streakeagle

SFP1 Sparrows were always a bit more effective than reality, but were still unreliable at launch and fairly easy to dodge. Fired within parameters against a co-operative AI target, I could hit at least 75% of the time with the AIM-7E2 and about 50% of the time with the AIM-7E. The advertised AIM-7 performance in the 1960s based on ideal range tests was around 50%, but Vietnam performance averaged somewhere around 8 to 12%. But keep in mind, pilots decided to fire pairs to help overcome launch reliability issues and also frequently fired outside the interlocks, so the actual PK might be quite a bit higher -- maybe 20 or 30 %? AIM-7Ms in combat conditions scored around 35% in "recent' years (think Desert Storm). They generally did not fire in pairs and waited to see if the first tracked before firing another missile. SF2 Sparrows started out being less effective than SFP1 AIM-7s as flying low over terrain became a valid way to break a lock. Initially, AIM-7Fs were completely worthless as AI would always beam the firing aircraft and break the F-15's doppler lock. AI were detuned to use less than perfect beaming maneuvers. After the release of SF2NA, a lot of (new?) players complained about the ineffectiveness of missiles... too many were completely missing which frustrated many players. I liked the difficulty as it seemed more realistic. But in response to complaints Third Wire enhanced the effectiveness of missiles to make the game more fun. I can now hit just about every time if I shoot carefully against targets with no chaff or ECM. So, yes, in my opinion, Sparrows are too effective in the present patch version of SF2.

This is where I am hanging out:

I check the combatace Teamspeak server every night between 9pm and 10pm, but then I go to the server for the F-86: 314th Mixed Air Division lobby @ ts32.gameservers.com:9105 As long as the F-86 Sabre Combat Range is up, that is where I will be if I am online. Great server for playing with the Sabre. I have copied the mission so I can play it offline and potentially host it. I haven't tried hosting yet. I have no idea what port forwarding settings are required. The F-86 Sabre is almost the perfect airplane for me until I can get the MiG-21bis. I even hit a MiG-15bis with a GAR-8 (AIM-9B) tonight. External fuel tanks don't seem to be working, so I usually run clean with full fuel and gun ammo. But someone else was using GAR-8's, so I gave them a try. If the target is oblivious to you and flying straight... great choice. If a MiG-15bis AI sees you, he isn't going to let you keep your load down to 2g's... so very little chance of using the GAR-8 once merged in a dogfight... as it should be!

I have been hanging out on a Sabre Combat Range where I can fly the F-86F on air-to-air vs AI MiG-15bis and find some live pilots. I have got Teamspeak 3 working great. If I only had the SFP1 plane set available as flyables, I would be back where I was 10 years agos: having a great time flying the planes I love with other people. I had some lag issues last night. Not sure whose connection was at fault. I know I played with no lag the first time I flew formation with someone else a few nights ago. I can't get better internet service than I currently have (other than to pay to increase the bandwidth). I miss the Verizon FIOS I had back in Tampa.

If you wanted a Mach 2+ interceptor for a good price, the F-16/79 was a great option. Pure turbojets are better at higher speeds than turbofans. At Mach 2, the F-16/79 was actually better than the F100 -> higher top end meant higher thrust/weight.

The J-79 has its own distinctive sound. I could identify those planes flying over while I was still inside a hangar.

Okay, I installed Teamspeak 3 and connected to the CombatAce.com TS3 server, voice.combatace.com Seems like everything worked okay, but there was no one present to verify my ability to send/receive voice.

Sure thing. I have taken the next steps toward multiplayer: got my headset mic set up and working. Still need to install a chat program, seems like teamspeak is still the main player for flight sims? I also got Shoot 1.6.4 working again so that I can navigate the radio menus for atc and ground using my voice rather than fumbling for the keyboard while flying. This is important for the F-86F, as I can say "Chief, turn on the ground power"... and he does, shortly followed when I am ready by "Chief, turn off the ground power"... which he also does. DCS needs appropriate period terrain and objects for WW2 Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Israel, India/Pakistan, Kuwait/Iraq, and a few AI tweaks... then the only limit will be how fast new aircraft can be released. Of course, successfully adding fighters with two crew members and the option to fly with AI or a real back seater would be icing on the cake for the F-4/F-14/F-15E crowds. The F-86F is almost the perfect trainer for DCS:World. It is easily the least complex non-FC3 aircraft to operate "by the book". The P-51D requires much more engine management and switchology for even basic flying as well as being a tail dragger. Whereas, I can get in the air, dogfight, and land the F-86F hardly pushing any more buttons than the SF series. I can't wait for the MiG-21bis! I typically have free time starting somewhere between 9 PM and 10 PM EST and stay up as late as 1 AM if I am not too tired.

