MacGalin

View File Lightning f.53dh 1974/1987 "Super Lightning" - Dhimar A simple mod of stock TW Lightning F.53. It gives you two fictional variants of dhimari Lightnings, armed with Sparrow and Sidewinders, with 1987 version equipped with modern HUD and radar from F-16A. It's the first SF2 mod i decided to share. Obviously, Strike Fighters 2 Expansion Pack 2 is required. --------------------------Background Story In 1966, Kingdom of Dhimar, worried about Parani supersonic Tu-22 bombers and Su-7 strike aircraft, ordered 34 F.53 Lightning interceptors from BAC. While Dhimari air force pilots were more than satisfied with its performance, speed and rate of climb, its missile armament was not really adequate for the task. This has become even more apparent after kingdom started to receive its first batch of US made F-4 Phantoms, armed with radar guided, all aspect missiles. In 1972, decision was made to upgrade the Dhimari Lightnings to more modern standards. Working together with Ferranti and Raytheon, Royal Dhimari Research and Development Bureau managed to successfully modify the AI.23 radar allowing it to guide new AIM-7 sparrow missiles. Both hull and wing hardpoints were modified in order to mount US provided AIM-7s and AIM-9s. The upgrade program also added (audio only) RWR and countermeasure launchers. The modifications decreased the volume of ventral fuel tank, however this was considered to be acceptable trade-off, and between 1974 and 1976 all dhimari lightnings were converted to this variant. In 1986 BAe offered further 22 Lightnings to Dhimar - all ex-Saudi F.53 airframes, together with supply of spare parts and engines. Soon after that, further 10 Lightnings were bought from Kuwait. At first, all airframes were intended to be simply refurbished and upgraded to the same standard as rest of dhimari fighters, but - mostly because of personal insistence of Dhimari Prince Fa'ad, the decision was made to modify them even further, completely replacing 60s era avionics with significantly more advanced systems - most important of them being latest AN/APG-66 radar, together with Marconi HUD (displayed directly on pilot's windshield, like in F-14, rather than on separate glass panel). In October 1987 first such modified Lightnings entered Dhimari service. The program was deemed successful enough that in early 90s it was extended to 1972 modified airframes as well. While 1972 and 1987 variants retained the ground attack capabilities of F.53, Dhimari air force preferred to keep them as pure air defence fighters. However, few airframes transferred to mercenary Special Operation Wing were sometimes used as strike aircraft - despite being armed only with unguided weaponry. --------------------------Installation Just unpack and drop it into mod folder. --------------------------Thanks and credits Skins were made using excellent Lightning F6 2048x2048 Templates by Sundowner Dhimari fin flash by Spinners Thanks to yakarov79 and Pvince for advice about modifying stock cockpit. --------------------------- All combatace freeware licence rules apply. Do whatever you want with this mod, as long as you are not breaking them. English is not my native language, so i apologise for any grammar and or spelling mistakes . Submitter MacGalin Submitted 08/26/2021 Category What If Hangar  

Hear, hear!

I think had the similar problem at first. Is your LOD viewer pointing at your game install dir? If not, go to extras>settings , enable CAT file accses, and point the viewer to your install directory.

It worked Thanks for helping me !

Ok, i did that, - copied the aircraft folder, edited the ini, and got very amusing floating cockpit instead of aircraft in game - but i still can not find the lod file to open with viewer. Is it saved on some temp folder or something, or am i missing stretching else entirely ?

Well, title says it all, i think. I would like to remove Lightning F.6 gunsight from its cockpit, but - like every other thirdwire LOD it cannot be extracted from *.cat file. That means i can not load it in lod viewer, and get mesh name. And without the name, i can't disable said mesh in the ini. So, was there any way found to get that data ? I heard that in ye olde days lod files were not locked...

Yeah, but unelss i misunderstand you (which is of course entirely possible ) , it would need one more additional stationgroup, and the plane already uses all six...

I was asking about the wEApon selection screen in mission briefing, not about loadout.ini configs. In loadout ini it should work fine because you have direct control over stations , rather than stationgroups. My concern is manually selecting loadouts before missions, and there you are stuck just with stationgroups. As for the plane, i did not think it would matter, since i was hoping that generic answer exists (like "yeah, there's a variable that allows you set up a minimum allowed weapon size") - which does not seem to be the case. As for the plane, its B-57G i am fooling around in order to learn how stuff works (or in this case - how it does not work). As for now, i decided to kludge this using cloned weapons with SpecificStationCode specific for the plane and the station. Not an elegant solution, but it works well enough for my purposes. If anyone is interested, here are the two weaponbay blocks i use right now:

I have another noob-ish question - how to prevent weapon station from being able to load light bombs? I need a pylon thats able to load for Mk83 and Mk84 1000 and 2000 pounders , but it would not allow to load smaller stuff like mk-82s or rockeyes. I know that there's a maximum size and diameter limit - but is there any similar variable for mimimum weight/size allowed? The wider context: i want to make 2 separate configurations of a bomb bay - [light] allowing to load 6 light dumb bombs in 3x2 layout , and [heavy] allowing to load a pair of heavier bombs in 2x1 layout. I am using two separate weapon stations linked to single stationgroup ID - it obviously works fine for the heavy bombs, but when i try to load lighter ones, then both weapons stations activate, and plane loads both 3x2 layout from [light] AND the additional two unwanted light bombs of the same type from the [heavy] station, for total of 8 bombs clipping through one another. Alternatively, is there any way to limit bomb bay weapon station to be able to load only specific weapons (mk 83 and mk84 in this case ) ? I know it could be done using SpecificStationCode, but that would require to create separate variants of above bombs specially just for this one plane - and i would prefer to avoid that if possible.

Its basically what-if dhimari flavoured evolution of B-57G, only intended not just for nighttime truck hunting with LGBs , but also for CAS and battlefield interdiction ( which i guess would be more of a priority for a small country dealing with enemy tank regiments sitting at the border ) . Here's its origin story:

Thanks, it worked ! I probably would not ber able to find this on my own, because the avionics.ini files of the planes i was using as reference ommited this line completetly.

You mean a/g strafing gunsight is hardcoded to stay inline with plane axis?

Well, i am trying my hand at some basic modding - basically making a fictional, heavily updated late 80s b-57 with phantom cockpit , f-16 hud, and all kinds of pgm capabilities . I have figured out most of the basic stuff about cockpit and avionics i needed, but one thing still eludes me. Guns on my plane are angled slightly downward (to help with strafing) . With basic cockpit and hud import, this means that gunsight is pointing high above the actual point of aim. I have used the viewangles variable in cockpit.ini, and it does work well - but it only seem to work for A/A lead computing mode. ViewAngles=0.0,-3.5,0.0 But when i select the guns in air to ground mode (strf) , fixed gunsight is still locked in way too high position, way above the line of fire - and i was not able to get it down by any means. So, any idea how could i bring the gun reticle into proper position in a/g mode? Or alternatively, how to force the plane to use the lead computing sight in A/G mode instead of fixed one?

My 2cents about ethiopia-eritrea war. Based on what i have read in monography of this war published in one of our aviation magazines. While it certainly shown that flanker is very dangerous and capable aircraft, it also demonstrated some things about russian AAMs. And while AA-11s were indeed as effective as advised, results scored by AA-10 missiles (and AA-10s were hyped up to unholy levels by some people, both real experts and "internet experts" )were very dissaponting. In combat use their performance was extremely poor. Both sides used them in relatively large amounts, and time after time they failed to hit. Its said that performance level was somewhere about vietnam era AIM-7Es. And its hard to blame it on pilots, since most of them on both sides were "imported" experts.