harryleith

I took a break from mud moving last night and took an unarmed RF-111 on a recon mission over Libya in SF2. It was a very different and hair-raising experience and I was hoping someone on the forums could give me some advice on developing appropriate mission tactics. Coming up onto the recon target, my 2-ship flight was intercepted by MiG-23's. Being unarmed, the only thing I could think of was to light up the afterburners and go like heck! I used chaff and flares and some jinking to avoid several AAMs, and once I had reconned the target I dove for the deck and stayed there. I evaded another couple of AAM's from the trailing Floggers and a couple of SAM's. My wingman wouldn't fly as low as I was and he got picked off by a SAM. Apart from slight course corrections to skirt Shilka AA positions I just stayed low during the egress and ran for it. The MiGs lost interest after expending their missiles, and for some reason didn't close for a guns pass. While the mission succeeded, I wasn't happy with the tactics I used. It seemed more like good luck than good management. My RWR screamed at me the entire flight and it felt strange to have someone in my 6 and not be doing anything about it. Should I have maneuvered hard against the MiGs to break their lock, or would that have just slowed me down? Should recon flights be escorted? That would seem to be impractical. I don't fly unarmed often and it was an interesting experience to be in a combat situation and not be able to defend myself. Anyway, thinking about it kept me up all night and I would love to hear any suggestions to improve my tactics for this type of mission.

I have been trying out Su-9 and Su-11 Fishpot series interceptors and learning how to fly them. They are armed with the AA-3 Anab (R-98) air-to-air missile. After flying several intercept missions I have come to the conclusion the Anab is essentially useless. Even short range attacks from 6 o'clock are just a waste of time - especially with the radar guided version. I have given the missile time after getting a radar lock to track the target, but no joy. They most often seem to go ballistic. At least the IR version tracks, but I haven't scored more than one or two hits on B-52s. The Buffs even seem to shoot them down on several occasions. I think the only way to acheive a kill would be to fly up to the target, pop my canopy and try to physically jam one of the missiles up the tailpipe! I know early missiles were of limited effectiveness, but this is just ridiculous! I got better performance out of AA-1 Alkali's. Without internal guns, that just leaves harsh language. PS. The B-52s fly a weird crisscrossing pattern and cover each other with their cannon - more effectively than I was expecting! Is this a standard tactic, or is the AI just getting creative? I have also learned not to dogfight in an interceptor. In one mission I closed on a flight of four Sabres. After achieving a lock I fired an Anab - to no good effect. Then the Sabres broke and I tried to turn with them to go for another attack. That was a bad plan! They were all over me! Even though I was faster, they could out-turn me and I was in trouble. I realised I was playing to my weaknesses and not my strengths so I used my speed to power away from them. Lesson learned. Interceptors do a fast pass and missile attack then dive away out of trouble. No dogfighting. Night intercept mission in an Su-11 Fishpot fighter interceptor.

