Starlight

Are you sure? http://www.eflightmanuals.com/detail/itemList.asp?page=3&CategoryGroupID=4 NAVAIR/NATOPS manuals should have all what you need to make a good simulation (unless you really are a pilot or WSO). I found somewhere the F-18E/F NATOPS manual and it has tons of info. I don't care that much because I don't like that aircraft, but that's another matter. The NATOPS manual rocks! I also have some F-16 MLU manuals (with HUDs and radars screens and info), and operator's manuals for some US helos.

not a good idea to have super-thirsty jet aircraft today http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20051010/ts_usatoday/oilrichcountriestapintonewpoliticalpower

Chinese and Taiwanese aircraft are almost copies and mixes of existing A/C designs. The Taiwanese Ching Kuo is almost a mix of F-20, F-17, F-18, while the Chinese J-10 seems a cut-and-paste of F-16, Eurofighter, Gripen and F-20 (the Gripen itself is also similar to the F-20). That is pretty common, especially where R&D is mainly carried out by agents and not scientists ;)

Yes, but you should also consider that DECM is not the only ECM form in EW. Active jamming is another form, and is much more powerful than DECM, because it's very high-powered and it could also be pre-emptive. EW aircraft are usually pre-briefed on the kind of threats they could find on a mission, and EW suites are properly tuned to match the threats. While not being the definitive resource, a good idea can be found on the novel Red Storm Rising, where you see formations of Soviet attack/recon aircraft playing cat-and-mouse with US CVBGs. Also the boardgame Harpoon 4 (and its PC counterpart Harpoon3) have a rough simulation of EW. I don't know if fighter aircraft are suited to pick up (and properly classify) enemy jammer signals. But EW and ESM aircraft can, and it's just one of their jobs. The problem with radio signals (jammers included) is that they can be passively noticed 1.5 times further the range they're useful at. Maybe more. That means that a radar that has a maximum range of 100 miles, can be electronically spotted at about 150 miles. Many variables can affect this value, but this is just to give an idea about why fighter aircraft are not always fighting with their radar turned on and with full voice comms.

So, is there anybody here who knows how to suppress the terrain camera restrictions in Flaming Cliffs?

no the Tornado skin is completely different and more detailed in Lomac. It has both sides (left/right) and both surfaces (up/down). In the Tomcat the wing has just one skin for left/right/top/bottom.... so you can't do really good camo skins.

It's not very precise yet. Also because the F-14 skin in Lomac is not tailored for camouflaged schemes, so I must figure some things out. And I also wasn't following the original photo, I was using a decal/paint sheet from TwoBobs. colors seem a bit different... The number 11 instead of 31 is mandatory, because the right side of the fuselage skin is just the mirror of the left side :( Please also notice the Flanker-like painted radome and tail and the white outline to simulate the Flanker silhouette.

Hi, and what about this feature on 1.1? I've only found and modified "CameraTerrainRestriction = 0;" in view.cfg but I can't find anything in view.lua, and in the game it doesn't work. What should I do to get the camera down to the ground? thanks, M.

for a pirated version of Lomac: LockOn: contemporary combat aviation :) but the whole sentence is great: "sequential add- it to game LockOn: "contemporary combat aviation" http://world.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ru_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ogl.ru%2fpc%2f8141%2flib%2fread%2f1021974918%2f I love online translators, they've really got a great humour!

Yes but Naturalpoint shipped my FC copy 6 minutes after I placed my order. I still have the email that prove it. I waited for months before buying FC, I don't care about the week it took to get from US to Italy. I paid no customs duties here. So I paid FC about half than what I'd have paid it @ SimWare. IMO, Naturalpoint rulez!

I also ordered my copy of 1.1 at Naturalpoint and I must say they're wonderful. It was shipped within few MINUTES (!!!!) after placing the order and I received it in just one week (I live in Italy). It works fine, no problems like LockonGold. And another good thing is that I paid it just $ 28.00 USD, about 22 euros, while at Simware, an European company, costs about 40 euros included shipping. Thumbs up for NaturalPoint! ;)

It would have been a great waste of money... a Patriot missile costs millions of $, the ball used in that penalty was sold for some thousands pounds as a souvenir ;) Don't know who paid such a crazy sum for simple ball.

