streakeagle

Loss of a dog is pretty hard. They are very affectionate and have colorful personalities that make them such wonderful pets/friends/family members. I find that the relatively short lifespans of dogs is the one real weakness in having them as a pet. You get so attached to them, then 10 or 15 years later, they are gone. Of course, unlike human relationships, if you get past grieving, you can easily find another dog that you will love as much as the last one. But do you want to get another one after feeling such painful loss? When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I had a parakeet that I loved. But he jumped off my finger and landed on the floor. I quickly discovered that our cat had hidden under the bed. She pounced on the bird and killed it with one bite to the chest. I never cried more for any other pet I have lost over the years. That day, my parents went out and got me another parakeet almost identical to the one that died. But it was never the same, and because I didn't really care for him, my mom gave him away to my Aunt. Of course about 5 years later, I missed having a pet bird. I was going to get another parakeet, but my dad chipped in to upgrade to a Cockatiel. Of course he just died a week ago after almost 27 years. While I loved that bird, he had a great personality, and I will never forget him, I have yet to shed a tear over his loss. Besides being hardened by the stresses of life, I think over time that I have learned to invert my emotions. Instead of grieving for his death, I am thankful for all the time I spent with him. I have simply accepted death as a part of life and appreciate the short precious time that others have spent with me over the years.

He was having problems staying on his perch, falling off more and more frequently. He was having trouble eating his food. But some days he looked very healthy and happy. I got him in 1981, he wasn't newborn, but was very young (8-20 weeks? I don't know). He was very smart and learned to whistle many songs such as Jingle Bells, Taps, and Charge. He could not pronounce words very clearly, but he had a decent vocabulary. He refused to learn to whistle Dixie... which is strange since he picked up almost any other sound he heard, including the microwave oven humming then going ding when finished. The old Irish Spring commercials which had someone whistling a tune always got his attention and made him very happy. His cage was always in my room from 1981 until 1989 when I joined the Navy. My parents had him until I got out of the Navy in 1997. He got very depressed when I originally left, and would get depressed again if he saw me too much while I was home on leave. He would pull out his feathers to the point of bleeding a little while depressed. When I got married in 2003, my parents were stuck with him again off and on as my job has required much travel and my wife cannot handle animals. I was home 3 weeks in December/January and my mom thought he was getting very ill, so I took him back. He perked up while he was with me. He was happiest sitting on my shoulder. My 1 year old son loved to try to touch him. I had not done much more than give him food and water and say hello over the weekend. I left for work down in Miami early in the morning and didn't even think to check on him. My wife found him dead the afternoon. I have shed no tears. I feel the loss of my longest living pet, but my life has kept me focused on so many other things and I knew that he was very old and his health was failing. But whether or not I show or feel grief, I cannot forget this little bird that was a part of my family for so long. It is so strange seeing the empty cage. My parents buried him in their back yard behind the shed where my pet snake and guinea pig were buried so very long ago. Rest in peace Igor. I do not intend to get another bird. Birds do not belong in cages. Igor had lost the ability to fly for any extended period with any skill many years ago due to having had his wings clipped for so long and being afraid of flying. In recent years, he would just about have a heart attack if he fell from my shoulder and had to land on the floor. However, I want my son to grow up exposed to all sorts of animals the way I did. I will try to teach him to appreciate wild animals, animals at the zoo, and other people's pets. But if he ever really wants a bird, then I will build a very large cage (almost an aviary) and make sure there are enough birds for them to feel happy without being dependent on human affection. Hopefully, he will be happy with having dogs, cats, perhaps a snake, and/or guinea pig.

