Caesar

I personally haven't figured out how to get the game to stop deleting modified .ini's of stock aircraft - seems to happen at random. However, I found a workaround is to make a separate folder with your modified aircraft/data/avionics.ini's so that if the game reverts or deletes the ones in your mod folder, all you have to do is drop your modified ones back into the folders in question (usually happens to my MiG-17's and ThirdWire F-8's). This might not be the ideal solution, but at least you have a fairly quick fix, rather than having to re-extract or re-modify extracted files over and over.

Bastards! They must have overheard my lunch conversations! Actually, I'm kind of happy about that. I had mentioned "wouldn't it be cool if you could put, say, four lasers on each side of a 747 and fire a laser broadside at an enemy formation hundreds of miles away?" I was intrigued by the concept that whoever the laser commander was would get one of those ridiculous 18th century naval hats and make calls to the cabin like "RIGHT FULL RUDDER! PREPARE RIGHT LASER BROADSIDE!" Oh what an assignment that would be! It might sound like I'm screwing around - I'm not, I actually brought this up, just at Rome, not Kirtland. Looks like some other people had the same idea. Given, of course, that we were developing a counter ICBM and tactical laser before CANX-ing both, lasers for air dominance seems like a natural follow-on. For that much power, you'd need something like a passenger plane to hold the fuel cell - maybe that "laser broadside" isn't as funny as it sounds...

That very airplane was at Rome for something like two months. Not sure why it was here, but I remember seeing it about every day driving to work for a while. Going out to lunch, I learned that was the bird that made the wrong landing.

Wrong series. (X-COM was the answer we were looking for.)

You guys got it all wrong, the apex fighter of the future is the Avenger. With twin-elerium engines it can go from about 0 to 25M within a few seconds in atmosphere! No fighter can match that acceleration, and it can decelerate just as quickly, with enough finesse (thanks to its advanced, possibly other-worldly navigation and computer systems) to touch down next to a splashed bandit and drop no less than 26, count 'em 26 ground troops for the assault and recovery of the splashed asset. With acceleration characteristics that good, the ability to perform sustained space flight and acceleration in the vertical, no other plane, aircraft or spacecraft, can match it. Armed with twin plasma beams, it would make short work of any SeXplan3 - Sukhoi, Boeing, MiG, Grumman, or otherwise, with no problem. Chasing down its opponent is no issue, and with the ability to make near instantaneous turns upon slowing, no COBRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! or J-Turn maneuver will help the situation for the plane being targeted. In fact, I don't know why we don't just put all our funding into those? They do take a lot of alloys to create, admittedly... :3

Where are you trying to fly it? What altitude/airspeed? Are you trying to get initial vertical positioning over the F-15? Are you dragging him slow? Are you using your flaps if you do get slow? Where would you fight it in your beloved F-4? I mean, if you go back through this thread, there was that whole hubbub that occurred with the F-14/F-15 that I really don't feel like revisiting to save everyone's time and frustration, and it was proven it's pretty easy to wax the AI F-15C in the F-14A outnumbered 4 to 1 or more in a gunfight, and that it's pretty easy to wax the AI F-14B/D in the F-15A/C outnumbered 4 to 1 or more in a gunfight as well. Any extra details on what's going wrong?

Always remember the magical healing powers of your ejection seat! Even if shrapnel tears through every major vital organ of your pilot's body and he is about to die upon landing, ejecting realigns everything, fuses the shattered bones, and stops all arterial bleeding. This in turn makes your pilot wounded, but not dead. Because the ejection seat gives you Wolverine like healing powers, you might be down, but not out! Seriously, though, it does. If your aircraft is counted as "DESTROYED" and you hit escape, you die. If your aircraft is counted as "DESTROYED" and you land, then eject, you live.

I haven't got a clue. The thing is, those aircraft may be "airworthy" or the one which blew up may have been one of the "better airframes" of those available, but there is no denying that the Tomcat arsenal of Iran is heavily aged. I think just about everybody has seen the footage of the F-14 that blew up near the USS John Paul Jones during a high-speed flyby. Considering this was a USN bird which had the technological and maintenance support which the IRIAF birds did not, but it still blew up because God knows why, the fact that an IRIAF one either caught fire, blew up or had some failure which caused a detonation shouldn't be considered the work of otherworldly or even political forces. I still think this would be a good excuse to initiate the Extraterrestrial Combat force!

There is only one rational solution for this problem: the formation of X-COM! I'm sure if the F-14's had been equipped with Plasma Beams or Fusion Ball launchers, the UFO's wouldn't stand a chance. Unfortunately, busted AIM-54's ain't very good for shooting down UFOs...

