Leaderboard

'Grey Dragon' 2004

Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IIA

sticker time!

Thanks, Stratos, yes I really enjoyed it, I have been locked in Kuwait for almost 2 years. It was nice to change the scenery from just going back and forth between home and work.

well, moving on to the main event. think this will do for now while i get the actual paint jobs and stickers on here v2k has got alot more details in the new one i will tell you all that.

Somewhere Out There... Earth Tracking Station... 'Uh, Bob, can you come over and take a look at my scope? I'm picking up something I've never seen before...' 'Sure lets take a look...Holy sh...!'

"Guns! Guns! Guns!.. Splash one MiG-29!"

Hawker Hunter FGA.9B - No.45 Squadron, RAF Strike Command, 1974

Stirling Service

BAC Lightning F.7A - No.5 & No.11 Squadrons, RAF Strike Command, 1983 Skin Credit: MacGalin

No i mean RAF variant.with those beautiful elbams.the file that was uploaded in download section was belong to DHMR.... TNX friends....!

I would mention Star Citizen, but it's still basically in development. But like daddyairplanes I believe there is life out there, they just haven't found us or we haven't found them yet.

I love this setting, Denissoliveira great Mirages fighting each other over Libyan-Egyptian border in summer 1977... Wish this terrain had some roads! Or even better, a full revamp!

Back home from vacation.

Cut him a slack, he's so happy he didn't realize it was in the download section. Just kidding @kurdistan1

Navy doing their things over Central America and Cuba...

For WW1 games (and just about any other type of game), there are lots of miniatures available on Shapeways: 3D Printing Service in various scales. The models tend to have a bit of a rough texture, but overall the detail and shapes are correct.

My 1/350 miniatures for Birds of Prey.

The problem with MiG-19s is that by the numbers, they were exceptional aircraft. Low drag, high power-to-weight. Then because of the swept wing (rather than a lower aspect ratio delta or trapezoidal used by Mach 2 fighters), it is inherently more agile, too. Compared to the MiG-21, it has only two weaknesses: top speed and stability/control at transonic/supersonic speeds. My question is this: if the MiG-19 was so good, why did the Soviets dump it like a hot potato in favor of the mostly inferior MiG-21? One big issue with the MiG-19 is Soviet service was that it was flat out dangerous. It could explode in mid flight. Pilots hated it. Also, the USSR, like the USA, was bitten by the speed is life bug and also needed to potentially intercept supersonic bombers, so the MiG-21 was the better short range/high altitude interceptor. Consider the fact that China kept the MiG-19 and derivatives of it operational for decades. They worked out the kinks and thought it was a great platform. But look at its combat record in Vietnam. The MiG-19 was only used in small numbers, so you can't draw very good conclusions. But I will say this, despite having fantastic performance, the Vietnamese pilots didn't care for the MiG-19 very much, or more correctly, the Chinese copies they were flying. Some Vietnamese pilots preferred the agility and guns of the MiG-17, others loved the ability to use MiG-21s to engage and disengage at will with quick Atoll shots on unsuspecting and/or overloaded F-4s and F-105s. Like the USSR, the VPAF found the MiG-19 unreliable. But it was MiG-19s that got Major Bob Lodge, who otherwise most likely would have been the first US ace of the war. They got him because of their tactics and his target fixation, not because of the MiG-19's performance. At the same time, the only supersonic gun kill in history was by an F-4 against a MiG-19. If the MiG-19 was such a fantastic fighter, why didn't it make an impact in the Arab-Israeli wars? First: Israel tended to knock out enemy fighters with pre-emptive strikes while they were sitting on the ground. Second: the one time they were caught with their pants down in 1973, SAMs were the star of the show and the first line fighters were MiG-21s. Many would argue that Arab pilots were not skilled, but if you study the records of both sides, you will find that Egypt had decent pilots, but they were hamstrung by Soviet equipment performance limitations (such as incredibly short range/endurance) and doctrine on top of the exceptionally good planning, training, skill, and luck of the IAF. In DCS World, the flight model is theoretically exceptionally accurate. The F-5E in a 1 vs 1 is essentially helpless against a properly flown MiG-19PF. The MiG-19 is able to turn better, climb better, and accelerate better. The MiG-21bis is only competitive with afterburner. But continuous use of afterburner kills the endurance of the MiG-21. As the MiG-19 is not commonly flown on multiplayer servers, people who know how to fly them can be very successful since almost no one knows how exceptional their ACM performance can be. My conclusion about MiG-19 performance is that flight sims do not properly reflect the problems that kept the MiG-19 from being a popular and successful fighter in reality. In flight sims, a MiG-19 with an accurate flight model IS supposed to be a UFO compared to its contemporaries and even much later aircraft until the advent of the US "teen" series fighters. In much the same way the MiG-17 was a problem in Vietnam, the MiG-19 should have been a problem for "teen" fighters until AMRAAM and the AIM-9L/M/X missiles become common. So, maybe China had the right idea to continue using it in parallel with MiG-21 derivatives. But if flight sims modeled the problems that MiG-19s really had and if you only had one life to lose in flight sims, most people wouldn't fly the MiG-19 despite its UFO performance, because no one wants to fly an aircraft that has a better chance of killing you than the enemy. Now, as it applies to Strike Fighters series games: AI don't use the hard flight model. If you plug in the correct performance numbers for the MiG-19, it will still be a UFO, partly because it really was the good and partly because of the way the AI flight model works. I can say that a skilled pilot flying the MiG-19 in SFP1/WoX mutliplayer was essentially unbeatable by any other aircraft until a patch crippled the MiG-19 a little bit and turned the F-8 Crusader into a magic UFO that could beat all other aircraft. One fact to consider is that in flight sims, focused on the player, 1 vs 1 performance is everything. But in reality, the slightly inferior F4F beat the hell out of the A6M Zero once US pilots learned how to fly as a team. In DCS World, a lone F-5E has little chance against an AI MiG-19 with high pilot quality. But with two player flown F-5Es vs two AI MiG-19s, the odds go in favor of the players if they use good tactics... except that the AI flight model and gunnery skill is even worse in DCS World than it is in SF series games, so sometimes you just can't beat them even if you properly execute the correct tactics. Overall, in SF series games, I never found it necessary to mod the AI enemies. I understood how the AI was flying and could generally beat them. It was actually pleasant to see the AI do something unexpected and beat me every now and then. I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to make the MiG-19 FM better, because the AI doesn't really use the full FM. Learn the vulnerability of the AI's tactics and exploit it, then the FM won't matter as much. SF AI is predominately horizontal turning tactics. Creative use of the vertical, rolling scissors, and "Top Gun" movie style sudden slow down tactics can beat just about any AI no matter how good their flight model is.