Historically, 9Es did worse than 9Bs! It was the AIM-9D that made the F-8 Crusader the MiG Master. Once F-4Js started toting AIM-9G/Hs, they were MiG Masters, too. The early AIM-9J performed the same or worse as the AIM-9E in Vietnam. Most of the missiles in SF2 work much better than historical rates since SF2NA patches intended to reduce the frustation of missiles always failing/missing. While this kills the realism of the outcomes of dogfights allowing many more kills to be achieved than ever possible in reality, it does make the game more fun. A MiG-21 can actually take a US/NATO first rate aircraft down using an AA-2 or better yet an AA-8. There were quite a few years in the SFP1/WoX series where AI couldn't hit targets with guns or missiles at all. Having AI that is capable of killing me makes the single-player only SF2 series much more interesting/fun, even if the means to do so are unrealistic.

You don't need radar WVR. You just need to be able to get WVR without getting smoked first. It can fairly easily be done in SF2, where I can beat F-15s using MiG-21s or MiG-23s. If anything, missiles are less effective in DCR than SF2, so getting to a dogfight might be even easier if you can find the target while hanging out in the weeds. If the MiG-21bis RWR gives a good enough indication of the threat direction, it can be done with patience as long as the F-15 keeps approaching rather than trying to stand off. A squadron of MiG21's trying to take out an AWACS defended by just two F-15s is the case the F-15 is supposed to handle without loss at 5:1 odds. It is the mission I would seek to replicate and play from both sides.

After missing March and July release dates... still waiting forever for this one. I love the F-86F, but if the MiG-21bis is as good as it looks, it will be my main ride. It may even bring me back to online flying to see if I can beat real live human F-15C pilots. As much as I like the P-51D and Fw190D9, I should already be trying to fly online... but I am content flying against AI for the moment. But if I can beat AI F-15Cs in the MiG-21 the way I can in SF2, then I want to face worst case F-15Cs flown by skilled people.

I still need to show these pics to my son. He likes Godzilla a lot.

If you read Robin Olds' autobiography, you will find that he didn't like RWRs. He said he normally turned his off since it continuously distracted him from what he was trying to do. He already knew he was surrounded by radars lighting him up and didn't want or need a thousand beeps to tell him this. Of course, he was using early variants crammed into F-4Cs that were not nearly as good as later versions. He also was exceptional at maintaining situational awareness. He was sure he could detect SAM threats well enough visually.

In what other sim could you have this fight over late 1950s Europe? It was 2 vs 2. My wing died almost immediately as the AI isn't really programmed well to fly planes that go fast but can't turn. It was a game a patience trying to set up a shot without departing controlled flight. Altitude was always plenty high up for easy recovery. I came in fast from above, but throttled back and if necessary applied brakes to reduced range rate for targeting/firing. Eventually, the AI cooperates if you have enough fuel to wait it out. Took a while to bag the leader, but the proficiency gained doing so made it far easier for me to set up a firing solution on the wingman. As presently modeled in SF2, the Voodoo is extremely difficulty to employ in a dogfight, but has quite a bit of power. With well trained pilots and sound tactics, it could even be reasonably effective.

Go hang out at Hyperlobby and look for a guy with some form of the name "doghouse". Leave a PC logged into the Hyperlobby WOV room. There should still be a few guys hanging around from the old days dying to find more people interested in flying SFP1/WoV/WoE at the 083006 patch level. They will help you get your setup working via Hyperlobby and/or Hamachi and will teach you how to rule the skies online with SFP1/WoX series games. You will get a bloody nose learning how to fly right against real people as opposed to AI, but if you can find them and get into their group, you will learn a lot and have a lot of fun.

Here is a PDF manual that teaches about all the SF weaponry and includes my write up without any pictures missing as well as a section on how to perform radar intercepts: http://combatace.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=17235

I made a tutorial a long time ago. It appears image shack is starting to delete some of my old images, but the text is still relevant: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB3w/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2343

No problem! Glad I could be of service to those who refuse to be infected by facebook.

