gbnavy61

That poor guy's about to have a really bad day...for the last time. ____ A little Razbam Prowler action.

Oh they are beautiful, but then, one can't fly a screenshot.

Disturbing...in more ways than one.

I would enjoy being proved wrong.

TMF new Tomcats are mythical. Like Pegasus.

So far, the only improvement I've seen is the 8-way chat/party system. Otherwise, everything they "improved" sucks. "Lame" fits it pretty well.

US in anything from Korea on up. Otherwise, I'll bounce between Britain and Germany for Europe - they have the aircraft that I prefer (either for reputation/looks or performance). Spitfires, Mosquitoes and 109s are some of my favorites. Always the Allies in the Pacific, mostly Hellcats and Corsairs.

I said weird. Never said wrong, did I? Chill pills for all. I'll take the first one.

Sweet. I like the paintjob, too. Btw, is the F-14 pic a painting or a computer image? Either way, it blows the doors off of anything I can do now.

Ooh.

Well, most USN traditions/customs/courtesies are from the RN originally. Likewise, our Air Force sprung from our Army, so they have the same (weird) habits.

Nothing against the Army, but they do think it's "normal" to salute inside of buildings and without a cover on. So, to someone with that background this also seems "normal." Congrats to your wife on the upcoming advancement.

Oh, an Army guy made the bill. That explains a lot. It just doesn't feel right saluting uncovered, especially out of uniform. Not to mention, it just looks weird. I don't find hand over heart or position of attention any less respectful than a salute. To each his own, I guess.

Nice - VF-24 and the Connie. Freakin' beautiful. Do you take requests?

I like to bring the jets back if I can. I figure, hey why not simulate the skipper wanting me to bring the jet back if possible. Aside from being on fire or out of control, I pretty much have only one concern with battle damage: when I move the gear handle, do I get three down and locked? If yes, easy day. If no, I'm thinking getting out is a better idea than making a fireball on the runway - I just don't know what the thing is gonna do on the ground when not on the wheels. I once brought back an F-14 with one engine, one stabilator and full of holes. (Unfortunately, no glorious battle tale - I just got a little too low on a practice strafing run. Ripped a fuel tank off and shed some fan blades, among other things.) Made it back to the field no problem - all gear working. I dead-sticked an F-4E in to land, twice. No damage, just ran it out of gas in combat, so again all gear working. Just last week, I took an A-4H in and zapped a runway. Got good and shot up for my efforts - although, I did violate the sacred rule of "One Pass, Haul Ass." Lost the rudder and got shot full o' holes, but all else seemed normal. Got back to the field for the straight-in approach, and son of a gun, I only get one main down. At that point, I cleaned it up, pointed it toward the coast and slowed down to 160-ish and pulled the handle. I was wounded, but survived. If I tried to belly land, or do a two wheel landing, I'm fairly confident I would have bought the farm. My advice, if you're not sure, get out. If you have a chance to do a controlled ejection, slow it down, minimize the sink rate (level flight or a little climb is better), and get a little altitude beneath you, if you can.

That or the Starship Enterprise. I'm still holding out... Very cool, though.

I think the little bulb hanging off the jet is a laser designator or some type of IR sensor/designator.

Think it's time to step outside there.

She's not that bad looking. The makeup definitely isn't helping her. I'm sure she's a nice person and really must like/love someone to pose for these photos - they don't leave much to the imagination. At the risk of digging a deeper hole, I'll just say this: If it weren't for less-attractive people, how would we know who the hotties are? (Remember when we talked about how you should end your stories one sentence earlier...)

My first requirement for a lady is that she have a pleasant face - that's the part I have to look at all the time. Yikes.

I know it's theoretical and all for fun within the game. I'm just suggesting that this technique of determining the drop point may not give the accuracy necessary to hit/destroy your target every time (again, unless we're flying a B-17 w/ a dozen bombs, or using cluster bombs). I didn't remember if the sim allowed everything to go into metric. Anyway, that still leaves two problems. First, airspeed. I'm pretty sure that the default info in the lower left corner gives you Indicated Airspeed (same as on the instrument panel). Is there a way to get True Airspeed? In the end TAS is what you need to base your calculations on, because the higher you go the more difference there is between IAS and TAS - kinda makes a difference if you want to be up higher to avoid AAA. If you have no wind, TAS is your Groundspeed - i.e. how fast your jet, and consequnetly, the bomb, is moving over the ground. Second issue is altitude. Just because you are at 6000' on the altimeter, doesn't mean you have 6000' between you and the surface. So, some advanced knowledge of the target elevation is required for accuracy. I tried this out in WOI yesterday - took a Scooter over to hit a runway. I ran the numbers for 300kts at 6000ft and got a drop point of 1.6NM. I know you used metric numbers, I converted to English units. Now, I have my targeting and HUD set to 'hard' so I wasn't able to be extremely precise with the drop point, but I got pretty close to the drop point (by eyeball anyhow). I came in at an angle because flying down the length would kinda defeat the purpose of the test. My bombs missed a runway-sized target by a good 100' laterally at least (assuming runway centerline was the desired impact point). Now granted I wasn't perfectly on parameters, but that's kinda the point - is anyone ever going to be exactly on? If you're off a couple feet on altitude, or you're a couple knots fast or slow, or you're slightly offset to one side of the other, it can make a big difference. The higher you are, the more flight time the bomb has, which means any deviations from your drop parameters have that much more time to affect the impact point. And if you're off on more than one parameter the affect could be increased (for example, if you're higher and faster than your drop numbers - your bomb is going to overshoot the target quite a bit).

I would assume even with all this math stuff you'd need to be pretty much right on parameters and right on course to get even close to the target. What kind of targets are you going up against and what kind of ordnance are you using? Also, how are you determining when you're at your drop point in the game? Also, how do you identify your other parameters - altitude is obvious, but not all aircraft have True Airspeed gauges - and what about different units like knots and feet vice meters and kph? Not trying to shoot down your work here - it's a good application of what you've learned in class - but, it seems an awful lot of effort to plan out the drop. If this is a WWII type bomb run with about a dozen or so 500lb bombs with a large target, this would work well. But otherwise, it seems like it would lack the precision needed to hit smaller targets, when a little dive-bombing might get you a whole lot closer, without all the number-crunching.

If we're lucky, maybe they'll sink all their own stuff before anyone else has to. Sorry for the crew, though.

I see the problem...you're flying a helicopter. (Sorry, I can't actually be useful here.)

Maybe said individual confused JFK and JFK Jr. If you overlap the stories, he could have been shot in a plane. Any takers? Storm, I know exactly what you mean. It wasn't an airshow, but we were out picking pumpkins (at the pumpkin patch of course - family tradition) one year before Halloween. I probably wasn't more than twelve at the time, with my little brother at my side, and we looked up to see what exactly was making the cool sounding prop noises a ways off. Lo and behold, a nice B-25 Mitchell (my brother's first name, too, as it happens) was buzzing around looking pretty sweet in the clear blue sky. We weren't the only ones to stop and look up - a father pushing a stroller with his younger child was easily within earshot. Suddenly he opened his mouth and out came the following sentence which made me cringe: "That's a B-24 Martin Marauder." Ouch, two strikes at once.