SkippyBing

You mean like the one where all the women in the world are refusing to date me? Doesn't make my life worthwhile as such...

I was surprised it wasn't one of the closer stars! 130 Light years is a heck of long way.

We've got a business plan and everything!

Yeah, I'm kind of hoping the RN sends one as well as I could do with some winter sun! We were actually talking about this in the crewroom a few weeks back and trying to figure out if we could set ourselves up as some sort of protection racket. If anyone knows where we can get our hands on a 10000 ton cargo ship we could convert into a helo carrier on the cheap drops us a line.

I think the latest version of Phalanx has an IR/Visual targeting option, and there were some trials on HMS York back in '01 but I don't know if it's a capability that's being fielded at the moment. There was a piece in Navy News about HMS St Albans getting a remotely operated 20mm which sounds ideal for that sort of thing. An LPH/LPD with an air group of ASuW helicopters and some Marine boarding parties might actually be a better bet than an FF/DD which would be carting around a lot of unnecessary capability for limited effect i.e. 1 Helo and 1 boarding party.

Come the revolution that's plan A!

It does save money though! Also if your smallest weapon is a 30mm CIWS then you can use it in self defence against a skiff armed with AK-47s as it's the most proportionate response you can deliver. To be honest the size of the boats these pirates are using a lot of missiles probably wouldn't even get a lock on them, ditto fire control radar for the main guns.

Not with pirates but un-flagged vessels or indeed anyone operating in international waters. As they're outside any legal jurisdiction there's very little you can do unless they commit a hostile act, at which point the right of self-defence comes into play. Before that they're just people with guns in a boat, you can't chase them into territorial waters either unless you have the consent of that country as it'd be an act of war. Mind you the pirate skiffs are faster than most Frigates and Destroyers anyway.

There is a particularly genius bit in the UK Official Secrets Act that says you can't put two unclassified pieces of information together to come up with something that's classified. The first time you read it you think, yeah I bet I can, then you realise it's to prevent people using open source information etc. to get around the Act by saying well if you read X and Y then Z is obvious when they knew Z all along.

The main problems I've heard of with active SONAR is that it may spook the whales causing them to rapidly surface and suffer a condition similar to the bends. Obviously it's also f***ing annoying having a high pitched squeal go off every few seconds (you can hear these things throughout a ship when it's active even on the upper deck) and I'm fairly sure it's louder than what the whales normally produce. However I'm not aware of any research that indicates the whales suffer any permanent damage from the actual sonar itself.

True pirates don't fly state flags, but it then comes down to how your ROE requires you to prove/verify the vessel isn't flying a state flag. Also if you don't catch them in an act of piracy the vessels they're using look exactly like the boats that are used for fishing etc. so you can't just fire on every small boat in the area even if they've got weapons on-board, I mean maybe they're worried about pirates too! It would still be an act of piracy against the vessel if you opened fire first on an un-flagged vessel especially if it's running away and therefore not a threat, you'd first have to offer them the chance to stop and surrender, fire warning shots etc. and if they're still not threatening life attempt to stop them without causing harm. Obviously as demonstrated by my colleagues on Cumberland if the pirates shoot at you then it's a whole new game. Note different countries have different legal requirements as to what they can and can't do to un-flagged vessels in international waters, after all they're international waters so there is very little in the way of jurisdiction. Look at the pirate radio ships that used to sit outside territorial waters in the North Sea and broadcast to the UK.

Which would be an act of piracy on the part of the navy vessels involved! Navy vessels actually have very few powers in international waters unless they're dealing with a vessel flagged in their own state or where there is an agreement with the flag state. Depending on what ROE is under operation, e.g. acting in accordance with the Geneva Convention, there's also the matter of proportional response. Basically if someone waves an RPG at a warship, responding with a Harpoon strike would be highly disproportionate, pointing the main gun at them would be a more appropriate response. If they fire a 7.62mm gun at a warship opening up with a 5" gun would again be considered inappropriate if it's possible to respond with a similar calibre weapon. The best summary of this I've heard is 'Do what needs to be done with what you have but no more'. Also good job by the Indians, a bit more of a proactive presence by some of the other navies and this problem might start to be resolved. Might devastate the economy of Somalia as well but hey!

