Stingray72

Also, on the nav thing... The moving needle MiG was talking about is pretty simple. On your compass too there is a line that if you are on course will run in the middle of your compass; it's almost two pieces, an outer compass/heading ring, and the inner rdial which shows left or right on intended track. As you drift left or right the line drifts as well. So if you are trying for a course due north or 000 degrees and you are on your track then there will be one solid line from top to bottom of your compass. If you move around for missile avoidance or something then pick up your original HEADING, again we'll say course 000, you might notice something like the your heading marker pointing to 000, but the line through the middle will have shifted off center to the left. This means that you are heading on the course you want, but not at your waypoint, and you will need to come left to regain your trackline to your next waypoint. If you steer just at your intended course you will miss your waypoint wide right. It is a little confusing, but try it out. also, if you get to where you can't figure it out then check out the nav tutorial on LOMAC lol. Yep, I went there. I learned about the compasses when I was trying to fly that pig of a game. If you pick the A-10 and do the Navigation Tutorial it explains what I was just talking about and also does it as an instructor, so you get to just sit with the plane in auto pilot while the instructor talks and flies, and you can see it visually all of the stuff I just explained. Most helpful!!! Good luck and hit us back if you have questions. MiG, again, you never cease to amaze me with your in depth knowledge of the SF platforms. Bravo Zulu Sir!! ~Stingray

So last night I was getting pretty tired but wanted to start another campaign. I decided on an F-111D campaign, and started the mission, but even at the load out screen my heart wasn't in it. I spied with my little eye that the F-111 has nuke bombs on it's list of weaps selections, so I took two. I took off, flew to the target area at full cruise, then popped up from the target around 6 miles away in full burner. Man my panel just lit up like I had been caught by the cops stealing hubcaps (a Rasimus reference, just finished his first book). I decided right then and there to try to toss bomb for the first time, so at 4 miles away from the target and around 9,000FT I let her rip, two nukes headed towards a fuel farm and a city. I turned tail, hit my chaff and flares, headed for the deck, cranked up the ECM, and left in a hurry. I was watching my bomb from F9, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing: MY BOMBS HAD STOPPED CLIMBING AND WERE FALLING ALMOST RIGHT ON TOP OF MY TARGET!!!!! Unbelievable! I watched them all the way down and they both landed roughly half a mile away from the tank farm. I received a mission accomplished transmission from Red Crown and went home and landed. Well, you would not believe my surprise when I looked at my stats page and there it was, two bombs hit 4 targets directly, but there were 25 kills lol. I took out everything over there, which isn't all that surprising after you think about it. Now, the surprise of surprises: I exited the debrief screen and it went to the awards page and there it was,2nd Lt. James Link had won the Medal of Honor!!!!!!! Not sure how much actual honor there is in destroying a small town and poisoning their land for 50 years, but hey, C'est La Guerre!! ~Stingray

Happy B-Day!!!! Um, I don't know you but that has never stopped me from wishing someone well lol. ~Stingray

Welcome back!!! The .cat extractor is in the downloads section for SF1 on page 5. It is good to have, and I am the least capable modder here but manage to use it ok for things like pilot skin mods. The patch I use is the OCT2008 one, I use it for all three of my SF stuff. It works great, and the patch for WOV seems to include some terrain mods as it makes my computer work a little harder than it does for WOI. The WOI patch gives you some more aircraft to fly in campaign mode, also very nice!! For WOE there is an expansion pack called NATO Fighters; it's a 4 part download and install, very nice pack. It includes terrain work and a huge expansion of planes used in campaigns and user created single missions. There is also a neato runway mod that makes the runways look a little more realistic, a real treat!! This file can be found in the SF1 downloads section on this path: SF1> SF/WO Maps/Terrains> Tilesets. It's on page two, called Hi_Res Runway Textures V2.0 Now, all of that said, MiG Buster has said that if you are running Vista or 7 to get SF2. I guess it is designed specifically for these two operating systems, but I have been to chicken to try them out myself as I am just getting comfortable changing things around on SF1, er, with minimal success lol. Anything crazier than this will need to come from the likes of MiG, Wrench, and some others that are VERY knowledgeable on this game. Good luck and if you have questions then send me a message and I will see if I can help or point you in the right direction. ~Stingray