Keep it short and simple: www.MajorLee.com www.MajLee.com www.Aerodrome.com

Tech support for hooking up the PCs is easy... I can get you there: 1. each PC has to have an ethernet port 2. each PC has to have a unique TCP/IP address on the same subnet with the same subnet mask, the simplest way to achieve this is with an off-the-shelf 4-port router which automatically configures the ethernet settings for any pc plugged into it. 3. If you are using only 4 pits, a 4-port router will do the job by itself since it can handle 4 pcs, if you are going to use more than 4, you have several options: a. use a wireless router and make sure the additional PCs support wireless ethernet b. get an 8-port switch and hook all of the pcs to the 8-port, then hook the 8-port switch to the 4-port router. c. get just the 8-port switch and manually configure the ip addresses/subnet masks. If you have internet, you may want to use the 4-port router so all pcs can share the internet connection. If you don't have internet, you can fearlessly drop all firewalls/anti-virus software while playing to make connecting easier and more reliable. So in short: You need either a router, a switch, or both and an ethernet cable for each pc to be hardwired to the router or switch, possible needing one more cable to connect a router to the switch if you choose to get both. I am against using wireless for this purpose since you want solid reliable fast comms for gaming. If you have some cash (since this will cost a lot more than 10/100 ethernet hardware), make sure each PC has a gigabit ethernet port and that you use a gigabit ethernet switch to join them all together. Most new PCs come with gigabit lan, so it is the switch that will cost a lot more. The in-game interface makes it very easy to connect once you have all the pcs on a LAN together (i.e. hardwired to the same switch). One person chooses to be host, the others refresh their list to find the host and join it. If you had 6 pcs... you could have more than one host so that several different groups could be flying in separate games. i.e. 1 guy could host a dogfight while another guy could host a coop, while the remaining people choose whichever host they want to play on.

If you can somehow link the canard braking position to the wheel-brake key, that would be the best way to model it... especially if the fact that wheel-brakes can't be applied in flight also prevents deployment of the canard in flight. Any other method I can think of would permit deployment in flight... which is unacceptable.

If you are going to hold up the Gripen until the FM and control surface movement can me modeled correctly, then it will be on hold indefinitely until TK decides to model complex fly-by-wire systems that mix control surface movements as required by the specific flight/load conditions. For a taste of what you are up against, go here: http://www.dtas2007.nl/userfiles/file/Pape...Ansell-Blom.pdf The canards normally move together and act together with the elevons to balance loads required to achieve desired pitch angles. So there is some kind of digital schedule that decides how much to move the canards and how much to move the elevons depending on the speed, alt, g-load, etc. In emergencies, the system will automatically move the canards independently as required to compensate for damage to other control surfaces. Some interesting tidbits can be found here: http://www.gripen.com/NR/rdonlyres/4894FED...ws_2000_02.pdff From what I have gathered at various websites/photos/writeups, etc: Inboard elevons are essentially used as elevators but in such a way to behave as flaps for certain configurations such as landing and takeoff. There is a very complex interaction between canards and elevons that depends on cg position, aoa, speed, alt, g-load, etc. Outboard elevons definitely perform aileron function, I am not sure if they are used as flaps... but based on the the complexity of the fly-by-wire system, I am sure every surface is used to the fullest extent to minimize drag and/or maximize lift. Here is a quote from a book on controls (Stability and Control of Conventional and Unconventional Aircraft Configurations A Generic Approach): "The SAAB JAS 39 Gripen control definition includes a movable canard surface in combination with four elevons, rudder, and leading-edge flaps. It is possible to obtain a choice of either max. L/D-ratio or max. lift, depending on what is needed at a specific flight condition, using the canard and the trailing-edge control surfaces in combination. At cruise and manouvre conditions, the canard and elevons are optimized for low trim drag. At low speed, high lift is desired for short field performance rather than low drag. The emphasis is then to carry a high load on the canard to provide a substantial lift increase by deflecting the wing elevon trailing-edge down for trim. Thus, to obtain a high trim load on the canard, good canard high-lift characteristics were important in the choice of the planform for the close-coupled canard layout." I have yet to find any references specifying max deflection angles, but assuming that the surfaces are at max deflection, photos such as these could get you in the ballpark: http://ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2000/04/...l_gripen_07.htm

Given that you don't have the time or interest in doing both front and back seats... My interest is in having the T-38A as flown by the Thunderbirds, so my vote is for the front seat.

With all the issues people have had with hard drive failures, I would think most SFP1 modders should use RAID 1. Using 2 drives to do the job of 1 is costly in terms of power, noise, initial purchase cost, and 1 more potential point of failure. But the benefit of being able to run your PC even if 1 drive completely fails and to be able to rebuild the 1 that failed automatically is worth it. Plus, you can read files from the drive faster since RAID 1 permits reading from both drives at the same time. Both my wife and I have RAID 1 and furthermore we mirror our personal photos/videos and other important documents between our pcs. So 4 hard drives have to fail for me to lose important files. I have considered using RAID 0+1, but I can't bring myself to use 4 drives just to get a slight speed gain in writing. Drives will fail with time... of course the hope would be that the drives would outlast the life of the PC given about a 3 to 5 year replacement cycle.

