JediMaster

Well, which would you rather do in a PC game, race a car? Or control a guy in a game like The Sims that sits down at a PC to race a car?

UAVs aren't flown like planes. Other than takeoff and landings when direct control might be assumed (although not always), the rest of the time a heading and course and altitude are fed into its autopilot and off it goes. In the case of an attack on a ground target I'm not sure how it's done, whether the coordinates are input and it flies out and back on its own or you have to manually create an IP waypoint and then a target waypoint, but in either case you're not in direct control.

In other words, flying an F-16 in Falcon 4 is MORE like flying a fighter than a real SSGT in the USAF telling a Reaper to drop an LGB on a house in Waziristan, let alone playing a game where you're that SSGT. To then put another sim in the loop removes you x2 from the actual flying.

Quite simply, it's not illegal to claim you've won any other awards--Oscar, Tony, World's Best Dad, Georgia's Best Steakhouse of 2008. Impersonating with intent to defraud is different from what this law criminalizes. Things like libel and slander are civic offenses, subject to fines, but this is a criminal offense with jail involved. If you allow this law, you are saying "well, you can say this and this, but if you say THAT we're throwing you in jail." That's quite clearly a violation of the 1st Amendment.

You can't let the fact that the guy is claiming a military award change the picture. He lied, and unless he's under oath in a court of law when he does so, it's reprenhensible but it can not be outlawed. You can't criminalize a lack of honor. Claiming it has any historical precedent in American society is also disingenuous. I don't think it was honorable to have children working in coal mines in the 19th century, was it? For every so-called "decline since the good-old days" you can easily find improvements to counter it.

The famous Voltaire quote states "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," and his works were an influence to the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. How many Americans have died to defend the Constitution? To say it's ok to flout those laws, if it's someone who disrespected those soldiers, is in itself disrespecting them! If the laws don't apply to all, they don't matter, and the Bill of Rights is just a farce. If you can argue against the 1st Amendment, you can equally invalidate the 2nd, or the 4th or 6th. So you could have your personal guns stripped away and then have the police come barging in on a fake pretext looking for something to arrest you for, like an "unapproved Bible", and then convicted in a trial with no jury without being told what you were charged with.

You don't have to like what they say, and you shouldn't, but you must allow it. That's what "free speech" means. Such a liar should be exposed and ridiculed by the community for their actions, but you can't throw them in jail.

IIRC, talking about the new AESA radars for the F-15C "Golden Eagles" an article mentioned it would effectively double the range at which they could detect (not track, that wasn't mentioned) fighter-sized targets. That longer range was quoted as about 80 miles, implying the standard F-15C radar can only see fighters out to about 40 miles. This makes a lot of sense as to why AWACS are needed, because if F-15s really could see out 200 miles all the time they'd need AWACS a lot less! They can see bombers farther out, of course, but really as the radar outranges its longest-range weapons (AMRAAM and Sparrow), how much farther does it need to see them anyway?

The main benefit to the F-15's AESA upgrade (as well as the Super Hornet and standard on the F-22 and F-35) will be the ability to detect cruise missiles at low level at ranges that will allow them to run a good intercept. Against a theoretical stealthy opponent of course it would help as well, but only to a point. Seeing a target is the first step to destroying it, but it's only the first step. Tracking it is next and that's what stealthy planes have proven most difficult to do. Then even if you CAN track it, if the missiles can't maintain a lock until you get very close to the target, you risk the target knocking you down long before you can hit them, the old brought-a-gun-to-an-ICBM-fight problem.

If the AMRAAM goes active too far away from a stealthy target to see it, can the launching aircraft continue to provide steering cues until it can, or is that no longer an option?

It was pretty lame not to have them.

Odd that the one thing the guy says sounds cool is NOT. UAVs are hardly fun to fly, it's like flying a small airliner, big deal.

Should the plane have dual engines (and the sim allows it, I know Il-2 doesn't despite having a ton of twins), it makes it a little easier to control the plane in an engine-out situation or during start-up/shut-down procedures. However, 95% of the time you keep them together, so it's not that big a deal. I have it on my G940 and so far I've never needed to use it.

Of course, that's the same argument made about digital piracy. On the one side you have the rights holders claiming theft, but on the other you have no material goods taken (ie by the pirate's actions no one is deprived of the product themselves, unlike stealing an object from a store) only the nebulous claim of money lost IF the pirate had paid for it (when they just as easily might have skipped purchasing it and only took it because they could get it for free). Whether it was copied and enjoyed for free or passed by, the owner makes nothing, yet they'll spend obscene amounts of money on legal fees to prosecute someone who themselves made nothing off of it (and is likely incapable of paying back enough to even cover the court costs let alone the fines), thereby increasing their costs and the amount they need to charge to maintain their comfy profit margin.

In fact, I think I read a report that the RIAA spent 10x more on legal fees than it recovered in those actions and other settlements, calling their entire process into question.

Anyway, getting back to the original point, a claim made of "hero" status without an attempt to actually profit monetarily is indeed a sticky issue of fraud. Fraud usually implies money, but if instead all it does is get someone a table at a restaurant sooner or some hearty thanks that's undeserved, what is the fraud to be prosecuted? This law doesn't require proof of harm.

