malibu43

MigBuster - I gotten into a couple deep stalls so far, both resulting in my F-16 pancaking into the ground! I completed 2 more campaign missions - both scrambles as I was waiting for a SEAD strike to start. I got 3 kills in each with no red missiles fired in my direction, which makes me think I may need to bump up the difficulty a little. I also discovered I can't map the speed brakes to the second throttle on my AV8R, which is too bad. So far I haven't found a use for it... I did add a homemade after burner detent to my AV8R. Otherwise I had a really hard time finding 100% mil power without staring at gauges. I'm going to try and get a picture of it later and show it off. I basically hot-glued a piece of bamboo skewer to the base of the stick on each side of the throttle so that the throttle lever contacts them at about 75%. I then sanded the skews down so they interfered with the throttle just enough to provide a noticeable detent, but the throttle could still be pushed past. Unfortunately, it's not adjustable, which means it might be a PITA for SF2, IL2, FC2, FE, and FSX. If anyone has suggestions for a homemade, adjustable throttle detent, I'd love to hear them!

Can you explain this? There was one crash this year. If you're talking about past years, there have been 19 or 20 fatal crashes total in 47 years of racing. This is the first time spectators were killed/injured at the reno air races. They did more than ground the planes. They cancelled the race. Umm... Do you think they don't do "saftey checks"? I'm sure they go through an extensive preflight. The planes are probably crawled all over by the pilot and crew for days/weeks before the races. They fly in a big oval/circle. That's about as basic as you can get. There are no complex manuevers. Oh yeah! You're totally right! We should let the NTSB that the probable cause of the crash is that no one checked to make sure the pilot could fly before he got in the cockpit. There is a minimum distance. The FAA says what it is. And the planes don't fly toward the audience. There's nothing you can do when a plane going 500mph goes out of control. The audience could have been miles away and the plane could still kill people.

Along the lines of what FC said - I think that a lot of people/media are going to wrongly start pointing to the cause of this accident being that the aircraft was 60+ years old. These airplanes have no business still flying, blah blah, etc... This wasn't a carefully restored P-51 meant to be as it would have been in 1944. Galloping Ghost was heavily modified. I would guess that the only part(s) of the aircraft that may have actually been around since the '40's would be the actual frame itself. Engine components, control surfaces, controls, control mechanisms, etc... could all be heavily modified and newer (younger) than I am. Those components that aren't new are probably meticulously inspected and combed over before any race/flight and on a regular basis. Therefore, I don't think (totally unqualified opinion, BTW) the risks of racing these warbirds is any greater than the risks of racing any other modified aircraft being pushed to it's limits (which is what racing is, BTW). The only real safe solution would be to only view air shows and air races on TV in your own home. Moving spectators farther away may have helped in this situation becuase of the way the aircraft behaved once control was lost/and or pilot was incapacitated, but it's not the end-all answer. An aircraft moving at 400-500 mph can cover a lot of ground between the time control is lost to the time it hits the ground. This time it was box seats right next to the final leg of the course, but it could have easily been a home several miles away. Or the plane could have impacted in the desert 100 yards in the other direction and it would have been just another air show accident. My point isn't that there shouldn't be any airshows. My point is that there was real bad luck involved in this case.

Found a 1/2 hour to read through the radio stuff, and then found another 1/2 hour to set up my DTC. And then randomly ened up with 45 minutes to try a campaign mission. Restarted the campaign and selected the same BAI mission I struggled with last time. This time it went pretty well. As we came up on the objective, 2,3, and 4 all asked for weapons free and I let them loose. Rifle(s)! I was in the process of fiddeling around with GMT and at about the time my flight started letting them have it, I saw some blips on the radar screen. With my mavericks slaved to the FCR I was able to pick up a little black trail of ants (OK, trucks, but they looked like ants...) moving across the ground. I ground stabelized and let a couple mavericks loose on two of the trucks. I think I got one. I swung around for another pass, and at this point the sky was starting to lighten as dawn approached. That coupled with the 4 or so burning trucks meant I could use Vis mode with the mavericks and abandon the GMT. I made a couple more passes and let loose the rest of my mavericks. I saw some tracers whiz past my canopy on the last pass, but that was it. I was spiked by an SA-13 a couple times, but that never turned into anything. I left the target area with the rest of my flight still working the target area over. I heard them engage a MiG-21 at some point. Judging by the radio calls it seemed to have gone well. I was vectored to a long final by approach, but as I was lining up I started having trouble with the speed brakes. It took me a while to figure out that the "B" key isn't a toggle like it was in AF. I had to hold it down to keep the brakes out. By the time I figured that out I was at about 1500' AGL, abeam the threshhold, and offset about 1/2 mile to the left of centerline! The smart thing to do would have been to go around and set up a better approach, but this is a video game, dammit! I chopped the throttle, left the brakes all the way out, and started some sort of S-turn into a short approach. Well, this was my first attemp at a Falcon landing in a few years, so needless to say, it didn't go very well. I over shot the runway centerline and stalled in a bank just a few feet off the ground off to the right of the runway. I hit the ground and snapped the landing gear off and slid for a looonnnnggg time, and then finally stopped. Hey, any landing you can walk away from... Debrief showed I hit with 4 of my 6 mavs. Killed a bunch of fuel trucks. Sweet. Saved it and quit. Between the new DX9 graphics, fully clickable 3d pits, and dynamic campaign, I'm having a hard time seeing myself go back to SF2 or FC2 anytime soon!