The Patriot was designed mainly as an AA weapon. The poor results in 1991 against Scuds (*), suggested the Pentagon to fund new Patriot variants especially designed to counter ballistic missiles. The ABM treaty prohibits any development of ABM weapons, but the Soviets integrated into their SA-10 missiles (which are officially AA SAMs) a good ABM capability. I guess PAC-3 is also an answer to the ABM capability of the SA-10. One of the problems while using mixes of aircraft and SAMs to counter enemy air activities is that of fratricide kills. There are new interpretations of Arab aircraft losses in the 1973 and 1982, that suggest that large numbers of aircraft were not downed by Israelis but from friendly fire coming from SAM sites. Modern tactics usually include SAM-free corridors, SAM belts, no-fly zones together with standard comms and IFF systems... but the experience with OIF (where Anglo-American forces had complete air superiority) tells that these tactics are still far from being perfect. I still can't understand why in a similar situation a SAM battery engaged friendly aircraft.... (*) In 1991 the Patriot was deployed in the Gulf as an AA defense weapon. The use against the scud was tried as a last-ditch measure, since preemptive action was unsuccessful. The 1991 Patriot performance however were degraded by some silly software/hardware bugs: I found this article while searching some material for my numerical analysis course at University: http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html it's a bit frustrating to discover how a million dollar missile can malfunction and cause tens of dead just because of the improper use of a 24 bit registry.

Well, anyway we were talking about air combat, so about AAMs. Even the -120C is fitted with a warhead, so kinetic kills happen because missile controls have been improved. That is exactly what I said in my post ;) Patriot PAC-3 is one of the few kinetic killers, but we don't know its PK. And AFAIK is a kinetic killer because one of its tasks is to counter weapons like ballistic missiles, which fly in a predictable path. I can't imagine a PAC-3 hitting a fighter maneuvering at high G's. I think that is the reason why even the most modern AAMs still have warhead and fuzes (-120C and -9X included). No warhead means that missing an aircraft by just one foot, you cause no damage at all. A fuzed-warhead equipped missile exploding within just one foot off the target is bound to cause catastrophic damage. Sure fuzing tech has been improved, as well as ECCM and missile controls, and that results in improved probability of hit, more direct hits, and overall improved lethality. The reason why Pentagon wanted a more precise/powerful Amraam, probably is that they want to *kill* an aircraft with a $300,000 missile. One shot one kill. While you fight against Air Forces equipped with just a pair of aircraft squadrons, you can allow to use more than one missile to shoot down an aircraft, but if you're outnumbered, each missile must be treated like a silver bullet. Yet each PAC-3 missile costs about $ 4 million, which IMHO is something really crazy. Even more crazy if you think that during OIF there were several engagements against friendly aircraft, resulting at least in one F-18 downed, and in a HARM-damaged Patriot battery.