I do a lot of air-to-mud work and I flew a mission this afternoon which shows how far I've come since buying this game last Christmas. I flew a single mission strike over Libya terrain in an Su-7BMK FitterA. The target was a warehouse on the docks. Enemy air defenses and air activity were set to random. My two-ship flight was loaded with four 250kg FAB unguided bombs each. As we flew into the target area, I started getting RWR warnings from HAWK SAM radars, so I dove for the deck. Getting low and hiding in the ground returns was the only defensive tactic I could think of because the Fitter isn't equipped with any onboard ECM or chaff. The chirping of the RWR changed to an urgent tone as the HAWK batteries locked onto us and started guidance tracking. Looking towards the coast I could see the smoke plumes and trails of several SAM launches and I deepened my dive angle, looking to get under 100 metres altitude to try and break the radar lock in the clutter from the sea. I could see the smoke trails curving towards us as the missiles tracked our aircraft. From the way the missiles moved it was obvious they were definitely locked on and heading our way. I watched my altitude winding down as the SAMs streaked towards us, hoping I was going to make it to the deck in time. As they came closer I could see the missiles at the head of the smoke trails. They flashed past me - passing close over my canopy and nailing my wingman, who had been slower to start to dive. He took at least 3 direct hits and it was just debris that came out of the explosion - no ejection and no chute. That just left me to continue the mission. I leveled off at 60m AGL and heard the search radars lose me. There weren't any fighters that I could see, but I wasn't willing to wait around and find out. I pushed the throttle up to full military power and streaked towards the target and the coast. Sun glittered off the waves as as I tore past past them - they were so close! At about 6 miles, I could see a number of ships, mainly tankers, docked in the harbour, and identified my target just beyond them. I nudged the stick and pushed the pedals to line up on the target and then pulled the stick sharply back and climbed. As I gained altitude the RWR came alive again, telling me the SAM search radars were still active and looking. Some light AAA also started to fire as I closed on the target and I saw a couple of lines of tracers arc up towards me from the docks. I couldn't jink to avoid the incoming fire because I had leveled off was lining up the sight on the target, but I was moving fast and the tracers curved away behind me. I selected the bombs on the weapons panel and set the ripple release to 2, flicked the Master Arm switch to arm the releases and nosed over onto the bombing run. The warehouse was right there in the front panel of my canopy - right where it as supposed to be. The bomb-sight marks were displayed on my HUD and as the target drifted into the sight reticle I pressed the pickle once, then again a fraction of a second later. I felt the weight of the bombs come off the aircraft as all four of the 250kg bombs separated cleanly. I pulled out of the dive of my bomb run and rolled right just as the shadow of a SAM flicked over my cockpit and some more tracers arced past my wing. I pulled around in a hard bank over the docks and started losing altitude again, heading for the safety of the deck. Flicking an eye back over my shoulder (Thank you, TrackIR) I just caught a glimpse of the warehouse before it was obscured by the dock cranes and tankers - it was a blazing ruin. I must have scored a direct hit! The HAWK tracking radars lost me again as I dropped to the water and the warnings from the RWR stopped. I advanced the throttle, streaking for home over the wavetops. Mission complete! It used to be I couldn't even hit the target on a run with dumb bombs - let alone fight my way in against enemy air defenses and performing a pop-up bomb run. I guess all that practice is starting to pay off. Banking away from the coast and hugging the water on the run for home in my Su-7BMK FitterA after completing a successful strike mission.

Hi Gang, How realistic is the over-G modelling in SF2? I was flying a TMF F/A-18A+ in a merged install of SF2 and had the wings just fall off my bird in a tight turn in full A/B. I thought I had been shot down by a SAM or some other threat I hadn't seen, but the Log just said I "crashed". I was coming around for another run on a target in a shallow dive at full A/B when I pulled the stick into a hard left turn. The grunt breathing sounded and so did the G alarm, then the entire right wing collapsed and the outboard section of the left departed the aircraft, followed by flames. My loadout was two wing tanks, a centreline tank, Litening pod and a single remaining GBU-16. Is this type of over-G modelled? I hadn't seen it before! Needless to say, I walked home...

OK. So a gentler hand on the stick, then. Thanks!

Hi Gang, I am modelling some aircraft for the Falklands 30th anniversary, but I am not sure what types of bombs to kit out my Argentine Skyhawks with. The Falklands mod talks about STRIM bombs and they look like British 500-pound freefall bombs, but I struck a blank on the web. Did they use UK, US, French bombs? Any info pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Hgbn: Here is my Sea Harrier album. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151121211940500.781659.902945499&type=3&l=6e4ae1b508 The Airfix Skyhawk is due out later this year - and I want to build a couple.

Thanks for the help, guys! I really appreciate it. Mk82's I have by the bucketload from the Hasegawa weapons sets, both standard and retarded. The source kits (the eagerly awaited new-tool 1/72 Airfix A-4B/P) has a British 1000lb bomb and wing tanks. I had seen multiple-bomb armaments as well, and was contemplating one of those. I can hang onto the British pattern bombs from my Haseagawa Harrier GR.3 and Sea Harrier kits to give me options. I can model an A-4B (brown/green camo) and an A-4Q (grey/white) but the A-4C has the later nose pattern not present in the new kit. Once again, thank you for your time and expertise!

