alexis99

I found this book on Amazon. They were selling at £50 or £5.90. I popped the £5.90 version into my basket, and that's when the cover of the book was shown. I suddenly realised I had seen the cover before and went to one of my bookshelves, and there it was. I had been quite obsessed with the Shooting Star 20 years ago, and had accumulated several books on the subject, but had clearly forgotten about them. I read Chapter 5, TACTICAL RECONNAISSANCE ROLE, but did not see your quote. Perhaps that's in the introduction. And in this chapter, surprisingly, there is no description of Photo Recon technique. However, there are many photos of the RF-80 and not one has the Gunsight assembly. So I feel I am correct in removing that from the cockpit. What had confused me was the little hole in the nose of the aircraft. I originally assumed it would be for the periscope, but now I know there is no periscope. In fact it's the K-22 Dicing Camera, which was for close-up shots of individual targets. This information comes from a review of the Hobby Boss model. So I guess you nose down and do a dive on specific targets and crack off some film. I find a gaffer tape cross on the windshield helps in lining up. Anyway thank you all for your help in clearing all of this up

How do Shooting Star and Sabre Jet Photo-Recon pilots know when they should initiate camera recording if they don't have a periscope viewer in the cockpit? The F2H-2P Photo Banshee has a set of cameras installed in the nose, and an optical periscope to enable the pilot to see an area of coverage marked with discretes on his scope. Same with the F9F-5P Photo Panther. In Vietnam you had the RF-101C, RF-4C, RF-8G all with periscopes for the pilot, and the RA-5C with a periscope for the backseater. But the Shooting Star and Sabre Jets had cameras, but no periscope system. So how did they know if their target was within range of the cameras. Were there discretes on the HUD, or was it done by specific height and timing. Does anybody know? Thank you

I was thinking that if an aircraft like the Photo-Recon Sabre had no periscope, then the cockpit would look something like my picture below. Since this aircraft had no guns, it seems likely that the valuable Gunsight would have been removed, possibly to be used on another aircraft. The Collimator glass would remain, since it serves as protection for the pilot. On the outside view of this aircraft from the Combat Ace Korean Air War package, the two cameras appear to point directly down 90 degrees from the horizontal. I would assume they are wide-angle, so that's generally 60 degrees. In SF2 you would therefore flick the pretend camera switch (yes of course I've got one) at about 2 to 1 mile from the target at 10,000 ft, approx 400 KIAS. I need to check this figures with my Banshee and Panther Photo-Recon aircraft which can be fitted with either a 30 degree forward or 90 degree down camera. (Unfortunately, due to SF2 limitations, it cannot carry the two settings). So are my speculations correct, or am I totally out-of-whack? I kind of like this version of the cockpit.

Yes, sorry about the confusion. From now on, for ease of use I will refer to it as a HUD glass.

In England we spell it Collimator. But it's no biggie. I am not confused.

SF2 calls it a HUD in the Cockpit.ini whether it has discretes or not. I just went along with that.

Yes I have mods for all the USAF, USN and Marines aircraft that had periscopes. They were very accurate. It's the ones without periscopes that intrigued me.

Thanks, I'll get it.

Did it have the Gunsight assembly though? All the photo-recon aircraft in SF2 have the Gunsight and HUD glass intact. I thought that if it was a photo-recon aircraft then they would have been removed, even if a scope was not fitted. The most important thing was getting the valuable cameras and even more valuable film back to base, not dicking around duelling with AA.

Okay, by HUD, I meant the HUD Glass. The thing that the gunsight is projected on. I felt it was more easily understood by everyone as a HUD, but if you want to give me the correct nomenclature, I will use it. I was thinking that rather than a projection onto the glass, maybe the glass had reticle lines drawn on it, maybe a circle to show you the general area covered by the cameras if you went into a shallow dive. Perhaps they didn't dive, perhaps they kept to the standard level flight at between 8,000 and 10,000 ft that the F9F-5P operated at . Or maybe the 15,000 ft that the F2H-2P operated at. I can see that if you have the target ahead of you and you know your distance to the target, you can calculate when to start recording at your given height. If you fly either the Banshee or the Panther Photo Recon aircraft, you could work out from their results at what point the target is passing into the camera field of view, and when it reaches the Nadir. I'd love to know which Meteor book. The only one I have is "Meteor from the Cockpit" by Peter Caygill and all I remember is that it was a dangerous aircraft to land because the gears came down separately, not simultaneously, so using the airbrake was a no-no. In SF2 the Meteor is a MiG-killer, but according to the book the real one had a lot of problems. Anyway, I'd better read it again.

HOW RUDE

The topic is about casting shadows and moving shadows. It's a description of something one sees in real life. If the technical term in games is dynamic shadows, then thanks for sharing. In the real world we call them moving shadows. If you're watching the sun going down over a beautiful vista, you might say to your girlfriend "Look how the shadows are moving as the sun descends". A nerd would say "Cool dynamic shadows". But he wouldn't have a girl next to him to say it to.

A moving shadow is a shadow that moves. You see a shadow in the cockpit and as you turn the aircraft the shadow moves across the cockpit. It's pretty basic stuff.

And the cockpit issue? Making cockpits is really time consuming, and involves a lot of numbers according to the experts.

