Dysko

In passato ho giocato tanto a SF2. Veramente tanto. È partito tutto da un DVD di Strike Fighters Gold trovato per caso in edicola nella mia ultima estate "di libertà", quella tra l'esame di maturità e l'inizio degli studi universitari.

È stato una droga per me. Come mod c'era TUTTO. Per me che non ho un "aereo preferito" è stato come trovare una miniera d'oro. Potevo aggiungere tutto quello che volevo, provare di tutto.

Mi piaceva anche per la sua semplicità. Non c'era bisogno di prendere un type rating per poter effettuare una missione, ma allo stesso tempo non era un banale sparatutto come Ace Combat.

E poi le persone conosciute su questo forum. Alcune delle amicizie strette su questo forum sono poi diventate amicizie nella vita reale, condividendo anche viaggi ad airshow.

Mi sono sempre piaciuti gli scenari what-if, in particolare del tipo "Cold War gone hot" (...ai tempi non potevo pensare che potesse succedere veramente ). Però ok, bello il Fulda Gap, ma quanto sarebbe bello sfrecciare in mezzo alle Alpi e colpire le truppe dell'Est che cercavano di avanzare da Gorizia?

Ai tempi questo scenario lo volevamo tutti, ma è sempre stato "lontano".

Poi piano piano la comunità si è ristretta, delusa dalla mancanza di aggiornamenti per SF2 e attratta dai continui sviluppi di DCS. Io stesso ho abbandonato il mondo di SF2 per DCS (sì, nonostante ci voglia un type rating per volare. Potete mettere pure il meme "Sei diventato ciò che hai giurato di distruggere!" da Star Wars ).

E alla fine trovo questo scenario finalmente rilasciato. SF2 è ormai un lontano ricordo sul mio hard disk, eppure la voglia di rimettermi lì ad installare tutto c'è. Ci sarà un ritorno alle origini? Perché dopotutto, come ho letto su un altro forum anglofono, "Strike Fighters è come la tua prima ragazza. Avete passato dei momenti indimenticabili insieme, ma alla fine vi siete dovuti rassegnare al fatto che non siate fatti l'uno per l'altra. Però 2 giri ancora ce li faresti" 

Grazie per il tuo impegno, e in bocca al lupo per la tua salute!

Update from Italy.

First of all, please understand that every region in Italy has some decision-making autonomy on several issues, including healthcare.

This is what happened:
Every region except for Lombardy: "Let's perform swabs on every suspect case, especially if they are sure they were in contact with a confirmed positive case, so we can trace the outbreak"
Lombardy: "Naah, let's perform swabs only on those who are hospitalized"

Result:
Every region except for Lombardy: the outbreak is more or less contained. Death rate is on par with rest of the world.
Lombardy: positive cases are coming out of the goddamn walls. Death rate is 4x than the rest of the world. Several people who were told to just self-isolate are often found dead at home (especially the elderly) without ever being tested (so they do not even appear in the official statistics). This March several towns reported 5x the number of deaths compared to the average number of deaths in March in the last few years, and often less than half of these are officially recognised COVID-19 cases.

Not only that, but in the last days a decrease in the number of daily discovered positive cases in Lombardy was reported.
It turned out that less daily swabs were performed.
As they increased again the number of daily swabs, daily positive cases started increasing again. Who could have imagined so.

I fear the situation here in Lombardy will still worsen for few weeks, as the outbreak reached Milan, the most populous and densely inhabited city in the region and northern Italy.

In Milan a new field hospital has been recently completed. And to celebrate its opening, hundreds of journalists were invited in a cramped conference room for a press conference  

The lockdown should have ended this weekend, but it has been prolonged for another week, and still it will not be enough.

Just to have some fun, here is a compilation of Italian mayors and governors angry with people defying the lockdown:

This is what is happening ~20 km from where I live:
http://www.ansa.it/lombardia/notizie/2020/03/18/coronavirus-colonna-mezzi-militari-a-bergamo-con-feretri_3b4e3a18-8467-4185-ad72-2939cc607f66.html

In that photo (taken 3 days ago), an Italian Army truck convoy is transfering corpses from the cemetery of Bergamo (Lombardy's 4th largest city) to other cities because the local crematory is overwhelmed.
I used to travel on that same road almost every saturday night, as one of our favourite pubs is near that place.

Now my area is the most badly hit. A cluster appeared in a nearby valley almost contemporary to the first clusters in Italy, but unlike the other ones it was decided not to lock down that place to avoid shutting down some important industries. Now the situation is out of control, while the first clusters are more or less contained by now.

Local hospitals are full. Bergamo's airport, the third busiest airport in Italy, is now almost exclusively used by Italian Air Force cargo planes transfering patients to hospitals in other regions in bio-containment capsules.

Long time since I last posted here, but I lurk from time to time to search for some good mods and I found this thread...

Northern Italy here, from one of the most badly hit provinces of the country. Total lockdown was enacted one week and a half ago. Companies are still open, and it was difficult to persuade my boss to allow me to work from home, since Italian bosses tend to think that smart working is for slackers.

Before the lockdown many people behaved very irresponsibly: overcrowding ski resorts (one of them is in an area close to where I live where one of the first clusters was found, which possibly explains why my area is so badly hit) and escaping en masse to the at the time unaffected southern regions, spreading the disease in the whole country.

In my area hospitals ran out of ICUs few days ago. Field hospitals are popping out everywhere, but we know they will not be enough to save everybody.

Is the mustang a 3/4 copy? Looks small

Yes ;)

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo a tutti!

Thank you everybody I had to make a correction though... As the owner himself told me, the Blériot XI is not a replica, it's an original plane!

http://www.winrar.it/

Oppure, se vuoi un programma unico per aprire sia ZIP sia RAR: http://www.7-zip.org/

And to my knowledge, no salvager was lost which is impressive considering the danger of the work.

Unfortunately that's not correct... as far as I know, a diver lost his life while working around the wreck.

I should have been near Genoa in the estimated day of arrival of the wreck, I wanted to go near the port just to see the wreck arrival, but I won't able to due to various reasons.

Ogni tanto un giretto qui me lo faccio pure io

...but they do not think about Freespace II. I wonder how the Sathanas Class would rate against those.

Both the Sathanas and the GTVA Colossus are about 6000 m long.

(another FreeSpace fan? I tought we were a rare breed!)

But I guess being a neutral country, you dont really have to sweat too many threats. I wish them luck.

Just few months ago, an Ethiopian Airlines 767 flying from Addis Abeba to Rome was hijacked by its copilot, who wanted to land in Geneva to demand asylum. The problem is: the Swiss Air Force is active only during office hours, and since the end of the Cold War they don't have QRA anymore. Italian Typhoons were escorting the 767 since its arrival over the Mediterranean, but it was very early in the morning, and instead of handing it over to the Swiss Air Force they had to hand it over to French Mirages, which circled with the 767 over Geneva until it declared fuel emergency.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/02/18/ethiopian-air-def-response/

Back on topic: I really hoped Switzerland didn't reject the Gripen. It was my only chance to see it near where I live.

No French airplanes? :(

Not this year. Last year there were French Mirage 2000s and Mirage F1s, but this year the French Air Force is already involved in the joint French-Saudi exercise Green Shield in Nancy (I should have departed for Nancy tomorrow, unfortunately I was forced to cancel it). What a pity, since I only have static photos of Mirage F1s