Dark_Knight_667th

:D Korean Peninsula-Present Day, The world watched concernedly as North Korea began the process of activating a nuclear facility with the capability of producing weapons grade plutonium. In the south, Protests broke out in Seoul and near US Military bases, protesting the US presence that still remained almost 50 years after the Korean War. A peace treaty had never been signed, only a very uneasy cease-fire. US Military personnel watched from inside the fences as the marchers moved back and forth in front of the gates. Seoul Airbase got the worst. Rocks were thrown at military vehicles and buildings over the fence, breaking windows and causing shocked airmen to run for cover. Lt. Colonel Jase Chandler walked to the edge of the flight line and shook his head. He couldn’t believe the people of South Korea would turn against the US in the face of the growing threat up north, especially only 50 miles away from the DMZ. An M2 Bradley fighting vehicle rolled towards the gate, its tracks clanking on the concrete to help the Security Patrols to secure the perimeter of the base. Rocks bounced off of its armored sides as it took up position sitting across the main access road. Chandler turned and walked back towards the hanger to begin pre-flighting his aircraft. The F16 CJ Block 50 sat nestled in with two other nest mates inside. It was about to be rolled out and readied for a training flight “around the block.” Chandler had just arrived in-country and this was to be his theatre familiarization ride. He stood and watched as the tow vehicle hooked up to the nose gear and pulled the tiny, lethal aircraft out of its roost and into the morning sunlight. “She’s ready to go sir. Holler at me when you are ready to strap in” Chandler waived at the speaker, Chief Andrew “Andy” Larson, crew chief for airframe 1101, the bird he was taking up this morning. He noted the four AMRAAMS and two Sidewinder missiles slung under the Falcon’s wings. “Going armed this morning chief?” Larson glanced at the aircraft. “SOP sir, Vipers in Korea always go up loaded for bear, just in case.” Chandler nodded and walked to the nose of the aircraft, taking a close look at the radome, making sure it securely closed over the APG 68 radar housed under it and began his preflight. Fifteen minutes later, he climbed the crew ladder and slid into the ACESII ejection seat. Larson climbed up after him and began helping him strap in. “Take good care of my bird sir.” “I’ll bring her home chief…just goin out to the store.” Larson laughed, “Roger sir.” Larson skipped back down the ladder and lifted it away from the side of the aircraft. Chandler waited till he was well clear and began running his start up checklists. He listened to the big GE whine and rumble to life behind him and began to count seconds in his head. A well-tuned engine would reach start RPM in about fifteen seconds, this one did it in thirteen. Larson and his crew knew their way around the GE pretty well. Chandler held down the idle detent and advanced the throttle to 25 percent and the GE responded, spooling smoothly up to idle rpm. Powering up the rest of the onboard systems didn’t take much time, but waiting the additional 15 minutes for the Inertial Navigation System to align seemed to take forever. Chandler passed the time going over emergency procedures in his head and checking in with the tower for an updated weather report. The viper finally signaled its human occupant that it was ready to go. Chandler moved the INS switch to Nav mode, engaged nose wheel steering and contacted the tower for taxi instructions. “Sierra 1, cleared taxi to marshal, runway 01” He advanced the throttle and the viper began to roll. He nudged the nose right onto the taxiway and headed down the sensor test area known unofficially as marshal. There he would activate his radar and electronic counter measures to test for possible failures, then arm his ejection seat in preparation for take off. Entering marshal, Chandler brought down the canopy muting the roar of the GE afterburning turbofan to a very quiet roar inside the cockpit. Five minutes later, he was cleared to hold short, runway 010 for take off clearance. “Sierra 1, cleared for take off, runway 01, vector 015 for departure, once gear up, switch to Seoul Air traffic control Freq as briefed” “Roger tower, Sierra 1 rolling” Chandler advanced the throttle, lighting all five stages of the big afterburner. Adrenaline rushed into his veins as he was pushed back into his seat by thirty thousand pounds of thrust. The viper rocketed down runway. Chandler watched the heads up display. At one hundred twenty knots he eased back on the stick lifting the aircraft’s nose, pointing it into the blue Korean sky. He waited a brief moment for the drop in his stomach telling him the main gear had left the tarmac. Checking for positive climb he cleaned the underside of the viper at 100 feet and brought the throttle out of afterburner to eighty-eight percent and began to climb. “Korea Air Traffic Control, this is Sierra One-One squawking two-eight-zero-zero, departing Seoul, how read?” Chandler waited for the reply. “Sierra One, radar contact, climb to angels ten heading zero niner zero” Chandler raised an eyebrow at the vector given to him. It would take him in nearly the opposite direction than his planned route. He turned to the new heading, advanced the throttle to 90 percent and increased his climb rate slightly, eventually leveling off at ten thousand feet. He reduced his throttle to conserve fuel and waited for the ATC to contact him again. “Sierra One-One, Korea Air Traffic Control, how read?” Chandler replied into the mike, “Five by Korea Air Traffic Control.” “Sierra One, contact Scimitar one on one-niner-three-point-two” “Roger Korea, changing frequencies” Chandler changed to the new frequency, something was going down and it looked like he was going to get in on it. From his briefing he knew that the frequency was for an airborne early warning aircraft flying orbits further south on its own training mission. It could be they just wanted to play a bit at vectoring a fighter, but Chandler didn’t think so. “Scimitar One, this is Sierra One-One with you, how read?” “Sierra One, Scimitar, read you five by, stand by for orders.” Chandler again waited. He would play with them a bit, he had plenty of gas. “Sierra One, Scimitar, what is your load-out?” “Scimitar, Sierra One, four radar, two heat, fuel state six