To be honest a CVN wouldn't be a lot of use against a few men with RPGs in a 20' open top speed boat. You're looking at operating a similar mission as against drug runners in the Caribbean.

So far the pirates haven't killed anyone*, opening fire on them might actually make the situation worse. Additionally as Gocad alluded to, taking out some of the pirates would do very little to resolve the situation and unless anyone has a good idea for sorting out Somalia this is a much more intractable problem than first appears. *One of the captives had a heart attack and another appears to have been hit by a ricochet. The pirates were immediately on the phone to the insurance company to apologise.

Wilches, I'm getting no joy seeing the prop in the internal view. Started looking at some other types to see if I can reverse engineer it but nothing yet. Can't understand why it's so hard!

Yeah, I'm thinking Marty McFly at the start of Back to the Future but turned up to 11!

Dabbling as I do in FSX this is becoming very noticeable there. FS9 Had tonnes of add-ons, but the quality was quite variable, since FSX came out the number of add-ons hasn't really approached the same numbers but the quality of at least 90% of the freeware is at the level of FS9 payware. Strangely I think it's different factors for the two sims, for the Third Wire family the base has been around long enough for a level of knowledge to build up so that the 3d model building is no longer the primary factor, i.e. a developer can easily find out how to get the right load outs, animate the VC etc. as well as make a kick ass external model. For FSX it's enough of a clean slate from FS9 that no one has a monopoly on the knowledge, however the SDK now provides the developers with the level of information they need to go beyond having a nice model that flies like one of the default planes. The common thread is that modders now have access to a knowledge base for either sim that allows them to go beyond making pretty 3D models that act a bit like planes. The next couple of years may prove interesting, the next FS has been signposted as at best having 3D model compatibility meaning devs will need to learn a whole new SDK for systems etc. where as I don't see TK doing anything that extreme to his series even if he overhauls the terrain engine etc. We could see the Third Wire series having more quality releases than the next version of MS FS.

No, that's why I'm an Observer, I get to tell the pilot 'No ****wit over there'. More often than you'd think, pilots, very slow.

Maybe some sort of phased array, but there aren't any aerials the right size to go OTH. Still the designation for that would be SPY-XXX. Other wise I'm going with Kirsten.

The F-15 fuselage provides around 50% of the lift. This doesn't make it easy, but it does mean the loss of the wing is less critical in staying airborne. It wouldn't work on say a Tornado or a Phantom. Ironically most of the '70s era jets ended up with lift from the fuselage due to the need to keep the early turbofans separate to ensure smooth airflow, I'm thinking Eagle, Tomcat, Flanker, Fulcrum. The exception being the UK Phantom which had the first turbofan with afterburner but was just a bit of a compromise...

You need a mod? That's a normal landing for me...

The canopy animation is ID 7, to make the cockpit one move at the same time you'll need to animate node F_Canopy. I have no idea why I called it that. I'm not sure why the sound is a bit quite, I did a lot of messing around with it in Premier Pro and it was right in the edge of distorting in that, but in game much quieter, my original plan of using the FSX sound files backfired somewhat! I'll try and sort the cockpit prop stuff tomorrow, just got in from night flying, need to lie on flat hard surface to straighten back out, don't remember eating since lunchtime, what day is it?

Hinch, Awesome work on the Eagle as always, thanks for letting me try her with the Wyvern!

Bear in mind prior to Goldeneye, Bond had only asked for a 'Martini shaken not stirred' about three times in all the previous films put together and he doesn't say 'the name's Bond, James Bond' in all of them either. Those were details that had stuck in the public's imagination and which the producers decided to run with when they relaunched the franchise with Brosnan.

Blackbird, check the Sounds folder, there should be a file called WyvernProp.wav in there. If not probably best to point the installer at an empty directory and cross the file across manually from there. I'll have a look at the prop, I'm not 100% sure I'm seeing it as it's quite faint!