Southernap

You might want to get WinZIP, over at WinZip.com, they have a free download and you only have to buy a license if you want to get some of the expanded features. It is general that when you upload a file here that you put a readme file to that will list who you are, what the file is and how to use it, then finally how to install your mod. If you don't like WinZip the other popular file compression here is WinRAR which I believe is also free.

With regards to the exchange rate. Use your ATM or your Credit Cards to buy things, that will give you the best rate for the day. The Exchange centers and some banks will actually have a preset exchange rate for the week and every day it might very. I used to use my ATM to get actual spending cash from various ATMs in the city. A couple banks whose ATMs worked with my card was Barclay's and I want to say HSBC. Just look at the back of your card and the little symbols on it for the various banking networks linke INTERLINK, CO-OP Network, or PLUS.

You want to look for Wings over Vietnam at your local computer store or online. Which uses the SF game engine and covers the war from the start of Rolling Thunder in 1964 to the end of Linebacker II in 1973. The playable sides are USAF, USN, USMC. The flyable aircraft are F-8, F-105, F-4, A-6, A-7, A-4, F-100.

If you push the comma button on your key board it will cycle your gunsight from fixed center to a depressed air to ground. The gunsight should of automatically cycled down when you select a bomb load. What I do when rolling in and dropping bombs is to center up the target on the pipper and then I extend the pipper a couple of mils ahead (in my flight path) of the target and then at about 1.5K to 2k feet I pickle the bombs. The other big thing I would recommned would be to head to downloads find the target range terrian and pratice on the range.

If you get a chance go and due the Imperial War Muesum in London there are some really good exhbits on display there. Linky I would also recommend that a couple of the stores in Heathrow are flight sim specific shops, where you can stock up on all you want on MSFS add-ons or other flight sims, even some hardware gear (like the radio stack from Goflight.). If you get the chance take the train over to Portsmouth (it is about a 4hr train and round trip tickets set me back in '05 about 40 pounds) and go and see the Naval Base and the muesum on the base along with HMS Victory. Then in town there is D-Day muesum which is totally awesome because it tells of that week from the the British side. On top of that there is an room in the muesum, which has a mural which is set that as you walk in the room above you is drawings of Lancasters and C-47's towing gliders, behind you is a picture of the fleet then on the walls laied out as best as possible (in geographic setup) is the Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha, and Utah beaches. Then there is Isle of Wright with Queen Victoria's Resort home. What amazed me was to be walking the grounds that Queen Victoria, her nephew Kasier Wilhelm II, and some of her other children.

Post it your mod. It isn't that hard to add a file to our download section. Click downloads, then click add files and follow the instructions.

The B-52H is here The EA-6B is here it was filed with the A-6 under the Cold War aircraft.

Cross-posted from the Matrix Forums, as requested by Don Gilman: Chris Carlson and I are the original creators of Harpoon, and Don Gilman and his company AGSI is the licensed holder of the computer rights for Harpoon. Chris and I created Harpoon over twenty-five years ago, and since then have released four editions of the print game, along with many supplements. Don Gilman has worked with us on computer implementations of Harpoon for over twenty years. Darrel Dearing and Dale Hillier have contributed fifteen and five years’ of design experience respectively, including working on earlier versions of the game, and have a deep understanding of modern naval warfare. The Harpoon player community is very active and for the most part eager to participate in improving the product. We are grateful to everyone who has participated with us in the past, and we encourage continued communication as we introduce each improvement. Feedback is vital to improving the Harpoon system, and user-created scenarios enrich the entire gaming community. However, Harpoon is a large, complex, data intensive simulation. Unlike many other popular games, it is constrained because it has to model real-world processes. No Zurgs allowed. It is inevitable in such an ambitious project that programming bugs will occur. Gamers have a right to expect a quality product, but most are also sophisticated enough to know that bugs happen. On some discussion boards, a few players have attacked AGSI and Matrix Games personally and professionally because of programming bugs. This unhelpful behavior says much more about the attacker than it does about AGSI’s quality control. Providing AGSI with complete information about any problems is the best way to correct them. Others in the gaming community have made self-serving claims to speak authoritatively for the game system. The only official source of information for the Harpoon game system is Chris Carlson and myself, and we will work through Don Gilman, who is the only computer rights holder. Anyone who attempts to distribute or profit from original or modified code without authorization is violating the law. We will act to protect our copyrights. Anyone who distributes Harpoon code or data without AGSI’s approval is at best wrong, or in violation of the aforementioned law. We categorically denounce flame wars or negative posts concerning the quality of one version of the game over another. Chris and I founded Harpoon as a collegial enterprise, with the twin goals of enjoyment and education. We have always shared information freely, including our physical models and databases, and in return have received valuable support and information from the Harpoon community. Anyone with ideas or suggestions about the game is welcome to contact AGSI or Chris or me. We do not have a monopoly on information, the laws of nature or imagination. Even after twenty-five years, there’s still plenty of work to do, but for the community to benefit, we have to work as a team. We work closely with Don and AGSI regarding improvements to the computer game, and feedback provided by Don and his team also influences design of the print game. We are committed to continuously improving both products. We look forward to the upcoming improvements that lie ahead. Our goal is a nothing less than a totally superior product, one that everyone can enjoy. And we will achieve this goal if we all treat each other with respect and work through our disagreements in a constructive, respectful manner. If you have questions or comments, please contact us, either through AGSI or Clash of Arms, our print publisher. Larry Bond and Chris Carlson January 2007

