Leaderboard

On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world. They, Succeeded Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it TOPGUN! What is it all about? Afraid you won’t be singing in bars and dating civilian flying instructors but you will be flying non-stop Air to Air against a selection of Navy Aggressor A-4s. So, if you have not flown much A-A recently this could be the thing for you with three campaigns set in different years with a selection of Jets to fly. The lesser striped A-4F Mongoose does not take prisoners -- great balls of cheese! The campaigns consist of: Campaign 1 1970 Select from the US Navy / Marines F-4B (1965), F-4B (1967) and F-4J to go up against A-4E aggressors. Campaign 2 1974 Select from the US Navy / Marines F-4J (1974) and F-4N to go up against A-4E aggressors. Campaign 3 1978 Fly the US Navy F-14A (1974) and go up against A-4F Mongoose aggressors. Oh yes and you need to try and survive 20 missions with only about 3 wingmen. Check your six or else an A-4 flown by such celebs as Viper and Jester will blow you out of the sky! The environment This is set over a reworked South West US Terrain and has a NAS Miramar runway layout like the real thing and some very nice looking features. Think Tactically So, as you can see you ideally want to avoid getting sucked into any turning fights and that also applies to the F-14A because the up-engined A-4F kinda cancels out the F-14s better turn ability. Keeping and supporting your AI wingman is a must and is key to dealing with the A-4 hoards and keeping your wingman alive is a must to complete the target of 20 missions. Your wingman is although not the most intelligent of pilots he is also vulnerable to your wayward sidewinder shots and general incompetence in issuing commands. If you have not flown the Mirage Factory F-14 the mod comes with, then there are a few different key presses for the radar and also advise learning how to use the radar (it helps!). Where'd Hollywood go man.......oh there he is - never never leave your wingman! We are the Mods The music it comes with is ace and (thank god) not a sign of “Lead me on” by Teena Marie. Those who had the soundtrack might still have flashbacks to some of the tracks on it. Anyway no need to touch the music or the terrain. I am using Starys SARCASM mod in this for environmental effects and also some Top Gun themed 1080 menu screens by Viper63a. The screens can be simply dragged into the Menu and Flight mod folders depending – also remembering to rename them to the correct file name so they show. You can of course change whatever else suits you for the environment you wish to replicate. Here Viper is telling me how my name will never be on the Top Gun trophy after losing all my wingmen in about 3 missions. Starting a campaign Important here suggest setting Campaign Difficulty as normal, and set Weapon Supply to Unlimited otherwise you will be down to AIM-9Bs by about mission 5. My first several campaigns had a distinct theme of running out of wingmen Do you think your name is going to be on the trophy? – You will need a lot more than ego to beat Viper and his souped up A-4 The F-14A took a while to get used to and best to use its advantages of radar with IFF. I have only used AIM-7Fs in these campaigns and do advise taking out the bad guys BVR if you can. With the F-4s you have less advantages but again playing to your strengths will allow you to prevail. Every now and then a cargo plane takes off on its flight to Hong Kong full of Rubber Dog s***. If you screw up just this much you might be on the next flight.

June 15, 2018 Update: Several planes and airships added, including the mid-war Schütte-Lanz types 6 to 11, Zeppelin Q class and British R.23 type airship (all player-flown), the Spad A.2 110hp and "retrofitted" 80hp variants, the Lebed 7 (unlicensed Tabloid copy), an obscure, lower-compression 210-220hp variant of the Spad 7 possibly flown by Rudolf Windisch, a very rare Nieuport 16 for the eastern front (possibly DUX-built), lower-flying Zepps and R.23 type airships for the GroundObjects folder, new fire, explosion, and gun fire and smoke effects, reworked snow and rain effects by Stary, high- and low-variant cloud effects, new ambient sounds (more subtle), and other tweaks as explained in the included "Read Me" file. Please look over that file, and the included pic. of the ver. 9.5 FM updates, for more info. regarding what's new. Happy flying, Von S

The guys are doing Sterling work on the R.11 files, while I work on the skins. Progress shots below.

