britgliderpilot

I never, ever thought I'd see a pic which made a B52 look SMALL. It looks like a toy . . . . . those carriers are really, really big!

Good point on the first . . . . and not sure on the second. Mid-eighties requirement, that was taken in '89 . . . . . feckit, we don't know the answer, shall we just speculate wildly instead? You all know we want to . . . . it's far more fun! I reckon Olgerd's page proves conclusively that it's possible, certainly :)

It was a dry run for Samuel L Jackson's new film!

Was it the Sidewinder, or was it the AGM-122 Sidearm? The Sidearm is possibly the world's smallest anti-radiation missile, and has certainly been carried by the USMC Cobra . . . .

Had this argument somewhere else, I'd say we name it Vampire II. Or just Vampire, we're not usually in the habit of sticking on numbers after we give things the same name as something old in Britland ;) Wasn't the Raptor going to the Lightning III at some point? And Spitfire, err, no. That would be teh sacrilege. Cyclone sounds too much like a vacuum cleaner. Why not call it the F-35 Dyson?

See, this is what we like to hear . . . . . . . . . not one mention of the word "Destroyer" anywhere in that sentence :P Oh, good thinking on the training modes too!

U2 wingspan - 80 feet. Project Eta wingspan - 101 feet. Difficulty is relative ;) Real answer - wheels on legs partway along the span keep them level on the takeoff roll, then drop away as they become airborne. For landing . . . . you've just got to be careful. You've got roll control right down to the stall, and you can keep the tips up virtually until you stop. CIA and USAF pilots had and have the advantage of a stationary level runway, which isn't a big deal. Landing on a carrier in a U2, though, could indeed be scary . . . grin. Apparently the first time they did it the tip hit the deck, ouch. Biggest span aircraft I've flown is the DG505 at 65 feet - it's not THAT difficult to land, it's just lazy conventional pilots being xenophobic ;) Biggest problem with landing the U2 is supposed to be judging your height above the ground - that's (and catching the wings rather than dropping them) is why they use chase cars.

Nope, s'true - from multiple sources. Not least of which, the excellent "Skunk Works", written by Ben Rich (who RAN the Skunk Works) and Leo Janos. The U2's an exception, though . . . . with carrier forward speed, windspeed, and the stupidly low stall speed, you could probably make an approach with little more than 20 or 30 knots closure on the carrier. Makes the hook stressings that much easier to deal with!

Hooked U2 and F-111B? :D You, sir, are my personal hero for finding those pics . . . . I knew both variants existed but had never found a single pic of either. Respect! To be fair, none of them entered widespread service use - the U2 was a relatively experimental aircraft flown by rather good pilots anyway, F-111B was only a prototype, and the C-130 SuperCOD . . . . . mmn. Good show on all of them, though :)

It's not so much a modification as something that's designed into the airframe to begin with . . . . You don't design your aircraft and then think "Oh crap - I've got to beef it up to land on a carrier" . . . . you design it to take those stresses in the first place. Beefed up gear to handle a no-flare landing is one part, stressing an airframe that can be decelerated by the hook and accelerated by the nosegear is another ("normal" aircraft not having to withstand that loading passed through those points), then stuff like corrosion-proofing and so forth . . . shrug. It's a slightly more complex process, but the basic result is the same - you end up with an aircraft designed for what you want it to do!

The "experts" aren't. Now will someone just lock this thread, before it turns into something else? :P On a side-note - the Fighter Mafia are now getting a touch too old. These gentlemen are the same ones that said the F-16 didn't need a radar . . . . .

Ahh, but which of those is more realistic? ;) . . . . . and that's basically the crux of the discussion! I'd say neither's entirely complete, so you should have both. But of course, inevitably people will suggest otherwise . . . .

You read the reports about the F16 and F15 pilots doing multiple WVR exercises on the F-22? WVR kills . . . . . aren't happening ;) And that's with six on . . . . . when minimum of four of them are dead BVR, you don't even have to think about the outcome. Come on - this is what the F-22 was designed to do! You can only develop an aircraft designed to beat the F-15 so far . . . . and it's not this far . . .

