ndicki

In CFS3 I've often complained about the clueless so-and-sos, but I have been shot down more than once by my own winger having a squirt at the same target I'm on! That seems pretty unlikely round here... I've upgraded all levels of ability to "ace", so let's see what thjat does. If it makes the enemy any better, though, it'll make life challenging... I'm not much cop with missile evasion!

Rhodesia an ENEMY? Training POOR? Who put this together? And African names? Hardly! The only time Rhodesia might have been an enemy was when Harold Wilson thought - very briefly - about invading, shortly after Smithy (RIP) declared UDI. He had the intelligence to realize it wasn't a clever idea. Start with the fact that most Brit servicemen would have refused, and those who didn't would have found themselves wishing they had! The RhAF was in many ways SUPERIOR to the RAF; vastly better morale and motivation, and a level of training which was identical, reinforced by lots and lots of practical experience. Aircraft availability on the Hunter FGA.9 (No.1 Sqn) and Canberra B.2 (No.5 Sqn) was HIGHER than that of the RAF, despite the arms embargo and the resulting inavailability of spares and supplies. Starter cartridges for the Hunters were a major problem; they were obtainable only from Britain, and Britain wasn't selling; the RhAF developed a far cheaper, local alternative which also placed less strain on the engine during starting. The Canberra has problems with its perspex nosecode cracking; the Rhodesian "Dimple Haig" cone solved the problem and was far more effective than the original. No.1 Sqn's favourite trophy was the "Jungle Dustbin". Try strafing a household dustbin from a Hunter, and you get the idea. Poor training? Aikona!

Well, I'm glad to know it's not just me! Off to try the tweaks you suggested, but it sounds a bit as though they won't change much! (AircraftObject.ini was in "Objects" - but I've found it, anyway!)

What are wingmen for? I go burning into a decent-sized slice of Blitz, bang off a few, run out of ammo and get out, mission accomplished or not. Meanwhile, my wingers are fannying around getting torn to bits, and when I've exited and gone to look at the report, not one has fired a shot despite being up to their necks in targets. Is there somethingI'm not doing? Shouyld I be giving them orders, as in CFS? If so, I couldn't find the button. Or are they there just to get in the way and give you one more thing to worry about? Any help appreciated!

OK, chinas, I've found it - you're going to laugh... It's all a question of the original nationality of the player aircraft in the msn file; I'd been using "Rhodesia", predictably enough, and the sim didn't like it! (Political correctness from a flaming computer, ag!) So when I changed it to one of the stock nationalities, everything worked fine. Knowledge!

Cheers, Wrench - I think I've already got them, but as I've been adding things a bit haphazardly, I'm not quite sure... I have modded the loadout.ini, and I honestly can't see what the problem is. Having said that, other aircraft which I haven't modded, such as Marcfighters F-4E Kournas, do the same thing. Perfect loadout changeability in "Create Mission" mode, but no weapons available, and none loaded, in "Load Mission" mode. It may be something to do with the formatting of the mission file. I bet it is, in fact. I've tried comparing mine to the stock ones, and nothing springs to mind, but...! Edit: The Hunter works perfectly in the stock missions, with fully editable loadout, etc. So it's the mission file that's to blame.

The mind boggles...!

Now that does look nice! Good one, whoever made it.

There's an A-4F here, don't know if that'll do you... http://marcfighters.combatace.com/Aircrafts.htm

Thanks, Ghostrider. Off to look... Any advice on my other prob, of loadouts not being accessible in a "written" mission?

Next fun problem is that the new weapons menu shows up perfectly in Create Mission mode under Loadouts, but when I load a mission I made with Le Missionneur, I don't get the loadout options - they just say "Empty". That stays the case when I switch for a stock aircraft, such as an F-4, for example. ???? What am I doing wrong? Ghostrider, those look like they're very nice skins you've got there - if I can download them, I think I'll have to make stand-alones for the Indian versions of the MiGs and Sukhois - I don't want them coming up as Enemy unless I'm on the wrong side...

YAAY! IT WORKED! THANKS ! But there was one piece of information missing - in data.ini, the pylon attachment type needed to be canged from "AttachmentType=UK" to "AttachmentType=NATO,UK" In testing, I found myself face to face with a couple of Indian Harriers. India isn't a hostile country, quite the contrary. Need to change that...

