SkippyBing

My bad, the A-12 was the CIA's OXCART, the YF-12 was an interceptor version for the Air Force of which all of three were made, and then the SR-71 evolved from that. As for A-11 that may have been due to Lyndon Johnson misreading All Weather Interceptor as A11 Weather Interceptor. The A-12 designator was originally used as A stood for Article or Archangel (the follow up to the Angel program that produced the U-2) and 12 merely indicated it was the 12th design they'd come up with in that program. Being the CIA they could call it whatever they wanted I imagine.

For the Pony/Mustang question think more on the lines of tasking rather than who operates them.

Err.. no it was a conversion of a Mach 3 interceptor known as the A-12 for strategic not battlefield reconnaissance , the recon version was to be the R-12 and in fact a lot of documents had to be changed when the announcement was made. Incidentally Lockheed have little say in the naming of their aircraft and no say in it's service designator e.g. the F-22 is called the F-22 because that was the next number in the F sequence. I wouldn't trust Discovery implicitly one of their programmes said that WW2 Royal Navy carriers had wooden decks and US ones armoured decks which was exactly wrong. All about the SR-71 naming

Didn't Curtis Le May think SR sounded better than RS so he amended the script when it was revealed to the public.

No. As a clue a Lynx, Seahawk and probably a few others can be a Pony or a Mustang what's the difference?

Interesting, but not the answer I was after for a hint look at the picture to the left of this.

I knew reading that book about the Sidewinder would pay off one day! What's the difference between a Pony and a Mustang?

The -9D had a cooled seeker head which required a coolant supply from the launch aircraft, the USN thought this was a good idea (it is) the USAF didn't (they later changed their minds) however their aircraft weren't set up to supply coolant to the missile so they couldn't make the switch easily.

Every time I take a leap of faith in Assassin's Creed my stomach goes light which is pretty impressive. I'd echo the CoD 4 moments too.

You'd think they'd paint it black just to give the conspiracy theorists a field day...

Don't mock the biscuit desicion , often closely tied to the one or two donuts on Friday question. For a slightly stupider criminal on the internet look here. Truly proof that idiot proofing the world creates idiots.

I was thinking the same when I realised Pretty Hate Machine was released in '89. Mind you I've just spent four hours in the bar with people who were born in '89 and have an un-enviable knowledge of '90s boy bands so I figure humanity is pretty much screwed! Oh yeah, Ferris Buellers Day Off and Combat Rock by The Clash

If you know how to use it, there's a difference between having all the best toys and knowing what to do with them. 'All the gear no idea' as we say, of course if they do it's all kinds of interesting!

Modelling was temporarily delayed while I played with my new R/C helicopter, fortunately I've now broken that so until the parts turn up I've been working on the Wyvern cockpit. Messing about with the Stringbag tomorrow! Wyvern Cockpit in FSX, shouldn't take long to port it over to WoI once it's finished Swordfish Cockpit in WOE Swordfish external, must sort out the hardpoints!

Basically yes. The model is in 3D Studio so it's just a case of using the FSX exporter to make the FSX version and the Third Wire exporter to make a WOI/WOE/WOV/SF version. You do have to play around with the animations as they're handled differently, and there are more texture options for FSX (bump mapping, reflection maps etc.) but it's not beyond the wit of man.

I think it's probably me! I have an FSX Wyvern that's 90% complete ( i.e the VC isn't finished) and using the exporter it works in WOI too looks like this It's currently number 1 on my list of things to finish so hopefully this year!

I think he lives in Switzerland so mountains are pretty much de-rigour. I don't think a helmet cam would cause any problems the one I've got weighs about 70 grams for the bit that actually goes on your helmet which is less than the battery pack for the lip light, I've seen footage from parachutists and similar stuff.

If someone wants to do the data.ini I could probably finish the cockpit off over the next bank holiday and then it's pretty much done.

The Typhoons canards are pretty big and bear in mind compared to the Viggen they're all moving.

Hinch, loving the Eagle. I was under the impression that the aerial masts around the flight deck were horizontal for air ops, is that going to be modelled or did they sometimes have them up? This is more because I'm likely to hit them landing on!

StreakEagle is mostly right, however if you look at the video a few years back from the Typhoon display at Fairford where it nearly hit the ground you'll see something odd. As the aircraft is at the bottom of it's loop and about 6' off the deck, and with the pilot presumably having both feet on the instrument panel to pull back as hard as he can the canards are pointing down, i.e. providing a downwards pitch moment. However the Typhoon continues to loop up away from a very expensive and slightly embarrassing crash. Why? Well the Typhoon is a dynamically unstable aircraft with computers doing all the clever stuff. The pilot has told the computer he wants to pull up, lots, the aircraft gives itself a massive nose up pitching moment in response, at this point being unstable the aircraft would keep pitching up until the wings stalled and it crashed horribly. To prevent this the canard applies just a enough pitch down moment to hold the aircraft on the edge of controlled flight so it changes direction as quickly as possible without stalling. The canard is basically opposing the aircraft's tendency to continue moving/rotating in any given direction once the initial movement is made, you only get this with dynamically unstable aircraft with FBW control systems.

I seem to remember the broad policy (with the occasional exception to prove the rule) was Fighter/Attack aircraft were named after meteorological phenomena e.g. Lightning, Hurricane, Typhoon (see names do get re-used), Bombers were named after cities Lancaster, Canberra or in the case of the V-bombers a seperate theme was chosen, Naval strike aircraft were named after big game fish e.g. Swordfish, Tarpon (UK name for the Avenger until we decided to stop playing silly buggers). A lot of the exceptions are from international programs where we didn't get a say in the naming, and stuff bought from overseas where they already had a perfectly good name or it hovers so we called it the Harrier. The TSR.2 should fall in to the first group, so Zephyr would be in keeping with the theme, although a gentle breeze may not be the image we're after! Cyclone might work...

I think first off Aviator on the BBC B in about '84, pretty good Spitfire sim for the time although the target were 'alien invaders'. I'm guessing because there's no way you could have done a realistic Me-109 with the graphics available. A couple of years after that it was Phantom Combat again on the BBC B, guns only and the view was fixed forward, I must have logged 100s of hours on that! It even had multi-player, I could just never find someone else willing to lug their computer to my place and link them together with an RS-423 cable! First PC flight sims and games would have been 1942 Pacific Air War and Fleet Defender in about '94/'95. And the first thing I did with them was try and mod the aircraft!

For a space sim I want something like a cross between Elite (depressingly I'm old enough to remember the original, on tape) and the Third Wire Sims i.e. open moddable spacecraft with the option of trading or blowing stuff up.

In the real world radar minimum range is down to a number of factors, however the main one is that most radars can't talk and listen at the same time. Basically the receiver is very sensitive as it's listening for a very faint signal and the transmitter is putting out a very loud one so it'd tend to overpower the receiver and damage it. Although the transmitter is transmitting for a very short period of time the signal is going out at the speed of light so the signal goes a long way in this time, this is the minimum radar range. Different radars have different minimum detection ranges, for instance a long range air search radar has a large one as it's putting lots of energy into the air to try and get a return off a small contact at long range. A shipborne nav radar will have quite a small one as it doesn't need to illuminate anything more than about 20 miles away and even then it'll have a large cross section. Radar band comes into this as well but to some extent that's governed by what you're trying to do anyway.