Race, It sounds to me like your missiles are going stupid right after launch. Might have to do with Launch Reliability value, but that is one thing that does happen in the TW games - missiles can launch, go dumb, and blow up. Are you using the ThirdWire AIM-54's or Ravenclaw's or...? With respect to aspect, it is precisely as MB wrote. A historic example was of an AIM-54 launched at about 115NM to a closing drone target while the Turkey was already at the speed of heat. The missile itself did not travel 115NM, it traveled 72 because the target was closing, and the extra speed helped it start fast! If a target is changing aspect to you, the missile's range effectively decreases (happens to all missiles, not just ones that fly a lofted profile). That said, this does not appear to be your problem, rather, the missile coming off dumb. If it's happening too much for your taste, you can increase the launch reliability. If it's still coming off dumb, could you give an idea of where you're launching from and at what?

SG, I think he's using the baseline ThirdWire F-14's. THINK being the keyword, the SP discussion was a tangent. That said, the radars of both TW and SP F-14's operate the same (barring the Av70 optional D). What MigBuster wrote is the procedure. Turn the radar on, switch radar to TWS and requisite range, select your AIM-54, select your first radar target, hit lock radar target, then go to the next, lock it, third, etc. For each target locked, a small number will appear next to the target in the order that the target was locked. When in range, fire your Phoenix at all designated targets. Every time you fire, the radar will iterate the numbers down by one (if you designated 6, 6 becomes 5, 5 becomes 4, 4 becomes 3, etc.) and whichever target is currently "1" is the one being targeted by the AIM-54 you're about to fire. Once you're out of numbers, you can't fire anymore. Also, the radar won't kick from RWS to TWS even with Phoenix selected. However, RWS, TWS, and ACM will kick to PDSTT if you've got Sparrow, Sidewinder or Guns selected and you lock a target.

Will check my sources for you and report back. For the aircraft itself, I wasn't part of the original team - the Super Pack portion of it began after the original was completed back in 2010, which included the cockpit, aircraft models, initial FM and avionics, etc. I got added into the effort to release the Super Pack to get the F-14D out, as well as bring the A and B up to SF2:NA standards with the newly available avionics, such as functional TWS, HUD functions, etc. (The original bird was released before NA), so I can't speak to prior design decisions. Once part of the SP team, yes, we did wind up going through many revisions to try to make the birds as accurate as possible, especially with the new functionality that NA brought to the sim.

CG, I wish! The modder who did that pit hasn't worked on any other 'pits that I know of for the SF2 series, and unfortunately, I haven't heard of plans for a "D" or "A"-specific pit any time in the near future. It would be incredibly difficult to model every F-14A pit, especially early on. The A-model's cockpit had a few different configurations between 1972 and 1983, which is about when it reached the familiar configuration with the two large "STALL" warning lights, ECM and landing on the right and left, respectively, straddling the front windscreen. Most of the changes wouldn't be noticeable to a player - changes to the right vertical console, master caution advisory panel, UHF, and a few other changes would be made between production blocks 60 and 90 (and later). If you really wanted to use the ThirdWire pits for your F-14A's, you could always replace the SP pit with the TW ones!

CheckGear, Yes, it is explained in the F-14 Cockpit and Avionics document that the F-14A+/B cockpit is used in all 3 variants, but the avionics, available weapons, and other factors change over time. The biggest noticeable difference between the F-14B and F-14A 'pits in real life is the ALR-67 display (RHAW display) which does not exist in the F-14A (any block). The F-14A displayed ECM information on the HSD for the pilot and ECM Display for the RIO. They still do this in the SP, but the functionality is redundant thanks to the ALR-67 display. The avionics are tweaked per model, to match the real-world setups as best as we could. The earlier F-14A's don't have the Sidewinder Seeker or the TCS, and the F-14A_74 uses a different jammer/ECM Suite (ALQ-100/ALR-45) than the 82 & 96 models. The later F-14A's have the seeker symbology, updated jammer (ALQ-126 & 126/B), locked glove vanes and added BOL chaff/full flare in the boat tail for F-14A(96), etc. The F-14B used most of the same avionics as the F-14A by the time it arrived, and in game, the most noticeable difference in terms of avionics is the ALR-67 receiver bands (wider than the ALR-50), but the jammer remained the same (ALQ-126/B). The Radar, VDIG and HSD are all the same in the F-14A and B, as they were in real life until 2003, when the B got the SparrowHawk HUD. Also, LANTIRN and guided bomb compatibility is not available until 1996 for the F-14A/B/D. The F-14D also uses the same cockpit setup since we don't have an actual F-14D cockpit to use, so we updated the avionics (HUD, Radar, ECM suite, etc). Until an F-14D pit becomes available, we have to use the stand in.