thousand.” Chandler began to wonder what was up. If the AWACS just wanted to play at vectoring fighters on imaginary targets they wouldn’t have bothered with the load-out query. “Sierra one, Scimitar, AWACS has unknown contact bearing one-zero-five your position, range 60 miles, approaching DMZ, standby for vectors to intercept.” “Roger Scimitar, standing by.” Chandler let off the mic key and his mind began the air to air checklist. He switched the APG 68 over to track while scan mode and turned towards the contact, scanning at eighty miles. “Scimitar, Sierra one, orders?” “Sierra one, scimitar, close and vis ID intruder of they cross the ADIZ. Establish contact and hold for further orders, vector one-four-zero” “Roger Scimitar, Sierra one-one enroute.” Chandler clicked off and turned the jet another thirty five degrees to the right towards his plotted intercept point, he advanced the throttle and the viper raced ahead, accelerating to nearly mach 1. He shut the radar down, relying on the AWACS to get him in close to the contact Off to his left in the distance, He saw sunlight wink off shiny metal or glass. “Scimitar, Sierra one, advise friendly traffic?” Chandler waited. “Sierra one, scimitar, friendly traffic has been vectored out of the area.” Chandler clicked the microphone button twice to acknowledge the information. He kept the area where he saw the glint in his peripheral vision, watching for it again. “Scimitar, Sierra one, radar quiet, request dope.” “Sierra one, scimitar, bogey bearing one-one-zero, one-eight miles, angels twelve” Chandler rolled the viper 60 degrees, turning to the new heading and activated his radar. “Oh sh….Scimitar, Sierra one, I have four, repeat, four contacts on that heading, close formation, closing to ID.” “Roger Sierra one, requesting alert fighters to launch from Seoul and Osan” Chandler didn’t bother to acknowledge, instead he climbed his viper to sixteen thousand feet in an arc towards the formation of aircraft. As they passed under him he rolled inverted and pulled the nose. He grunted through seven g as he brought the aircraft back to level behind them at over mach 1. Two of the aircraft in front of him broke off, their silhouettes showing very clear in the morning sun, and turned towards him. “Scimitar, Sierra one, Vis ID confirmed, I have two, I repeat two IL28’s and two, I repeat , two Mig 23’s, engaged defensive, request permission to fire.” “Roger Sierra, fire if fired upon, vectoring fighters to your location.” Chandler locked on to the lead Mig closing on him, he watched the Mig as a flash of fire erupted from under its left wing. “Sierra one, engaged defensive archer…Fox three” He hit the pickle button on the stick and an AMRAAM dropped off the rail into the morning sky, igniting its rocket motor and accelerating it towards the Mig. He immediately rolled 90 degrees, dropping chaff and flares as he cranked the viper through a 9 G snap turn to defeat the inbound heat seeker coming at him. He heard the muffled explosion as it chased one of his flares. A quick inspection of the caution panel to ensure no lights he rolled the viper back towards the Migs. He was just in time to see his missile impact on the Lead Mig’s left wing root and blow it off the aircraft. The other Mig had gone high trying to arc in behind him. “Splash one, Sierra one engaged defensive, Mig 23, bullseye 080 10 miles.” Chandler hauled the viper vertical pulling it towards the Mig coming after him. He punched up dogfight mode from the viper’s controls and selected ACM vertical on the radar. He smiled under the strain of the g-forces as he watched the Mig pilot make the fatal mistake of rolling away from him. The sidewinder automatically selected by the viper’s avionics began to growl louder as it tracked the Mig’s hot exhaust. He unloaded his aircraft, relieving some of the g-forces and launched the heatseeker. It rocketed towards the Mig, its pilot dropping countermeasures in an attempt to defeat it. Its seeker temporarily losing track on the lost flare ejected from the Mig’s countermeasures stores, it then snapped back to the extremely large heat source created by the target’s two engines in full burner, impacting directly between them and blowing apart the rear of the plane. Its fuel tanks then exploded, its crew having no chance to eject. Not bothering to reflect on what was going on, Chandler hauled the viper back towards the remaining two aircraft. The IL28 was a medium bomber, slow, cumbersome, but armed with thirty millimeter cannons on the tail for defense. Canceling dogfight mode through the cockpit systems, Chandler again found the two bombers south and a bit east of him, about 12 miles away. He barely saw the two South Korean F4 Phantom’s as they arced up from below and engaged the IL28s with sparrows and sidewinders. He did see the fireballs from the two bombers quite clearly. “Scimitar, Sierra One, all hostile contacts splashed, request dope” “Sierra One, Scimitar, picture clean for the moment, RTB” Chandler turned for Seoul, the two F4’s forming up off his right wing for a moment before entering a cap position 10 miles south of the DMZ. US Army Headquarters, Seoul: Brigadier General Mathew Farmer sat behind his desk, looking tiredly at the mountain of paperwork before him. The air conditioning in this wing of the building was on the blink again and the combination of heat and humidity was making him feel his 50 years of age. He had sat behind this desk for the last five years, day in and day out. It was always the same pile of paper work, fuel requests, weapons requests, and so forth, from the various US Army units under his command. He glanced up as his office door burst open to see the very white, shocked face of his aide-de-camp in front of him. “Sir, we just got a message from USAF command. One of their vipers just engaged a pair of Mig 23’s and a pair of IL28’s inside the South Korean DMZ. I requested confirmation and just got it. The F16 pilot, along with two ROK Phantoms engaged and destroyed 4 DPRK aircraft 14 miles inside of the South Korean ADIZ.” “Contact the border posts and see if there is any movement on the ground. Keep me posted.” “Yes sir.” And Luke..calm down will you? “ “Sir” Farmer shook his head and began wading through the paperwork. Somebody had goofed up North, and their pilots had paid for it. He didn’t think it was anything to worry about. For the rest of it, yall will just have to wait for the book... DK