By modelling I mean plastic, so I have access to lots of US ordnance via the Hasegawa weapon packs, but nothing NATO or UK. Web turned up one reference to Spanish-designed freefall bombs in use in the Falklands.

I have been doing a bunch of intercept missions and I am learning a health respect for the gunners on both Soviet bombers and B-52s. More than once I have either gone home perforated or just been plain blown out of the sky. I know you shouldn't make stern attacks, but if you have a MiG15 or -17 and your intercept vector is all wrong, it's a long stern chase just to catch a flight of B-52s! I was always a bit dismissive of gunners on modern bombers, but no longer! Cheers, guys! Keep up the good work.

I just finished reading Sea Harrier Over The Falklands by Nigel "Sharkey" Ward last night and I must say it was a serious eye opener. His tone is somewhat superior and occasionally a bit defensive, but I guess that comes from the sort of confidence and self-belief you want in a great fighter pilot. His book raised a lot of issues. For example, I was horrified to know that Harriers in 801 Squadron flew the entire war without countermeasures. According to the book, they received two kits late in the war - both of which were unserviceable. They instead crammed chaff into the air brake, so they could release it that way, or stuffed it under bomb mountings so releasing the ordnance gave them a burst of chaff. This is far from the high-tech world you imagine of modern air combat, and is frankly just a cut above opening the canopy and throwing the damn things out! They also didn't have any tracer ammunition to observe fall of shot, because the RAF didn't believe in it, so MOD procurement couldn't see why the FAA would need it... Probably the biggest theme in the book is the different experiences of 800 and 801 Squadrons with their Blue Fox radar and Navhars. Because most of the 801 pilots had been involved in the Initial Flight Trials Unit, they had lots of experience getting the best out of these systems and swore by them. Alternatively, 800 Squadron who were newer to the equipment seemingly couldn't get them to work effectively and given this unit was on the flagship, this failure was the experience the Admiral had of the equipment. Sharkey believes pulling a CAP off 120 miles to do a visual scan of an area they could have searched by radar lead to the loss of the Sheffield. The Argentinians got through the hole in the cap and launched their attack. His maths about the effort versus effectiveness of the Vulcan bomber raids was also startling. I hadn't thought of it that way, but using 11 tankers to put one aircraft over a target to drop 21 bombs just doesn't work out to be cost effective. I'm sure this book will stand a re-read after I have had some time to digest it.

This is a long and sorry tale. I own all the SF2 series games and enjoy blasting around the sky on my own. However, a friend suggested we play multiplayer and we bought WOE, installed it on our respective PCs and enjoyed blasting each other out of the sky. So far all is roses... I have just bought a new laptop - a 13inch MacBook. being a bit of a geek, I thought "I can install Windows XP onto this under BootCamp and then when I visit my friend we can blast each other some more". We have used WinXP and WOE on my mate's Mac laptop and it works just fine. Unfortunately, the latest version of BootCamp on the latest laptops only supports Win7. This is OK for all the other stuff I have to do on it (work and similar dull pursuits) but not so good for skyborne gorefests. My question is can WOE (08 patch) run under Win7? I read the forum posts about getting it going under Vista and assume similar things will probably work under 7. Secondly, if it is running in DX9 under Win 7, are all the DirectPlay bits that WOE multiplayer depends on likely to be working? I just wondered if anyone has any Win7/WOE multiplayer experience before I go jumping through hoops to set it up on my laptop. If it is possible and can probably - forums willing - get it working, but it would be nice to know it is feasible before I start. Otherwise I will just keep a spare WinXP PC handy and tote it and all the associated gear the 300kms to my mate's house when I visit...

Alright! Just had a 3-player with a MacBook running Win7, A PC running Win7 and an iMac running XP. Worked like a charm! Thanks guys.

Worked like a charm! Let the air combat maneuvering begin!