Aero S-107 'Brawny-A' - 24th Bomber Regiment, Czechoslovak Air Force, 1970

Uncensored International Version: Censored US Version:

View File Su-33 SKINS and INIs This is only Skins, cockpit and inis. THERE are NO aircraft LODs (aircraft 3d model). This pack is only for persons who are lucky to have Su-33 aircraft. installation: 1. Back up your Su-33 previouse files and delete Su-33 folder from your mod folder. 2. Extract the archive, and place files in your mod folders at their places as usual you do. 3. Copy files SU-33.LOD and SU-33-001.LOD from your back up in your just installed Su-33 folder. Rename if needed. ====================================== Used files: Sea Flanker cockpit 1.0 By YEYEYE (approved by Erik, October 22, 2014) ================================= New Skins: 1nd Squadron Eagles of 279 KIAP 2nd Squadron Tigers of 279 KIAP Su-27K Shenyang J-15 Prototype Gray Shenyang J-15 Prototype Serial Shenyang J-15 Prototype Yellow Old Skins: None Best regards, bazillius. Submitter bazillius Submitted 06/15/2018 Category Other  

Just came across this, and thought I would share it.

'Brawny-B'

Fifteen years later (1987) I showed up at Andersen at the 6Oth Bomb Squadron, 43d Bomb Wing, Andersen AFB, a brand-new second lieutenant fresh out of EW training. The briefing room in the picture still looked the same as I remember it. I had heard whispers about the great Andy revolt against the CINC, and how they literally chased his ass off base during Linebacker, but have never heard the real story until just now... I had a hard time believing us crewdogs actually did that to a four-star...

Roger, got them both. Prodding and poking now. Thanks too to Stephen for that info. The Lebed 7 looks great. Will give it a whirl when the TE wears me out.

Thank you Wrench for your time and that info. Ok it looks like I need to learn more of tga files. RB3D was much simpler but not as satisfying graphically. I have collected all the mod tools here at CA but haven't used them all yet. I have all the cat files saved from Verdun and Cambrai. I have a lot to go over. Heading off to collect Cuba and I will certainly take up your offer when I know what question to ask next. I am assuming the 3W terrain editor is over at 3W, if not that will be my next question. Come, Toto, it looks like a big adventure ahead of us.

one of the reasons that learning and using, even with it's flaws and (sometimes) difficulty in use, is the stock 3W terrain editor. Not only allows the quick and easy addition of new tiles, but automatically generates the necessary TFD, HFD and _data inis. Then, it's a simple matter to copy/paste the newly added tiles statements to the data ini, and TFD & HFDs into the terrain under construction. BE ADVISED: back up the original _data. ini, and the TFD and HFD before doing anything!! There's no automatic save in the TE or the TFD tool. You make a mistake, you eat it. I find the TFD tool less than useful for creating and modifying full terrains. Oh, its good for viewing, and maybe carving a river valley through a mountain, but overall ... to the questions: not all terraformers included all the tile necessary for their terrains, especially the very early 1stGen versions. That's because they reference them from one of the main terrain cats. (one of the reasons I include ALL tiles in ALL my terrains. Then you only have to worry about terrain objects. Also referenced from "main cats") all tiles from all the 3W games are in bmp and tga formats (we won't discuss the format changes right now), and are stored within the varying terrain cat files (ie: wwiverdun.cat). You will one of the cat extractors, and just pull everything out of the cat. Store it someplace (relatively safe) You will need the data ini, as you need that to add the new tiles too. Unfortunately, you'll also need the textruelist.ini for the terrain you're working on. Odds are, there won't be one. Which means you need to create one using that function in the TE, and following the numeric listing from the data ini. If you're trying to make a "swampy" or party flooded region, with patchy water or patchy dry land, you'll have to make tga's for those. The best example, visually, are those I created for the Everglades on the Cuba OTC map. So, more questions, ask and I'll try to answer.

'

The battle of bulge continue...