Mr_Tayto

Occasionally I get a mission "description" of the type in the title. Not even a description like "air defence suppression" or indication of the area - of course there is a flight plan with an IP and target waypoint. It's not a big deal, I think I understand that these are Weasel/Iron Hand missions, and approach them as such. The main issue is that the game doesn't give you any idea of how to complete these missions, unlike strike and escort, which are self-explanatory; destroy such-and-such target, protect this flight from interception. It's just as well I am extensively read on Vietnam war aircraft, missions and tactics, or I might not have the first clue, but it's still confusing at times and I want to be good at these missions (and of course, safe to RTB). So, a first question: When do "Primary targets" show themselves in these missions, and what's the best way to find them? I understand the theory behind Shrike/Standard ARM employment, but struggle to know when is best to shoot. Even with maximum settings, I find draw-in for ground targets, especially at medium level and above, means I often don't see targets on the ground unless they're big and obvious like buildings. Radar vans, launchers and individual AA guns are difficult to pick out without using the visual targeting HUD markers. Add to this early Rolling Thunder aircraft don't have a RHAW scope, often only audio warnings. To my second question: How do you combat SAM tracking radars (especially without knowing range and, in early months, bearing)? Does firing toward launched SAMs help, as the radar would be close? Thirdly, I guess I'm just looking for tips. I dread these missions when they appear, not because they're dangerous (although they are), but because they're less "directed" than strike missions, which have an obvious pass/fail point. Can anyone share best practice for 'Nam-era Weaselling? Thanks in advance!

I love it Would make a great nuke bombing target for early 90's Moscow

Yeah, agreed. And generally I have good results with CCIP equipped platforms like the A-6 (I should, I've been practicing since the 90's with Microprose sims!) The issue I have is with my own behaviour with the aircraft in high threat environments, not the mechanics of the bombing itself. I guess I'm also trying to be good with TLAR aircraft. Dive/toss/level bombing without a bombing computer is more art than science in SF2, and it's all I have in the 105, but I can do it. Again, it's about how I approach targets (both psychologically and in physical terms) in SEAD environments, regardless of the method of bombing.

So, also in the mud-moving context... is speed life? I mentioned liking the hi-lo-lo-hi mission profile of strike missions in the Thud because I think its speed affords a certain security at low level, and I've read that drivers (at least, WW drivers) preferred to stay above 400KIAS striking targets. In the A-6 I was undone by trying to turn and burn between 1-3kft and always catching a stray 57mm round, desperate to just hit my targets and leave at 300ft! Maybe I should just be doing long racetracks and maintaining speed? Obviously SA-2s muddy these waters, but I'm yet to be hit by one I guess.

I looked back over Devin Horner's "The 100" and watch the first three videos again. Ep.3 covers three missions (3-6) and as it turns out, mission four is indeed an Iron Hand. Unfortunately, it's a truncated mission as at this stage he was talking about squeezing 3-4 missions into one ~1hr video, so we don't get to see the "result"; he doesn't get a "Mission complete" from Red Crown, for example. However, I did get to see how how does it, and that will help. The problem he (and I) had seems to be a lack of ordnance to compete the mission. Enough CBUs and rockets to account for 4-5 AAA sites, but when you're dry, you're dry - and you don't want to push your luck.

I have watched every Devin video related to Vietnam (and about half his VNAF videos), and I swear his luck with not pulling Iron Hand is better than mine! Unless he edited his campaign data .ini! I'll trawl through them again in case I missed some. Unfortunately his F-105 campaign seems to be on hold at the minute, which is a shame because I love those videos.

Hi all, I don't know if this counts as resurrecting a dead thread (it being eight and a half years old and all), but I'm looking for some specific advice in dealing with Iron Hand missions in Vietnam. Specifically, Rolling Thunder as I've never had a pilot survive more than 5 missions, and it's almost always down to an Iron Hand mission. At this point I'm pretty comfortable doing Thud and Intruder strike missions, and have a good hit rate with and without CCIP using pop-up profiles. Iron hand seems like anathema to me, being used to unloading and GingTFO; I have to loiter in some pretty awful flak environments, ususally low and slow having hit my first target, and I usually get bagged by a 57mm I can't evade. I usually suffer losses to the flight, too. So I'm looking for advice, maybe even a successful mission video, to give me some tips for surviving. ARM employment, dumb bombing, ground fire evasion, flight orders, all that stuff. Thanks in advance.

Hey OP, a quick Q before I install. Does this cancel the CCIP mod I already have in my FOTI Intruders? Does it include CCIP (is this the "bombing system" you mean)?

Hey, that's a great idea actually, although I've rarely used chaff in the game so far.