Saw this in Defense News, and I was really glad when I did because we are constantly hearing about what a big threat naval versions of aircraft like the Flanker are going to be, how they're gonna out-fly or outfight our aircraft, which I eschew to begin with, and then a report comes out stating "well, it WOULD be able to do those things if it weren't limited to four missiles and a dismal range!" As it is mentioned late in the article, once the Chinese build a CATOBAR carrier, their J-15 is going to be a lot more capable, but until then the J-15's power projection capability is going to be piss-poor at best.

They always launch for me if they make it to the launch point. Just thinking about it - they will jettison their cruise missiles if I launch on them and they have to start popping chaff. If my missile doesn't reach terminal distance before they reach their launch waypoint, they launch. I actually haven't had the AI launch in a long time because during intercepts, I try to get to the waypoint as fast as possible, riding burners, launch and max loiter back 'cause I'm usually down at about 7-6,500lbs at that point. If you take a bit lower speed, you probably won't reach them before they launch.

TGD is definitely a good book - while the back quarter or so does deal with the movie, Bio provides a lot of insight to air combat from the RIO's perspective, what he had to go through to become a RIO, time in TOPGUN as a student and as an instructor, his first ejection off of a carrier while with VF-24, and he writes it well. If you get a chance, check it out.

If you want to fly later missions, or in other variants of the F-14, there's the F-14 Super Pack. You can also get your strike on with the F/A-18 and A-6 packs. EDIT: HUDDATA.ini and Viewlist.ini have to be extracted from the FLIGHTDATA.CAT, using the ThirdWire Extractor utility. They are normally found in C:\Program Files (x86)\ThirdWire\Strike Fighters 2\Flight folder (or wherever your install resides). Edit with a normal text editor. When finished, drop into your mod folder's FlightData folder (e.g. C:\Users\Name\Saved Games\ThirdWire\StrikeFighters2 Europe\Flight). EDIT 2: Thanks, Wrench!

Yeah, we got hit with it - obviously I'm not affected being active, but I've picked up some furloughed civilian duties atop my current ones!

Absolutely; something like that happened in real life. Don't recall the model of -105, but the Thud crew bagged a MiG-17 with 20mm, and if memory serves, shot off the left wing. EDIT: Apparently, it happened a lot more than once.

One thing to pay attention to in the F-14 is how heavy you are when coming back to the ship. The Tomcat carries a lot of internal fuel, and if you "Alt+N" back to the boat, and you're still hanging out at 56,000 pounds (above max trap in reality), you're going to have to fly faster on approach; if you try a 125kts approach with that much weight, you're going to sink waaaay too fast. While I primarily fly the Super Pack version, the approach characteristics are similar, and so long as you're at lower fuel/store capacities (~48,000 or less), you can fly it closer to the mid-120's to low 130's. Follow the ILS until final (think it gets screwy as you get just about to the fantail of the carrier), pay attention to your descent rate, and you shouldn't have a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn-oemgzlEU I wish I was this epic...

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I think this is a touchy subject for me because Medieval Europe seems to get a pass on physics, metallurgy, chemistry, etc. to rumor and false "common knowledge" even among highly educated persons. You'd be surprised the level of education of folks who actually believe some of this stuff. They're a hell of a lot smarter than me (this isn't a feat), much better educated, but somehow don't quite grasp that, say, an object made of steel is going to weigh the same if it was made in the 1400's or if it was made today. I've had to correct PhD level folks on this stuff before - these are not stupid people! The objective of my post was not as an attack, nor some challenge to you to stand by what was written, but instead to remind people to think critically of what they're reading so that they don't fall into the trap of taking some of this stuff at face value, which even particularly well educated and intelligent people (either of which, I do not consider myself to be) are prone to do . Thinking about it from the stand point of absurdity, it is funny - I failed to think about it in this way, but then, I'm not the brightest bulb out there. I'm also the type of person who, the last time I was drunk in a social situation, got into a discussion on heat-treatment of steels used in armor, the effects of manganese on the formation of martensitic micro-structures, and the maximum resiliency in kJ of such armors vs. lead shot, pointed and blunt iron arrowheads, compared to untreated ones. A bit bland, and prone to miss a joke. If you feel offended, I apologize.