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Some progress on the Vietnam Scooters. Focus lies on A-4E and F (B+C still need Cockpit-Repaint). I'm still not sure yet, how to release a first package...Currently I'm at 46 skins with 1,5GB disk space. VA-56 "Champions", USS Ticonderoga, 1964 VA-152 "Fighting Aces", USS Shangri-La, 1970 VA-106 "Gladiators", USS Forrestal, 1967 VA-55 "Warhorses", USS Hancock, 1968 VA-155 "Silver Foxes", USS Constellation, 1966

War on Drugs... Somewhere over Central America...

On a CAS mission

Grumman F-109A Wildcat - VC-7, United States Navy, 'Red Star' Fighter Weapons School, 1966 During the first USN Carrier Deployments to the Gulf of Tonkin during 1963 and 1964, the USN top brass were appalled by the results of its F-4 and F-8 fighter aircraft during their initial engagements with the Vietnam Peoples Air Force. Whilst the F-8 was a competent enough dog-fighter the handful of F-8 kills were scored with the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile mainly due to the 20mm Colt cannons jamming during high-G manoeuvers. USN F-4's were far less agile than the F-8's and were also handicapped by the official 'Rules of Engagement' requiring visual identification of enemy aircraft before firing the beyond visual range radar-guided AIM-7E Sparrow missiles. Whilst an urgent study into rectifying the situation was launched a senior Royal Navy pilot, Lt Commander Dick Lord, whilst on secondment to the USN's VF-126 squadron at Naval Air Station Miramar, California introduced the USN to methods and tactics he had learned as a graduate of the Royal Navy's intense Air Warfare Instructors School in Lossiemouth, Scotland. First and foremost was structured air-to-air combat manoeuvring training using, wherever possible, dissimilar aircraft and with 'red' aircrew purposefully flying the mission in the style of the enemy. With limited funding, the United States Navy 'Red Star' Fighter Tactics Instructor Program was launched to teach ACM tactics and techniques to selected Naval Aviators and Naval flight officers who would, in theory, return to their operating units as surrogate instructors. 'Red Star' initially used USN A-4 Skyhawks and borrowed USAF T-38 Talons to simulate the flying characteristics of the MiG-17 and MiG-21 and in early 1966 received eight Hindustan Ajeet aircraft directly from Hindustan's Bangalore production line. Entering service as the F-109A Wildcat, the Ajeet's were supported and maintained in USN service by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. In service, the Wildcat's were flown by instructors pilots whose objective was to develop, refine and teach ACM tactics and techniques using the concept of dissimilar air combat training with the Wildcat pilot's replicating the performance of the Russian-built transonic MiG-17 'Fresco'. The eight F-109A's operated as part of VC-7 based at Naval Air Station Miramar from 1966 to 1980 and it's five surviving Wildcat's were scrapped when the squadron was disbanded on September 30th,1980.

Folland Gnat FGA.55 - 1st JaVa, Netherlands East Indies Army Air Division, 1963

South China Sea. Present Day...

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Today we are taking a trip back to 2004, a time when as you can see from the photo above featured PC CDROMs! Before Internet speeds for most were high enough to consider sending entire game files they had to distribute games to people using good old fashioned Compact Disks. The shiny CD came complete with its own (Jewel) case with cover and even a printed manual. As you can see a time when even Thirdwire had to distribute games and make them look like games used to - the manual even tells me to go to http://www.softwarehelpdesk.co.uk/ for technical support…………..ha looks like that domain is up for sale! Looking at the back we can see it even ran on Windows ME with 256MB of RAM! - Yes, I had to look back to remember what Win ME was – the very last of the Win 9x line before Microsoft thankfully ditched that and we got Win 2000 then Win XP. Of course, in 2004 or nearly all of that decade Win XP was the only game in town for home users and it was great for its time. For anybody who had bought Strike Fighters: Project 1, a Vietnam game was a logical and most welcome step forward….a game that recreates the intense air combat experience in the skies of North Vietnam at the height of the air campaign……………..what could be better! The manual lists the Player and AI aircraft, and although the VPAF selection looks fairly complete, the US selection was very limited compared to the later Strike Fighters 2: Vietnam. This was a time when there was hope for the future and many opportunities to modify the hell out of the game and start getting into place the absolute ton of things not included in the box. Terrain & Environment As you might see (from the case) the Terrain that came with WOV wasn’t much better than what comes with one of Thirdwires Phone & Tablet PC games – a pretty poor and unrealistic looking barren wasteland. Unsurprisingly it was not long before modders produced somewhat better tilesets - one of the first I remember and although free was used by Yankee Air Pirate later: The RA-5 Vigilante - does not come with WOV There was a payware tileset for sale at Razbams store at some point – but suffered from having obvious borders and tile edges – also 512 x 512 bitmap files were pretty big at the time but very low res by today’s standards. This later effort includes a version of Starys Green Hell which included a lot more trees for the first time: Vietnam was hell - Green hell! When released WOV also had no clouds either but they were added in a later patch: Low level clouds, gone but not forgotten Game play The North Vietnam Air Force (VPAF) and air defences were quite well set up as part of the terrain, with relevant SAM and AAA models for the era along with relevant AI. The MiGs varied in effectiveness from patch to patch whereas some of the SA-2s had a Kill probability of about 99% - this was rightly toned down somewhat in Strike Fighters 2 (SF2). WOV included an airbourne FAC (Forward Air Controller) role and this was usually represented by an 0-1E Birddog flying over the battlefield (Callsign Snoopy) – this was removed from SF2. The game added Carrier operations for the first time although the carrier was pretty lonely by itself most of the time, and players could only fly off it in campaigns and scripted single missions! The B-52s thought they were safe from Thirdwires lesser spotted MiG-17F Payware There were some options for payware – mostly from Razbam and Yankee Air Pirate – both had air of controversy that I won’t go into here. One of the very few payware aircraft was the A-1 skyraider pack Before the Mission Editor arrived in SF2 you had to create single missions using Notepad basically, quite a time consuming and difficult process. Yankee Air Pirate basically created single missions based on real missions from Vietnam and was quite an important addition for anyone with an interest in that subject. Populated carrier deck Landing and taking off in Hueys from smaller boats like this Shooting down Colts in Hueys Shooting the side gun in Hueys - Get some!. Of course, with scripted missions you can do quite a few things you cannot in auto generated single missions and campaigns! Advance clone army! The VPAF, masters of camouflage Looking back Wings Over Vietnam certainly started out as a fairly serious attempt to put together a decent standalone Vietnam war Air Combat simulator and in that respects, did a pretty decent job, but only if you took time to add a lot of the mods available and change the game yourself. Graphically it was using DX9.0c so was up to date in that regards although again you had to add mods to get it looking to what it should have perhaps been out of the box. F-111A - not included with WOV EB-66 - not included with WOV …………and Here we are at the tail end of 2017 and still no real alternative to WOV and SF2V on the Vietnam War flight sim front.

