streakeagle

It has been public news for some time. It is one reason that the USAF had no care about whether the NASA space shuttle was being retired... they had already developed one for their own purposes. They would like an upscaled version, X-37C, that could carry larger payloads including people.

Well, the only advancements from before are using your photos as an overlay for the previous black/white lo-res manual print-out and adding our old 46" LCD TV to my computer desk... no more dragging the PC out to the family room, its mine now! I will provide pics as soon as I get a chance.

I will gladly take any drawings you have! At some point, I want to ditch the Warthog throttle and put in a home-built reasonable imitation of the real one.

That pic is perfect! I am envious of everything you have. If and when DCS has a fully clickable F-4E/F Phantom, I will be wishing I had everything you have. But, over time, I hope to largely replicate what you have with wood and real switches minus the gauges. Of course, years from now, maybe I will be in a position to get equivalent PC driven gauges or maybe even get around to getting what you have. While my wooden box does the job, I truly regret not buying the authentic enclosure that was sold on eBay by the same person that sold me the stick mechanism. You even have the snap on "boot" that covers the base of the stick. At some point, I would like to have functional rudder pedals that move in and out with the hand crank on the center console. But I don't have the metal working / machining skills to do it right and can't afford to pay someone else either. Rudder pedals and throttles almost never pop up on eBay, and when they do the price goes too high for me. So if I ever want to do this, I have to come up with something I can fabricate in my garage with basic tools and materials from Home Depot / Lowes. I saw the ejection seat trainer cockpit on eBay once, and my wife even authorized me to get it. But I had no place to put it and didn't want to waste money on something I wouldn't be able to use or even store at home. The one I saw was ultimately bought by the USAF for training QF-4 pilots in Florida. Kind of ironic that the USAF had to buy and F-4 trainer at eBay prices that they had probably just gotten rid of for pennies on the pound through DRMS. Keep posting pics of your progress!

MiG-25s and MiG-31s look way cool and distinctly Russian no matter how well they do/don't perform in combat

I am very sorry to hear you are having such trouble. I hope that it is just a minor problem or at least can be solved with a minimum of pain and suffering. What is the recovery time if they operate? In particular, how long before you can sit up and play flight sims At the very minimum, even if you are constrained to lying down in a bed, you could always watch all the Godzilla movies. I won't wish you luck because you don't need it... you already have and can continue to overcome adversity better than most people in the world. But know that your friends here wish you the best health and happiness.

Isn't AC-100 the CO aircraft with the bright colors? The closest I can find for 1995 is March 1995 AC-204 at Leeuwarden AB ops: Also from the same time/place, AC-205: AC-101 in 2006: So, I am thinking, just apply yellow higlights on the tails of the 1995 204/205 pics to get AC-101 in 1995.

Thanks for the post. My son loved it!

In a word, "no". It is supposed to be possible to create an orbit waypoint in the mission editor (not sure if that even works), but you can't tell wingmen to orbit.

Fingers crossed.

Those shots do look pretty good... but it would be nice if there were more "Sundowners" doing that quality of work for every model ever released for SF2 Of course, being primarily an F-4 Phanatic, I am lucky to have had Sundowner and Ravenclaw keeping me topped off with goodies in recent years. But I have lots of SF2 flying time in all the century series birds, both stock and mods, as well as MiGs. It would be nice to have every aircraft I fly, if not every aircraft available, to the same standards as the best mods.

