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Kamchatka Patrol............

Over Hokkaido, Japan

Keeping the British end up...

For most aircraft that's real damage. For the hog that's a nose bleed. She's a bad ass triple redundant tank with huge teeth. Fairchild built one hell of a platform and to think that the ole hog was developed in the early 70's, in-serviced to the military in '77, and still actively flown today makes her in a league of her own. Go get a cup of coffee and remember to breath and relax when removing the seat cushion from your backside.

That, but also OKB Sukhoi themselves in that they used the Su-35 designation more than once. Su-35 designation was first given to a Su-27M test version, i.e. a series of models to test an upgraded version of the basic Su-27. That first Su-35 had canards, but never entered serial production due to lack of finance and orders from the government. Then the Su-35 designation was re-used in the last few years for the latest model, that actually entered service and has no canards.

That the PM could be the MF i doubt. Because the MiG-21 came in 4 generation. The first generation was a daylight fighter without radar. The second generation was designed as interceptor with radar. The P was the symbol of that generation. It stands for perekhvatchik, interceptor. The third generation was multi role capable. Thatswhy the M for export models and S (saphire) for soviet used versions. The bis was the 4th generation. I think the PM is a never existing version, like the PFMA, which you find often in the literature, but not in reality. The PFL i found in Gordons book. I think he is wrong, because he cant tell us for what the L should stand. Topeczer repeated only what Gordon wrote. Why i say that? Because all letters have a meaning. P stands for radar equipment, F for stronger engines, S either for SPS System (border layer blowing system) or Saphire radar. T stands for more fuel (toplivo), -13 for equipment with K-13 missile. FL means "Frontline". The single letter L has no meaning. It could have been used for "light" (lyokhki), but the plane Gordon mentioned was not lighter that the average MiG-21PF. It was a little bit heavier. The V has a meaning, it stands for vetnamski (vietnamised) and was an indication for improved corrosion protection and additional protection against water and wet weather conditions (for instance the cooling slots in the radar cone were sealed). Gordon wrote, that the designation PF-V is wrong and was never used. And he is right. The designation was PFV, without "-". In russian laguage it is written so: МиГ-21ПФВ.

Then a pair of Flankers appeared from behind a hill, and wanted a slow-speed, low-level dogfight..... How often does a Flanker leave you with a gun solution from dead astern?

This was supposed to be a simple Armed Recon mission....truck busting with a Harrier. Not so tough, right?

Since Stary kindly remembered me in the "tree planting" thread of my promised TOD Editor, I want to apologize for the (very) long delay. Shortly after I made the proof of concept of custom shaped tod objects another (Real Life) project took over: planning and building our house. Therefore in the last one and a half year I didn't have that much time and energy for modding/programming activities. Now we finally live in our new house and I recently resumed my modding/programming activities. This is my roadmap for 2018: 1) LOD Exporter for blender: Currently I'm working on a LOD Exporter for blender. It's in an early stage. Mesh export seems to work but only uses color information yet, no textures, no bump maps, no animation, ... . 2) Updating LOD Viewer and Target Area Editor Besides implementing new features I plan to switch to the OpenSceneGraph library for 3D visualizing instead of pure OpenGL. It will reduce the programming effort in the future and also brings other benefits. 3) TOD Editor Maybe I will implement it as an extension of the Target Area Editor, I'm not sure yet. The use of the OpenSceneGraph library should give me the capability to import several 3D file formats that OpenSceneGraph supports (instead of writing the file importer myself) and let me convert them to TODs.

More "Heavy Metal" although it's 1 ton lighter than a P-47D-40, with both at typical clean combat weight.

Light Non-metal Wonder ;-)

Heavy Metal Thunder

Commonwealth and BPF Corsairs