Even if LockOn could simulate all the 1,000 switches and modes of the Mig-29, if you had a 1,000 button HOTAS controller configured on your PC, this doesn't mean that the real aircraft has HOTAS technology! In that case HOTAS would just be on your PC! I never flew any combat jet, but from the reports that I read, I understand that the earlier Fulcrums have not full HOTAS commands, so if you're in a fight and you need to set up a missile attack you have to play with some switches in the cockpit. And if you're pulling G's while pursuing a desperate Falcon pilot pulling himself 9 G's, that's not an easy thing to do. And even in BVR, US fighters, AFAIK, are more point-and-shoot (like digital cameras) than the older Russian build counterparts. Keep in mind that BVR engagements don't last so long so you don't have much time to play with switches... More modern Russian aircraft like the Mig-29M or latest Flanker versions incorporate such technology. I think this is one of the main "technology gaps" which many aviation articles refer to when talking about "F-16 vs Mig-29" topics.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with an F-16 pilot and he told me that (referring to the Sidewinder) direct kills happen but it's not for that purpose that they are built. Missiles (at least like -9L/M) are just "carriers" for their fragmentation warhead, and they have a proximity fuze which make the warhead detonate when the weapon is close to its target, sending shrapnel against it to shred its airframe. He told me that a Sidewinder hit is more something like a burst from a large shotgun. Obviously such a shrapnel burst on an airframe packed with fuel, electronics, wires, hydraulics and so on can have a tremendous effect. It doesn't take that much to cause a fireball in the sky. And if the blast is very close, the HE warhead blast can take its toll too. However kinetic kills are not so common and current AAMs are not configured for that purpose. You should note that every US AAM (AIM-7,-9,-54,-120) has proximity fuzes which detect when the target is within lethal range to detonate the HE/blast fragmentation warhead. If they were kinetic killers they wouldn't need all these things. The same pilot told me that Sidewinders against bigger aircraft like F-15, F-14 and Su-27 wouldn't be able to inflict tremendous damage, at least unless they score a very close hit in a critical zone. (he also told me about a story of a US aircraft damaged by a friendly Sidewinder hit which made it back home) I don't know much about the AMRAAM, but while active radars usually have a high-PRF, their "image quality" should still be inferior to that of the IR-wavelength. So I won't be surprised if Amraam hits would be even more "proximity" hits than Sidewinders, meaning that they need a larger warhead. But that's just my speculation. If the article about the Serb Mig-29 is true, then there would be evidence that an Amraam hit can be not enough to shoot down a quite small fighter like the Mig-29. Keep in mind that the Amraam will equip front line US fighters for a while and many potential enemies of US aircraft fly Flanker versions, which are much larger than the Fulcrum. For that complaint of the US DoD, I've read about it on an aviation magazine, in the mid 90s, which I'm not sure I can find out again.... it was in a news article so I'd have to read some dozen issues before finding it.... Some years ago the Amraam contractors had a new funding to improve ECCM, jamming resistance and control system. The smart way, seems not to add warhead, but to make the weapon more precise. However there's already an example of larger warhead applied to AAMs. The Israeli Python and Shafrir, are basically very similar to US Sidewinders, but carry a much larger warhead to inflict deadly damage on the target aircraft. The idea is that, if an enemy aircraft is hit by a larger warhead it simply can't live to fight another day.

some more info Acig: http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_380.shtml F-16.net http://www.f-16.net/f-16_news_article607.html flight-level.com http://www.flight-level.com/dogfight/dirk.html http://www.flight-level.com/dogfight/peric.jpg PS: GGTharos, the original thread (http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/archive/index.php?t-6123.html) is serious or to make people laugh? :) Those questions deserve the first place in the "Aviation Newbie" contest... I can't bear those forums where aviation is treated like ufology or conspiracy theories... 1) I have heard PAF shot down Israeli F-15 while it was overflying Pakistan from India 2) Israeli mercenaries flew in Africa in support of South Africa and Ethipia in regional conflicts. 3) Russia sent AWACs to India in 1971 war with Pakistan- and used this against pakistan 4) US F-117 shot down over serbia was shot by MiG-29 5) In Gulf War, US used `accidents' to cover up many air losses- they accept 40 odd losses, actual losses may be over 100. 6) Israel lost over 20 planes in 1982 to Syria in air combat- western accounts have always maintained 0-2 for years.

The reaction time of the MiG-29 pilot was probably a bit higher than what expected, mainly for these reasons: - the amraam didn't give so much warning, so between it went active and impact it was probably a matter of few seconds. LockOn teaches that TWS doesn't give any amraam launch indication. - the mig-29A, despite being an aircraft with wonderfulf flight characteristics, is not full-HOTAS-equipped and is not so much user-friendly. Even if you read the full report of German Mig-29As against US Falcons, you see that the Fulcrums were a bit better maneuvering in some envelopes (low speed, knife range) but the Germans quickly admitted that setting up the switches for a missile attack took much more time than in the F-16. And maneuvering is just one part of the fight. Next you have to fire you missiles ;) - NATO had achieved air superiority, there were AWACS monitoring the sky, and even if there were some misunderstandings between fighter pilots and controllers, the surprise factor was much more in NATO's hands. Another thing that arises here is that (like I stated in another post, but no one believed me...) the Amraam has often failed to be a real mig-killer, despite its good hit percentage. Ok all aircraft hit were at least forced to head home (the luckiest), but I remember reading that since its earliest operational use (1992-Iraq), the Amraam was criticized by US DoD because its warhead was not sufficiently powerful to inflict lethal damage on bigger fighter aircraft (like Su-27 and Mig-31 I think). Remember the Fulcrum is a small fighter, even if it's twin-engined. The story reported on that article is obviously filled with propaganda. But also US and NATO use propaganda too. Those who have some knowledge can filter articles like this and still get some interesting info. I hope that this thread doesn't get politic. GGTharos offered a good article from the technical point of view, don't try to hijack it. I understand that some wounds from that war are still open. I live a few kilometers from Venice, Italy, and I remember that war as well, because when it broke out I heard jets returning from operations over former Jugoslavia and because in 1999 I was bound to enter the military (at that time we still had one year of mandatory service). So I wasn't happy that a war broke out a few hundred kms from home, as I'm not happy when I hear that a war breaks out somewhere in the world. And I hope no one here likes war too... PS: I think I recorded some real footage of F-16s shooting down the four Super-Galebs over Bosnia, many years ago. As soon as I find that cassette and a working VHS player I will rip to divx and I'll put it online.