Carter, that's a heart breaker :( Sorry for your loss. In news, Lt's Notheisen and Hogedon were up in the air for the first time since their close call a few weeks ago, and they came back with a vengeance!!! 27SEP79 Recon the airfield near Gross Dolln. Callsign Tampa, flight of 2 T/O: 0909 Land: 1030 WX: CAVU Normal take off from Spangdahlem. On approach flight was intercepted by MiG-23's. I shot one down and so did LT. Hogedon. On the way by an airfield SW of the recon target destroyed an SA-9 and a Bar Lock radar. Recon of target airfield complete. Egress was normal until 20 NM SW of Gross Dulln, when we were intercepted by a flight of 2 MiG-21's. they had not shown up on radar, as they never do, so went undetected until Red Crown called them to us. I visually tracked and shot down the first one, and directed LT Hogedon to attack the second one. He succeeded in downing this aircraft. Red Crown advised us of two more bogeys, but I heard Lt Hogedon call bingo fuel so we left the area low and fast. Total for the day was 2 MiG's and 3 ground targets destroyed by me, 2 MiG's and 2 ground targets destroyed by LT Hogedon. A great way to come back to the war!!! LT. Notheisen "Jaybird" Also, I discovered you can reef a WW Phantom around pretty well, but there is a trick. Use opposite rudder fro what you think you should use, she turns pretty well, although she does bleed energy like an SOB!!!! ~Stingray

Where did the old DD's forum for SF1 go? ~Singray

I had the same prob with WOE after my Win7 install. After I updated to the OCT 2008 patch it stopped acting up and worked as advertised. Had a similar prob with WOI until after the patch as well. Hope that helps. ~Stingray

I was flying IL2 one day a few summers ago when I heard the distinct sound of radials. I got up and went on my porch and a B-25 flew over!! More coming though, so I stayed, and a B-17 and a B-24 both flew over. Turns out that they were at our local airport in Astoria, OR landing for a weekend of pay rides and tours. I just happened to be lucky enough to live along the approach for landing!! Another time I was getting laundry out of my truck and I heard that lovely sound of the Merlin also and looked up. There I spied a Mustang zipping over head! Very cool. Lastly, when I was in HS, my boss at the marina where I worked, well him and his twin brother had flown F4F's in WWII as coastal patrol types over the Atlantic. We were sittin in the shop one day and heard a plane fly over head, and he goes "That's a Grumman", and sure as poop there was a Wildcat flying by. Very cool!!! ~Stingray

And that's the trick to the air war, always fight your strengths!!! Nice work Carter, you'll make something of yourself yet lol. Kidding, nice work for real. ~Stingray

Welcome SkyViper!!!

New Pilot alert!! lol 2nd Lt. Ariel Keider is flying with the No. 110 squadron (Knights of the North) in 1967 Yom Kippur war. He flew his first mission this morning. I was going to start anotehr F-4 pilot, but let's get some variety eh? Mission: Early morning strike on Cairo West A/B. Come in low and fast, hit the runway to keep fighters on the ground, clean the rest up after the runway is down. Weather: CAVU Flight time: approximately 1.5 hr Flight: From Ramat A/B - Dodge flight, 8 Vantours loaded with six 500lb bombs and full load of cannons. AAR: Take off and ingress normal. On reaching the target area I observed many fighters and bombers on the ground. I ordered my wingman to destroy the runway and the rest of the flight to strike ground targets while I went to work destroying bombers on the ground. I observed two MiG's taking off, one was destroyed by a bomb while taking off, the other made it into the air and flew away to the NW. There was a mix of TU-16's and MiG-21's in the two hanger areas. I scored multiple hits with both guns and bombs. I called for the second flight to RTB as they had expended their bombs and set my flight to strafing. When we were finished I called to RTB. Our egress took us ENE. I observed the MiG from early flying under us headed S. I called for my flight to attack it. After a swirling fight I was able to catch it in a shallow turn; it had set up behind one of my flight and was just turning slowly keeping pace with him so I was able to catch him and shoot him down with guns. The rest of the flight home was uneventful until we were 10 miles from our base. I observed around 8 tanks in a town W of the base, there was also a AAA gun site. I ordered my flight to attack. My #4 said "Roger" and then went and landed. He will be punished for his cowardice in the face of the enemy and will be recommended for grounding. My #3 made a pass with guns and took fire, then headed home. My wingman made one guns pass, he also took fire and I ordered him to RTB. While the gun was distracted by my wingman I came in low level over a hill and dropped bombs on two tanks ( I had 2 left for some reason). I observed no hits and landed without further incident. Signed: 2nd LT Keider Vantours are pretty cool huh? I had a good run, lucky not to get plugged by that gun though. The mission was not a success though, enemy forces were able to occupy the town there were after. Ariel will no doubt keep bombing the heck out the Arabs though!! Here are some screenies. Yeah, suck it Egypt!!! Not for real though, just for my campaign.... Cliff, I still can't get the brief / debriefs to show up for screen shots?