Thanks FastCargo and Wrence. Always appreciate your guidance. @Wrench - your explanation of where to save the files here is very clear and crystalised what I had already read on the forums. Thanks again and I will try and get in going.

Hi Gang, I have been having trouble scoring a hit in the SF2 Falklands Mod. I did an anti-ship mission flying Super Etendards and my Exocet missed the target. Fair enough, I thought. No system is flawless. However, I repeated the mission a half-a-dozen times and the Exocet invariably misses its target. This includes my weapons and my wingmans - when he decides to drop his! I looked in the .ini file of the missile and the Accuracy is 85%, but I can't seem to hit a thing. I lock on to the ground target using the E key, close on the target and then launch. My launches are from 12 miles through to 5 miles from the target, using the Argentine AR_AM-39 from the game, and a couple of AM-39As just to test if that made any difference. I am playing the SF2 Falklands mod with a full merged install of SF2. The Falklands mod was installed as a separate mod, so it is only what came in the download in the game. Does anyone have any ideas? [WeaponData001] TypeName=AR_AM39 FullName=AM 39 Exocet ASM (Arg) ModelName=AM39 Mass=670.000000 Diameter=0.430000 Length=4.412000 SubsonicDragCoeff=0.120000 SupersonicDragCoeff=0.222000 AttachmentType=ARGENTINA SpecificStationCode= NationName=ArgentineNavy StartYear=1979 EndYear=2020 Availability=2 BaseQuantity=24 Exported=TRUE ExportStartYear=1979 ExportEndYear=2020 ExportAvailability=1 WeaponDataType=1 RailLaunched=FALSE RocketPod=FALSE Retarded=FALSE FinStabilized=TRUE SpinStabilized=FALSE HasGrowl=FALSE EffectClassName=LargeMissileEffects ReleaseDelay=0.000000 WarheadType=0 Explosives=160.000000 FusingDistance=0.000000 ClusterBomblets=0 ClusterDispersion=0.000000 GuidanceType=7 Accuracy=85 MaxTurnRate=10.000000 MaxLaunchG=3.000000 LockonChance=95 LaunchReliability=95 ArmingTime=2.000000 SeekerFOV=25.000000 SeekerGimbleLimit=25.000000 SeekerTrackRate=15.000000 SeekerRange=60000.000000 CLmax=14.000000 MinFreq=0.000000 MaxFreq=0.000000 MinLaunchRange=2000.000000 MaxLaunchRange=60000.000000 Duration=600.000000 CounterCountermeasure=0.000000 NoiseRejection=0.000000 CapabilityFlags=0x10300017 LoftAngle=0.000000 DescentAngle=0.000000 MaxLoftAltitude=0.000000 BoosterStart=1.000000 BoosterDuration=10.000000 BoosterAccel=10.000000 BoosterEffectName=MissileFireEffect BoosterSoundName=Missile BoosterNodeName= BoosterPosition=0.000000,-1.128000,0.000000 SustainerDuration=600.000000 SustainerAccel=10.000000 SustainerEffectName= SustainerSoundName= SustainerPosition=0.000000,-1.128000,0.000000 InFlightEffectName=MissileInFlightEffect InFlightSoundName= ReleaseAnimationID=-1 EODisplayFlags=0 CEP=7.000000

Now it is a "Hit"ile not a "Miss"ile!

Thanks for the replies, gentlemen. As always, I appreciate your insights. For a quicky fix i might just change it to TV guidance - it doesn't bother me to have the TV image displayed. Hope you had a Happy New Year. Off to bag some ships! Harry

The challenge is to build an Airfix 1/72 scale Sea Harrier FRS1 before the deadline of Feb 29, 2012. This started as a challenge between an old friend and myself, but I thought I would throw it open to everyone online who wanted to join in. Please pass this invitation on to anyone you think might be interested. If you want to do the challenge, just let us know, and post pictures of your progress online. There is a Facebook event page for the challenge and there is more information on the Challenge website at http://www.digitalforge.com.au/challenge/index.html .