Yes, it is - but it's a different requirement. A Sukhoi will perform well NOW, against aircraft of today's generation. A Raptor will kill anything else currently in the sky without breaking a sweat, and continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I don't know of any aircraft currently in development that could compare to the capabilities of the Raptor and the integrated USAF machine. Unit cost would have been cheaper if the full complement of aircraft (as required in the foreseen Cold War worldview) had been required - R&D has now been split over an ever-decreasing number of aircraft. The majority of Sukhoi's R&D has come from government funding over the years ;)

. . . . I haven't progressed far enough in my F4 life to realise you could do that. Entirely logical and consistent with the depth of modelling, though. I was actually putting it as a bonus - the comms in Lomac are strictly for your package only, makes the skies seem a little emptier to me . . . . As a further note, Lomac isn't exactly friendly to those on routers either . . . . and there are still plenty of threads about people struggling with the timeout settings.

No, I knew what you meant - but writing "it can know where to start shooting" could be taken to mean that . . . . well, it CAN know where to start shooting. Pretty much nothing facing a Raptor (with the possible exception of anything on the same datalink) is going to be able to see it at any point before disintegrating into a thinly dispersed cloud of hair, teeth, and eyeballs. Which of course we both know, but someone else reading that sentence might not.

It won't know where to start shooting, so perhaps that wording's slightly misleading . . . . Anyone got a grammar nazi badge?

. . . . . I don't think you can get a more glowing recommendation than that! ^^

IIRC, the only upgrade for service aircraft is the current one, from Su27S to Su27SM standard. Su27SM is not the version modelled in Lomac . . . . . Su27S is, which was the original version to enter service.

Just to address the concerns about momentum being modelled in F4 - somewhere I have an article which infers that the FCS on the F-16 is set up in such a way to provide a totally linear response. Example given was that once you centre the stick from a roll, the FCS will actually deflect the ailerons in the opposite direction to stop the roll instantly . . . . I don't enjoy the feel of flight in F4, but I have a feeling the FBW system means we're not quite comparing like with like. In other respects . . . . . Falcon 4 is really rather good, and you should buy it. Perfect it isn't - but the way the theatre is tied together and the way the dynamic campaigns work is absolutey superb. They're not kidding - having to start your jet on the ramp, make the right taxi time, make your waypoints on time, and co-ordinate with a whole heap of other packages in every single mission in a dynamic campaign, with AWACS chattering to all packages all the time . . . . it's just something else entirely. If only Lomac could crack that atmosphere . . . . . the immersion is fantastic, it really is. Pity it looks so old, really, otherwise I'd be playing it far more.

. . . . when I was back at Uni for a bit of a bash last week I killed a bit of time (while everyone else was recovering from their stinging hangovers) by hunting down the aviation section in the Uni library. There's some really good stuff in there . . . . including a book entited "MiG - fifty years of secret aviation design" It listed two features of the -29S that I didn't recall seeing before (doesn't mean much :P ) were that the leading-edge-flaps are now divided into five segments in four (attention to detail!), and a bit about the flight controls - I quote: "the conventional flying controls were optimised to increase the AoA operating range (up to 28 degrees) to augment the aircraft's steadiness in flight and controllability at high AoA's, and to move back the trigger limit of unintentional stalls and spins" Sounded funky, wondered if we were to do some proper test flying whether it'd be represented in the Lomac FM :)

Nope, that's the way it works IRL - seems that radar type can only be pointing straight ahead, 45 degrees left, or 45 degrees right. They spent a bit of time on the avionics since v1.02 - partly because more information came to light with declassified manuals, and partly because they finally got the time to do some stuff they already knew about ;)

BSO was only ever a static campaign - a very big and ambitious one, but still a static campaign. It's not stopped forever - chances are we'll see at least part of it some day. F4's real strength to me has always been the way the theatre is simulated - the aircraft itself is modelled in great detail, of course, but the feeling of immersion for me has less to do with that and more to do with the radio calls from other packages, the tower calling to whine at you, your waypoints actually mattering . . . . . . and stuff like that. Simply adding an F-16 to Lomac won't address the fact that Lomac doesn't do all that fun stuff, and I seriously hope that ED can increase the immersion in the theatre with their future projects.

Mmmn . . . . . . yep, I'd agree with that :)

The FSW jobbie is the S-37 or Su47 . . . . . . the Su37 is effectively an Su35 fitted with thrust vectoring and a couple of other toys. Chavez is a bit of a loony, and should be watched carefully to make sure he doesn't do something really stoopid . . . . . . but that's an aside from the aircraft.