Typhoid

50hr/flt hour!!!! In what fairy tale did you read that? The Tomcat generally averaged about 300hr/flt hour for maintenance and THAT is what killed it. It was a beast to maintain and put in the air and in no way did it ever approach the turnaround and maintenance manhours per flt hour that competing aircraft take. The Hornet is a dream to maintain and they can turn around an aircraft with less than 25 per flight hour, which is eye-watering for a maintenance type. I know a couple of F-14 types including some former maintenance officers and CO's along with some F-18 CO's, and my son is currently an F-18E maintenance officer. There is absolutely no comparison between the two. You can talk tactics and air to air vs air to ground all you want, but when push comes to crunch the ability to meet the flight schedule/ATO with 4 of 4 Hornets beats 2 of 4 Tomcats for half the fuel per sortie and 1/6 the maintenance manhours. don't get me wrong. I am a Tomcat fan for the lost deep strike and long range air to air capabilities we've lost. But basing the argument on maintenance is dead wrong. We absolutely need a third entry into this debate. It isn't about whether the Hornet or the Tomcat will meet the Navy's future requirements. Neither will in the future. What needs to be put on the plate is a new aircraft program to put an advanced air dominance fighter onto our carrier decks in sufficient numbers to dominate a FUTURE contingency that may involve advanced opposition fighters such as the advanced Flanker variants. Neither the Super Hornet or the mythical Tomcat 21 can meet that potential threat. Typhoid Aircraft Maintenance Officer VAW-115 '82-'83.

This is a very fun (for me), quite historical mission, that I'm proud to share with you. Read the included docs, please. Paolo, Paulopanz very nice. Particularly challenging with getting jumped as the mission starts. Cleaned up flying both sides of this, although cruising back to the recovery point in the F-8 all I found was two tin cans to ditch alongside of! cool mission. Thanks

both planes?.............

I've done an update to the F-14D model that is posted here; http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autom...p;showfile=3806 This is an update of the earlier F-14D mod to the Mirage Factory F-14A and corrects several inaccuracies. The earlier F-14D release more closely represented the capabilities of the "Quick Strike variant which never actually went further than "view-graph engineering" and would have been a half step to the later Tomcat-21 which also never made it off of the drawing boards. If you like that variation you may wish to rename it as the Quick Strike, recognizing that it never actually flew and that there is another model of the Quick Strike already posted. This variation of the original F-14A represents the capabilities of the last operational configuration to guard the fleet; the F-14D "Bombcat", which included the capability to drop bombs and laser guided bombs. Other advanced weapons available at the time, such as Mavericks and Harms, were never incorporated into the F-14D due to budget limitations. This release also incorporates the outstanding avionics upgrade done by Sandmartin and Batman1978, special thanks to them for their fine work and for granting permission to include that in this release. I have included the older cockpit and avionics for those who, as I do, like thundering along with a ground mapping radar for strike aircraft so you can install that "avionics degrade" if you like that option. Disclaimer - This model is a minor tweak only of the ini files to update the engines, radars and weapons to enable the full air to ground capabilities that were fielded in this aircraft. This does not include the detailed airframes changes of the later aircraft, that is left to a more capable modelling team at which point this version will be withdrawn. This release assumes you have already loaded the Mirage Factory F-14A, without which things like sounds will not come up. And again, my thanks to bpao and his team for their outstanding work and permission to mod their model. Hope you like this version and good hunting! Typhoid

that's why we call a "touch and go" a "crash and dash"

Negative. Alpha Whiskey is the Anti-Warfare Command who works for Alpha Bravo who was the OTC. Either of them could have issued the Warning Yellow and I do not know for certain which one did, though I think in this case it was Alpha Whiskey. The next one up the chain is Alpha Alpha who is whom I worked for and that covered the entire Med. So I had a ring-side seat, so to speak, and was plugged into the event from prior to start to past the end keeping my boss, the 3-star in command of the Sixth Fleet in the loop, but no direct hand in the events as they occured.

I was the TAO for the 6th Fleet Commander on the flagship. As such, although not flying in the engagement, I was an indirect participant in the action from the time the Floggers started moving until it was all over. I was the first one in the fleet to call a threat inbound. Having said that, the Officer in Tactical Command under whose direct command the engagement occured was the Carrier Group Commander an echelon below the Fleet Commander. CARGRU commander (actually his TAO) is the one you hear in the audio giving the Warning Yellow call. That is the direct involvement, the Fleet level where I was is more accurately an indirect involvement. it certainly kept me busy during that watch.

weaklings...... the obvious carrier campaign is WOV. Beyond that several of the add ons have carrier campaigns. I don't see any way that an auto-installer would work. Too many details that have to be tweaked. The how-to in the library above has the detailed instructions. I've added carriers to several other campaigns with mixed success and have been building carrier missions. and I don't use auto to land! Obviously though I have a slight advantage....

haha? ????

i'd say its realistic because of the disparity of forces.

actually, one of the things that slows it down in WOV (in particular) is all the SAMS that can lock on at long range. The higher you go, the more stuff is shooting at you and the slower the frame rate as a result. go real, looooooooooooooooooow

WOV is the one that gives me the most problems in running. I think the processor speed is also an issue, mine is currently at 2 gig and I still have problems when a lot of stuff is going on. I've had to dial down the graphics to keep performance up, especially with hi-res terrains. currently running a P4, 2ghz, 512mg video card (nvidia7600), 1.5g ram. It still chunks at high loads. when I put my older nvidia5500 in my daughters computer, with a 3ghz, 500meg ram, it ran other games smoother than my computer does. So the clock speed does have an enormous impact and 2ghz is probably a minumum and too slow for high res. :(

very thorough summary. Looks like an outstanding addition.

Cool link to a Mustang fly-in with some other supporting actors. http://www.eaa.org/gallery/mustangslegends/

agreed. I don't have 18GB taken up by 8 separate installs including one with all the F-111's. must have done multiple loads with "tree's' subfolders? just guessing

not to mention the battery pack or generator that is needed to drive that thing!

sure. I've already modified another campaign using the Libyan terrain to test out various carrier planes. As I finish up with the current batch I'd enjoy jumping into this one.

it is the same video we reviewed on the flagship after the engagement and I recall the details of the audio from my part during the engagement.

it is. I still have an audio tape of that and it is the same engagement. I remember that one all too well.

I'm slowly getting better at it. could take a hack at it after I finish up some other projects.

cool. I will leave my planned update of the A+ on the shelf and pull it when your B comes out. In the meantime, I have an update to the D close to finished (still just an ini mod to the basic A model) which will hold down the fort until whenever.

as I understand it, and read in a lot of the manuals, they were both the same plane in fleet service. Just an administrative difference between the two fleets.

oh, so this is a full model rebuild with the new airframe changes in the visual? way cool, looking forward to it. The A+ and D on this site did an ini mod to simulate the engines only with the increased thrust. when this one comes up, I'll ask them to take the 14A+ down. I've been tweaking the D model and am planning to update the one here as a more accurate representation with the capabilities more closely tracking the real D in fleet service. What is currently up more closely replicates what the Block 2 or Quickstrike might have been. Do you have any plans to press on towards the D?

absolutely true and never advertised as anything but. Is that why you would never answer my requests?