I am in love with flying again....can't wait for them to finish this thing.

"This is you Captain speaking, thank you for flying the world's most experienced airline." ------ now with matching registration and 'Clipper' name badges (coming soon!)

Speaking of somewhat creative skins...here's another that I will include with the ver. 9.5 FM update pack...to go with a separate data ini for an early/obscure variant of the Spad 7 200-220hp that I've been tinkering with...Rudolf Windisch acquired a captured Spad 7 sometime in Jan. 1918 that he flew occasionally (180hp or higher? no data I could find)...Windisch "disappeared" after being shot down in late May 1918 on the French side of the lines. Those with skinning talents will perhaps create an accurate dragon to put on the sides of the fuselage...I've used Stephen's decals, and others, to improvise. The Hisso 8 sub-variants 8Ad to 8Be range from 210 to 220hp output, the 180hp variant is listed as 8Ab and possibly 8Ac...this gives some room to speculate on what Windisch acquired in early 1918, considering the variety of Hisso variants in use...the Germans did fly some captured Spad 7 types as early as April of 1917...those would have been likely of 180hp...perhaps 150hp only. Von S

Hello Crawford, that was my attempt at a mottled gray-green color...perhaps a factory paint-job gone wrong - while I like to be accurate with the FMs, sometimes I get creative with the skins (color filters, etc.) but within reasonable limits - no pink or neon green aircraft. Regarding the Dux Nieups., the sources I went with were these four...not the best ones probably but they do give me room to include obscure types such as the 16 Dux...although it's possible that the sources confuse the Dux-built Nieu. 11 (that has a headrest) with western-built Nieu. 16 types. Flyingmachines.ru, Historyofwar.org, Aerodrome.com, Wikipedia Nieu. 11 article... Happy flying, Von S

Marine Furies

Vietnamese MiG-29s

Sunday morning on the flight line

In this thread there is a lull, it's time to make "easy modding" by adapting the received WIPs to my old good FE1. God bless Geezer, for his planes fly in the 1st Generation without problems. This requires only the conversion of some files in other formats and minor "cosmetic" changes. But most of the time I had to spend on this Caudron R.11. Even in this incomplete state, the model looks amazing! I entered the correct Node names in the corresponding positions in the DATA.INI file, and the control surfaces started working. Only ailerons for some reason deflected simultaneously in one direction. I quickly realized how to fix it. ... But I really rack my brains over the rear gunner! He obstinately did not want to look back, but only forward. I tried many combinations, but this did not solve the problem. In the end, I found the solution almost by accident. But now the trouble is that, although both shooters now have the necessary viewing sectors, they very rarely attack the enemy. And even if they attack, flashes of their shots appear in the most unexpected positions around the aircraft. And this problem has not been solved yet. I’ll think of it all tomorrow )) Here is my preliminary, raw version of the DATA.INI - maybe someone will be interested. Note. If someone wants to try this, do not forget to rename the aircraft's main folder to CaudronR11 so that the folder's name coincide with the name of the main INI file. CaudronR11.rar

A good foreshortening, Von S... but why is it GREEN ??? It being known that the Nieuport airplanes, manufactured at the Dux Plant, were painted in silver (using coarse-grained matt aluminum-pigmented dope, so they seemed gray compared to the French ones). In addition, Nie.16, like Nie.23, was not produced in Russia.

Think it'll pass for a Seafire?

He's still in the Navy 32 years on and driving a Super-Bug now? Ok... he "Feels the need for... not quite as much speed" Craig

Into Stormy Daniels skies