Okay well, let madvad post it, or you can post it. I'm not interested in being credited

The original F-105D series has an error in the AOA tape. The discrete reads "STALL", and is incorrect. As you can see in this picture from the Flight Manual, it should read "FINAL" As mine now does. It is important to recognise that this triangle is not a stall warning, because if you believe it is, you will be flying incorrectly. The MIN SAFE SPD warning and the diagonal hatch above are the stall warnings. The FINAL is the area that should be placed on the marker when you come in to land at the correct speed, altitude and fuel state in order to achieve a perfect landing. It is the FINAL APPROACH MARKER. If you think it's a STALL warning and try to avoid it, you'll come in badly. It is also useful when taking off, as once you reach 130 Kts rotate speed, you can pull the nose up until the marker is in the "FINAL" triangle, and the aircraft smoothly lifts off at the correct speed.

There you go TAPES_F-105D.7z

So that's the next aircraft to be built for this site? The AIDC F-CK-1 Ching -Kuo.

Fascinating thread on the most wanted new aircraft. Since I spend most of my time in the cockpit, I thought I'd steal the idea and talk about wanted cockpits. For instance, the B-2 has a place-holder in the form of the B-1B, so it would be nice to see a dedicated B-2 cockpit. I know the idea of an F-14D cockpit has also been thrown around and not yet stuck to the drawing board. I'm currently flying guuru's Tornado at the moment. It has a back seat! Wow, what a superb feature. So since the technology and know-how is there, wouldn't it be nice to have a back seat for the talking baggage in some other such tandem aircraft. F-14, F-4, Gloster Javelin for starters. And a side seat in the A-6, B-52, Vulcan etc. Another sadly-lacking feature is the drogue chute. We can emulate the effect of a drogue chute with the appropriate code in the datafile, but it would be nice to see the drogue chute showing in the mirrors. Could these not be retro-fitted? The SF2 F-117 has one, so someone knows how to do it.

Okay, good to know. I can't remember whether SF1 or SF2, but the Crusader F-8E would go straight through the carrier deck on landing. Odd things do happen, but you just shrug them off and move on, so I can't quote which carrier or any other details. Maybe that was back when I wasn't flying hard fuel usage, and used to zap to the final waypoint. In the above situation, I think one needs to look at the carrier catapult settings. On a real carrier, you adjust the catapult tension for the weight of each individual aircraft. You can't do that in SF2. But sometimes it's too strong and you leave the deck at 180 kts, and sometimes it's too weak, and well, perhaps you roll into a weak part of the deck.

Sorry to bring this up again, but the original release of Super Hornet BlkI and II had the fuel loads in the Data file erroneously written in pounds, when it should have been kilograms. If this hasn't been patched, then the Super Hornet in SF2 is an extremely heavy aircraft, and maybe the deck can't handle the weight. These are the fuel amounts in Kilograms that should be in the data file. [FuselageFuelCell1] MaxFuelAmount=1080 [FuselageFuelCell2] MaxFuelAmount=1180 [FuselageFuelCell3] MaxFuelAmount=1188 [FuselageFuelCell4] MaxFuelAmount=1715 [RightWingFuelCell1] MaxFuelAmount=753 [LeftWingFuelCell1] MaxFuelAmount=753

I don't know what that means. I can post the AOA figures that I've fixed. I can post the correct fuel loadouts and corrected fuel gauges that I've done over time. The Lightning F6 was the last fuel gauge correction I did, but I've done so many that I can't remember. And when I post any information, people tell me it's old news, and I should stop whining. Sorry for the whining I just did.

Well I never thought I'd see this. An A-6 intruder with an opening canopy! Most of the Vietnam aircraft that come with SF2 have the ability to open and shut the canopy built in to the DATA file, but not activated. To activate the animation for the A-6 canopy, you do this: In the DATA file, scroll down to [Nose] and add this: [Nose] SystemName[004]=Canopy Then go to down to [Pilot], which looks like this [Pilot] SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT PilotModelName=PilotN1 Position=-0.35,1.15,0.85 SeatModelName=seat_f-4 SeatPosition=-0.35,1.15,0.48 MinExtentPosition=-0.85, 0.49,-0.35 MaxExtentPosition= 0.00, 1.81, 0.91 CanopyNodeName=canopy_rear CanopyAnimationID=3 Now add this: [Canopy] SystemType=ANIMATION InputName=ANIMATION_1 DeploymentMethod=MANUAL AnimationTime=6.0 AnimationID=3 MaxDeploySpeed=20 Make sure that you put the same number in [Canopy] Animation ID= as is already in [Pilot] CanopyAnimationID= With InputName=, put the number of the key that you usually use for canopy animation. ID=1 relates to ShiftKey+1, which is what I use. This works with F-105 and F-100 too, and probably a lot more. If you don't see the point of this, don't use it.

It's not an issue. I just wondered what would happen if I put a paratrooper on a B-26 wing station. I thought it was funny. Naturally, I won't make a habit of doing this. However, you are absolutely correct about SpecificStationCodes. YAP needs a bit of work here and there. Nothing serious. There's no A-7E, so I'll just put one in. And some of the cockpits of existing aircraft, where I've enhanced the graphics and generally cleaned up, I am putting in the YAP aircraft. There's going to be a lot of fun ahead.