Fubar512

Witnessed two eclipses a long time ago (in March of 1970 and July of 1972). Both were partial eclipses in my area, and in the latter event, I set up a telescope on a street corner with a sun projection screen so passers-by could get a safe look. What I remember being cool about the 1972 event, was seeing literally thousands of projected images of the eclipse caused by the sun shining through the tree leaves in the area.

The answers to those questions can be found here: http://combatace.com/forum/268-thirdwire-strike-fighters-2-series-knowledge-base/ Admittedly, it may take a bit of searching, but trust me, the answers are there. Now, do you have other SF2-series titles already installed? If you do, then you'll find that SF2:NA has merged with them. What that means, is that you now have access to the IcelandNA terrain, and the SF2NA ground objects (ships), from inside the other titles. That makes things rather easy, when it comes to modding.

Uh, no way. The fore deck on the Elco and Higgens boats were not reinforced for that sort of weight, and field mods were limited to lighter weapons, such as 20 mm or the even lighter (weight) 37 mm scrounged from a P-39 For example, the Oerlikon 20 mm weighed about 400 lbs fully loaded on a fixed tripod mount, and just over 600 lbs when mounted on a reinforced pedestal. A single Bofors L60 40mm weighed in at just a hair over 1000 lbs on its pedestal mount, which is why it was limited to being mounted near the fantail, where the flatter sections of a PT's running bottom would still provide enough dynamic lift to allow the boat to achieve planing speed in a reasonable amount of time, and not adversely affect its top speed. It also required a crew of four to man it. So that being said, a twin 40 mm mount would probably push 2,200 lbs (or more, as the powered quad 40 mounts on BBs and CAs weighed in at over 25,000 lbs!), and would undoubtedly effect the boat's ability to plane off. Also, due to the sharp entry on either Elco or Higgens hulls, even a single 40 mm mount would probably cause what's referred to as "bow steer". That's where either hull's sharp entry would catch on a wave, and cause the bow to dart to either side. I have some experience with bow steer. I once ran a 55-foot sports fisherman, that displaced just over 40 tons, or about half the weight of a loaded PT boat. The owner had replaced its original, bow mounted 15 foot RIB, with a 17 foot Boston Whaler, and just that additional 500 lbs on the fore deck was enough to burn out the auto-pilot's steering motor. In fact, the boat ran so much better with no weight on the bow, that I made him remove the dingy completely when we were running out of our home port. Here's an image of the '109, showing it's stern mounted 20 mm Oerlikon on a reinforced pedestal. Note the additional deck reinforcement beneath the pedestal itself. Now, an interesting weapon, was the Elco "Thunderbolt", which featured quad Oerlikons, with either dual or even quad .50 cals on either side. Talk about a shit storm!

Or sink Japanese destroyers, submarines, and armored Daihatsu barges in the Pacific Theater, not to mention one Nazi Corvette, numerous F-lighters, and at least two Schnell boats in the Med. Oh, and a brace of PT boats held off a wave of Japanese strike aircraft near the Solomon Islands, in broad daylight, downing at least three of them.

"Motor Mac's" (engineer's) station on an Elco 80 footer. Talk about being in the hot seat! The 658's web page: http://www.savetheptboatinc.com/new_page_9.htm

Hey Kevin, Here's a late Higgens boat, with a 37 and a 20 mm on the foredeck, the standard 2X twin 50s, a 40 mm on the fantail, an additional 20 mm just forward of that, four torps on lightweight racks, 2 (MK7?) depth charges, and 5" rocket racks, port & starboard!

Radars today display the set range somewhere on the screen. For example, the image that I posted earlier shows the radar is at a 12-mile setting, so each ring corresponds to 2 nm out from the center. Most of the equipment today is pretty idiot-proof. However, it all means nothing unless one is paying attention.

What we need is a good PT-sim that covers the Pacific, Med, and North Sea theaters. Taking on the Tokyo Express in the slot (off the Solomon Islands), barge-busting along the New Guinea coast, interdicting Axis convoys off Sicily, and fighting Schnell boats in the North Sea. Vosper, Elco and Higgens boats for the Allied side, versus Italian MAS boats, the aforementioned Schnell boats, flak lighters, Daihatsu barges, etc. Killerfish Games, take note!

If you are referring to the sort of water effect that SF2NA has, the simple answer is no. SF2NA uses a LOD-based terrain with more advanced terrain shaders, the older titles use a TOD-based one, with fairly simple shaders, that do not take full advantage of the DirectX shader libraries.

Commercial radar sets often integrate AIS onto the display, along with target data tags. For example, this is a Furuno FAR series display. Note the AIS target data on the right side.

In my experience, not very messy. While one often does see a series of "pacmen" (small dots) appear to randomly propagate across the display from a radar-equipped target, I've never seen it interfere with determining the range or the relative bearing of said target. And, from what I've seen, the Crystal's AIS set was functioning at the time of the collision, so the Fitzgerald would have known its heading, speed, and vessel name, and that it was a "dangerous target" (meaning that it was on a collision course), from the AIS tag that would have appeared on their navigation radar. For those of you who do not know what AIS is, here's a wiki page on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system

It's in the "Rules of the Road" module of the CG Master's exam. The minimum passing grade for that module is a 90, for obvious reasons. The other modules (the minimum passing grade for them is 70) are deck general, navigation general, and what they now refer to as "plotting". When I took a prep course for my master's ticket back in the dark old days of the 1980s, one of my fellow students, a middle-aged lady who was an attorney by trade, commented that it seemed every bit as hard as passing a bar exam...LOL