JediMaster

The problem has become (for once) a lack of publicity of the problem. When the first crash occurs because of a laser, assuming the crew survives to tell that's what it was, THEN there will be a slew reports about it.

Oh, the RAF will no longer need to engage in air-to-air combat? I guess all the unfriendly countries out there are giving up their airplanes as well? Once again, people can't see past the war in front of their eyes. If they had 30 years ago, Afghanistan wouldn't be such a slog now. Build a force today to fight there tomorrow and you'll be in deep trouble when it turns out to be something totally different.

Well, the issue isn't combat losses, it's just accidents. We've already lost 5% of our B-2 force to a single accident! Things happen, from ground fires to a hangar collapse to a mid-air refuelling accident, and you can't stop them all. We managed to keep most of the F-117 fleet in service till its retirement by virtue of retiring it early! If we can the F-22 in 2022 or so I'm sure we'll still have most of them as well. Keep them for the decades they claim to intend to, however, and you have to deal with other things like wing cracks (see our F-15Cs).

The book I mentioned was a compilation of several books, each on a separate plane. I wonder if your book was the source. I recognize the diagram as well, I'll have to pull my copy out of the closet and examine it!

I'm also supposing their military careers will be relatively short, so they're giving them a lot to do early because they know they won't be around for long. That said, even if it's "easier" for them than the average service member, at least they're doing it! That's more than can be said for a majority of the so-called "leaders" which are ordering those same service members into combat. If it needs to be done, don't hesitate, but don't do it without realizing the true costs involved by sending them in and just thinking "well, they volunteered." They volunteered to defend their country and make a positive difference, not to play some politician's games and die for someone's reelection chances.

Hey, I recognize that font! Is that from "The Great Book of Modern Warplanes"?? I read that thing cover to cover so many times when I was younger and there was less reference material easily found than now...

Well, the F-22 was designed to replace the F-15 and the F-35 the F-16, so they're not built to the same specs. Sure an F-22 could do the F-35s job, just like an F-15 can do an F-16's job, but would you want to spend that much to do it? I remember the original JSF plan was for something like $25m/A model, $30m/C model, $35m/B model. Boy did they screw THAT specification up.

Me too, it was called C-SPAN. *rimshot*

A small number of laptop models have a GPU-on-a-card that looks like a small circuit board that can be swapped out/upgraded. Most likely yours is not, it's not a popular option. The fan is usually linked to the CPU temp, so if the GPU overheats you wouldn't necessarily have any indicator. I have an 8600GT on my Dell laptop, but it has just one fan. Most likely there is a heatpipe arrangement that brings the heat from the CPU and GPU to the same place where the fan can cool it, hence my statement that perhaps the thermal connection between the GPU and heatsink has failed. If the laptop has suffered any jarring impacts lately, or been in a hot dry place, that could cause the thermal paste/pad to break down. When that happens, it's going to overheat within a second or two of power-on. The instances when it would work for a short while before failing was likely because the connection was still partly there, so it took a little while to overheat. Your only (free) recourse is to disassemble the bottom of the laptop, find the GPU, and check the connection between it and the heatsink/pipe. Not knowing your model's design, I'm not sure how user-repairable it might be, to get a new thermal pad in there and reconnect it. That said, it may be "too late" for the GPU anyway, and while that would keep it from overheating again, it could already be permanently damaged. As for data, they don't need your HDD to fix it. Most laptops have an HDD that is easily removed after you undo a couple of screws. REMOVE THE DRIVE BEFORE YOU SEND IT AWAY. Otherwise, who knows what could happen?

"A bit of work"!?!? That's the understatement of the year.

You could have a failed fan or the heatsink came loose on the GPU or its RAM. If you get distorted graphics BEFORE you load windows, just in the BIOS, it's 100% a hardware problem. The 3 months OOW part is miserable, because this looks like that's exactly what it needs...to be repaired at the hardware level.

That's bizarre. It didn't give any errors installing the patch, it just didn't work right? Like B-17 II this was one of the few MPS games I never got. I spent my time playing EECH and Longbow 2 instead.

LOL, because they felt the F-35 was the wave of the future. If they did cancel the F-35, as improbable as that would seem (since we'd have to pay back literally billions of dollars to all the countries that paid us), maybe they'd reopen the line. Only 20 F-22s to go.

Imagine the joy of the people who'll be able to tell the story of when they were rescued by the Prince of England. I've read about the stories of a few people out west saved by Harrison Ford in his helo in an impromptu rescue mission.

That's not the kind of behavior you typically see in a forum administrator. I grew up watching some Speed Racer and Starblazers, but I was never big into them. Something about the style just irks me. Call me crazy, I like smooth movement, not rapid movement between freezing in place.

Yup, they wanted One Plane To Fly Them All (types of missions) hence the projection for 2500 planes. It's just bizarre that everyone today talks of when "production ends" as if that's some big cost-saving measure. I bet if you looked at how money was spent on the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 programs since they started it's easily many times the original esitmate...since we kept building them! The question isn't just "what does it cost" but "what would the alternative cost in comparison"? You could just scrap the entire fighter fleet, that would be real cheap. No need for training pilots, maintainers, spare parts, fuel, weapon development, that would save MEGAbillions! Or we could just keep building the planes we have now, the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18, and in 20 years when advanced ground defenses swat them from the sky because they're just too old to be effective over enemy-held territory, we can just keep churning out more to replace them! Take all those illegal immigrants and give them yet another job no one will want...US fighter pilot! We can save money by not training them in how to land! They'll never live that long anyway...

