Tengu

Here's photos of GBU-12's, loaded in pairs, underneath (empty) Sidewinder rails. To my eyes, without @LanceCriminal86's LAU-34, it looks like AIM-9 fins (oriented at the 45s) would interfere with the forward vertical fins of the GBU-12s if you tried to send a Sidewinder down the rail. Perhaps it's possible to use the TER and dumb iron bombs with the bomb's fins only at the rear, and still send a Sidewinder down the rail? Changing gears, does anyone know whether the Paveways' noses will center, aerodynamically or otherwise, in flight. On the ground, do they always droop?

There is a very helpful article from the amazing treasure trove of "The Phantom Phacts". The Phantom Phacts: THE F-4 INBOARD PYLONS If you're interested in pylons, when this or that antenna was installed, or the evolution of dorsal panels in minutiae, it's amazing what you can learn there, even if you've been a phantom phanatic for a couple of decades. This photo shows the Naval (and RF / early C marks) LAU-17/A pylon with the trapezoidal-shaped adaptor underneath. All drawing credits to Kim Simmelink / The Phantom Phacts. For what it's worth, it looks like there's more space "below" the LAU-7 Sidewinder rail when mounted on the AF's MAU-12 pylon compared to the USN's LAU-17/A. This photo is from a JASDF F-4EJ, and they haven't loaded the AIM-9s. These are also Mk82's. But it doesn't appear to me that there's any adaptor between the MAU-12 and the TER. This is the closest I can find to @Aussie_Mantis's search. Photo credits to Kazuteru Sugawara.

@AG-51_Razor brings up some important real-world considerations when trying to fill in missing data by instrumenting warbirds. To his comments, I'd add that owners and insurance companies might frown on us attempting to fill in missing compressibility limits, deliberately repeating high speed departures (from controlled flight), or generally poking around the extremes of the envelope with these irreplaceable airframes. Also, could a restored aircraft from today with an effectively blueprinted engine and clean modern fuel actually overperform a war-weary engine with contaminated in-theater fuel sources. And what do we want in the game anyway? The very best theoretical factory-fresh, ace crew-chief maintained, best-fuel, best-everything example or the average rank-and-file example? I'd also recommend the YouTube channel Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles. Greg is extremely thorough in breaking down the existing documentation and attempting to compare various aircraft. My point in bringing Greg's channel up, besides sharing an awesome channel for any Warbirds fan, is that EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHARTS, understanding more about the circumstances of the test (eg it was wartime test of a captured example suspected to need an engine tune), determining what the test conditions were, understanding whether or how datapoints were corrected or calibrated, etc can be difficult and has a huge impact on making truly meaningful conclusions about an aircraft's performance. I'm amazed we get the flight model detail we do get.

@VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants and anyone else wondering about the KW with respect to the DCS World / 2023 and Beyond video: 0:43 Close up of instruments 3:00 Low flying, in cockpit. Note the M4s up on the dash and the gray water bottle on the right 3:09 Tight view of external fly past. 4:19 "Go-Pro" style view, firing 70mm rockets from starboard side Also, I'm not sure what we're seeing at 3:06. There's night vision, a laser, and automatic fire against a technical.

@Pampi Nice! Are those pistons a kit part or 3D printed?

@drewm3i, one reason would be the varying map and campaign combinations. If you forced convergence to the latest map, you might have people with the older maps stranded with respect to their purchased campaigns being broken. But if you allow different maps, you force campaign authors to double or triple their work. I believe @Reflected already commented that he didn't intend to recreate and maintain multiple campaigns for multiple map versions of the same / similar area. Happy to be corrected, but there's at least one reason.

@Diesel_Thunder, that's awesome. Just making sure I read that correctly, your org performed a flying display, not just static? Do you only participate in Wings over Houston, or do you make it to any of the other Texas / southern airshows? It's getting harder and harder to photograph Phantoms airborne, so I'd might even consider a ticket to Texas next year.