The main reason the US has not lost many aircraft to SAMs in recent wars is that the US takes out the SAMs on the first day of combat :) But even an F-117 has been lost to SAM shots... when an opportunity presents itself, an unexpected good ole IRM can be devastating. US SAMs haven't gotten much of an opportunity against aircraft, since F-15s take out enemy fighters right after the enemy SAMs have been wiped out :) Israelis haven't forgotten how effective SAMs can be, but haven't had to face serious numbers of them for quite some time either.

Jed Eckert: How did you get shot down, Colonel? Col. Andy Tanner: It was five to one. I got four.

Where: meet at hyperlobby When: Tuesday thru Thursday nights from 8pm to 11pm (est) What: stock/patched install of WOV, Hamachi, and optionally teamspeak the goal is to try to get as many people as possible into a co-op mission. ideally exactly 16 people for 8 vs 8 and no AI airplanes, but we will make do with whoever shows up. Hyperlobby can be downloaded from here: http://hyperfighter.sk/ Hamachi can be downloeaded from here: http://www.hamachi.cc/download/list.php the hamachi network will be: wovnet (password = wovnet) Teamspeak can be downloaded from here: http://www.goteamspeak.com/ I will be using the combatace teamspeak server found here: http://combatace.com/index.php?categoryid=12

Is it any surprise to anyone who knows me that I love the F-4 (inside and out)? RAZBAM's F2H is a pleasure to fly as much as their Skyraider is. I wish RAZBAM could do more, I like his 3d work quite a bit.

This error can happen if you plug the joystick into a different USB port and haven't re-installed the driver since doing so. This just happend to me when I moved my PC to another room and moved by rudder pedals from a front usb port to one at the rear of my pc case. Try leaving the stick plugged in to the current USB port and re-install the driver (you may have to reboot), then you should be able to program the profile.

The place to fly this sim online is Hyperlobby. There are very few people who come online at any given time. If you want to find someone, you need to go to the Wings Over Vietnam chat room in Hyperlobby every night between 8pm and 11pm eastern standard time. If you wait around a few nights, someone will show up. Look for doghouse or the 531ghost squadron. While the WOV Hyperlobby is not specifically set up to work with WOE, it can be made to work, but first you have to find someone else with WOE willing to play online to make it worth the effort to get it working right. SFP1, WOV, and WOE are all the same when it comes to playing online, so directions on how to get one working right generally apply to the others. Getting these sims to play well online can be challenging for some people depending on their internet connection/router/firewall setup and general ability with computers/Windows. What little online community there is can be very helpful. They know how to get it set up and working. However, if you are rude and/or impatient, you will be ignored. If you have Windows XP, I suggest you learn about Hamachi and download/install it since it is used by almost everyone who flies online. It is a virtual private network that allows people to play online without wasting so much time trying to fight routers and firewalls. Go here to learn more and/or get it: https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en Please read the information found here: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p...65f82e34bd3c8c6 Everything said there about Wings Over Vietnam applies to Wings Over Europe. If you have already installed and patched your game correctly, reading and understanding the info in the above post will make it easier for others to help you.

USAF guys can whine all they want... serving in the USN during its best days with max funding and manpower still looks like a gulag compared to serving in the USAF on its worst days. I caught the last dying gasps of the Reagan mega-Navy era and saw the full effect of the post cold war draw down during my service from 1989 to 1997. I know a lot of USAF people were pink slipped in that same era and dumped into an economy that didn't want or need them (i.e. airlines were and still are downsizing), but quite a few sailors went that same route. Just as bad or worse, the ones remaining in service have had to bear arduous sea duty rotations that make TDY in the USAF look like paid vacation. But USAF and USN aside, the guys I feel bad for at this point are the Army and Marine men that keep rotating to Iraq and Afghanistan. The stress and dangers I faced during submarine duty are miniscule compared to the risks and actual losses suffered the past several years. They are the ones truly bearing the burden.