Hi all! I have read "a few" books in my day, and there are about half a dozen that I can think of that I really remember well. Non-fiction: "Scream of Eagles", which was posted already , but man is that book crazy! I probably have three or four posts on here somewhere hollerin' about that book!! "Low Level Hell" by Hugh Mills, auto-bi, he was a LOACH pilot in Vietnam at 19, flew a jillion missions and lost 4 helo's total. His 5th is on display at FT Rucker. He flew with the 1st of the 9th, 1st Air Cav. Pretty serious and intense book. "Rupert Red Two" by Jack Broughton. It's about his experiences before Vietnam, like flying Jugs over Europe! "Chicken Hawk" by Robert Mason, it's about him flying helo's in Vietnam. He flew CH-46's. Fiction: "Flight of the Intruder" and "Intruders", one we all know I think, the other is about Grafton punching some mouthy hippie out and getting sent to teach a bunch of Marines to fly the A-6 in peacetime. Pretty cool book. "The Wild Blue: A Novel of the USAF" by Walter J. Boyne, a famous history author. It follows four pilots and an enlisted guy through their careers, and their wives included. Pretty cool book, covering a lot of actually history while telling a real cool story. One pilot is just a good old boy with superior skills, one is a crazy @ss with great skill, one is a ring knocking West Pointer with alright skills but superior political connections, and the last is a black navigator turned pilot trying to make it in the white man's USAF. The book covers from Korea to post Vietnam, has smart bombs, helping the Israelis, a race riot, just an unbelievable book. Surprisingly enough it is a fast read and does not bore you, well me anyways, one little bit. By far one of the most captivating fiction works on aviation I have ever read. Here's a review and overview: http://www.whiteoakbooks.com/305/Review.aspx "The Expendables" by Leonard B. Scott. It's a ground pounder book, sorry :( Never the less, superb awesome book about 5 guys in the 1st Air Cav fighting in the Ia Drang in 1964. ~Stingray

You mean Corporal. That's what his Generals used to call him behind his back lol. He hated them for it.

Good info, thanks Slarti and Aleks!!

I agree with pcpilot. The other day I was flying on IL2, and someone made mention of Germans being stubborn. I replied the it was not the Germans who were remembered for this, it was indeed the British. Every single engagement that these men and women fought for the first 2/3 of the war was always in the balance but for a few men. Malta, BoB, Africa, Atlantic, Burma, all of them were held onto through sheer tenacity, a drive to just get through it, survive and continue fighting because they new what was at stake and had known and been fighting since the very beginning. They took severe blows and setbacks, and always came up swinging somehow to give some lucky shot to cripple their foe! Simply amazing!! my islander allies, you did a great service to this world many many years ago, one that should not be nor will be forgotten, history has made sure of this ~Rob

Probably not. A lot of good pilots in real life are not around to tell their stories because they stayed with their a/c too long and went in with it when it crashed. You made the right choice, because according to the rules you're boy will be out of prison when the war is over, and he can fight another day in another, later campaign. At least you saved you pilot. Carter is right, you can do everything wrong and still come out alright. And yes, Carter, thank you. The MiG killing boys from Kansas will be up again in the morning for a mission. Having learned about the capabilities of both the MiGs AND our own missiles I am sure they will be more careful or put more thought as to engaging when they can run. ~Stingray