@exhausted, I read the Wiki article on the RR Spey, but I'm not sure what that means. As you wrote, the comment suggests there was maybe an issue with overtemping the compressor outlet or other equipment in the vicinity? Still, while compressor outlet temperature would have been high (thinking high hundreds / sub-thousand deg-F), combustion chamber and turbine inlet temperatures would undoubtedly have been a few multiples higher, 2x to 4x compressor outlet temp if I had to guess. So it wouldn't have been a material and cooling technology limitation, although material selection issue is possible. Regardless, this feels more an argument for "we could have extracted more thrust from the Spey, but were bottlenecked". But more thrust is more thrust after all, and the RR Spey's already had about 15% more thrust than the GE J79s, even with this compressor outlet temp comment. Maybe it's a semantic argument, but I'm more inclined to go with @r4y30n and his area-rule comment (as to why Spey-powered Phantoms were slower at the top end). The Spey was a physically larger (bypass) engine than the J-79. They drove more mass flow which required which required wider intakes and trunk. The Spey's were also toed in relative to the plan-view centerline to minimize impacts at the mid-fuselage "waist" and their thrust lines were angled even further below the profile waterline than the already noticeable angled J-79s. (See photo below.) Cross-sectional comparisons of a Spey-powered vs J79-powered Phantom would show the RN / RAF fuselage to be wider and/or deeper for the entire flow path from intake to exhaust nozzle. Spey-powered Phantoms had less optimal thrust lines (angled several degrees off their flight vector) and more drag compared than their USN siblings. The bottom of the intake is level with the wing's leading edge. But moving aft, and greatly aided by the white belly paint, we see that roughly a third of the Spey's engine diameter sits below the wing's trailing edge. If you've never checked out his various blog, Tommy Thomason is an excellent resource. A former aerospace engineer, for McDD, he does wonderful scale drawings and contour comparisons of various subjects. "As it happens, my first job after college was working for McDonnell Aircraft as a junior flight test engineer on the F-4K/M Phantom program." For his detailed comments on the Spey Phantoms, see: Tailhook Topics Drafts: The Spey-Powered Phantom Changes

Thanks @GUFA. Welcome to the forums, BTW. I never welcomed you. Your obvious passion is ultimately good for DCS. Truly. I'll keep my comments short. I wasn't playing "Enforcer". Both you and those "parochial" posters are equally entitled to your thoughts. In my previous post, I was trying (and perhaps failing) at articulating other posters' nuances even as you accuse us of missing yours. The W-- T------ comment wasn't an insult or putdown. It wasn't even about you. That comment was observing that DCS fans have not been blessed with anywhere near the same abundance of choice or rapid speed to market as some other platforms. DCS doesn't yet have all the major types covered, let alone their opfor and all the subtypes. Our DCS reality is that the pipeline is still limited and development priority makes winners and losers of us who are still craving a specific derivative or model, ideally within the next five years. I didn't accuse you of bringing up a "paper" Phantom. The F-4F ICE was absolutely as real deal in-the-aluminum as the Starfighter variants we've been discussing, and I presented the ICE as a thought experiment about development priority. At this point, I'll leave my previous post where it is. You like that the Starfighter in many flavors and the ASA in particular. And that's fine. No sarcasm. No irony. Have a good day and happy flying.

@GUFA, you started your "last reply" by quoting TLTeo not finding the ASA or ASA-M particularly relevant. And the "first sentence from your last reply" appears to be... Firstly, let's give @TLTeo some credit. I sincerely doubt he has some anti-Italian Starfighter bias sporting a Frecce Tricolori avatar. The second sentence of said reply begins... From the numbers, GUFA focuses on ~147 (ASA) > ~49 (ASA-M) out of almost 2600 airframes. The G-model alone is over 1100 airframes. Consider the strike focused CF-104s and the air-to-air J's, both essentially G models, and you're talking about ~1500 airframes and way more countries. I'd also point out that 125 of those G's were manufactured by Fiat for the AMI. The G can be Italian too if that's all IFE can secure documentation for. From the dates (60a to 80s), that's an S; not the ASA or ASA-M. This thread is titled F-104S-ASA, but GUFA repeatedly talks about mission editing for the mid-Cold War. In the 60s to 80s, that's just a plain S. S's served in the time frame you mention. S's were refurbished into ASA's and delivered in the late 80s and early 90s. ASA's were modified into ASA-M's and delivered starting 97/98. On relevance, TLTeo has twice now acknowledged that S's were BVR capable, and rather capable in general. He stated that an S might be a good compromise for IFE. It came in interceptor and strike subtypes. Some carried the Vulcan. They also carried a Sparrow. So depending on what you want to do with the Starfighter in DCS, it covers a lot of bases. This is one way to measure relevance, in this case, why buy a Starfighter module and how do you want to fly and fight with it. All of the rebuttals about the efficacy of AIM-7s are non-sequitur to TLTeo's post. He never commented on the Sparrow's usefulness. I'm also puzzled about Taiwan and Pakistan. TLTeo didn't bring up who went to war in the Zipper, nor did those two nations use S / ASA / or ASA-M models. The argument about the gun misses a point about relevance. GUFA wants to Fox-1 something. Others might want to strafe something. I interpret TLTeo's argument to be that the ASA's and ASA-Ms are very few, very late, and very specialized. But from a pragmatic go-to-war relevance, by the 80s and certainly the late 80s, you also Eagles and Hornets and newer Mirages on top of the older French aircraft, Phantoms and Tomcats. By 97/98, Falcon-Cs joined Eagles and Hornets, with all carrying AMRAAM by that point. There are pointier "more relevant" sticks to grab by these time periods. From a DCS fan relevance, G's were more widely used in more numbers, more liveries, more countries, and more roles than the ASA and ASA-M. @Volator was driving at this earlier. (At this point, let me acknowledge the suffering RedFor pilots while I argue about BluFor options here.) So? Why does that (numbers) matter? Because, ultimately, DCS is not W-- T------. Even with the amazing and exciting announcements from the past three months, we still don't huge numbers of aircraft types or necessarily deeply-curated lists of region- and era- relevant resources. Development times are long. Sales volume will never look like Halo or other AAA title sales. So if you can't have a fully populated Swedish Cold-War tech tree and you can only get one model, maybe a couple or three sub-types of said model, what do you start with? If Heatblur changed their mind and said we only get one Phantom after all, would you argue they go with the F-4F ICE because it got AMRAAMs? I'm THRILLED we're getting a Phantom, but if the ICE, diminishing returns and market cannibalization hypothetically bumped a naval Phantom or the more "mainstream" E model / subvariants, I would be gutted. And as GUFA wrote in the IP, AND JUST BE CLEAR A KFIR IS NOT A MIRAGE 3. Sometimes, you just prefer a specific model / sub-type / mission. GUFA prefers the ASA while... TLTeo, Volator, @Mig Fulcrum seem to be arguing for the G as priority, and I agree with them. With the G, you have more potential buyers who flew them or maintained them or have family who did. The G checks more patriotic boxes. "My country flew it." If you're pushing yourself to master a Widow-maker and her tendencies, it was mainly the G model manning those Cold War walls and killing all those NATO pilots. @Bremspropeller suggests if you're role-playing a G as an A or C model, you can as easily pretend a S is an A or C model. Fair, but Brem's proposed build order still prioritized the G, then S, and then ASA. But again, TLTeo seemed fine with the cold war S as a compromise. It does give you a Fox-1 capabilities. But a Cold War S is not a Glasnost-era ASA / post-Cold War ASA-M.