I was considering going this year, possibly taking my 3 month old son. We wouldn't have been there until Saturday, but still, kinda makes me shudder. PS - Not that it can't be discussed here at CA, but there is a pretty lengthy thread at SimHQ already. Contains some interesting discussion as to what might have happened. http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3391667/Tragedy_at_the_Reno_Air_Races.html#Post3391667

Agreed. After installing and making sure everything worked, I assigned some joystick buttons and jumped into a BAI campaign mission (that's a good idea right, after not playing any version of falcon in several years?). Well, I didn't realize it was a night mission until I got in the cockpit, so I flew the first 1/2 of the mission through NVG. That didn't help. Was so confused on the way to the target trying to turn nav and strobe lights off and trying to get the MFD's to do what I wanted them to do that I flew right past the target area and over an SA-3 sight. Managed to dive and evade the one SA-3 that was lobbed up at me. Took another minute or so to get the HSD back up and find my way back to the target area. Then another few minutes trying to get GMT to work. Finally gave up on that and just turned on labels. Found some red ground units, but couldn't get an image up on my mavericks. Finally worked (didn't know it at the time, but so far it seems like you don't get any image from mavericks if you're above 12K...?). Fired a couple mavericks using boresight at some thing moving on the ground. After all that, time was up, so I just ended the mission and discarded the campaign. So, note to self: I can't jump into a new version of Falcon when it's been years since I played another version of Falcon that I as only semi-competent in. I've since re-assigned some joystick keys that are more important than they used to be and hacked my way around the Mavericks training TE. Something tells me I may want to try some more TE's before I jump into the campaign again. I gotta figure out this new radio frequency stuff. I can't say I'm really excited about having to manage radio frequncies. That's probably the system I'm least interested in using. Oh well...

I forget what the .ini entries were and where they go exactly, but you can use the "move" trick to move the colored HUD glass so it's no longer visible. Take a look at the cockpit.ini files for the A-6 in the A&G XP. They have the edits you are looking for.

Invisibility suits have been around for a long time. In fact, I have one. Here is a picture of me wearing it:

I love being a Californian, but people here can be such idiots.

I downloaded this the other day. Absolutely amazing! Plus, with FLARE, it looks liek it will be even better.

I haven't explicitly seen the answer to this question yet - Does the campaign customizer allow you to create a campaign that is based on a carrier?

This has been the only DLC so far that I have considered getting. Would have saved hours of campaign_data.ini editing that I've done over the last few years. Just need TK to fix the bugs and confirm that I can customize campaigns that start from carriers...

Also, what year are you trying to fly? It needs to be either 1982 or 1983. I forget which one.

!?!?!?!?!?

Folks, I have all the SF2 series and obviously found the upgrade from SF1 to be very worth it. However, I still only have SF1 with the expansion pack and the ENB mod installed. I'm trying to decide if it's worth upgrading to FE2... With the SF2 series, it's a no brainer because of the all the great new mods that are constantly coming out that require SF2. The "Mod" folder thing makes it really easy. But for FE, there aren't nearly as many new things in the works and my install stays pretty much untouched for months or years at a time. So in that sense, some of the advantages of the second gen don't factor in. Basically, upgrading would just be for graphical improvements and any other code updates that are in there (are there any?). Any thoughts on if the upgrade is worth it? FWIW - I"m not really much of a WWI guy. More into WWII and "Jet" stuff. It's just there for some occasional fun. And along those lines, I have the free version of RoF installed as well. It has a pretty limited plane set (only two), but for someone couldn't even pick a Spad or Sopwith Camel out of a lineup, a really diverse planeset isn't that big of a deal. And for the same price as FE2, I could get ICE for RoF, which I think would add quite a few more planes. What would you do if you were me?

Thanks, guys. I've decided not to buy anything at the moment. It doesn't seem like the upgrade from FE1 to FE2 would be worth it for me. And until I've actually had some more time to play RoF (I've had the demo installed for a couple months now, but have only flown around in quick missions using the keyboard...), I don't have any reason to spend $$$ to add more aircraft. In general, I think RoF looks better. In fact, I think the graphics are pretty amazing. FE with Juan's tree's looks pretty damn good too, though. For now I'll just keep 'em both!

OK. Now something else weird is going on... I have an album: http://combatace.com/gallery/album/634-malibu43s-album/ But when I go to upload in image, it asks me to create a new album or select an album. The album I linked above isn't anywhere as an option. Am I missing something?

Works. Did it for years until I got my new laptop!

And then elaborating on what Wrench said, the .ini entries you posted in the first post for the SAM site are meant for *terrain_name*_targets.ini. Meaning it would be placed in the terrain, not just part of a single mission.

I have never been able to find a way to re-engage the catapult after landing.

Hmmm... I've never really played with ground unit moral. That's good to know for the always-challenging-to-get-just-right ground wars in the SF2V expansion pack campaigns! PS - someone needs to combine Baltika and MigBuster's posts and put them in the KB ASAP! Way too much good info here to not have saved there.

Excellent video!

The campaign one is a tough one. There used be at least of description of what all the variables are and very basic description of what they do in the SF1 Knowledge Base, but I think the link was broken at some point. I have a pretty good grasp of what variables need to be tweaked in order to accomplish certain things. But, TK has always been very vague about how supply levels and the outcomes of player missions impact the campaign - basically always saying that the game takes them into consideration, but not exactly how or to what extent. I'd rather not sit and try to write out everything I know, but if you have some specific questions I can try to answer them here or in PM.