Yes, the A-4 was designed to carry a single nuclear weapon. That is the reason for the ridiculous height of the landing gear, it made the plane sit up high enough for this application, although any use of such a weapon would most probably result in the loss of pilot and plane as she was not all that fast. ~Stingray

Hi! Last night "Jaybird" flew another Wild Weasel mission; it was a total failure:boredom: AAR: We took off from Spangdahlem without incident and turned NE heading towards our target area. About 10 minutes into the flight I spotted a large group of contacts on the radar. I locked one of them up and headed downstairs to keep myself from being seen. The formation was on a reciprocal course of mine, and when they wre close enough they were identified as a formation of TU-28 bombers and MiG-23 escorts. I had hoped that the escort fighters would see that we weren't a threat and carry out their mission as ordered, but it was not to be. One of the MiG's broke and headed down after us. There was about 4NM seperation, and theMiG appeared to be after me, so I sent my wingman, LT TIm Hodgedon, to attack him. I also got myself turned around quickly, no east feat in a WW F-4, to catch him a turn if LT Hodgedon missed with missiles. He connected with an Aim-9L, but then I saw a third spec behind him, one unnoticed previously!!! It was another MiG, and he shot a missile right into Lt. Hodgedon. I locked the MiG up and shot an Aim-7 at him, but it failed to track. We got into a scissors of sorts, another very risky thing to do in a WW F-4, and somehow I managed to spit him out in front. I shot every one of my Aim-9's (4) at him and all of them failed to track even though they were within envelope for the missiles. I then worked on pushing him out so I could engage him with my radar missiles. Three times I had him in radar missile envelopes, and three times the missiles either failed to track or flew into the ground. I went 0:7 on missile shots, my wingman went 1:1 but was shot down. Realizing I had no offensive capabilities for a/a or a/g (I had dumped my externals in the first pass) and was running out of fuel fast turning with this dude, I set him up to try to turn on my away from my intended track home, and when he did I dipped the nose and headed for Spangdahlem. He gave chase, but I flew him over some AAA sites and he decided to leave me alone. This pilot was very good!! I landed safely with no further incident. Signed: 2nd LT James Notheisen Cliff, you know me man, I am pretty good with missiles these days after reading from The Book. Unbelievable, not one single missile hit lol. The enemy took whatever town it was after, and I was hoping that maybe some fighters took off to intercept the bombers, but no, they were successful. Hopefully after a few days rest Jaybird can get up in the air again and hit back hard at the enemy. Lt Hodgedon was picked up by friendlies with no injuries after evading for a few hours, he is back on flight status and I will ensure that he goes with Jaybird on the next mission as well. Both of these two men are the squadron's only MiG killers. Wish them luck!! ~Stingray

Nice work Stover, er, Carter lol. These DID campaigns are just friggin great!! I like that you have to try hard like when you said about dropping your tanks to evade then come back at it only to be snagged up again. 2nd Lt. Mantell is still doing well, although I don't know how to take screen shots of the boards at the end of missions or rosters so I can take pics of that. I did start another, 2nd LT James "Jaybird" Notheisen, my real life cousin's name lol (he hates being called Jaybird, so I found it ultra appropriate as a callsign). He is flying Wild Weasel F-4's in 1979. We'll see how that goes.... ~Stingray

