJaBoG32_MightyM, Emmer and me here: http://bweijers.myphotos.cc/gallery/?dir=LLTM2007 Also, 33rd_SeBur has written a nice article (in German) about the event, which can be found here: http://www.lan4friends.de/

YAY! Finally got the electronics to work :D I added two LEDs, one to see if it is connected to USB (and has +5V power supply) and one to see if the programmer is connected. After some wire-tracing, re-soldering here and there, and trying different firmware versions, I finally got it recognized by Windows. Seems like I've got an extra axis (there should be six, it says seven) :D Next step is to connect all the remaining pots and ground all ports I don't use at the moment, since the controller seems to have a problem with non-connected ports.

Wow, that MiG-23 stick looks awesome! I'm currently in the testing stage of our stick, also using mjoy, but with no luck so far. I have programmed it, and according to the programming software, there are no problems. But for some reason Windows refuses to detect it when I plug it in. Here's a pic of the test setup, with a two-axis ministick and three buttons connected. Tomorrow I will continue testing, I hope to find the problem then, as it's the last evening I can spend on it before the Lowland Tiger Meet. By the way, the ministick I'm using here won't be the base for the final stick. We will use it for the "Centr Strob" hat on the stick instead.

Heh, if we would have the money to own such a jet, it wouldn't be hoisted up like that, It would be flying every weekend :D AFAIK the aircraft is owned by Tobit Software, who also built the hall around it. Nice thing about Tobit and Virtual.Aero is that they also have four full-motion simulators, in which you can fly a Red Bull Airrace routine. The first time we were there with the LLTM, they had Lockon running in those sims, that was awesome! Those full motion simulators move in two axes (pitch and roll), and even go inverted. That makes flying aerobatics a lot more difficult, but also a lot more fun :D

Just for the record, it's an Su-22 Fitter ;) And yes, it's a very nice location. Before we got this hall at Virtual.Aero, we had the Aviodrome and the MLM (Dutch Airforce Museum) as a host, which were, in terms of atmosphere, even better. But there were some problems there (too small / too expensive, etc)

Little bump, with just over one week to go. At this moment, there are 100 subscriptions, but there is always room for some more :)

It's been a few days since our last update, but the project is still going :) The controller for the stand-alone stick is almost complete, I hope to be able to program and test it this weekend. Here is a quick image of the test setup: The ministick will be used to test the X and Y axes, but it isn't connected yet, the buttons are also there for testing purposes, on the final stick there will be more :) The five pin connector next to the USB socket is for programming the controller. The final version will have several of these connectors, to easily connect all the buttons and potmeters (or hall sensors, if we can get our hands on some). When testing is complete and we have a working controller, I can design a special circuit board for this, which makes building more sticks easier. (Right now I'm planning the layout on the fly, resulting in quite a chaos of wires on the other side of the board :) )

We have yet to decide on the the springs we will use to center the stick. We want the feeling to be similar to the Suncom, only with a longer stick, so the springs will need to be heavier (more like the Cougar)

Blaze, it's me, not HPO ;) I have seen the connector, it looks like a standard PS/2 plug, but it only has five pins instead of six. The electronics inside the grip collect the signals from all buttons and hatswitches and create a serial data stream with al the button-pressing you do when you're flying :) By the way, does anyone know if it's possible to add two extra analog axes to the Cougar stick? Our left-most directional button will be analog (at least on our stand-alone stick), but we haven't found any info yet whether this is possible on the Cougar...

The Suncom is an old HOTAS modelled after the F-15E. Here you can see one which has already passed the 2000 flighthours mark :)

At the moment we're concentrating on an addon for the Cougar and a stand-alone stick. The Suncom proved much more difficult than we first thought, because it has quite a lot of logic in the grip, on a fairly large PCB, which doesn't fit in our grip. The cougar also has some logic in the grip, but this is a simple and fairly straight-forward circuit, which can be built on a very small board. This week I plan to finally build the base electronics of our stand-alone stick, I'll keep you posted on my progress.