Starlight

Soviet doctrine called for these things. It's just a matter of facts that most of the Soviet equipment on their airfields WAS mobile (radar, control tower, floodlights). It's just another matter of fact that NATO equipment wasn't mobile. Yes, there is some NATO equipment which is (or was) mobile, but it wasn't that much standard. NATO exercises "outdoor" called for a huge logistic effort. "Airbase operability" was a real issue in a central european scenario http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj89/boyles.html Furthermore most of the Soviet aircraft were designed to withstand harsh conditions and operate from captured airfields (which are expected not to be extremely clean). The last NATO aircraft able to take off from semi-prepared airfields (Harrier excluded) was probably the FIAT G-91.

Soviet equipment was designed to be used also with captured material, and most of Soviet equipment was movable (control towers, comms, floodlights). NATO equipment isn't so "flexible".

you don't need to expand the whole LO world. Simply put, you create some detail around an airbase in Turkey, Romania or wherever you want. Just to create some more realistic environment for airfield ops. After T/O you climb, do your mission over the detailed Russian territory and come back into your detailed NATO airbase. stop. The point of my post was: - it's not realistic to see US/NATO aircraft operate from russian-style airbases. - I think it would require a not-so-huge effort to create a detailed NATO airbase. A full terrain expansion would require much more time and effort.

Turkey is filled with NATO-style airbase. there was even a user mod which added a NATO airbase in Turkey. Anyway it just doesn't make sense to operate F-15 from such airbases. In most cases they wouldn't be able to operate from non-NATO standard shelters. Even modern Soviet fighters had a hard time to operate from older shelters. Many times in Eastern Europe Soviet fighters were parked outside of the HAS because they just couldn't fit, since they were designed for smaller aircraft.

I think that a quite easy but still interesting add-on before release for BlackShark would be a NATO style airbase. I mean, TAB-V shelters, "western-style" runways, taxiways and hangars, plus some other things... Having F-15 and A-10 as flyables and taking off from soviet-style HAS, is quite a nonsense... just my 2c....

In LO, the mirage is already iper-modelled, in the sense that it easily beats the F-15 in gunzo. The -2000 seems to be hyper-maneuvrable, with a lot of SEP, and it's very tough to shoot down, since it's hard to hit and even if one scores some, it flies with considerable damage. I don't know if I was ever able to shoot down Excellent-AI mirage2000 in gunzo (or maybe I shot down a few...)

I also remember two great intros on Falcon 3.0 and 4. I also agree with Witchking, some early promo movies for LockOn were great, and one of them made me buy this game.

I'd call it "Black Shark"... at least we'd have one out there before autumn '06 ;)

it could be useful, but the "usability" of this site really sucks, and most (if not all) of the tables are made with stolen graphics (decal sheet, acig.org and many other sites). that's not fair...

whoa! that's great! I did find just one of the SA-12 batteries, near kaliningrad, but I wasn't that sure. Now I recognized their typical layout. thx, enjoy the baltic fleet ;)

A small but well defended Russian outpost: the Orbat This is @ Kaliningrad this is Khrabrovo: "Su" out of the woods @ Chernyakhovsk the fleet: One further thing that I noticed is that the terrain looks amazingly similar to that in Lockon, at least from some altitude. PS: Could anyone point out some place on GoogleEarth where one could find air defense positions? for example a SAM battery... thx

Is it protected by Starforce? If it's not maybe USAF could copy it from ANG :D

Maybe the F-15 in lomac simulates the fact that most military engines in peacetime are underpowered to lengthen their expected lifetime. Anyway I'm also quite sure that in wartime these restrictions would be removed... Anyway, for all those who want a bit of F-15C airshow action (included a brutal takeoff roll), here's a movie I downloaded from emule. It's not mine, but I didn't stole it, just downloaded from emule, so I suppose it's something shot by a person who wanted to share it with the Internet community. It's a splitted rar (because my hosting service doesn't accept files larger than 10 MB), make sure to download both parts before trying to extract the movie. here we go: http://digilander.libero.it/airsuperiority/f15%20eagle.part1.rar http://digilander.libero.it/airsuperiority/f15%20eagle.part2.rar enjoy ;)

Your chart states "US standard day 1968" Kula lives in the UK, and he probably saw the F-15 many years after 1968, and we all know climate has changed dramatically in the last years ;) that's my explanation. Anyway, more seriously, I've seen some "Viking departures" at Aviano AB, and hell yes,they go straight up after t/o roll!

expected release date "This item will be released on May 25, 2006" from amazon.com I'm not sure, but BS may have some unexpected "enemies". I mean BS will be really complex and Hi-Fi but - won't change Lomac very much (except for Ka-50 lovers) - won't be a cheap addon - will still have Starforce I'm not an expert of the flightsim market, but many people may be "routed" to WOE because it appears a more interesting title. I'm not saying WOE's "approximate flight models" could challenge BS' AFM with 6 DOF, but WOE under some aspects could be quite a breath of fresh air.

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/04/25/Navigation/177/204883/Pictures+Pilot+trapped+for+5h+in+cockpit+of+USAF's+new+$135m+F-22A+Raptor+after+canopy.html

I also don't understand why ED spends more time modelling 50k polys tanks and then leaves the AI with huge flaws. That gives the flank to the critics who says that lomac sucks compared to other sims except for eye-candy and AFM. If you don't want to implement AI or dynamic battles why not switch to civilian sims?

thanks SK, you're my source of reputation ;) :D Maybe later I'll upload my googleearth bookmarks, so you can all enjoy most of the former "Central Front" bases.

Hi Mbot, I remember you once asked me my googleearth bookmarks. You still want them? I mapped a lot of NATO and former Soviet bases.

:D

uuuuuhhhh, Severomorsk and Polyarny are also online... shame that's so dark over there!

Some AAMs can pull up to 30G, AFAIK. If you search on the Internet maybe you can have more precise data. The Phoenix was inteded since its early stage ("A" version) to be employed against ASM/SSMs. In the first test one of the drones was simulating such a threat. Of the six targets 5 were shot down, the sixth ceased to simulate the RCS of the intended target and the Phoenix lost track. Even if the Phoenix can engage fighters it was not designed to do that, so it's not believable that it can intercept a highly maneuvrable fighter turning at corner speed or pulling a lot of Gs. And also remember that 17Gs are high, but also speeds are higher in the Phoenix, so even at 17G the turn radius is probably wider than a fighter doing 9G at 400 kts.

GoogleEarth has updated Germany and UK high-res photos, so you can see many of the former (and present) airbases out there, to see what they look(ed) like. Unfortunately many got levelled and are barely recognizable... for example Wildenrath has a nice road/railroad oval running thru... Bitburg, the former "nest of eagles", home of the awesome 36th TFW, is now home for any boor car-tuner... Altenuburg-Nobitz has two lakes nearby which I'm not sure they were there when Fulcrums were operating.... Anyway, enjoy the ride! ;)

How could you ever see panic on the deck from several thousand feet? Phoenix were intended to shoot down bombers at standoff range. No Phoenix was ever fired at bombers, they were just fired at fighters, which are not their intended targets. And Iranians got some kills anyway even against fighters. ;)

being about phantoms, all I can say is that they had some phun. pharewell phantom ;)