Gepard

It very sad to see how big parts of Australia become victim of mega size forest fires. Its very sad. But always if i see the pictures i ask myself, wheter the firefighters do their job properly. I remember a day during my military duty time in East Germany. It happend during a shooting training in summer. It was hot and dry. One burst of tracer ammo missed the target and caused a fire. In astonishingly short time the fire became bigger and bigger and went out of control. Me and my comrades were orderd to fight the fire at all costs, with all what we had. And to be honest, we had not very much, only our small military spades, which we called Muckerlöffel or UB-1 which stand ironically for Universalbagger (universal excavator). We shoveling the hole day and we had no chance against the fire. The forest was lost. That all guys thought. No chance. But then, we heared tank engines and short afterwards 3 pionier tanks T-55TK arrived the area. Each tank was equipped with a dozer plate. The tankers said to us: "Nice try, but now look how the profis make it the right way." The drove back some hundred meters and started to make a path (glade) mid in the forest. It needed some time, but when they finished in the forest was a deep scar of pure soil, no tree, no plant, a scar as wide as a german Autobahn. Then the boss of the tankers came to us and asked who of us had match packages. Of course all of us had matches, because lighters were rare in East Germany. Then the officers stuck his finger in his mouth, checked from which direction the wind came, and then he gave us the order enemyward ( word by wort translation of "Feindwärts", what means the direction, where the enemy is, comarable with starboard and backbord on ships) of the paved glad to light small fires. We should make two steps, then light the gras, make two steps, light the gras and so on and so on. We started to burn down the forest, but in a controlled and slow way. Our "counter fire" had to crawl against the wind, so that it not was able to become big and fast. When the big, hot and fast forets fire reached the "defence line", our small fire had "eaten" all trees and plants, so that the big fire had no food anymore and broke down in a astonishingly short time. Mid next day the fire was out. We sacrificed a smaller part of forest to save the much bigger part. We fought fire with fire. And we won. In this summer in Germany was also a big forest fire which the firefighters were unable to handle. The smoke was to smell 500 km away. After some days, when the civil authorities acknoledged, that they were unable to stop the fire they asked the Bundeswehr for help. 2 or 3 days later the Bundeswehr pionier tanks started to fight the forest fire in the same way like in my military time. After 3 days the forest fire was defeated. Perhaps the Aussis should do it in the same way. Fight fire with fire. Edit. I forgot to post a picture of the east german pionier tanks. T-55TK. Its a very helpfull beast.

The Israelis rearmed and refueled their french made planes in 1967 war in under 5 minutes. East german ground crews needed comparable time for refueling and rearming MiG-21 during tests. In normal peacetime the turnaround time was around 20 minutes.

Cool idea. Such a hovering carriers we could use for a "Battleship Galactica" or "Star Wars" mod.

What do you think. Which tile is better for representing London? The grey one or the more red one?

Same was done in Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Uhse-Rotermund

Battle of Britan 2 "Operation Seelöwe" terrain. Recon mission. Target London. South of Canterbury heading north west. We are closing the estuary of river Themse. Flak fire and intercepted by Spitfires over London City. (Temporary tiles for the London parks) Escaped the Spits near Tower Bridge. Successfully escaped and now running home.

Sit rep: Terrain progress is going on. Its time to build streets.

There are Knowledgebases in this forum. There you find a lot of answers for your question.

Real life is much more important than anything else on computer.

"Alarmstart!!!"

Progress with the terrain is slower than expected. I have to change the tileset from bmp to jpg because the fps rate became to low.. Full squadron take off from airfield everywhere in northern France.

Dirty water in the engine. That means engine change and overhaul. Its a dirty and wet job. The mechanics will love it ;-)

FW-187 Falke. Close escort for Do-17 over Kent.

Thats true. some systems which were developed in the late Soviet Union were designed to fight down enemy targets autonomous. Such systems you can find in the Su-22M4, the Ka-50 and Ka-52 for example. Originally it was intended, that the pilot/operator had to designate the target, all other things, including the opening of fire, layed in the "hands" of computers. Today even the target selection and designation can be given into the hands of the computer system. That such systems have a tendency to fire sometimes to fast and without friend or foe analysis we had seen 2 or 3 years ago, when a Ka-52 accidently attacked a truck with exercise spotters during "Sapad" big scale exercise in Russia. The computer took over control, detected a target, decided that the contact was hostile and opend the fire. The crew was surprised. Shit happens. For me such "accidents" are a clear warning, that autonomous weapon systems should be banned. The last decision over dead or live should be in the hand of man, not in the hand of computers.

In stress situation such things can happen, if the fire button is in the hand of trigger happy soldiers without strict control by commanding officers. Imagine. The persians expected, that the US would strike back after the iranian missile attack. A missinterpretation of radar signals caused the feeling to be under attack. In such situations some guys tend to fire first and ask later. Shit happens. All over the world. Its sad for the people in the civil plane. Really sad.