I had an issue with long stutters/pauses after patching from 2.06 to 2.07 and applying multiskin. I uninstalled, deleted the folder, then reinstalled and applied patch 2.07. Everything works great, though I haven't applied multiskin yet. Since I already had Rowan's BoB, I waited until this game was well patched before spending any time on it. I don't remember when I finally purchased/downloaded it, but my download starts with 2.06, so it wasn't too long ago. I haven't had much time to play with it. After I realized there was a 2.07 patch, I spent the night (i.e. lost many hours of sleep) playing this sim. I played a bit last night as well. No game will ever be perfect, but this one is almost as good as the hardware and technology permit. Jug, I have no idea what is causing your problem, but as suggested above, get over to the Shockwave forums and surely the BDG guys will be able to figure out what's going wrong and help you fix it. The reward for you efforts will be having the fun of diving in on large hordes of Ju87 Stukas, Ju88s, and He111s amidst swirling dogfights with Bf109s... utterly amazing. I die a lot ignoring the escorts and taking down as many bombers as I can. When I want to dogfight, I play the 1v1 mission against a HERO pilot. It is much easier flying the Spit, the Bf109 requires a lot more skill to exploit its power advantage, but the AI makes it a good fight either way.

Historically, after each new game release, TK has released patches that brought the previous releases up to the same standard as the latest release. For example, WOV added support for aircraft carrier takeoffs/landings and SFP1 was patched to SP3 level to match. WOE added clouds and 1970s avionics and SFP1/WOV were patched to current 083006 level to match. However, TK seems to have been overwhelmed since releasing First Eagles... consumed with both the FE Addon and WOI. Additionally, FE needed improvements specific to low-speed prop planes. The improvements made for FE have not yet been retrofitted to the SFP1 series. Perhaps some of the improvements are incompatible/unneeded for jet sims and will never be merged with the SFP1 core engine? Only TK knows for sure what changes he made and which ones will be universally applied to the series, but I can say with reasonably high confidence that WOI improvments will make it back to SFP1/WOV/WOE. It is just a matter of whether the FE game series will continue to develop independently or if it can/will be merged with/back into the core SFP1 engine. I prefer a unified game engine in which any of the terrain, aircraft, weapons, etc. work interchangably between sims. But I can understand the need to keep the file sizes down to what you need, especially when marketing your games via download. A WWI sim doesn't need support for HUDs, afterburners, radar, etc. while a jet sim doesn't need support for rotary engines and machine gun reload/unjam switches. It will be interesting to see where TK goes with this series after WOI is released.

SFP1 is nice with the F-104G and lower SAM/AAA density makes it far less demanding on lower-end systems. SFP1 is missing a historical terrain/background when the obvious choice for the planeset/time-frame was Vietnam or the middle-east. WOE has a great planeset and historical terrain, the actual combat is still fictional. WOV provides for me the best planeset/terrain/historical background plus carrier operations are built in out-of-the-box. This is the sim I wanted when I bought Jane's USAF and later SFP1: a solid Vietnam F-4/F-105/MiG-21 sim.

Graphics Falcon 4.0 has addons to enhance graphics, but anyone who has played modern games can see F4.0 is a generation behind. Likewise, SFP1 series has limited detail for terrain compared to modern sims, but the aircraft/ground object details and textures are unbeatable. LOMAC set a new standard that slowed down even the best hardware available when it was released and still drops framerates substantially with max quality settings in certain situations. 1) LOMAC 2) SFP1/WOV/WOE 3) Falcon 4.0 Difficulty/Realism (especially avionics) Falcon 4.0 set a standard that has only been challenged by Jane's F/A-18. LOMAC is done well, but lacks the clickable cockpit and dynamic campaigns. SFP1 series is called a "sim-lite" by its own creator, but certain elements are actually capable of being more realistic than any sim currently available, but not out-of-the-box. 1) Falcon 4.0 2) LOMAC 3) SFP1/WOV/WOE Gameplay Falcon 4.0 is very scalable, toned down it is as easy to play as SFP1 series. Scaled up, it is the most challenging combat flight sim ever released (thought Jane's F/A-18 runs a close 2nd). SFP1 is fun and can be very challenging, but the AI has its limitations which can destroy immersion and make the game too easy even on hardest stettings. LOMAC isn't too much different than Falcon 4.0 or SFP1, but the environment seems more sterile and the modern avionics/weapons make air-to-air combat a boring stand-off BVR fight between missiles, radar, and ecm. If you can get in close for a good gunfight, it is fun. Air-to-ground operations are fairly detailed and interesting. 1) Falcon 4.0 2) SFP1/WOV/WOE 3) LOMAC Multiplayer LOMAC is so solid for online conectivity that it is used by the virtual Thunderbirds. The built-in ability to fly opposing sides provides a good environment for squad vs squad fights. Falcon 4.0 is pretty good for online in its latest implementation (Allied Force), but leans toward co-op with its focus on flying F-16s. SFP1 series simply does not provide enough multiplayer options to hold interest for most online players. Connectivity has its issues as well. 1) LOMAC 2) Falcon 4.0 3) SFP1/WOV/WOE Variety SFP1 series is king here: almost no limit to what you can fly or where you can fly. Number and quantity of addons is unbelievable and most are free. LOMAC out-of-the-box isn't bad, but doesn't leave much room for addons beyond reskinning unless you enjoy flying aircraft that have the same cockpit/capability of a stock aircraft while using a different 3d model. Falcon 4.0 has tons of addons and to a certain extent allows you to fly other aircraft, but clearly this sim is focused on flying Falcons and at this point those marketing Falcon 4 Allied Force don't want anyone distributing the kind of mods that kept Falcon 4 around for so long. 1) SFP1/WOV/WOE 2) LOMAC 3) Falcon 4.0 While I own all of these sims (and many more), the combination of limited time and personal preferences leave me playing primarily the SFP1 series and WOV in particular. I like the historical flavor and much prefer flying F-4s, F-105s, F-8s, F-100s, A-4s, etc. I also prefer using older weapons that are unreliable and have limited release envelopes that require far more flying skills and tactics to hit both air and ground targets. I have done full-blown ramp starts with Falcon 4.0. I think the level of detail is awesome. But I don't have the time to waste and I am bored by air combat dominated by the use of all-aspect heat-seekers (AIM-9L/M) and AMRAAM. For others, Falcon 4.0 is the ultimate in gameplay (hence my labeling it #1 above), but for me, I almost never play it. I enjoy flying the F-15 in LOMAC, but I am not too excited by using AIM-9L/Ms and AMRAAMs nor by facing opponents equipped with the same or better weapons.

