Do335

having done the previous 2 fights one thing is certain. the hunter is no better in the horizontal compared to the fresco and is even out-classed in the vertical. what can play to the hunter's hand when the playing field is even... i intend to find out in this one. the fight starts. obviously i can't stick to a horizontal turn as we know how that'll turn out, and i can't go up either coz we know he'll come up and get me. so climbing turn it is. however it is still a maneuver that heavily relies on vertical performance, and as i gradually ran outta smash, there was no choice but to turn into him. it became heated, we came head on, with the mig's guns ablaze. leveling out a few seconds after the mig flew by, i realize there's not enough airspeed for a pure vertical conversion, so decided to go for a one circle turn into him, while keeping some vertical movement. we meet head to head again, the trigger happy AI left me cursing for sure but i know he's not fully aimed. after this second head on, a two circle developed, and i was able to out rate him and get behind his 3-9 line. he continued going high, airspeed dwindling which extended my rate advantage even further. i ended up squarely on his six. but, obviously the 'nam pilots saying the mig standing on one wing and ends up behind you in a blink of an eye ain't kidding, for the mig, with just 0.7 nm separation between us, broke hard left, instantly creating some 90deg angle off between us and denied me a shot... grrrrr and so from this point on it is a repeat of the 1st engagement all over again. a tied up horizontal turn fight, a low yo-yo by me developing into a downward spiral, me going up upon reaching ground level... except by keeping my speed up and not completely hanging in the vertical, the fight remained neutral. ....until at the bottom of a loop the mig suddenly stopped maneuvering and started bugging out. I turned on debug. Yep. He's out of fuel. He then put up some evasive maneuvers, but nothing one can't handle, and ended up without a vertical tail. apparently with a limited fuel load and a reheat guzzling fast, the fresco couldn't stay in a fight too long which ended up being his demise. so this concludes this engagement which... lasted a whopping 9 minutes. however, it is not over yet. to be continued...

To seek revenge in the 2nd engagement, i chose the classic pure vertical move, which is to run max throttle all the way to the merge and pull up immediately after. up from 15000ft apex at some 60kts/30000ft, the mig is no slouch either ending up just 5000ft below, going in the opposite direction from me. split-s back and a high yo-yo later he's down from 30mm gun fire so, the mig has a powerful engine but not that much powerful. but the "i-go-up-he-goes-left merge" feels more like an AI exploit, so i decide to play fair in the 3rd engagement. to be continued..

here's my hunter chronicles. i was originally thinking of taking her (which seems like the British way of calling everything..) up against the mig-19, but turns out she's vastly outclassed by the Farmer. So i chose the mig-17 as the opponent. 1st engagement, decided to keep it horizontal. But just like the fight in fagot vs sabre, it settled in a deadlock close to stall speeds with my nose sticking up to about 45 degrees angle off and unable to do anything better. again, i opted for a low yo-yo to increase my turn rate, again no avail as the fight develops into a downward spiral.. approaching ground level, in an attempt to break up the deadlock i pull into the vertical looping back with the mig in tow, only to find him gradually gaining to my 6 o'clock... and as i pull up into the 2nd loop he opens up on me! i desperately changes plane of motion but no good. he promptly shot me in the back with his 6th volley. ouch!... the hunter is still flying, but the engine is completely dead and the roll is very stiff. i was able to avoid his follow on shots and put her down on the field, while the mig circles overhead like a vulture... apparently this round goes to the fresco. the vertical switch was the bad call, because it seems like the fresco has better vertical performance with that afterburner of his. to be continued...

hey was wondering how it would end half way thru the vid, turns out it's a curve ball. by changing the plane of maneuver and rhythm of the fight, the ever lasting energy circle was broken, leaving a confused flanker and a victorious EF... me likes:) (PS i have typhoon phobia. thing was almost unbeatable for me in my falcon time... good to see it's not so OP here)

hey appreciate it guys. a bit occupied today, mayhaps gonna try the hunter tomorrow. what the... that's unworldly going thru all the trouble to implement a wing sweep but just to serve as a glorified flap... hell. also reminds me how little i actually know of some of them ruskie birds... thanks mate that's good info for me. PS i did some research on what the buffet means in the game and here's what i came up with, based on what TK said in some posts. basically you start to hear the buffet sound once your alpha goes past "alphastall" and your aircraft's CL is on a reduced slant. more over some stall characteristics also kicks in once past it. anyway the point i got from this is to avoid buffeting as much as possible, unless pulling in for a shot / doing last ditch maneuvers etc.

here's the DACT i mentioned a few pages back flying the mig-15. the guy talking is me:D for i decided to do a voice over this time. next up.. probably gonna do a Hunter vs mig-19.