And there is the end result: None of the combat flight sims ever released have been perfect or ever will be. Just a matter of finding the one that suits your needs best. The problem for me is that each one has key flaws that can't or won't be fixed. But I expected SF2 to keep improving and moving toward my ideal, instead it actually started moving backwards and at the moment is completely frozen "as is". DCS on the other hand, has improved quite a bit, especially in comparison to LOMAC/FC, and promises to continue making dramatic improvements for at least a few more years if ED doesn't go bust. For the moment, SF2 remains the superior sim for dogfighting. But as much as I love dogfighting, I want a whole lot more than SF2 currently provides. For me, DCS only has a few significant limitations compared to my ideal: 1. One small, flat map instead of modelling the globe (SF2 is equally guilty here). All flat maps are significantly inaccurate and if they cover a large enough area, become grossly inaccurate. To be fair, it has been stated that Edge can support a global model, but can DCS: World support it? Kind of ironic that the "world" is so small and limited when "World" is in your product name. I only know of two more maps on the near horizon: DCS:1944 and DCS: Nevada. 2. Planeset. I am not a huge fan of 1990s and later air combat. I don't want combat to be a pushbutton missile fest. I prefer combat in the 1960s with the diversity of aircraft and weapons ranging from small gunfighters to heavy weight gunless missile interceptors. It will be a very long time before DCS can compete in this category if it even lasts long enough to try. 3. AI. SF2 isn't exactly the gold standard for AI behavior, but in many ways exceeds what DCS is using. For my purposes, dogfighting in Battle of Britain 2 Wings of Victory is the Cadillac of air-to-air AI, at least for close-in guns. But DCS has done so many other things so well, that it is painful for me to go back and fly SF2 after flying the A-10C, UH-1H, and P-51D in DCS. Despite flying it for years, I can still have fun flying SF2, but I have even more fun flying DCS:World. The unmatched detail and accuracy of the UH-1H is enough to hold my attention for quite some time. If, I didn't have any other DCS aircraft, I could easily devote all of my time to mastering the UH-1H. But the P-51D is every bit as much fun to fly... especially in a dogfight. Both of those aircraft will take a back seat once I have the MiG-21bis. The F-15C AFM about to be released might get me to spend a lot more time in the F-15C. All I can do right now is sit back and wait to see what actually gets released and when I can get a hold of it.

I don't know if someone has posted this link before, but it sure is slick The F-35 should have been everything the F-16 evolved into, but with stealth: Small, agile, relatively cheap, very capable at both air-to-air and air-to-ground. But stealth inflates everything: size, weight, cost, and in this case deflates performance to F-4 Phantom levels. http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-JSF-Thud-2004.html

It would take some serious work to remap those old WoV skins to the SF2 F-105D

The only hi-res skins I recall are those made by easy kill. He has (had?) is own dedicated website, but posted some of his work here. I don't recall SF2 era releases, and I haven't tried to splice his SFP1 work into SF2. http://combatace.com/files/file/3636-f-105d-high-res-sea-1-1-4/ The website is here: http://www.digitalstrike.eu/ I would say that he did for F-105s what Sundowner did for F-4s. While I don't always agree with certain artistic choices of either one, they are both the best I know of for their respective aircraft specialty.

But I think SF2 isn't that far from accurate on jet vs jet 20mm/23mm/30mm cannon combat. MiG designers figured they could get kills with just 3 round fired down range with the latest 30mm laser ranged cannons. F-4s and F-105s were embarrassingly vulnerable to minor hits from flak shrapnel and small arms, much less direct hits from cannon rounds. Some of those aircraft made it back despite severe damage, but unlike B-17s, this was the exception rather than the rule. There are not many photos of heavily damaged survivors when it comes to Mach 2 jets. The F-4 received field mods that helped with some of the worst problems, such as retrofitting self-sealing tanks and armoring some key areas. Who buys a combat aircraft of any kind without self-sealing tanks (the lack of a guns wasn't nearly as critical as the other design issues with the F-4)? But the F-4 and MiG-21 were virtually tanks compared to the MiG-21s, which not only burned like Japanese Zeros when hit center of mass by even 1 or 2 rounds, but usually exploded violently. When you pack a plane that tight (i.e. all engine, fuel, and just enough room for the pilot and a small radar), there is no armor and a vital spot just behind the pilot that explodes almost every time one is hit. The loss rates for jets in Vietnam after being hit by air-to-air cannon fire leads me to believe SF2 is not that far off from reality. WW2 is a different story when you look at .50 cal, .30 cal, 13mm, etc. Plenty of cases where the airframes absorbed lots of hits, even on aircraft made of wood and fabric. But again, 20mm was devastating to fighters. In SF2, 0.50 cal fire seem way too lethal, lending credence to the idea that the whole system is a little bit heavy on the damage despite my opinion that jet-vs-jet might be close to dead-on. But DCS is just ridiculous. Have you seen what a single 20mm hit does even to just a non-critical wing or fuselage location? I can see my hits on the MiGs and Sus. Yet, I have to aim very carefully to cause fatal damage and to my recollection, always see a pilot bailing out. When the angles permit, I always pull lead and track back through the canopy... it is an instant kill in just about any other sim to hit canopy glass with a cannon. Yet that rarely if ever seems to happen in DCS. I enjoy flying DCS, but if the goal is high fidelity modeling, the damage modeling has a long way to go compared to engine and flight models.