The USAF made an update to that design, and called it the A-10 :)

My sentiments exactly. Though the F4U Corsair gives the P-51D a good run for my favorite WW2 aircraft. WWI: Sopwith Camel Between the wars: hard to say, P-26 Peashooter maybe? But this list has only fighters. If there is any 1 aircraft I might actually love as much or more than all of the above, it is the B-17 Flying Fortress. The why for all of those is quite subjective: I simply love the way these aircraft look, love their history, too. I happened to grow up with F-4s and UH-1s flying overhead, so I am partial to those two aircraft.

Absolutely. WOE not only lets you pick the resolution, but also the aspect ratio. So at 1920x1200 you need 16:10 aspect ratio. This gives you an undistorted view. I have run at this resolution on my work laptop. I have also played at 1920x1080 with 16:9 aspect ratio on my 46" LCD TV. Either way, the game looks and plays great.

Either one can be modded to play anyway you like. i.e. you can add F-15s and A-10s to WOV and change the available years as well as adding European terrain user addons. and you can add carriers and F-8s, A-6s, etc. to WOE as well as a Vietnam terrain user addon. Buy one or the other and if you really enjoy the core engine, buy the other one as soon as you can afford it and enjoy the best of both worlds, perhaps even having a merged install.

The WOV install is completely unharmed by this process... But there are some consequences for the WOE install. Random single player missions choose aircraft from the available pool based on the year selected without regard for terrain or nationality. This means that you might see Vietnam planesets flying over Europe and vice versa. Besides seeing incorrect aircraft over the selected terrain, the markings favor the WOE install, i.e. you will see Soviet markings while engaging MiGs/Sus over Vietnam. The good news is that you can always play the unmerged WOV to get appropriate random single player missions. If you are primarily flying campaigns or playing online multiplayer, the merged install is the way to go (everyone must have the same merged install setup to play online) with more of everything to choose from without having to switch installs: more terrain, more planes, more campaigns all built into a single install without having to do any mods.

After reading some SimHQ posts, I was curious about the Vietnam: The Experience mod for Operation Flashpoint/Resistance. It is an awesome mod complete with jets. So I made a simple mission: F-4E vs MiG-21. Of course the flight physics, avionics, and graphics suffer the usual OFP limitations. But overall, I was very impressed. It was fun and somewhat immersive. It would be great for online play compared to the SFP1 series: climb into your aircraft, take-off, land, custom missions. You can eject and fight on the ground: imagine finishing up your mission by trying to evade capture on the ground and getting picked up by a SAR helo with a Spad escort? If Bohemia Interactive could ever get their support for aircraft up to the level of SFP1, it could easily become the ultimate flight sim ever made.