Hi all, I was recently introduced to Stream Deck as a concept and realised it could be used as a remote keyboard/macro enabler for SF2. I had a spare and unused android tablet and installed the software to give me this ability. After an ultimately fruitless search for icons or profiles, I decided to make my own (below). I use desk mounting brackets for my HOTAS because a) I hate having my elbows higher than my lap for flying at my desk and b) if I'm playing historical aircraft I want a centrally mounted stick. Until today I was drawing my keyboard forward on the desk to hit buttons, but this always lead to indecision because I had to make sure it was the correct one. I've take a few pictures of my layout, let me know what you think and whether you have something similar. I'm not done, I intend to program some macros for further flight/squadron behaviour in landing and combat (i.e. attack ground/air)

111 squadron based at RAF Leuchars when I was a kid, just across the river from me. I spent many weekends on base as a cadet

Hi all, My USN Spad Steel Tiger campaign keeps sending me north of the DMZ, which is fine I suppose as when I am it's usually against logistics targets like littoral sampan bases and the like. The problem is the density and accuracy of flak against low-and-slows like the A-1. Out of three missions flown in this campaign, two have had targets in NVN and only one in the Steel Tiger zone, and my last one against a fairly deep base North of Vihn. This mission resulted in me losing the Spad after managing (somehow) to get her back out into the gulf and bailing out in vicinity of the ship: I've played a few fast jet campaigns so far, all of which have resulted in KIA or POW due to flak, but speed and being able to climb makes it feel like less of an issue unless on a bombing run or making an obvious mistake that I've learned from. So my question is, are there any tactics for avoiding flak in slow crates? I'm jinking like mad but took all the fine on the bombing lineup. Also, I took three wingmen to hopefully disperse the flak among us all, but went in first on the target.

I am struggling to find The Range in the downloads section, does anyone have a direct link they could share? Also, I'm not overly familiar with the mission editor; I have tried to do a South Vietnam "free flight" mission where I have the option of testing out planes for carrier take off and landing, and ideally bomb delivery, but I don't understand what I'm doing when it comes to placing "targets" (usually in friendly territory so I am avoiding AAA and SAMs). I've watched a video but it didn't make it so clear and didn't detail how to place a "landable" carrier.

Awesome Does it have a carrier for landing practice on? I'm fairly proficient with the A-1 and A-4 now, have limited experience with the A-6, but I'm dreading the F-4!

Brilliant, thanks. My next mission after this post was in RP2 again, doing armed recon above a city, I wasn't so lucky on this one and got POWed after losing a wing. For now I've switched back to the somewhat easier(!) life of flying A4s in alpha strikes with lots of F8s flying top cover. I'm still struggling to put into practice bombing, but at least now I have buddies to help me out. Iron hand missions remain my kryptonite, there's a lot of "learning on the job" with this sim. WOK is my next campaign when I inevitably get splashed again.

Rewatched a few Devin Horner A-1 videos, and the flak sure seems more manageable at 6000ft, so point definitely taken. When flying F-105s downtown, I did Hi-Lo-Hi profile dive bombing, and that worked fine but it's obviously not an option in a Spad, so I'll try to keep it medium level.

CMH seems excessive for a few infantry squads on top of a camp. Mind you, they were very well hidden.

Hi all, I've owned SF2 for a few years now, but couldn't get on with it. Let me explain; I've been a flight sim guy for 30-odd years, having played my first flight sims on Atari STE. I've been a WW2 pilot flying Spitfires, P-51s, B-17s... Jumping to F-16s, F-14s, A-7s. My real interest has always been in "non-glass" cockpit combat jets, but sims didn't really exist for them as far as I could see. Until SF2. The reason I couldn't deal with SF2 was that I didn't have the physical set-up with my PC; it's a sim where you need to look at instruments (no HUD) and around you for SAMs and muzzle flashes, so I set about buying an IR tracker (Delanclip) and some brackets for my HOTAS. I was ready./ I came to SF2 late, having only even heard about it a few years ago. You couldn't believe my glee when I saw it was based around Korean- and Vietnam-war aircraft and on until the early 80s. I love the plethora of mods and the tight community, even for such an old game. I have questions though; while I understand the game is not a strict "cold start" type sim (like DCS), on the other hand it holds no hands. I know - in theory - how to land on a boat, but the game still needs me to know the gear, flaps and landing speed of a lot of aircraft, and doesn't signpost this anywhere. I guess I'm looking for a resource somewhere. Same with bombing; I love that most aircraft don't have a CCIP (although I downloaded Migbuster's DIANE mod for the A-6, a plane I love), I struggle with bombing. Flying the F-105 I looked at some 1960's resources and managed it in Hi-Lo-Hi missions from Thailand, but that was dive bombing. Flying through flak at <500ft and popping up into radar controlled flak and SAMs makes it a bit trickier and I've missed a lot more than I've hit. I'd love someone experienced in A4s and F4s to teach me there. Then there's mission types; flak suppression in aircraft without an RWR seems nuts, and ridiculously difficult, even with the ability to look out the cockpit. I'd like to "turn off" the HUD one day but I'd never find the targets without it (not to mention managing airspeed on carrier landings). So if anyone is still playing regularly and wants to help me with the above, I'd be very grateful.