This is quite simply a law against telling a lie, not against profiting or injuring others because of the lie, and that's the problem. I know there's a military version of this law that prevents service members from claiming to have done things or received medals that they have not, but a civil version of such a law can't be that broad.

I don't know what the stats are for the Hornet fleet, but unless it's a simple problem most catastrophic engine failures are likely to knock out the 2nd engine on the Hornet as well since they're so close. I've no idea how often a Hornet has suffered a single-engine failure and been able to RTB vs it resulting in eventual ejection. However, the F-16 has sold a lot better than the Hornet over the last 3 decades, so my guess is that they looked at its stats of reliability (not available in any quantity when Canada chose the Hornet) and determined it wasn't that big a risk.

After all, the USN went with the Hornet instead of the F-16 originally because of the same dual-engined safety reason (despite operating single-engined fighters for decades like the A-1, A-4, A-7, F-8, and all those pre-Nam era ones that didn't serve past the 50s) but has also chosen the F-35C for itself.

No, the Tiger is an EADS joint Franco-German helo.

You're thinking of the Rooivalk. Not that it looks very different: Denel AH-2 Rooivalk

I'm going to guess it will be $300 or so (which as it doesn't come with rudder pedals puts it at the same premium price as the Cougar, while CH and Logi you can get HOTAS + rudders for that) because I really don't know if they'll get away with more.

So...are they going to have to block potato imports to Gaza now???

I just call them people movers, because that's all they do.

Warehouse 13 is a fun show, I really like it. That promo does capture the spirit of the show.

Is it me, or does it some like the marketing people's wells have run dry? Names like "Vibrant" really just seem uninspired. Looking at the names for phones, cars, and so on, I just get the feeling that they only approve familiar, dull, simple names. I bet we could pick a better name in this thread in one day than they did. Of course, we don't have the overpaid research department with all sorts of meaningless stats to back up our choices.

Yes, first is a Hornet and the 2nd is an F-16. I noticed the F-16 still has his underwing tanks on, so he's not pulling many g's.

Of all the campaigns, I think Op Arrowhead's is the best since the original OFPs. Arma and Arma2 campaigns were just meh. I haven't played the free add-on AH-64 campaign that came out for Arma2 with the 1.05 patch yet, though. As for mods of older tanks, I don't know. Unlike OFP's 1985 timeframe, Arma is current and the M60 just isn't really relevant now. That doesn't mean someone hasn't made one, though.

They made pedals before anyone else that I can recall. I have their original gold-anodized RCS pedals from the early 90s still for my Cougar. I never got the Elites. Until I got my G940, I'd never used any but those.

This is Boeing's attempt to keep its fighter division going along with the Super Hornet until the proposed successor program to the F-22 and/or F-35 is created...the so-called "6th generation" fighter, even though right now no one really knows what a 6th gen fighter would be defined as.

Northrop Grumman dropped out of the fighter arena 20 years ago after the A-12 and F-14D were cancelled. McD had the F-15, but after it failed to make downselect on the JSF in the mid-90s it let itself be absorbed by Boeing...that was a literal make-or-break for them. Boeing brought some of their people over to their JSF effort, but by that point it was largely done so I don't know what if any contribution they made to the prototype program. I'm sure had Boeing won they'd have used them on the production program. Of course the funny thing is the Super Hornet and F-15 were both McD programs that Boeing inherited, Boeing itself hadn't made a fighter since before WWII!

I also think Boeing had a bit of a leg up on LM for the JSF because LM already had a new fighter program with the F-22, so they were hoping they'd win JSF to keep both remaining fighter companies "healthy." To their surprise and disappointment, they didn't. So all they have is the old F-15 and F/A-18 going, while LM still sells F-16s along with the F-22 and then the F-35.

They're really desperate to keep all the old lines going until something new happens. They want to sell more Super Hornets and F-15s wherever possible.

That's the Mi-35M, but I don't know if that's a retrofit program or it's only new builds. The funny thing is the Mi-35 used to be just the export downgrade model. Now the Mi-35M is the better version and Russia itself is buying a few dozen.

It apparently never got one. There were barely over 100 built in an age when planes were produced by the hundreds if they were successful.

Many planes are designed to recover themselves from a spin assuming neutral control inputs. Touching the controls can prolong or worsen it. Of course, go back in time and you'll find planes that didn't have such characteristics, but the good ones recover easily.

Ugh, I HATE the "greenhouse" of the Hind-A.

That sounds like a genuinely useful little app!

"Best commercial"? I believe that's an oxymoron.

I'm eager for the next millenium, myself. This one hasn't turned out to be what I'd hoped for.

US planes were behind the times then, that's the truth. Europe was rearming itself far sooner and Germany made good use of the conflict to refine equipment and tactics. Had the US been involved it's fair to say those lessons would've been applied sooner than they were historically and US planes at the start of WWII would've been better.

Boat racing? Interesting.

If I still had rfactor installed I might try it, but I dumped it a while back and am hesitant to reinstall when I'm so swamped with other stuff.