F-105 campaign missions-running out of fuel

[Foxendown]

I've started a campaign in the F-105 in WOV but I don't seem to have enough fuel to get to the target and back, allowing for a few high speed dashes through enemy defences. Also, for the first mission I can't select drop tanks from the loadout screen. I can get drop tanks for the second mission but they show up as empty on the fuel gauges so I still run out of fuel about 60% through the round trip from Thailand to North Vietnam and back! I'm not sure what I'm missing here. I wondered whether F-105s had to refuel on their way home and, as that feature isn't included in thsi sim, you simply can't make it back. Any advice will be much appreciated.

 

Also the way campaigns work in this sim seems very hard core-you can't save a campaign in progress or skip to the next mission if you miss the target-and if you die the campaign ends and it's back back to square one unless you refly, or is there some workround for this?

[Stwa]

I've started a campaign in the F-105 in WOV but I don't seem to have enough fuel to get to the target and back, allowing for a few high speed dashes through enemy defences. Also, for the first mission I can't select drop tanks from the loadout screen. I can get drop tanks for the second mission but they show up as empty on the fuel gauges so I still run out of fuel about 60% through the round trip from Thailand to North Vietnam and back! I'm not sure what I'm missing here. I wondered whether F-105s had to refuel on their way home and, as that feature isn't included in thsi sim, you simply can't make it back. Any advice will be much appreciated.

 

Also the way campaigns work in this sim seems very hard core-you can't save a campaign in progress or skip to the next mission if you miss the target-and if you die the campaign ends and it's back back to square one unless you refly, or is there some workround for this?

 

 

I am probably not really qualified to answer your question, but this would be my experience from WOV.

 

1. Just like in the real military, the Brass in WOV can come up with some real nightmare missions sometimes.

 

2. You need to make your own assesment if the mission is BS or not.

 

3. If so, you should probably try to make the mission "look good" even though it will result in failure.

 

4. Its not worth it (for you and your wingman) to run out of gas over North Vietnam, just to blow up their hanger or fuel tank.

 

5. Sooo, drop your bombs on an alternate target, and if you are really lucky, down an few Mig's before you return home.

[Foxendown]

5. Sooo, drop your bombs on an alternate target,

 

It's a good thought, but I think you get "mission failed" if you don't hit the allocated target (and you then have to refly at once or the whole campaign fails.....). A better alternative may be to divert to another airbase nearer to the target. Trouble is all the missions in this campaign seem to involve quite long flights (which is realistic I think) but according to one of the few books I have about the Vietnam air war, the F-105 had a range of 2, 070 miles, so it should be able to get there and back, even allowing for some evasive use of AB. I like to fly the whole mission including take off and landing (though I use accelerated time and AP for the uneventful stretches)-if you hit the target and then quit of course you succeed in the mission, even though by then you've definitely not got enough fuel to get home! Maybe this is a modding issue and I need to find out how to change the F-105's fuel load to something more realistic, though if it's wrong I'm surprised it hasn't been picked up before given the age of WOV, so perhaps it is something I'm missing. Does anyone know if I should be switching tanks or something like that?

[Emp_Palpatine]

Use carefully throttle of the F-105 and do not let AI fly it.

F-105 tends to sucks heavily the fuel as soon as you get above 35-40% throttle.

[+DWCAce]

...the F-105 had a range of 2, 070 miles... Does anyone know if I should be switching tanks or something like that?

 

Range often gets confused with combat radius. Range is more for a ferry flight (just going in one direction) whereas combat radius is how far you can go with stores and get back to base (there AND back).

 

Wkikipedia (a notably unreliable source, but it still gives a good example) has, for the F-105D, a ferry RANGEof 2210nm, and a combat RADIUS of 780nm.

 

I don't remember if WOV models the tanks there were carried inside the bomb bay, so you may need to check that (should be listed as an internal tank, and it probably is, TK's good about that). I'm sure some of the modders will chime in on this one with more detailed explanation.

 

In the TW series you don't need to worry about switching tanks, only about jettisoning the ones that are empty :)

 

If I'm doing a full mission, typically I'll take off, and once I'm in the climb, I'll clean up and take it back to MIL power. Climb as high as you can, but not excessively. I'll then go to WING LEVELER and cruise to the waypoints.