Yes, you're all right - they were designed before the technology was on the market, and upgraded by a number of users - it was Britain's most successfully exported post-war fighter after all! The one I really want to put together is actually a Rhodesian Air Force version; strictly speaking, this would be an FGA.9, but I don't have the model, which in any case is visually identical to the F.6. RhAF Hunters were not equipped with Sidewinders - but you've got to make the odd concession! The Hunters were retired in 2002 after serving for some 40 years! The Air Farce of Zimbabwe has replaced them with 17 Chinese F-7M MiG-21Fs, 2 F-7 Trainers, 3 MiG-23s delivered by Libya. Other types include BAe Hawks and K-8 trainers. The Hawks are falling into disrepair owing to minimal maintenance over the last 20 years and the inavailability of spares. Zimbabwe is now high on the "Not Nice" list owing to President Bob Mugabe's predictable anti-social behaviour, so nobody will sell him the bits. The Hawks were a sort of "Independence Present" from Britain, and were in fact practically taken out from one day to the next by the SAAF, who were unhappy to see newly-independent, hostile Zimbabwe acquiring more modern aircraft. Of course, the fact of having the aircraft didn't actually amout to much - most of the (white) ex-Rhodesian Air Force pilots and techs had taken the gap and gone to South Africa (or a variety of other places) anyway. Time has proven them right.

Cheers, mate! It's the F.6 I've got, not the FGA.9 (I'm on SFG - no stock Hunter), but the technique will be the same. Off to try...

I'd like to add (inauthentic) Sidewinder loadouts to a stand-alone Hunter I'm working on, but I can't find the trick - could somebody please help? I realize this has probably been treated in the knowledge base, but I can't find a post which outlines the procedure in clear, Haynes Manual, newbie terms! Thanks!

You mean on top of my half-dozen installs of CFS3, each at some 5-6 GB each! But I confess to being a "developer" as well as a user... Lots of good things to discover and fiddle with here, too! Funny thing is, SF still goes into sulk mode now and again - rebooting gets it back to normal.

Goods to hear it - so I'm not off track at all!

Well, there must be a series of problems then. Pity, I thought we'd got it cracked.

Anything similar? It's a registry/cleaning/maintenance tool which runs permanently in the background. Whatever it is, you probably won't find it in the taskmanager under "Applications" but on page 2 under "Processes". Worth checking it all out, bit by bit... Have you got an HP printer installed?

Found the problem. Iolo System Mechanic. It has a monitor program which runs in the background, called SMSystemAnalyzer.exe. If you go into Task Manager/Processes, you'll find it - it's enough just to click on End Process, and it'll stop. No damage should be done to anything, despite the Windows "It's not going to like this" comment - but don't blame me if...! Anyway, mine now runs perfectly, so that's one problem solved. Should this be moved to the knowledge base? It seems to be something we didn't know!

Thanks, everybody - off to look for Madagascar! Apologies for asking Newbie questions which have already been covered - I did (briefly) look through the knowledge base, but obviously not thoroughly enough... Which will teach me to be more tolerant (I am, really!) of Newbies on the SOH CFS3 forum which is my other home!

I d/l-ed it from here and Check Six - both seem to react the same way, so unless the master file has a problem, it is not a case of corruption. It's possibly a conflict with something on my rig, but I can't imagine what - and a lot of people seem to have the same trouble. AFAIK, my copy of Windows (XP Home SP2, genuine, OEM) is up-to-date except for the GDI detection tool, which I didn't like the look of! I've e-mailed Skypat - the program creator - to ask if he has any idea. One thing comes to mind - who here is running WinAce?

Well, I can't get SFP1E_10.exe to run. First, it hangs on "Registering fonts" during install, then when I actually try to run it, I select the cat file, click and I get an error message "Error accessing external object property filename." Which is explicit. Any ideas? I've tried downloading from another source, in case it was corrupt, but reinstalling changes nothing.

Cheers, Russ - sounds simple enough...

Is there any terrain add-on for SFG that looks like Southern Africa, does anybody know? I've picked up a few bits, but not seen that sort of thing. "And how is it installed?" asks the total newbie very timidly!