So after some experimentation (and because I've always loved the plane), I decided to start "learning" carrier ops with the A-1, flying Steel Tiger missions - because again, they're pretty cool. My first mission (with a new pilot, following the "Dead is dead" principle) was a milk run to the Vinh PT Boat base, which I dispatched fairly easily by rippling my entire load of M117s all over it. Took some HMG fire from the PTs themselves as I dropped in, but nothing that affected the plane, so I flew home and trapped (first time!). In the de-brief it seems I was "injured", so spent some time in Subic chasing nurses. 5 months, it seems Next mission was a looong flight from Yankee to the SVN/Laos border, (south of Da Nang) to deal with a HCMT camp, which I did with bombs, took fire again from the jungle so circled and rocketed a couple of squads before coming home. On the way back I noticed a right roll, looking out of the cockpit I see that my right flap had been shot off, but nothing major as it was easy enough to counter with light pressure left on the stick. Get all the way back to the ship, and despite her manoeuvring like she was dodging torpedoes I trap again on the first attempt, sans flaps! Now, as pleased as I was with myself for a successful mission and a good trap, I wasn't prepared for what came next: Apparently for my work deleting a camp and a couple of VC squads in what was a fairly permissive environment, I received the Medal of Honour Has anyone else had this before? Was it purely for a good mission, or was the fact I landed the Spad something to do with it? Score for the mission was 3000 I think.

I agree wholeheartedly about the civilian casualties, and it's one (of many) reasons that both our countries are better off with professional armed forces. It's also in a weird way why I want to be better at bombing; the way the game works I can order my wingman to hit the target and if he is sufficiently skilled he will complete my mission for me, but I want to hit the target, and if I'm downtown I don't want to hit a civilian centre by mistake. If that makes sense. I've also been taking advantage of the fantastic mod community here, and have downloaded the Falklands '82 and WOK mods. Next is Desert Storm 30AE, because that's the war I grew up with on TV and the one which started the fire of aviation for me (that and the Soviets in Afghanistan).

I don't know why, but I'm drawn to them. I'm a historian by education, and the Vietnam war really appeals to me as a subject. In aviation terms it seems like such an inflection point in technology and tactics; for example NFWS being instigated due to experiences in VN, and also things like the first showing of SAMs, and how hard it was to counter even the SA2. Add to that analogue cockpits and tactical nuclear bombers being repurposed as CAS aircraft (two things that couldn't be further apart)... I'm not American, actually I'm Scottish, so no hangups on the war here, just a studied interest in the men and machines.

So @EricJ I watched the Devin video on bombing tactics - it was already watched so I must have seen it several years ago, which explains my Hi-Lo-Hi instincts on the 105. Makes a lot more sense with a regular reflex sight now.

Thanks for the reply. Finding Devin Horner has helped me a lot, I've been glued to his videos for a couple of months now, and learned a lot about how to fly and fight from them. I will look at The Range map, I've been crying out for training missions to be honest, so that seems a good place to start. Somewhere to practice with a carrier would be ideal. I'm comfortable with land-based planes, pretty much. Even before the IR Tracking etc. I was happily running missions into NVN with 105s, having read enough about missions to know - just about - what to do. Carrier Ops is the dream, though. I want to fly the whole arsenal of Vietnam-era aircraft from ships. I've been most successful with the A-6 so far, I guess because she's pretty tame at landing speed (even though I bolter at least once per trap!)

Hi all, based off a recommendation I dropped the requisite 100 buck (well, £76) on the full install, and so far I'm very impressed. I have an X52 Pro, so I downloaded and applied the "SFPITkey.ini" from the downloads section of the site here, and it's great. The problem I have is that with only two hands, I find it difficult to get across some other aspects of the sim beyond flight control. An example of that is the radio; I find the radio marked button doesn't work on the profile, and even if it did (or I'm doing something wrong) there's no tutorial so I don't know how to use it. I may even be using it wrongly, but again I see know way of knowing how. The second thing is vision controls. I don't have any eye tracking software or hardware, so will be reliant on some kind of accessible control to "turn my head" looking for targets or threats. Again, short of taking my hand off the throttle or stick, there's no way I can see of doing it without reassigning some hat on the HOTAS (which is not ideal). In this case I suppose I'm asking if it's worthwhile reassigning a hat on the stick to turning my head, and using the keyboard controls for radar operation? Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give. I've realised one ambition this week, of flying a SEAD over North Vietnam in a Thud, and I'm looking forward now to another, which is flying the EE Lightning. Just with there was a "quick fly" with no bad guys to practice take-offs and landings (especially on CVs!).