 

Hope this helps! :)

[Foxendown]

Thanks for that-good advice. I thought 2, 070 was an absolute max (presumably high altitude subsonic flight) and not realistic for combat. The round trip to North vietnam from Thailand was about 1, 250 miles and having done some quick reading about "Rolling Thunder" I learned that the F-105s refueled on the way in and the way out and were often so short of fuel on the way out that the tanker pilots risked all to refuel them in enemy airspace. So it seems to me that WOV models it right-no A2A refuelling available so you run out of fuel on the way back (assuming that you are flying the mission in a realistic way, passing through defended zones at high speed and using your speed advantage over VPAF interceptors either to show them a "clean pair of heels" or defeat them in combat). So perhaps the best way to simulate the availibility of tankers is by stepping down the difficulty setting for fuel usage from "hard" to "normal" or "easy", so I'll give that a try. For full immersion I feel that you need some way of being able to fly fast and use a lot of AB but still get home, which seems to be the way it happened back in '66.

Edited April 1, 2008 by Foxendown

[+DWCAce]

I think there were alsore reports of the kc-135's towing the thuds for some distance as well because they were so low...

[+JSF_Aggie]

It's a good thought, but I think you get "mission failed" if you don't hit the allocated target (and you then have to refly at once or the whole campaign fails.....)

 

You should only loose a campaign if you die, or if the enemy ground forces capture your HQ. If you're flying the WOV stock campaigns, there are no ground battles.

 

Are you saying you get a campaign loss everytime you fail a mission? I've never seen that before.

Edited April 1, 2008 by JSF_Aggie

[sparkomatic]

Wasnt there, but from everything I have read (Route Pack Six, etc) the real F-105 sorties involved in-flight re-fueling inbound before leaving Thailand and tankers were awaiting their return to Thailand. Read more than one account of a Thud floating in on fumes after leaving RP6...bear in mind that means it had essentially 90% fuel on board when it left the safety of Thailand for roughly a 20 minute there and out to the tankers again...in WOV you are often tasked to make the entire journey on one fuel load whereas in reality they would have used nearly three times that.

 

So, without aerial refueling, it is not all that much fun. There is a way to hack the game into essentially reversing fuel flow at a set throttle position (someone exceedingly better versed in the game mechanics discovered this, NOT me) thus adding fuel while flying, but only at a controlled point (just like aerial refueling). Say you set the hack for 23% throttle, in that case when the throttle was set to 23%, the fuel flow reverses and you gain fuel at an adjustable rate. This allows you to mimic receiving fuel. I used this technique (again, someone else discovered it) and applied it to Starfighter2 most excellent NF-104 (the rocket assisted one) and could thereby extend the range of the jet by essentially adding gas after reaching altitude (which also enabled me to burn all of the fuel in the dash since I could refuel anywhere, but you can impose limits on yourself).

 

Can also get all formal with it and set a tanker in a mission profile, rendezvous / fly formation with it and use the throttle setting you determined in order to add fuel, then off you go to spread democracy.

 

Dont like it? I dont care...just giving you options...you could wait until 3wire implements aerial refueling...or you could just live with it...either way I still dream of Alyssa Milano.

[Foxendown]

Dont like it? I dont care...just giving you options...

 

An interesting one too....there seem to be no limits to the modding you can do to these sims. I think I'll try to live with it though-anyway my attempts at refuelling in LOMAC and F4 usually result in a collision rather than hooking up :-)

 

I was wrong about failing to hit the target ending the campaign (it's early on in my WOV campaign and I keep dying AND missing the target), but I didn't know losing your HQ had that effect too.

[SJPhantom]

First off, There is no Tanker support. I can attest to this because I've done it before. If you've done any reading on the 105's in Vietnam, they tanked pre-strike because takeoff with Max weight sucked an enormous amount of fuel, even with the extra 2000 lbs of thrust they got from water injection. TOT wasn't much help either. If you loitered at all say for a downed pilot or missed your target or for whatever reason your TOT was lengthened, rest assured, you had better have a Tanker somehwere.

 

Excellent references for 105 missions in North Vietnam are "Thud Ridge" by Jack Broughton, and Rasimus's books..especially "When Thunder Rolled".

 

Oh and Migs and 105's....sure, the Thud was able to get one once in a while, but Rasimus in particular would tell you to stay away from them, they will eat a 105 alive.