The Feburary 2007 issue of PC Gamer Andy Mahood who write thier Sim Column made mention of some of the people trying to revive the flight sim genre. They were mentioned in the same paragraphs as the guys like Oleg Maddox and his IL2 team and the folks that did Falcon 4:Allied Force. Congrats guys

For a Typical SEAD mission the A-6B would carry either 2 AGM-45 Shrikes on stations 1 and 5 (the outer two most pylons on the wings) then carry 2 AGM-78 Standard ARMs on the inner two wing stations (stations 2 and 4) with a 300 gal drop tank on the center line. For long range the two Standards would be dropped and an additional pair of 300 Gal drop tanks would go on the inner stations and depending on how badly a hole needed to be opened up either a pair of Shrikes or a pair of Standard ARMs would be carried. Typical mission profile for an A-6B would be to loiter just over the beach or just near an ingress/egress route for an Alpha Strike at high altitude trolling for a North Vietnamese SAM site to light them up. Then turn and fire a missile down their throats. There would usually be two airborne, one to cover the ingress point (where the Alpha strike went in country) and another to cover the egress route (where the Alpha strike would come out). They would never follow the strike to the target, rather USN doctrine would be that A-4's or A-7's armed with Mk20's and rockets would go and hunt the air defense sites along the route. Collectively in USN and USMC doctrine these missions were (and still are) referred to as IRON HAND. Wild Weasel was strictly a USAF term.

Try using the following line: "Upgrade[01].Date=" Then put in a date such as 11/1918 for example if you want the unit to Upgrade on November 1918.

I made a mistake with my inital posting, it is currently a work in progress. Also note if you read the WIP list there is a big red line in there that says the following: "The most current list will always be on the last page of this thread" So I would scroll through a few pages and check the post dates or times to make sure you are reading the most current list.

The line that says "Upgrade=" you will put either FIXED or RANDOM. If you put Fixed then it will follow the calander path as laid out below that line. If you put random, then you will upgrade to new planes, but you might upgrade to the SPAD on the first of Janurary 1916 instead of the historical 7/1916. It all depends on how you want to write your campaign on whether you want to stick to the historical upgrade path or let the squadron upgrade to the new plane on the next supply run in the year.

It sounds like the carrier's ini file is looking in the wrong place for the decals. Look in your ground objects folder for the carrier having problems and then look for a file named, "X.ini" where x is name of the carrier's model. For example if you are looking for problems with the CVA-9 model then the file to look for would be "CVA-9.ini". This is the file that tells the graphics half of the engine what to skin where and how. So if that directs the game to another directory that you don't have and to look for files that will end in LOD, the model will be blazing dull white. The other thing to check while you have the models ini file open is do you have all the LOD's named properly. Try checking those and see what happens.

Did you copy the sounds that are in the zip file over to the games main sound directory?

Jink off target into the sun and at full burner.

That is silly that the only thing which the single mission or even the campaign will generate is routes for tankers or cargo ships. Because even the stock Patrol boat that is in the basic game doesn't want to even show up. I think that would be fun with an A-4 and some iron bombs or an F-100 trying to chase down a patrol boat and hit it, at least more complicated then trying to hit some slow cargo ships or tankers.

If you use the Strike Fighters Extractor located in the downloads section here and then in the extract from the missiondata.cat the following files that are named the following "namedX.lst" there X is should be something like US, British, French etc. Then using a simple text editor you should be able to open them up and add whatever last names and then whatever first names you want. Just remember that the program will draw from this list randomly to create your pilots roster in the game. So if you want a specific first name to always appear then you will need to reduce the options to only that first name.

Landing on an aircraft carrier is a hard and dangerous thing to do and there are accidents. Not all of them lead to the lost of an aircraft. The last major lost that I know of where an aircraft went over the side was onboard the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67 in 2001. A F-14 while preparing to take off had its nose gear shear and the aircraft wasn't able to achieve take off speed and the aircrew didn't have time to respond. So they went over with the plane and were lost at sea. The last major landing accident that I heard off was onboard the USS Enterprise in 1998 when the LSO and the Air Boss (the two guys who control safety on the flight deck and the air space) landed an EA-6B on top of a S-3 in the landing area. The S-3 had lost steering control and was awaiting a hook up to be towed out of the landing area. Long story short 4 men died and the US lost 4 airplanes, 2 F-18's that were parked further up the flight deck were hit with flaming debris and burned up to the point that they were write offs, all because a number of people lost situtational awareness. There are all sorts of checks and balances out there to help stop modern accidents on aircraft carriers, but things happen. Such things as engine failures (that is what killed the first female F-14 pilot when on landing one of the engines suffered a compressor stall and quit), tires blowing up on landing (there is a famous video scene of an that happening to an F-18 on the Kennedy then the plane spins out of control), tailhook failures, or the pilots get too low and too slow and suffering a ramp strike. Things like this happen from time to time. Just like ashore with civilian air liners or even the USAF, however there are a number of cameras that are recording every take off and every landing that way if there is an incident there is a way to go back and try to put what happened back together and learn from it.