I got plenty of rest, didn't leave the house too much, and my son mostly left me alone. So, I spent most of Saturday and quite a bit of Sunday flying DCS. For now, our big 7-year-old 46" Mitsubishi 1080p LCD TV has become my monitor, which really makes me feel like I am in the cockpit when the zoom is set just right. I mainly flew the DCS P-51D on Saturday. I focused on flying P-51Dx4 vs. Fw190D9x4. I got familiar with how the AI handles multi-bogey engagements and tried to get my gunnery skills up to the laser-death-ray skills of the AI. If my wingmen respond well, it is a race to see if I can get any kills. They stole some kills from me quite often. My best mission, I killed two Fw190D9s with really fast focused bursts, during which time the AI easily splashed the other two. On a typical bad mission, I would try to clear an Fw190 off my wing's tail, but the Fw190 would nail him fast, in the mean time another Fw190 would be lining up on me while I chased the first one. The tail warning radar can be very useful if it isn't being tripped by the ground or wingmen. If you hear that bell ringing, you know you need to do something about it. I also use the rear view mirrors extensively. They let me track a bandit that passes head on and I almost always see a little speck diving on me. With TrackIR, I can get disoriented while maneuvering violently and sometimes I can't find the bandit even when I know he is on top of me and about to shoot. But most of the time, I can keep track of my target and maybe even keep up to date on where the other planes are. I think it would be much better with a 360 degree dome or maybe an occulus rift head mounted display. I spent some time practicing startup/taxiing/takeoff with the P-51D. The startup is much simpler than the A-10C or even the UH-1H, but I can still have some trouble with getting it primed right and turning over. Taxiing in a tail dragger is a trip. I only ground-looped once, totally destroying the plane trying to turn too fast with too much speed. Generally, I have no problems though since it behaves a lot like the P-51D from Aces High, complete with the locking tail wheel. Simply flying this beast is a pleasure, getting to fight in it is an added bonus. The flying aspect could be exponentially more fun if I could fly anywhere in the world per MS FSX and have high-def mods for my favorite locations. I also enjoy the 6DOF cockpit in the F-15C. It looks great on my LCD TV. Guns only combat is a little too easy, but fun nonetheless after getting spanked so many times in the P-51D. I don't believe the F-15C should easily beat Su-27Sx2 in close-in gun combat. If the AI flew those aircraft as well or better than me, I should never really win since one should always get me if I try to get behind the other one. Despite the AI limitations, sliding in with the gunsight tracking correctly is just as fun as using the K14 on the Mustang. The dispersion seems to be too much for the 20mm M61. Also, the damage effect of the 20mm seems too little. Even taking the dispersion into account, I can see how many hits I am getting. In reality, one or two hits could be fatal and five or six almost always are against fighter sized targets. In DCS, 20mm seems to have the effectiveness of 0.50 cal and 0.50 cal seems to be about the effectiveness of 0.30 cal. Of course, I have gotten used to SF2's highly lethal damage modeling. But, I would argue that in the case of MiG-21s, it seems to match reality. I don't know what's realistic or not when it comes to helos, but I love flying the UH-1H. I have the Mi-8 and like it, too. But the UH-1H is right up there with the F-4 as my all-time favorite aircraft. To have it modeled to this level of detail/realism is simply amazing. I have gotten pretty good at flying it and transitioning to a hover, etc. I am not so hot at engaging well defended targets. But I am having so much fun just taking off/flying/landing that I am not too worried about my combat skills. I need to do the missions. The only one I tried was picking up people from the tall mountian peak... but I can't seem to land without crashing. So, my flying skills aren't quite all they could be either ;) Realistic or not, I still find DCS to be challenging, fun, and rewarding. While I still fly SF2 for the plane set and maps, I am pretty close to flying DCS exclusively.