Hi, I don't know if this was posted before... anyway here's a TPC (tactical pilotage chart) for the well-known region: [WARNING : 500+ KB, so it'll take a while on 56K connections!] http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/abkhazia_tpc92.jpg

100% agree with you AI improvement for computer-controlled aircraft should definitely be given TOP priority, even before adding new models and new AFMs. Present situation doesn't allow for any serious single player missions, in particular A/G missions. Attack runs are ludicrous. Same goes for SEAD missions. If they're going to offer Lomac to the military for FAC training, I seriously doubt any Army/Air Force would just consider buying it, since no attack run in RL is even similar to those in Lomac. If SimHQ/Leadpursuit reviews are correct, F4:AF should be light years ahead of Lomac in this field.

"HLA compliancy is being integrated" Wow! If I remember correctly HLA is an acronym for High Level Architecture, which is a standard for military simulation. It allows a layered design for a scalable and flexible approach to simulation. I heard about it during a simulation course at my University, there was a lesson entirely dedicated to HLA. Seems ED is going to do serious things... hope that we can get better IA soon in our "desktop applications" :)

Well, the Russian Carrier has not a really huge AirWing, so I don't think there are a lot of landings to sustain. In the previous photos posted in this Forum you can see on the deck just 2 Su-33 and 1 Su-25 (UB, TM, -39?). I know that arresting wires are changed every X landings on US carriers, and also aircraft hooks are changed after Y landings. I don't remember actual values for X and Y, I'll make a brief search. Maybe here they used older wires, which broke with the higher tempo of real ops. It's a shame because the Su-33 is a beautiful but rare aircraft. Hope the pilot is ok.

That means that LockOn 1.2 will simulate at least 3 modern aircraft which are active with less than a dozen airframes in flying conditions :) New title coming up: "LockOn 1.2 : Rare Aircraft"

They didn't prepare for the real traffic too. I went to that airshow soon after posting that message. I arrived in time but car parkings were full, and there was a "service unavailable" also there ;) I managed to park my car somewhere in the crop fields and I got to Rivolto AB by bike and on foot (about 6 km) like good'ol spotters used to do. I lost the first shows (Eurofighter and half of the Dutch F-16) but the Eurofighter made another in the late afternoon. The airshow was absolutely great and the static display was also excellent. I took some 660 photos (I'll publish my "DACO" soon... who read a DACO book will understand...) and I also shot some videos. Just to give an idea, the live display featured the main European aerobatic teams (from Italy, Spain, UK, France, Sweden and others), Eurofighter, Tornado, AMX, Draken, F-16, C-27, Mi-24 Hind and many others. The static display instead featured F-16s (many versions), a German F-4F Phantom II Tornadoes and most of the aircraft which flew in the airshow. At the TV I heard that there were about 200,000 people, maybe even more (some said 400,000... seem exaggerated but there was really A LOT of people!!!!)

http://www.aeronautica.difesa.it/SitoAM/index.asp?idsez=1010&idente=1529 at this url you could watch an Italian airshow. There are aerobatic teams from throughout the world, plus Eurofighter and other aircraft. It's live streaming and should last from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm (GMT+1)