At this point most of the money has been spent. All that's really left is the money to actually build them which is far less by comparison. The other thing is the Harrier is a dangerous plane. Lots of accidents on takeoff and landings over the years. The F-35B is FBW and many times easier to fly, mitigating the risks to both pilot and ground crew. The search for a replacement for the Harrier has been underway for 25+ yrs, to stop now is short-sighted. The final point...creating a new plane to replace either the F-35 (and that means it also will have to be in 3 versions) or to separately replace the planes it is meant to (F-16, F/A-18, AV-8) will result in yet again a large bill for R&D before we can even start rolling any off the line. If you think they could be cheaper than the F-35, you're dreaming. There's no going back to $20m fighters/bombers. The gov't literally is incapable of running a program with that focus.

Pretty much the only alternative spot for B-1 engine mounting is on top of the fuselage where the engines are now, mounted more Blinder-style but still in front of the tail, not on it. The problem with that, of course, is the aerodynamics TOTALLY changes. The thrust line is now above the wings instead of below so increasing thrust would push the nose down, the weight distribution would change, etc. It would make the plane more stealthy to have the intakes on its back, of course. I think it boils down to "how much can you change the base design before the costs increase to the point you could just start from scratch anyway?" Look at the Super Hornet...despite claims of being based on the Hornet, it's really a brand-new design from top-to-bottom with its own set of unique problems that decades of Hornet operation neither foresaw nor aided (wing drop?) Planes like the C-5 and U-2 that had their lines reopened had minimal changes compared to when they were shutdown, which is why they were cost effective. Besides, the B-1's engines aren't outdated, and the plane has massive range. It's one of the few planes out there I'd say is NOT going to benefit from a reengining, unlike the C-5, B-52, E-3, E-8, etc. What gets me is that it looks like the F-15 will still be rolling off the production lines after the F-22 line shuts down. Granted it's the Strike Eagle variant, which replaced the air superiority variant in the late 80s on the line and haven't been built since, but we're not going to be having "F-22Es" replacing the A on the line either. F-15's in continuous production for over 35 years, F-22's for barely a dozen. Frankly, if we're not going to buy enough F-22s to replace all the F-15Cs, which are starting to have serious problems due to their age, they should just buy more F-15s with AESA to replace the F-15Cs.

I don't think TK did, or ever planned to, patch that Wright Bros sim. That meant he could indeed do a simple "control input" recorder. I don't think there were any other planes in the air with you, either, it was just free flight in a non-hostile environment. As for pause, have you tried mapping a stick button to that command? I doubt that the sim itself would let you, but the stick software might.

It looks like it works for the ground units, too. Notice the line attached to the tank icon on the map? I'm just not sure if the directional arrows take you to previous/next waypoints or units. As for campaigns, it's easy to just make a set of single missions as a campaign. Sure you don't get previous mission results carried over, but you could always set it up so they assume any target you fail to destroy in a mission is taken out by a follow-up flight between missions. TK has never had a scripted campaign in the TW sims and I don't think it's starting now.

You got your FLCS to work with USB? The reason I bought the Cougar in the first place was the loss of the gameport in my SB Audigy years back. I LOVED my FLCS/TQS/RCS combo, with Bob Church's digital chips upgrade, but it wouldn't work via USB. I think I finally dumped my FLCS when I bought the G940 for space reasons, it was still sitting in the closet till then. The Cougar worked, but it was never as good to me as the FLCS/TQS was.

Bizarre, it's working fine for me. It shouldn't even matter which Logitech software you're running, 5.08, 9, or 10. Ok, I admit I've not tried it with the 5.10s yet, I just installed them last night.

I heard November for its return, but nothing solid about day or time.

You couldn't put 777/787-style engines on a B-1, there's no clearance under the fuselage for that. Besides, size considerations would mean only 2 engines instead of 4. Using the F119 or F135/136 could work, however. Frankly, if you're going to make a missile truck that never overflies the target then a 747 Freighter mod could well suffice. It has the payload and range requirements. I can't imagine wanting to fly it over a target to drop bombs, though, even in so-called low threat areas because you never know where a SAM might be hiding. The B-1 has agility that no airliner can match and is useful at low level as well as normal operating altitudes, something the Buff can't match nor could an airliner.

Some games with replay abilities, like LOMAC/FC/DCS and Il-2, are basically useless thanks to patching. Anything portrayed in the playback that has been altered thanks to a patch/update, such as FM, damage modeling, AI performance, etc renders the previous one broken in some way. They use the deterministic way of recording missions to keep file size down, but that makes the patching process ruin it. It's such a big factor that the 1.0 release of Black Shark had training missions you could watch and then take over and fly yourself that were ruined by 1.01 and then 1.02, so they were removed! Now you have to go to their site/YouTube and just watch videos of the missions.