I never got around to getting the A2A Mustang, but always think about it. What is it that the DCS Mustang does better besides the fully functional combat features? I love the DCS flight model. I love the clickable buttons. The K-14 gunsight is a pleasure to operate. I guess the only things I don't like about flying the DCS Mustang involve limitations of DCS World, such as the terrain and dogfight AI. I suppose the sounds in DCS World are a bit gamey/movie like: I shouldn't hear enemy planes tooling around at all. I don't fly MS FSX very often at all, unless the A2A Mustang's flight model and feel was known to be more accurate than DCS, I think I am better off saving my money for other toys/games. If A2A releases the F-104 and/or F-4 before DCS gets to those aircraft, I will probably buy those... but maybe not. SF2 is better for the combat until I can get DCS fidelity.

Found one panel light on ebay and used that to get a national stock number which corresponds to many equivalent part numbers: 6210-00-812-0243 On ebay: grimes aircraft A7075: http://www.ebay.com/itm/A7075-Grimes-Aircraft-Instrument-Panel-Avionics-Control-Panel-Indicator-Light-/131035890671?pt=Motors_Aviation_Parts_Gear&hash=item1e825903ef&vxp=mtr Now to see if I can get some of these at a reasonable price :) This part number gets results: MS25010A15A Complete brand new parts are about $23 each, a bit steep for me. Ebay has some of the knob parts in bags of 5 for about $2.50, but the shipping is about $40. Very tempting, and I could cheat and rout LEDs in the lamp covers to simulate complete lighting. http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-x-Lampholder-Aircraft-quality-MS25010-13A-NOS-/291011048033?pt=AU_Transportation_Collectables&hash=item43c19c3261 Readily available in California at $10 plus shipping per lamp: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panel-Mount-T-1-3-4-Bayonet-Indicator-Lamp-Assembly-270-1930-0111-702-/321221463099?pt=Motors_Aviation_Parts_Gear&hash=item4aca4a8c3b&vxp=mtr

Someone probably programmed head bobbing or attempted to and connected the stick axis to cockpit position, or something similar. Typically, in the cockpit ini files, there are dummy instruments such as g-meters, that cause cockpit movement to simulate head bobbing due to g-load and or bank/roll/pitch indications. These can be safely deleted or commented out.

I have some Honeywell lever lock toggle switches coming in from ebay to do the YAW, ROLL, PITCH, and INT WING TRANS switches, these should be real close if not identical to the switches used in the real panel. I am in the process of building an order list for a variety of switches and knobs with a supplier to cover as many of the controls as I can. Now if I can just get my hands on a clear sheet to cover the panel.

How is your cockpit arrangement going? Please post photos when you are finished. I got all the left console panel photos squared up, resized, and pasted on to my wooden console. Could you take another photo of the left sub panel that is centered and perpendicular from a distance, but zoomed in to help minimize the perspective effects. Alternatively, if you could just post the original without the yellow measurement across the panel, I could make that work, too. What I need now is to get some switches and knobs mounted, then place some clear plexiglass or lexan about 1/8 or 1/4 inch thick to place on top. Is there anywhere I can buy those black knobs with 4 ribs that provide the lighting for the lables? Thanks, Stephen

The F-4 weapons delivery manuals are available for sale at eflight manuals, but unless they have been rescanned, the prices are kind of high for the quality of the scan and the hassle of the electronic copy protections.