Storm.. You are a freakin moron. DK

This is all unofficial at this point..however, at SatanX's prompting that somebody oughtta go over and give these guys a hand in the flight sim department I sent em a little "sample" of my writing.. Seems they liked it. The Dark one as I am sometimes called may just be doing reviews of the hottest flight sims in the near future for the Armchair Empire..Sim companies..be warned..if it don't come out smelling like a rose..I will put a name to it. If it does come out smelling like a rose..you can bet your vertical stabilizer that I will praise it.. DK

When you want to kill something..

Dagger, I can understand your feelings on my post ok, Simple fact is, Strat First Gutshot Strikefighters from the get-go. It might have been savable had they followed TK's requests to not release...they didn't. I got took..again...thinking that maybe, just maybe, it would be ok. I've waited almost four months now. I have better uses for my time than waiting around, twiddling my thumbs to do flight models on a very broken sim. We can fix FM's all we want..we can't fix broken code. I know TK is tryin..but I don't think Strat First is being straight with him, or us. TK, I seriously hope you change publishers..I would strongly suggest approaching ubisoft for your next release. They, at least, listen to their dev teams. IL2 was put on hold for a year at Oleg's request because of bugs in the beta for IL2 that he was having problems working around. He got it fixed and both Maddox Games and Ubisoft have benefitted from it. They've done the same with LO Mac once just to be sure they could include in that sim what they said they would. Guys, the bottom line is this. I've had enough of waiting. I've had enough of the silence, I've had enough of Strat First period. This isn't the first sim they have published that I have bought that was screwed from the get go. Steel Beasts was another that was under developed that could have been a show-stopper had it been done right from the start. Patch news or not..I've had enough. I'm going back to what I know..and thats flying a viper over Korea..Good hunting, and good luck. DK

The screenshot is the viper out of Falcon 4.o SuperPack 3 Block 52 F16 CJ..I've tweaked the loadouts for it and am tweaking a campaign Good Luck to you all. DK

It's becoming obvious that we probably aren't going to see a patch before summer or possibly even later that my SFp1 cd is now becoming a 50 dollar coaster. To thirdwire and Strategy First..I hope it was worth it because, and I think I can pretty much say this for the majority of the people who purchased this mockery of a sim, that your respective companies are probably black listed in most simmer's minds. This fiasco has probably cost you a pretty decent chunk of pocket change from future sales. I'm out. To those of you with more patience than I..good luck with your experiences. I hope it all works out in the end. DK

Holler and ye shall find the answer to your woes.. Drop me an email and I'll send you something to to get you a temporary fix. I've put any additional FM work on hold until after the patch in case of ini changes. But if you are frustrated, drop me a line. cptdarkknight@cox.net DK

