gbnavy61

Enemy set to normal for me. Seems enough of a challenge. Perhaps one day I'll work up to hard. Otherwise, I have everything else on hard except for HUD and Visual Targeting. Don't you just love departing controlled flight mid-dogfight? I know I do. The Arnie decided to bail on me going after a couple Fitters just yesterday. Was slow and had a little too much back stick when I tried to use the ailerons to roll - got a nice adverse yaw departure instead. Had about 9000' to the dirt when I started. I think the problem was I didn't let the spin develop fully before I tried to recover - or I should've pushed a little forward stick to help recover. I kicked in opposite rudder and the joker made like she was gonna stabilize, then she started to spin again in the opposite direction. Went through this one more time, and after that I was too low to recover anyway, so I punched out.

Off topic: Rhino = F-4. Period. End of story. I always thought "Thunderchicken" suited the SH well. Too many syllables for the radio, I guess. Resume Topic.

Ok, apparently I can go 25-50-10, just not 25-10-50. Weird.

On top of that, do yourself a favor in the F-8 and map the "gun group" function. Now you can fire only two cannons at a time instead of all four. If you do yank too hard and jam them, you've got two good cannons left. It does happen a lot in the 'Sader, usually I jam up one cannon per mission - sometimes a heavy G-load, sometimes just a long burst. However, using them 2 at a time and disciplining yourself for taking shots will get you plenty of gun kills with the "MiG Master."

Any good restaurants nearby? Always a good excuse to take a trip somewhere.

Bueller?

I'm thinking about playing around with some modeling. What are some good 3d programs to make aircraft? For example, what program do you Mirage Factory boys use to make your great birds?

I got a ride in one of those, once. Fun times. North Island to San Clemente and back.

Sounds correct to me.

In what way?

Thanks, all, for the replies. Keep it coming if you've got more.

Arnie won't cycle radar range settings for me. Using WOI patched up. Any suggestions? I take that back - range will cycle, but it won't loop back around to the other end - i.e. I can go 10, 25, 50nm scale, but not 25, 50, back to 10. Is there a way to fix that? My default setup is to have one button on the throttle to decrease range only - as a contact moves closer, I can scale down. But, until this jet, it has always looped back around to max range.

Disagree with Viper in two respects: 1) "Fleet Defender" is a clever phrase but it doesn't really describe what the Tomcat was built to do. "Air supremacy fighter" as RADM Gillcrist put it, is a much better description. Yes, long-range cruise missiles and the big ol' Russkie bombers that dragged them were part of the equation. But, the Tomcat took lessons from the dogfights of Vietnam into account, too. The Tomcat had the qualities of a high-speed, long-range interceptor, but also the close-in maneuverability of a dogfighter - at least for its day. The Tomcat, in the legacy of good Navy fighters could defend the fleet as well as take the fight over enemy soil and dominate the airspace, allowing the rest of the air wing's assets to be brought to bear on the enemy. 2) As Dave already mentioned, there's still plenty of threat to our carriers and battlegroups from enemy aircraft/missiles. It was minimal, not too long ago, but it's now in a resurgence. Think about it this way - there's probably a lot more unfriendly nations out there who could afford to buy multiple aircraft and missiles to threaten US warships than could afford a surface or submarine fleet to do the same job. I think there is definite cause for concern that the Super Hornet has taken on the role left by the Tomcat. I think the shoes are a little too big to fill. Unfortunately, Dave is correct. The Navy has dropped the ball. The Air Force has been clear-headed enough to see the necessity for something like the F-22 and provide the ability to design and procure it. Naval Aviation has been pissing R&D money away for the last few decades. The A-12 comes to mind. Lots of projects that were never even half-done were scrapped and the money sunk into them, gone for good. As a result, the Super Hornet got to step into the spotlight because it offered adequate performance and lower cost. The whole "off the deck" comment that sakai made doesn't only apply to missiles. The common theme downplaying the Super Hornet's relatively moderate top-end was this: "Most dogfights don't take place above Mach 1 anyway." That's all well and good, but doesn't consider the whole story. The Super Hornet's top speed is around 1.8M - and that's with very little hanging off the jet. The Tomcat could bust 2.0 with a full air-to-air load. If you were a battlegroup commander, wouldn't you rather have the ability to launch your fighters off the deck and intercept the bad guys farther away? If you were a pilot, wouldn't you rather have to ability to get out of trouble as fast as you got into it?

So, bottom line - there's no way of doing a model without at some point running it through 3ds max to convert it properly?

This has probably been thought of before, but is it possible to add a working IFOLS to the carriers? It sure would make it easier to get back aboard (not that there isn't a lot of slop in the game, but it'd help at night when you can barely see the ship as it is).

Indeed. There's too few players, and as a result, too few new ideas coming down the pipe. Not enough competition anymore.

Well, C5, if you look at the history of US Naval Aviation, you can see in WWII we got away from the concept of a pure fighter. Deck space is limited, so F4Fs were replaced by better fighters - F6Fs and F4Us. But, those new fighters could also perform the strike mission. Early in the war, a carrier had about 25% fighters, and the other 75% was dive bombers and torpedo bombers. By war's end it was 75% fighters and 25% others. Fighters started to do more of the heavy lifting while increasing the capabilities of the airwing to first, get air superiority and then, support the Marines hitting the beaches. So, I don't think you can have a Navy fighter nowadays that is just a pure fighter. It doesn't make sense. However, I do believe you can have a great fighter that is a decent strike platform, in favor of having a bunch of great strike aircraft who double as adequate fighters. Hornets are superb strike aircraft, but I'd still rather see a better fighter hit the fleet.

What the Navy really needs in a new Grumman fighter (hurts to say this part...) or strike-fighter (...oww). Not enough Grumman stuff on the flight deck anymore. Yeah, I also have a beef with the whole Jack of all trades concept: what if you have some critical failure of components? Your entire fleet is grounded until it's fixed. Sounds like a dumb security arrangement to me. Sure, the odds of such a calamity are low, but it is possible. It's all about the bucks nowadays. Nobody wants to spend a million bucks on a missile anymore - or $40 million on a kick-ass plane to carry them everywhere. Sad really.

It's not 4, but steeper than 3 - due to the ship moving the effective GS is about 3. You guys bring up a good point, since the CVs are only edited missions or campaigns. But, I think as Typhoid mentioned, the tolerances are not so exact in the sim, so we can probably get away with a one-size-fits-all meatball.

WTF?

H-60s.

I'm slightly familiar w/ GMax - I think a copy came w/ FS2004. But, you make it seem like more hassle than it's worth. Will Milkshape 3d do anything for me, or is that another hassle? At this point, I'm less interested in making an entire aircraft, as examining an existing aircraft and playing around with it to see how everything works. I can work up to making one, someday, but I need to start small.

Ok. Is there anything of good quality that isn't prohibitively expensive? What sorts of programs are all you modders using? (It's like pulling teeth.)

Is that what TMF uses? What does it cost?

I'll agree w/ 3 out of the 4 you got. I thought most of the Bud commercials were lame, though.