The MiG-19 is great on paper, and therefore is great in a sim based on paper. In reality, it had some "issues" that made it unpopular with pilots. Its performance relative to other MiGs is comparable to RAF Lightnings compared to its contemporaries: excellent power-to-weight and low drag with all great performance that implies (climb, acceleration, etc.), but apparently its biggest flaws were in reliability/maintenance and possibly stability/control issues. I think TK added the control limits with WOV. With original SFP1 up to the long time standard SP2a, the MiGs faced no limits at higher speeds. The transonic region has always been a problem for TK. The original flight models ini files used 0.4 Mach intervals: 0.4, 0.8, 1.2... etc. That's a pretty big jump in data points that makes covering the sudden changes between 0.8 and 1.2 impossible. As a result, most aircraft perform far too well over this speed range and I can remember the F-105D being unable to go supersonic initially because the drag was too high. I think in SF2, TK doubled the resolution to Mach 0.2 intervals, which offers some improvement. But even then, there is still a lot of change going on between Mach 0.8 and 1.0 that determines why an F-86 was better than a MiG-15bis at high speeds. It would take an interval of 0.05 Mach to show some of the intricate differences in drag, but that is overkill for the rest of the speed range outside of Mach 0.8-1.2. The solution would be to have data ini files with variable resolution rather than a fixed interval. That would keep the total number of data points reasonable, but still allow great fidelity at critical speeds.

There isn't a fighter plane in the SF series that I can't beat with any other fighter plane in the series. AI is a huge factor, but having played SFP1/WoX online for a few years, I could rack up kills against much better planes while flying F-100Ds, F-105Ds, and F-104Gs. A good plane alone is worth little without a smart, well-trained pilot to employ it correctly. Doghouse flying a MiG-17 was virtually unbeatable. The king of early SFP1 online dogfighting was the MiG-19... turned about the same as a MiG-17, and accelerated/climbed better than an F-4 or MiG-21 in the vertical. Yet I could defeat MiG-17s and MiG-19s while flying the way underpowerd F-100D when they were flown by lesser pilots or AI.

Great interview, great photo of the Century birds. As a fan of the F-15 in the everlasting Tomcat vs Eagle debate, I love his assessment that ranked the F-14 roughly equal to the F-4 in a dogfight, whereas the F-15 was only limited by its pilot :)

Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks - The Game http://www.thesillywalk.com/

Robin Olds flew the Voodoo. He actually used it to perform a formation air show (think Thunderbirds). It wasn't agile by any means, but it didn't just fly in straight lines either. He also had a very low opinion of the AIM-4 Falcon. However good the Falcon looked on paper or in staged tests, it took too long to fire, had even more limited launch parameters than the AIM-9B and early AIM-7s, and was rarely able to hit a fighter sized target. The Falcon might have been effective in its intended role of heavy bomber interception at altitude, but it was (thankfully) never employed in that role, so there is no real world data to confirm whether it would have worked as well as advertised.

I have flown P-51Ds for so long in so many different sims, but especially in Aces High. The Aces High P-51D FM gunnery models are both fairly detailed and accurate, so transitioning to the DCS P-51D was pretty much a no-brainer other than learning how to keep my engine from seizing up. The only feature I miss from Aces High is being able to set the range for the guns, as I like them focused a bit further out than most pilots. Initially, beating the AI P-51D (the only opponent originally available) proved very difficult because the AI uses aggressive vertical tactics and seems to retain energy more efficiently than player flown aircraft. But I soon figured out how to go easier on my stick, keep or restore energy every chance I got, then get a sustained burst on the AI as it peaked in its vertical maneuver. The AI Fw190D9 flew essentially the same way, perhaps having slightly inferior turn performance and slightly better climb performance? All I know, is that with no additional training or practice, I could smoke the AI Fw190D9 nearly every time if I didn't overheat my engine. With the release of the Fw190D9 module, I am in completely new territory. I rarely flew Fw190 variants in Aces High. I hated the ballistics of their guns and didn't have the patience to employ the boom and zoom tactics they were born to use. So, I have little idea how to employ an Fw190 efficiently. Most of my Aces High Fw190 time was in the Fw190A5 with some time in the Ta152, but almost no time in the Fw190D9. Now that I am the Fw190D9 flying against the AI P-51D, I have been painfully reminded how hard a time I have flying the Fw190. But years of flying F-104s, F-105s, F-4s, and F-8s against MiG-17s in SFP1/SF2 does help. I have no trouble getting the AI P-51D to get trapped below me as I make a steady climbing turn using my power advantage. Eventually, the angles come around in my favor. But every time I try to close in for a shot, the P-51D pulls up into some sort of vertical stall/lag roll that pretty much reverses our position. But, I finally figured out how to lag him and quickly gained practice on leading the target with such low velocity rounds. I finally got my first P-51D!

I was flying the stock instant action mission, co-alt, head-on. Not sure what the altitude is because there is no time to check instruments... just dial in the wingspan of the Mustang and a range of about 300 meters to get the gunsight ready, then I try to keep my eyes on the P-51D 100% of the time and flying by "feel" in terms of climbing and turning as much as possible without stalling. Force feedback could be such a blessing.