WOE does not have carriers installed in any of the stock campaigns. They deal strictly with the land and air element in contentinal Europe. NATO planning for carriers would of had US, UK, and French carrier forces gathering just off Ireland or off the southern coast of England near Portsmouth and then push north to into the Norweign Sea and carry the war to the Soviets. Primarly but attacking and containing the Red Banner Northern Fleet and then to bomb thier bases up and around the Kola Pennusila. It is generally assumed that if the ballon went up and Strike Fleet Atlantic, which is what the NATO carrier battle group would be referred to, would of been a serious engagement with numerous losses on both sides both in terms of aircraft and ships.

No the aircrew were able to take right back off again and enter the landing pattern again. This is one of the reasons that they go to full throttle on landing and only after a signal from a handler in the landing area do they throttle back.

It happens from time to time. If the Avation Bosun mates Equipment (the greenshirts that take care of the Cats and arresting gear) doing keep a proper count on how many landings a wire makes it will snap then whip around the deck. The way the arresting wire works on an aircraft carrier is that it uses the physical mass of the carrier to stop the physical mass of the airplane in flight. Think of it like this in layman's terms, A dog tied up to a post mounted in concrete in the ground is running at you at the last second the chain jerks him and causes him to crash to the ground. The pole and the concrete were what pulled the dog to a stop. Well if the dog has been doing this a bunch of times with out the chain being replaced then one of the links will eventually snap. The way a wire comes out of the arresting gear engine up to the deck is pretty interesting. Here is a shot of one of the deck entry points. Basically this is pulley with a turnbuckle that is attached to the wire below deck and the wire above deck , also referred to as the cross deck pendent, is attached to. In this shot you can see the turnbuckle about center of the shot just under the horizontal stab of the F-18. Here is some ABE's changing the cross deck pendant just before the go's. You can see the turnbuckle better in these shots, it is up in their hands and basically has a huge bolt and nut assembly holding them together. A good wire team can strip a wire in the minute and half in between aircraft recovering. Here is an ABE restringing a wire. Here some ABE's are greasing up the sheave that the wire is paid out from. This is what one of the engines looks like below decks It stretches almost completely amidships on the deck just below the flight deck. The engine is basically a double hydraulic piston. As the wire is paid out above it pulls something close to 5 miles of wiring below the deck on the engine and pulls the piston close on the hydraulic reservoir. Once all the pressure is built up a valve opens up and pushes the piston back open and that in turn causes piston to go another way and retract the wire above and build up pressure for the next aircraft. They set these engines for so many pounds, this setting will equal the maxium of what an aircraft can weights at the moment of recovery (with fuel and weapons onboard). That is why you will see some aircraft dumping fuel as they come into the landing pattern. The really fun job is to restring an engine That whole spool will be used up to restring one of the 4 engines and while it is going into the engine there are usualy people strung out at points holding the wire up to prevent it from scrapping along the deck and to help grease it. They take big leather gloves and just goop some grease similar to axel grease onto thier hands and as the wire is pulled tight it will be greased in their hands. I have never seen a wire part on my time on the flight deck of US carriers, I have only heard about it or seen training films of it happening. The worst one that I saw and heard about was in advance training school. The instructors showed us film from the USS Franklin Roosevelt when a wire parted during landing operations and killed one guy out right when it cleanly seperated his torso from his legs and severely injured about 8 or 9 other guys with all sorts of missing limbs. The biggest thing to do when a wire parts is get out of the way and let engery dissapate from the ends. Then go out clear the landing area for the next jet. The USMC has a portable arresting gear system for use ashore at thier airfields.

Sorry about that we should of had the crew chief stop you. The Maintenance squadron had a missing tool, I guess you found it.

I don't have FE but I do have the other Third Wire productions that use the same game engine (SF,WOE,WOV) and they also have problems of the wingmen bouncing around and weaving while in formation. I forget off hand why, but it has something to do with how the AI in attempts to maintain formation goes to the extremes of a pre-defined box for the formation selected. So the AI flies the airplane all the way to the bottom, then all the way to the top, all the way to the left and all the way to the right. To date I have not had a wingman hit me in the other games.

The only thing that I would add is that VF-124 was the West Coast transition squadron and was numbered out of sequence and assigned the Modex of 400.