Nice one cougar! I've always wondered what happens when the flogger tangles with the phantom. i'd thought that due to its variable sweep wing like the tomcat, it will gain the upper hand once the fight gets slow but apparently... that is not the case at all..?

hi Beach. wrt to 1, i think the best anyone ever did here was a 'squadron editor' for SF1, where you can adjust the stats of your squadron mates in a campaign save file. (It's no longer applicable to sf2 apparently, but I still managed it with a hex editor..) You're right that a lot of this stuff is simply not displayed for the user to see, like in EECH or Falcon4. It's not even well documented by TK or just vaguely... the campaign save file is in a encrypted format and very hard for a 3rd party to crack any of it at all i reckon. to 2 i think it's been many times mentioned, killing tanks, parked a/c, supply dump etc will have direct effect. i remember toting a gunpod on my phantom in the iceland campaign and just strafe the enemy tank formations mission after mission. by the time my ground forces launch offensives, there're no enemy ground units to fight them anymore - instant win. basically this game is such a hidden (pun intended...) gem. but i think it's still way better than ones that have no dynamics in its campaigns at all.

ah darn my jokes mate. i mean after top gun the aviation community just loves the tomcat even more, and we know all the buffs between the cat and the bug... remember once in a chat room i said something like "the hornet is great it turns and banks at 90kts!" and then everybody started jumping at me ehehe. and about what you're saying though, although a hobby is not important as a family or a career, i do think it is important that one keeps his passion, it is afterall one of the things you live for. i've had to take a few breaks along the years as well and it felt a significant part of myself is just missing. RL is tough and takes precedence for sure, but gotta give yourself props for getting back to it! anyway got a few DACT ideas in mind, will contribute my report soon.

modders work for free and work based on their interest. leave them be :D

yeh clear avenue of fire is issue in real life too, amraam shots into furballs or past friendlies are generally forbidden due to possible fratricide. and wow did this thread explode recently, having some great read here. plz do keep 'em up, and good to see your reports again EricJ. hornit lover here as well btw, sometimes tis a tough life among a post 'top gun' community :p

Third wire series:D if ya don't like it the notepad is just a double click away no?:D

Another epic battle with voice over!

I just toured around their forum a bit. Seems no dynamics in the SP campaign at all, you just fly the missions to unlock equipment and skins. No modding at all, ppl are still arguing about flight models... ehh not for me. i can see the online dogfight community will like it though.

Frenchie: in your Campaign 1 file, it says UnitID=15, however in Campaign1_data file it says [AirUnit048]. Change it to UnitID=48 and that should be it..

captured a video of Steam and Iron game play. keyword for this game... Jutland. and everything else around that event!

sure is an annoying one... good to know it's a prob with the game (not me screwing up)

one of the benefits of NATO membership i guess, must have a strong air force!

hey cool one. anyway to enable subtitles on this thing?

Blue angels skyhawks to the tune of dreams by Van Halen, 1986. First watched this on u2b. that video's no longer available but vividly remember one of the pilots' daughter commented on it "My dad's name is xxxx xxx and he was flying the first jet on the left. So good to see this video again." (or something to that effect). I was totally amazed by it. seems utube has gone completely corporate and wiped this video all out. mayhaps it stays a while on vimeo.

wondering what happened sometimes it's unconsciously forgotten and the face go green afterwards

yes Caesar, but i'm saying some additional chaffs on the rails. For one hand you get SARH Phoenixes/Slammers/Adders, or, you get some extra chaffs on your aircraft to help foil missiles (meanwhile, say, your AI wingies don't get the unrealistically high amount of chaffs as to maintain game balance). I just think.... the latter is the lesser of the 2 evils. but oh well neither is good enough when it comes down to it, as per PFunk...

wow that is a bummer. i never faced ARH equipped redfor come to think of it, but fired a lot of fox3s for sure. isn't there some other way besides making all fox3s into fox1s? i guess for a modern conflict like black sea, making the opfor SARH only isn't acceptable.... how about extra countermeasures for the player only, like BOL for the f-14s and -15s. AI can't use them but AI always gets 6th sense of an inbound missile, so that balances it out a bit for the player. also doesn't EricJ's superbug pack model the ALE-50, that thing goes on F-16s as well. towed decoys are supposed to be the prime counter against ARHs. fwiw i know 2 things, RWR nowadays can not only detect the missile seeker radar, but also the datalink between missile and launch platform. reason it doesn't display that is because it will get confusing when multiple missiles are in the air. otoh some US FMS programs didn't include the rwr's ability to detect seeker heads, so some foreign operators didn't have it, therefore you can say SF2 isn't entirely wrong ofc i'm not one of the real guys but just heard from them, so correct me by all means.

in with baseball bat! lol reminds me of a line "a single pussy hair can pull a battleship thru the desert" there i was wondering what happened to all the inspiring hollywood flicks these days. apparently they're sold out to the commies!

The zipper! Traveling on the road so not flyable the next week or so for me, tho remembered and digged out a good post by a former pilot. http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6798#p6798 (The numbers for flame out landing was especially scary for me at that time doing some reading up on the F-16 SFO. If I interpret right he was referring to the high key and it was 15000ft 260kts for the zipper, vs. 7000ft 200kts (iirc) for the viper....)