Well said Gocad. I'll ease up with the Phantom Phandom lol. Sorry, I just really love my plane!!! The F-8 did cause quite a stir when she came out, very capable a/c for certain. My favorite prop is the Corsair, which my dad flew in Korea. There is one at a museum not far from me, a flying one, it's a -7 that used to serve in the French Navy. It's wearing different colors now, but boy is she pretty! Dad flew the -4's, very fast planes as far as props are concerned. Dad also has time in the Bearcat, SNJ, T-34, AD-4, FJ-4 and FJ-4, and the A-4C. He tried to get into F-4's, but the Marines were just packed with capable regular service pilots that wanted to fly the latest and greatest, so he opted to leave the Marines before he had to go to war in the A-4; he left in 1964 and flew for United for the next 29 years, retiring when I was a kiddo. I know he flew DC-4's or DC-6's (not sure which), DC-8's, DC-10's, 707's, 727's737's, and 747's while with United. My dad is 5'11" and fairly wide, this is relevant for this story. One time I called my pops to ask him what unit he flew A-4's with, and he was kind of drunk lol. I asked him what he thought of the little airplane, and it went from one of the greatest to one of the worst in the span of a single sentence..... "Boy, what a good little airplane that was. She was pretty tight in a turn, felt good on the stick, a little cramped, not very fast either. Hmmf. Oh, and she had these little slats that would come out of the fronts of the wings, and sometimes they would only come out one at a time, then you'd fall out of the sky like a little corkscrew.....WHAT A DUMB JET!!!" lol

Sakai, I'm with you on that one pal, I am a die hard IL2 gamer, even started a squad a while back lol. I asked about WOR the other day, where to get it, so that I could try it out also with the same intentions, to see if it is as fun as IL2. I have some of the same gripes with the game as you do. Let me know if you get it and how it stacks up!! Anyone else know where I can download WOR?? Here are some screenies from my latest campaign. Please excuse my shabby graphics, I am running a fairly basic computer, I also don't know how to get rid of my flight info or I would do that too.!! The skin is from Mig Buster, it's the Maryland ANG skin with the Oriole on the engine and the correct markings for the tail. These planes used to fly their approaches over my yard when I was a wee laddy. MiG, I can't thank you enough for this skin Sir!!!The pilot is one that I downloaded on here, it's the modern HGU set up for the F-16, but I thought it was appropriate here too.

Do any of these programs work with W7? I am running W7 for my opsys now and would love to turn off some stuff, even though it is not the hog Vista is / was. ps, I partied down with the crew of Merv Griffin's yacht, The Grif, some years ago down in St. Croix, musta been around Feb of 2001. All of them were from England, and they used the word "squiffy" for everything lol. Can someone please explain exactly what it means to a dumb American??

Forgot to add a screenie from last night's Hog mission.

Nice work Nightshift!!!! Those 'Saders sure are thirsty! 2nd LT Mantell flew another mission with the Md ANG last night. We took out some air defenses, encountered no MiGs, and RTB. We lost one Hog, my wingman fooled around halfway to the target destroying a radar site and, well, I guess HE enountered a MiG lol. That makes three total for killed or MIA from our squadron in two missions. Very sad. ~Stingray

I had a similar problem when I did mine. Do you also have some planes missing like I did? Are you running Vista or W7? If so, here's what I did, keep in mind though that I am no master modder lol. Just throwing it out there so I don't get into trouble for "helping" the way we aren't supposed to!! Ok, so I had the same problem, and here's what I did. I erased all traces of WOE except for the folder where I keep all of my mods, kind of like my storage bin. You might find that there are two spots for WOE, one under Third Wire and another under Wings Over Europe. If this is the case, then your mods are going to one folder and your desktop icon is from another. It makes it very hard to keep track of, or it did for me. I scrubbed anything having to do with WOE, like did a file search and if it had been installed in the game it was recycled, again with the exception of my storage folder. I then did a fresh install and patched it to 2008. When I did these installs, I let the game go where it wanted to, as in don't change the path, just let your computer put it where it wants to. Now, check your game after every step (naturally) to make sure it works. For the NF, do the same thing, let the computer put it where it prompts to. I found that it was prompting one folder and sending it to another, the correct folder. All of my stuff is in Program File>WOE, but it was prompting to Program Files>Third Wire>WOE, which is a real folder as my WOI and WOV are under 3W, but WOE is not in it, it's in that first path. I did the first two installs, checking each one, and found no issues. I did the same with NF3 and again found no issues. I have a small issue with NF4 in the form of some missing Brit plane:( , however, not worried about it enough to tear it all down again lol. Hope this helps if this was your problem. If not, then good luck!! ~Stingray