harryleith

I am helping a mate get to grips with Third Wire sims, but we are geographically separated. He was having trouble with IR missile attacks, so I made this video tutorial to help him out. I hope it might prove interesting and useful to any other new players. When I get some more time, i might try and build one for radar-guided missiles.

Hey Streakeagle, This actually sounds very interesting. I used to play the Air Superiority boardgame (I can't believe I threw it away in a move a few years ago) - does this compare? I assume you enjoy playing it. I would love to hear your thoughts.

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.

Sort of like this...

Actually, I had in mind it would be more of a quick-reference. I have been feeling the lack of just having something to quickly look up to see if a particular weapon is radar ir IR guided - with Soviet weapons it is often hard to tell...

Guys, if I was any more shortsighted I would have to fly with a white stick out the cockpit! It was what kept me out of the Air Force as a career. Now I know why...

Actually, one of my joysticks ir reconfigurable for left or right-hand operation. I'll give it a go - thanks for the tip!

I recently bought WoE because a couple of friends and I want to play multiplayer. I have just spent the afternoon testing the multiplayer on my LAN and got it working just fine, although I felt a bit silly running from room to room taking turns shooting myself down. Now we know the concept works, and I have made a standard set of (mostly Mirage Factory) add-ons, it's time they bought their own copies so we can play. Running back and forth playing with myself is not as much fun as it sounds!

Thanks everyone. I'm not looking for sources (although you have shown me some interesting stuff!) but more trying to gauge interest for developing a site which shows the info. I had a play with building an interface for it. This is what I have so far.

Wrench, the Japanese site looks interesting, but not the best layout! I was looking to make something a bit more approachable. Thanks for the link - I'll spend some more time there.

Hi Gang. I have been trying to get my head around the latest array of Soviet weapons (AAMs, later SAMs etc). I have a good handle on equipment to the late 80's, when i was keeping a close eye on weapon systems and technical development - but stuff like later AAMs and SAMs I am still catching up on. I was compiling some information to get them all straight in my head, but I was wondering if there would be a wider interest in having an online database of weapon systems. This information is just begging to be databased, but I don't want to go to the considerable effort of designing a fully database-driven website and be the only one to use it. I am a professional web developer, so I can pull it off. I just want to gauge the level of interest, if any. Is anyone interested?

I agree the film combat looked simplified, but we aren't the target audience. People who understand flight and flying are just too small beans for anyone to make content tailored for us. This will be a story about the people who flew, accessible to a wider audience than us - and the flying just has to look exciting enough to add flavour to the story. After all, I don't think anyone watches Top Gun for tips on modern air combat manoeuvring!

Hmmm... Having a lot more luck in 2011. Although my JH-7A did get shot down by ground fire from a 120 Rheinmetal cannon on a K4 tank. Nice shootin', Tex!

My mission dates are all around 2015, so I'm not sure what systems have become available in the Modern Warfare Korea mod by that time. Certainly the after-action report identified the missiles as SA-17s. That particular game install has only the Modern Warfare Korea mod installed - completely vanilla - so there aren't any stray SAM systems except what came in the mod install. It's too bad, because it looks like fun - it's just way too deadly for me to get my teeth into!

I did a clean install of Win7 and loaded the Strike Fighters 2 series and reinstalled the Modern Warfare Korea mod. It all works fine, but I just don't seem to be able to last more than a few seconds in the air. Am I doing something wrong, or is this just a fairly realistic representation of flying in a modern SAM-rich environment? My first mission in a F-15C I had just detected a flight of MiG-21MFs and was turning to engage when I was hit by a pair of Aphid C AAMs. As I watched my flaming aircraft drop towards the deck, it was hit by at least 3 SAMs - An SA-6 and two SA-17s. Talk about overkill - I think once it hit the ground, a North Korean peasant even came out of a hut and threw stones at the smoking wreckage! I tried it from the other side by taking a MiG-21 and lasted just a few seconds. Two AIM-9 sidewinders blew me apart, while Red Crown was still in the middle of saying "You're clear. No bandits in your area." What am I doing wrong? Should I fly into the target area rather than warping? I seem to arrive and evaporate to a combination of AAMs and SAMs almost immediately. Even diving for the deck only buys me a minute or so. Should I turn the difficulty down? I am willing to entertain any suggestions...

I have a soft spot for the MiG-21 too. When we player Air Superiority (the board game) or Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, I was the only one willing to fly red team, so I quite of ten found myself in a MiG-21 or MiG-29. That is a NICE skin.

Thanks Wrench! All of us CombatAce Aussies appreciate the great work you do on bringing us RAAF aircraft. Keep it up!

I have been a Mac user since 1990 and I just love them. The university I worked for bought me a MacBook Pro 12", a big screen and a keyboard and mouse, and it was the best rig ever. And the new Intel-based ones mean you can install and run Windows as well, should you feel the need. Being able to dual-book Windows and MacOSX is great. Price-wise you always pay more for Apple hardware than a comparable PC rig, but component integration and quality control is usually worth the price.

Hi Gang, I own the full spread of SF2 titles and have been happily flying for over a year now. However, I have a geographically-challenged friend who wants to try Strike Fighters but wants to do multiplayer. This would involve buying at least one of the SF1 series games. After reading through the multiplayer guidelines (Yes, Wrench, some people do actually read the forums first ) it seems each game of the series handles multiplayer a little differently. I am interested in finding out which title people would recommend. My research has me leaning towards WoE, but I would appreciate any opinions before hitting Pay Pal. If it helps, my mate last played Chuck Yeager's Air Combat flying F-4s against my MiG-21.

I have a fondness for Soviet aircraft, and today I took a break from flying modern jets and went retro with a MiG-17. However, flying these early aircraft isn't without its hair-raising moments. I was in a high-speed dogfight with some A-4 Skyhawks and F-8 Crusaders when my MiG became unresponsive. I had forgotten the MiG-17 has a disturbing habit of locking up the controls at high speed, meaning you can't maneuver and just fly along in the direction you are going until you can slow down. I understand this is caused by the flow of air over the control surfaces which at high speed were just too great for mechanical linkages and pilot strength to move. Western aircraft had hydraulic controls to avoid this issue. Consequently, my angling for a stern gun-attack turned into an embarrassing overshoot as I sailed blithely along in a straight line, madly trying to bleed off speed with my air-brakes. The F-8 tried, but with shells whistling past the cockpit I finally got some control back and barrel rolled up and over before breaking into a hard turn to force an overshoot. Not a lesson I will forget in a hurry!