SkippyBing

They actually saw the pressure wave from the explosion in the pressure reading of gas towers in London, which indicate it passed through about 7 times! There's an excellent book on Krakatoa by Simon Winchester, which goes into the historical background, the geology and the events of the day. I read it in one sitting on a flight back from the states, highly recommended.

For what? If we didn't need something to put on the two new carriers we'd be going for an all Typhoon fleet, we ordered enough!

Wrench, should fit fine then, you'll just need the adjusting spanner....

WHAT, YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP I'M STANDING BY A VOLCANO!

So if we put Speys in the Typhoon they'll go faster quick, who knows where I can get two of them! Out of interest how does the F100 compare size wise with the Speys? I'd guess with the size of the intakes air flow wouldn't be a problem at least! I think I made the same mistake with the engines on the Vixen back when I made her, all the instrument read outs went to the same place as well, took me a day to figure that one!

Wrench, Have you thought of using the engines from the Typhoon? Not sure of the thrust figures but I think it's a lot! I'm fairly sure that part of the program never had any major problems so would have been available in time frame, and it'd make sense from a logistics point of view as well.

This diverter less inlets, how do they work then? Does accelerating the airflow around the lump re-energise it so you don't have to divert it away from the engine?

I'm really doubting the stealthy as a F-35 line, looking at the weapons bays they don't have the usual sawtooth on the leading and trailing edges of the doors, which is an easy way to reduce the RCS from the join. I'm not saying this isn't a good idea from Boeing, I'm sure there's a large market for them if the price is sensible, I just don't think they should exaggerate it's performance. Mind you how's anyone ever going to be able to disprove their claim!

I'd say the main problem with under-fuselage stores is deck clearance on recovery. There's a good tale on a Buccaneer thread over at Pprune, someone was doing trials in fairly rough weather, now bear in mind with the wheels deflated and the undercarriage in the full compressed position there's a couple of inches clearance between the bottom of the main gear doors and the deck. They managed to get sparks off the bottom of the doors and the deck doing a bolter before going round to land on and call it a day. So I'd say belly tanks probably aren't an option, much like the RN Buccs never got the bomb bay door fuel tank. Obviously ideally you'd have the outer pylons, I'm just wondering if there's some way to model them as a weapon or some such, rather than having to amend the original LOD?

I could see this working if say, you designed two UAVs to do it from scratch. But retrofitting an existing aircraft seems more trouble than it's worth for all the reasons already mentioned.

SB, I think the main problem inter-war was that with the RAF controlling all aviation their priorities were elsewhere so the Fleet Air Arm sucked the hind teat. It's the same today, I've heard RAF support helicopter mates describe being a rotary pilot as being treated like you've got syphilis! I do like the Flycatcher, they've got a flying replica in the FAA musuem and it does look like something you could knock up in your garage! Actually I think the replica may have been... Anyone got any plans?

You say that, I've read in one of my books that the side by side twin stick Blackburn, aka the Bull could just about manage a 100' per minute climb rate, which by most definitions meant it had reached it's service ceiling at ground level!

Nothing is as ugly as the Blackburn Blackburn!

Sweet work, if you need any references I have a load.

I'm voting improved terrain, if you compare it to what can be cranked out by FS9 or FSX it's starting to show it's age, as someone who gets vertigo above flight level 001 it'd be nice to have a higher resolution mesh with more defined road and rail links. If we're going all out power lines would be awesome too, especially if you get hurt hitting them.

No, bizarrely the Thunder City examples were all built specifically for the RAE, and I think were some of the last off the production line, the UK based airworthy example being the next on the production line. Some info here, note the Hawker Hunter Aviation example is waiting for parts for the seats from M-B before being fully airworthy.

If you look at this pic of an S.1 here there's nothing outboard of the end of the aileron. Whereas on this one of a late S.2 there is. Actually the first time I've seen those two phots, which confirms what I'd thought from examining old black and white photos. I was thrown for a while as the plans in one of my references has the late S.2 tips on the S.1 three view, I spent ages trying to tie that in with the pictures I had before deciding the plans were b*****s! F*** me, just noticed at least on of Thunder City's seems to have the early S.2 tips, here. I would have thought they would have been upgraded at the same time as the rest of the fleet but apparently not.

Yeah, going by the pictures I've got, the S.1 wingtip finished at the end of the ailerons. The S.2s were all delivered with a triangular wingtip extension that obviously improved something at the expensive of fatigue life, the fatigue specimen keeping the S.1 wingtips so no one noticed! What I can't tell is if after the grounding they went to the S.1 tips, or a cut back version of the S.2's. If you look at pictures of later S.2Bs they appear to have a sliver of wingtip outboard of the aileron, rather than nothing so I'm thinking the later option.

I don't think you actually need to remove the IR filter, certainly when I flashed my remote at my webcam (VX-3000, it was on offer) it showed up bright and clear. The instructions are a bit vague on that front as one section of the site says you need to and then in one of the pdfs it says it may not be necessary. On the software front, I have a feeling later versions of Freetrack may lack trackIR support for copyright reasons.

It works with a standard webcam, set up is a bit tricky if you insist on not reading the instructions but if you can solder three LEDs in parallel then it's certainly cheaper than getting track IR. It took me a couple of hours to get up and running, but that included installing the webcam properly and figuring out how to configure that. It works fine and was certainly cheaper than buying track IR and finding I didn't like it!

Probably, they've got the only three currently flying and the only three that are all black! HHA have one at Scampton but that's only just become airworthy recently and I believe they're still waiting on some parts before they start regular tasking. Pacman, the Bucc I'm working on for FSX is going to cover both S.1 and S.2 and should see it's way into Strike Fighters in due course, i.e once the model is finalised I can look at importing it to SF and making any changes to the mesh that are needed. As far as I can tell, all RAF Buccs had the later wing state and were S.2B, the S.2 was the original RN version with the S.2C having been upgraded with the wing pylon move and the S.2D being fully Martel capable. When they got transferred to the RAF the RN models were modified to the then current S.2B standard to standardise the fleet.

A friend of mine has a copy of that, awesome footage, although his wife and I both wondered why they'd chosen what sounded like the most uncharismatic* man in NATO to narrate it. I was also disappointed by the half second shot of a Sea Harrier's tail! That aside it's definitely worth watching and I've been meaning to find a copy of it on PAL format DVD for a while. *To be fair anyone who's seen my interview training tape tends to ask why the short bloke doesn't do anything apart from laugh at the tall bloke so I'm not exactly great TV myself.