@YoYo, OnReTech posted the original with a black inset square instead of red. Jascha turned the inset box red and bold when asking a question. OnReTech confirmed that that's the high detail area inside the red box. The rest of the area, the grid boxes, is included.

@Harlikwin I'd say more modern but would love to be proven wrong. From the announcement: "The map is being designed to represent the 2000s and up to the present. It is planned to recreate about 40 airfields, both military and civilian: Wadi al Jandali, Abu Suwayr, Faid Air Base, Nevatim Air Base, Ramon Airbase, and many more." And from elsewhere in the subforums:

@Baaz, TBF, I think most any cold war aircraft that didn't drop or shoot anything in anger bit more friendly pilots than of the other team. It's kind of eye-watering the number of accidents and hull losses that occurred back during the cold war (and civilian aviation during the same decades). The F-104 isn't alone in that, and it even had remarkable (good) safety records in some nations' service (eg. Spain & Japan). For the F-104's popularity, I think some fans might be attracted to its design. Whether you like the lines or not, it's an evocative design with obvious compromises in form that went into maximizing speed and minimizing drag. Like the 105, it looks fast even parked on the tarmac. Historically, it was also involved in conflicts over Pakistan/India and the Taiwan Straits, not just Vietnam. I'll leave others to debate the veracity of claims and counterclaims. I speculate the most important driver of the 104's popularity is the 104's enduring presence in the aviation enthusiasts' line of sight. The 104 was the tip of the spear for over a dozen western-friendly countries, in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Compared to most other century series types, 104s were still flying for Greece, Turkey, Taiwan and NASA into the mid-90s. Modernized Italian 104s weren't retired until the 2000s. Even today, there are civilian F-104s still flying in aggressor, scientific, and airshow demonstration roles. Whether that spark was you're first operational posting or that first time at the airshow when you saw one streak by overhead, there's something to be said for reuniting with an old flame. I've seen plenty of posts here in the forums that this person was hyped about <insert type> simply because their uncle David flew them. And I think the F-104's ubiquity touched more hearts over more years than many other potentially "more worthy" aircraft. Thank Lockheed's marketing team for that. As a side benefit, those many and varied operators also allow for more "plausible" what-ifs with the current and announced DCS Maps. F-105 is also interesting, but I'm apprehensive about the licensing and necessary IP.

What mountain is that in your photos, @Rudel_chw and @vilson.farias?