Bristol Vincentious B.2 - No.617 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, 1963

@Geary you are still the man when it came to metal skins and doing teh panel lines and rivets on the old Starlifters trying to match you on it, dont know how you had the patience to do it (even with the cheat templates i made to work with rivets) still placing rivets.....

The sun was already up and it was shaping to be a beautiful summer morning in the Med when we were launched as the Alert 5. As we climbed to altitude the controller aboard the E-2C briefed us on the developing situation.. A Libyan Arab Airlines scheduled flight from Benghazi to Damascus had turned left instead of right on clearing Libyan airspace and was now heading west, apparently towards Malta. Was it a hijack, a defection or something else? Our orders were to close in on the airliner and try to find out.. After a few minutes the situation worsened. The airliner wasn't responding to Libyan ATC instructions to return to course or to turn south, back to Libya, and two MiG-25s had been launched in pursuit.. The Hawkeye was trying to put us in between the MiGs and the Airbus, but the Soviet built fighters had picked up speed and the angles were all wrong. Then suddenly we heard an urgent call from the controller on the E-2C. 'He's firing a missile!' The Hawkeye controller was now broadcasting on Guard for the Airbus to take evasive action as the Libyan AA-6 began to track the airliner.. We were cleared to engage and I snapped out the orders, 'I'll take the lead. Two you engage the trailer' We both called Fox 3 as our AIM-54s arced up to track on the Foxbats.. But there was a problem with our missile. 'Looks like we're being spoofed' called my RIO. 'I've lost lock and so has the missile.' I switched to HEAT and went for a lock with my Sidewinders but we were still just out of range. In my headphones I could hear my wingman call Fox 3 and then Fox 1 in quick succession. Another Phoenix and then a Sparrow? Was he having trouble locking on too? After interminable seconds I finally got a Sidewinder lock and called Fox 2, but way too soon there were not one but two explosions and smoke trails ahead.. My wingman had killed both MiGs with his AIM-54 shots! Although his AIM-7 and my AIM-9 would hit the burning targets in the next few seconds they were both already out of the fight. But what about the Airbus? Had it survived the Libyan missile attack? I called the Hawkeye and rolled onto a course towards the airliner. He had radically changed course and altitude, causing the AA-6 to waste fuel and time trying to manoeuvre onto him until it lost lock when the launch aircraft was destroyed. We picked up the airliner at low level south-east of Malta... It didn't answer our calls, but made a single call to ATC at Luqa, Malta that it was commencing a straight in approach and ambulances should meet it as there were wounded aboard. I crossed to the other side of the airliner to give it room as it commenced it's landing run into Luqa, which had already cleared all traffic in anticipation.. We watched it all the way down to the runway.. Then it was back to the boat via a tanker and home in time for breakfast. Maybe we'd read what happened on the airliner in tomorrow's papers...

Buccaneers on a desert strike..

Right in the pickle barrel LOL... Just pickle below the red square and bingo bombs on target.

Been working a bit, the last days, still learning... New Su-15TM

Warm welcome over Britain.

July 1st, 1985... first flight of the prototype of the Mirage 2000CR-01 ! Unknown customer...

I trained with the 35th in Kuwait in 2001. We did a joint live fire with them.

Argentina Vuela 2014 @ Moron Air Force Base, Buenos Aires. Sadly it was one of the last airshows in the country.

Yes @kurdistan1 you are correct. Please accept my apology.