In peacetime the SAM batteries in WP were under strict control. They were integrated in a hugh air defence network with central command structure. Without order of the central command it was not allowed to open the fire. Even the activation and direction of radar was limited. Violation of the rules was punished. Trigger happy soldiers never had the chance to come close to the fire button.

And in the bad old times the so called scientists said: "the socialism will always win." and they were wrong. You have no guarantee that the scientist this time are right. And by the way, in the bad old time you were also allowed to say "2+2=5", but you had to live with the consequences. Same procedure as every time.

Do you made some progress with the terrain?

The main difference between me and you is the side of the iron curtain on which we grew up. For me it is a deja vue. 30, 40 years ago so called experts and scientists agreed, that the socialism will be victorious. For the main stream in my country the statement "the socialism will be victorious" had had the status of a law. It was written in books. It was proofed by scientists. Doubts were not allowed. To have a non mainstream opinion was punished. There were no discussions. Only the main stream was right. All others were shouted down or worse. And in such a situation we are again. Again there are scientist who lift a theory on a rank of a law. Again doubts are not allowed. Again people with non mainstream opions are shouted down. Again the mainstream is always right. "Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer recht!" The party, the party is always right! Only the color of the party has changed. Not anymore red, now green. The philosophy behind it is the same. Make people fear. Make them to have panic. And you can rule them. Simple. Sorry, from such "things" i had enough in my lifetime. Thatswhy im sceptical if someone say that he has found the one and only truth. As the german proverb say: "Gebranntes Kind scheut das Feuer!" "Burnt child shies away from the fire!"

Is carbondioxyd CO² really that "big" problem? Its a problem, of course, but ... To say it clearly CO² is a fertiliser for plants. Without CO² no plant can survive. Without plants we cant survive. As more CO² as better plants can grow up. And who can really say, that the climate change is caused by CO². Where i live, in the middle of Germany we have very thick layers of sand. This sand came with the iceage from Skandinavia to Germany. 10.000 years ago we had an ice glacier which was more than 100m thick. In a relativly short time the ice melts away and formed the landscape we have here in north and central Germany. The climate change came very fast. In less than 30 years the temperature climbed by 6°. And surely it does not climbed, because our ancestors made to much Mammoth BBQ. Yes, there is an increase in temperature. And it is man made. One example. Not far away from me the airport Leipzig-Halle is situated. As all airports it has a meteorological station. And this station exist since the 1920th. And if you look on the temperatures you will clearly see, that it became hotter on the airport. But what you cant see is the reason, why it became hotter. In the 1920th till 1950th the airport had only grass runways. In the 60th one runway and some taxiways made by concrete were built. Concrete is a heat reflector. When the sun is shining the temperature climbs much faster than over gras areas. In the 1990th, till today, the airport was completly rebuilt. Very big areas are covered now by concrete. Of course it is now hotter there as in the time before. Our big towns, our big streets, parking areas, industrial areas and so on, are all mady by concrete or similar materials. Of course they are hotter than in the natural landscape. The town grew up, became bigger and bigger. Meteorological stations, which 20 or 50 years ago were situated on meadow areas are now mid in cities. How is it possible to compare the datas? My problem with the "Greta movement" is, that they have the strong believe, that they are 100% right. They believe to be infallible . And sorry guys, but such "thinking" i know from the bad old times. At the time, when here a party was ruling, wich believed to be infallible. They had a song "Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer recht!" (The party, the party is always right!") and always, if i see and hear Greta and her followers this old damned song come up in my mind. I dont like it. Yes we have a climate change. But we cant stop it. We must adapt our society. Darwin said "survival of the fittes", not "survival of the strongest".

The screenshots are from which game (SF2 or WOX). And which terrain is it?

Which tileset do you use now? Can you post a screenshot? I have seen, that at least one or two new tiles still must created, for rivermouth into the sea and a riverfork.

The terrain is made with 500x500m tiles to get a better look in FE. For SF2 tiles with 2000x2000m are needed. So it is not usable for SF2. To make it work in SF2 a complete new retiling of the terrain is neccessary. I download your files in this moment. I will check them out. Edit: I have installed your files and on my computer the terrain runs fine. Perhaps the tileset neeeds to much ressources for your computer. You could try to replace it with a more simple tileset or the stock tileset from FE.

Post the ostpreussen.hdf, the ostpreussen.tdf and the ostpreussen_data.ini files here. I will check it out.

The antenna which is formed like the tip of an hunting arrow is the so called SAU antenna. SAU is a automatically landing approach system, which enables the plane to perfom an autonomous landing approach or on more modern systems an autonomous landing of the plane. SAU is part of the RSBN navigation system. RSBN is comparable with the american TACAN, but is much more precise. Normally you has two such antennas on the plane. One under the nose, the other on the tailfin. Here the SAU antenna on the tailfin of the MiG-21bisSAU