@Gunfreak, @okopanja I tend to agree with the "most shown is generally the closest to release," but to a point. I think we, as the rabid impatient community, often interpret the DCS 20xx and Beyond videos as what's being released that year when they're equally about what ED is prioritizing and actively spending manhours on. The two ideas aren't 100% the same. I'm also not sure how well "most shown = closest release" holds for the marketing of the 3rd party developers. Razbam is heavily represented via Mudhen and the South Atlantic. Heatblur is heavily featured with Forrestal, F-14, and even three(?) instances of the A-6. Aerges and IndiaFoxtEcho were absent from DCS 2022 and Beyond, as far as I could tell, despite having impending products. I think the F-14 and Forrestal screen time communicates that Heatblur continues to develop them just as the F-16, F/A-18, and Hind screen time shows ED is trying to push those products over the finish line. Maybe because Aerges and IFE had their own communications in Nov/Dec-2021, so they weren't covered / carried by the DCS 2022 video? Aerges put their own teaser video for the Mirage F1 a couple of days prior to the DCS 2022 video and IFE had already communicated by then via the forums that they had submitted the MB339 for QA. I'd reckon that both products are (much...) closer than Mudhen or A-6 (even as AI).

@Rick50 Here's one more just for grins.

@Rick50, the USN variants (from which the RN/RAF variants evolved) used probe-and-drogue system. The probe folds up similarly to the one on a GR7/9 Harrier, but does so internally. You can see the "door" on the back side of the probe. Here's a walkaround photo. The probe is gone, but you can see the door which closes flush. Israel later installed a permanent probe kind of like the M2000 or the bent probe on the later A-4's. Looks draggy-AF. I suspect Iran's F-4D and F-4E probably had the USAF style boom style refueling port on the spine. See IrAF photo below.

I've got to think that Casmo inevitably flying a released KW around, explaining the how and why of different systems, maybe designing and showing off a "realistic" mission or two will sell copies.

@Akatsuki, have you tried looking up plastic scale model decals? Something like this. I got the next two images from: HobbySearch Military Plastic Model Store (1999.co.jp) For a given model kit, that site oftentimes attaches photos of the box art, the various sprues, and pointedly the instructions which will include decal and painting maps like below. (I shrunk this photo since I'm merely trying to convey the idea.) You'll want the instruction sheets from the kits versus the after-market decals. While that might seem counter-intuitive, the aftermarket decals tend to be only the special markings, not the "mundane" stencils that come with the base kit. Cross-reference the above maps to walk-around photos and maybe a really detailed "box review" that shows the decal sheet in detail. Like below, but in better detail. 1/32 scale and 1/48 scale would be best for legibility. 1/72 and 1/144 are extremely small and on the edge of legibility even when handling the actual decal sheet. So, if you find a detailed shot of decal "38", then you'll be able to copy paste to all locations marked "38". That yellow placard you mention has two diagrams and bubble call outs. I interpret the upper half to be the underside of the F-4 "flying" lower left to upper right. The lower half appears to be an upper view with the F-4 pointed from upper right to lower left. This is the best I can find: Finally, and I buried the lead here, try Japanese "walk arounds". Most spotters take overall photos. Only scale modellers (or digital artists) are taking crazy zoomed in shots of Do Not Walk stencils and brake line fittings. I got that yellow placard shot from this guy: NABE3's Aviation Photo Gallery (fc2.com) Look under the Walk Arounds > Japanese > F-4EJ, RF-4E, etc, etc. There's several good shots of the undersides of the outer wing surfaces and the forward fuselage. As amazing as they are, you might still need a combination of these and the decal maps to get the full surfaces. Nabe3 also has decades worth of squadron marking in addition to the walk around photos. Another of my favorites is: J-HangarSpace: Information on Japanese Aviation This is great English language source for unit histories, unit marking, etc for Japanese aviation subjects. (In case you're like me and don't read the kanji and katakana.)

Anyone else remember way back when? We actually had to WAIT for companies to finish the products before you could purchase or obtain them. And those greedy companies didn't even give us money back for not finishing up and going to market any sooner. (Don't mind me @Mike Force Team; I'm just having a laugh.) In all seriousness, I'd imagine there will be a pre-order sale like any other DCS product. The Syria map was 3rd party and was discounted like 30% prior to release.

@AG-51_Razor, thanks for educating me. I was going to ask if it was a CVE noting the Wildcat / Avenger combo, but you already answered that in your post. Apparently, it's from Sep-44 aboard CVE-18 Altamaha. The caption from another source states: "A F4U-1 Corsair starts takoff (sic) run on USS Altamata (sic) (CVE-18) in 1944 after widespread acceptance of JATO units for fleet use." That last bit is news to me. Here's another Jato Corsair from the internet. Also a BuAer video on JATO from 1945. It shows details of the Jato bottles, wiring, and attachment to the aircraft. It also compares unassisted and assisted take off runs of a Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, Dauntless and Avenger. I was surprised at how quickly the Corsair's tail lifts off on the unassisted run. The pilot gets his tail wheel off the ground in maybe a second and the aircraft level maybe 4 seconds.

I really like that shot of the flightline with the South Korea-, Japan- and Philippines- based squadrons.

That's really convincing (photo-realistic) in black and white. But what am I looking at with all the white smoke?