RAF Kestrel GR1 & GR3 Pack by Cocas - V2.0 V2.0

************************ Royal Air Force Kestrel GR1/3 for STRIKE FIGHTERS 2 V2.0 ************************

Due to technical internet issues Cocas has asked me to release this for him as he's unable - This is the V2.0 update of Cocas and Spinners fantastic "Sea Kestrel" pack and is a fairly comprehensive overhaul of the original pack with almost everything either new or improved! This pack includes all the Effects, Weapons and Sounds required to run on a standalone setup but it has only been tested on an Full 5 Merged setup.

Installation

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Unzip then copy and paste the Effects/Flight/Objects/Sounds folders into your Mod folder (usually C:\Users\YOUR NAME\Saved Games\ThirdWire\StrikeFighters2 **or whatever yours is called**).

AIRCRAFT

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Aircraft Specific Info -

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Kestrel GR1 ('87 - '05) - Designed for the RAF as a purely ground attack aircraft alongside the the Royal Navy's Sea Kestrel FRS.1 it had the Radar removed and had the new Angle Rate Bombing System (ARBS) fitted instead but was otherwise virtually identical in performance. The 4 RAF Squadrons equipped with the GR1 were given different paint jobs to reflect their different areas of speciality with 1F & 20R Sqns painted Green for Central Europe, 3F Sqn painted in White/Green winter camo for Northern Europe and 4F Sqn in Desert sand for the middle East.

Kestrel GR3 ('06 - '20) - This massive upgrade saw everything from the engine to weapons to the avionics all hugely upgraded, especially the weapons. It included a new Nose mounted FLIR camera with RWR and the ability to carry the more advanced weapons that the RAF had developed. All 4 Sqns returned to a Grey paint job for the GR3.

OTHER INFO

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Issues -

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ARBS - I've tried to be tricky here and made the ARBS system a laser designator but with no range. You'll need to fit some LGB's to see it working but if you want to actually drop LGB's then you'll need to add a separate Laser Pod to do the guiding. It does look pretty cool though!

Hovering is quite difficult at 1st. With a fuel weight of under 25% and no weapons you can hover at around 55% thrust but without a working Nozzle gauge it's difficult to tell where your nozzles are pointing, especially as the 3D model nozzles stop moving at only 40' visually! My recommendation is to apply fully forward nozzles (98.5') and then slowly move it backwards until the engine exhaust dirt looks like it's pointing at 90' but it's not ideal (see Alternate Cockpit below).

The mapping is "interesting" in some places with stretching, especially on the 2 Booms. The 3F skin (winter Camo) was really tricky, so much so that I wanted to punch a thousand cute kittens by the end after spending hours/days trying to get the edges to match up! So sadly it's not as good as I'd like but the PS templates are out to so hopefully you can improve on my skin.

*******If you find any issues or find that I've got something wrong please contact me on CombatAce - http://combatace.com/user/64030-ianh755/ *******************

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Alternate Cockpit Usage (for Advanced Users only) -

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Included in this pack is Bobrocks fantastic Harrier AV-8B cockpit which, as it includes important Nozzle info, makes hovering much easier. However the Cockpit is more limited in comparison to the Kestrel (F-23/29) version so, if you're not bothered about trying to hover that much, I'd stick to the original Cockpit. Installation is simply dropping the Cockpit folder with it's 2 ini's into your A/C and altering the aircraftname.ini to point to the 2 new ini's. I'd make a backup before you though just to be safe! Please use at your own risk, if you don't know how to alter ini files then please don't attempt to install the new cockpit in case you break something!

THANKS

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Massive thanks to Cocas for creating the 3D model and patiently modifying it everytime I asked for any/every crazy little thing!

Spinner for his fantastic work with the original Pack.

Dels for creating his superb F-23/F-29 cockpit used here with his kind permission.

Bobrock for creating his amazing AV-8B cockpit used here with kind permission.

Ravenclaw007 for the stunning weapons he makes and I continue to enjoy using.

Spillone104 for his Improved Afterburner Effects.

The Various Modders who've made the Pilots and Seats which I used from my install but sadly I can't find out who you are to give full credit (please PM me and I'll update this with your name) but I think its' EBurger68, ChrisBV, Ravenclaw007 and EricJ

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Have fun and thanks for Downloading.............................................IanH

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