Is it on the F104 you are noticing this or on all aircraft? DK

Adding landing lights would not be hard to do through the dat.ini's for each aircraft. An additional light entry would have to be added giving locations on the model for the lights, color, and whether it strobes or doesn't strobe..I think even intensity of the light is also set there. Again..its a matter of having the proper tools to do the job..and being able to translate all that is there..and figure out from that, what can be added, how much of it..and when it is "seen" or "not seen" DK

Hmm..then we would need a top notch wingtip vortices model..as well as engine exhaust vortice model..Oh god..the agony of tryin to tank would drive me to drink..I'll take a nice fat KC any day..even a KC 130....hmmmm

Ranger..most of those aircraft are model complete..they lack only an FM. FM team is currently working on tools and data to do just that. Once the data is found and the tool is finished (ours, not thirdwires) we should be able to do FM's in about 3-4 hours would be a good guess. so that means that add on aircraft could very well have their FM BEFORE they have a model. If you would like to see aircraft added faster..start helping to find flight test data on the real aircraft. DK

Umm...if I may interject here..lets just drop the whole thing and move on shall we? The thread is gone..lets leave it at that. DK

Just an update: Due to TK's response that the Flight Model tool was low priority at this time, two of the FM team have begun work on our own to aid us in the creation of flight models..As work progresses on it I will keep you all updated. DK

I would like to reiterate my request for people to help out with the Flight Model team..We've got a ton of aircraft coming up that have been requested to us to do Flight models once tools are released or made. We've gotten a start on some of the major data collection as far as flight test data for the real aircraft..but with all the aircraft being modelled and without more help we are going to be overrun in a very short time. Even if you don't think you have anything to contribute..if you can run Internet explorer and use a websearch..then come help..the rest can be taught as we go. DK

One request to all the modellers: Its great that all these aircraft are being modelled, as you complete a model and IF you wish the skunkworks FM team to do the flight model, please forward the model and a complete set of Flight test data for the real aircraft to us. Doing it in this way will be the only way the FM team will be able to keep pace with all the new aircraft. Thanks DK

considering some of the trees I have flown over SD it would be a matter of doing the forests..just a matter of placing all those D**n trees, second thing to consider would be the possible fps hit. DK

:shock: DK

Direct X..the open GL support for SF is very limited..and only supports it in 600x400 res or something like that DK

Being one of those Spec Ops on the ground, yeah, we painted our share of Sam Sites and a few other things as well. The cats could drop em just as good as the Eagle E's DK

Savage..what you are referring to is ecm and it was not available on early aircraft like the sabre and early phantoms.. DK

http://members.cox.net/cptdarkknight/this%20low.jpg There's an example :D DK

If its bright green in front of you..that means climb If its bright green RIGHT in front of you that means two things 1. quick check to make sure you put on clean underwear. 2. pull yellow handle Other than that...if you aren't leaving a dust trail behind you..yer not low enough DK

It is..however, once tk releases the tool for the FM's it will be a pretty simple fix..I just need the data to plug in..I've got pretty good data on the migs..but at the moment I'm flying blind by trial and error Russky over at simhq provided the data on the Migs straight from the Mikoyan design bureau. I've got a set of beta FM's with that data in it..but they are nowhere near ready for public release. The Migs still need the lift ratios tweaked for the wings which I can't do without the tool. The Mig 17, with proper thrust is still a threat..but with the available tactics a beatable threat and vs a phantom is practically not a threat..Pop two of em before you get wvr and the other two in the flight generally turn tail and run..Mig 19s pose more of a threat to a phantom than the 17's and the Mig 21s are a serious threat, or will be once their wing data is properly put in, this data as far as I am able to discern isn't off by much..but that little bit is making all the difference in how the AI fly. Same goes for the AI in the flyables. Just putting in proper stall speeds has made the AI fly much differently, The migs won't try to climb high unless they are high to begin with due to stall limitations set in the data.inis..the Mig 17s now try the turning dogfight instead of an energy fight, MIg 19 tries both, Mig 21 I haven't come up against yet..and I have found even more data on it and the phantom finally but I am still stalled till the tools are released. Now, I would like a set of volunteers no more than 8 or so for the dirty job of working on FM's. As a community with the potential for large multiplayer activity we need a standardization of flight models, both for new aircraft being added as well as the "cd stockers' The eight or so that volunteer, plus myself I would like to be able to offer realistic flight models for all added aircraft, allowing the modellers to concentrate on the model, and us on the FM's, this would bring about faster addons of aircraft for the enjoyment of the whole community, as well as a standardization in multiplayer. Those that wish to volunteer, please contact me via icq at icq# 82925687 or by email at cptdarkknight@cox.net

Guys.. I'm well into bringing all the fighter FM's pretty close to the real deal. I'm now just waiting for the tool(s) from TK for setting the variables. SDirickson..I have no problem nailing a MiG 19 with the tweaked F100, but there is a trick to it. DK