The only thing I could find online was The Naval variant had bigger tires…which gave a distinctive bulge in the wings 
….and of course the launch bar on the nose gear.
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This is from “Rampant Raider” (Skyhawk in SEA) book. on the Bullpup A2G missile which I think the Phantom has right?
The Bullpup was a perfect example of a weapon that worked well on the desert target ranges of Nellis Air Force Reservation or NAS China Lake, but wasn’t much good in real combat. The pilot had to fly his airplane perfectly steady in a shallow dive toward the target while he carefully maintained the missile’s flight path down his line of sight. This required nerves of steel when antiaircraft shells were bursting all around the airplane and tracers were coming through the 100-mil ring of the gun sight! The other problem was determining the missile’s distance from the target during its final few seconds of flight. The pilot saw only a bright dot of light superimposed on the target. If the dot of light drifted off target, there was a tendency for the pilot to panic and overcontrol the missile while trying to correct its flight track. During the latter stages of its flight, the Bullpup would be hypersonic, and what seemed like small corrections could cause huge and erratic changes in its flight path.
Gray, Stephen R. Rampant Raider: An A-4 Skyhawk Pilot in Vietnam (p. 214). Naval Institute Press
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Didn’t Gray end up saying that it was a good weapon towards the end of that cruise? I might be confusing him with another author. I’ve read four A-4 books in a row and about to start a fifth, Dead Men Flying.
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Haven’t finished it yet.
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HIP games has a vid coming out tomorrow (30/1/24) looks like it could have some phantom content 
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Quick Question…What type of HOTAS/Grip are you thinking of using for The Phantom?
I have 3 choices of grips…
-Warthog/F-16
-F/A-18/StrikeEagle
-F-14 Tomcat
I have a Warthog and Virgil Throttle…I’m leaning towards using the later because of button availability.
I’m interested to hear what set up you guys will be using?
It’s such a simple layout, you could run any of those. I’ll probably use the TM F/A-18 Hornet grip on a Virpil base since I fly mostly the F-15E and warbirds these days. I remember that dad used to bring them home from work when we were kids, so that we could play with them. I wonder if the squadron had a box of grips laying around. Maybe the switches were inop or otherwise defective. He had a B-4 bag in his bedroom closet with his helmet, G Suit, misc survival gear, K-Bar knife, flying flashlight, signal mirror, and a small flare gun. He would let my brother and I play with that stuff as if it were as natural as a ball and glove.
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I think The TM Hornet grip is a very Good Choice…The addition of the paddle switch to use as a modifier to switch to WSO is a very nice option.
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I’ve been using the Hornet stick exclusively for the last year, maybe more. I wish the paddle were longer like it is on the Warthog stick, but otherwise I love it for everything other than the Warthog/Viper. That extra 4-way hat is hard to map when you don’t have a physical one.
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My dad was a new LT, and was a POL officer at Ubon with the 555th on his initial tour in Vietnam he came in a bit before Olds and James. I’ve got his “Go to Hell” hat with all the squadron patches in my study. I have thought about sitting down and interviewing him for a book, but I don’t have the faintest idea how to start. He served through the cold war till after GW1, and saw massive changes in the Airforce in that time.
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It’s a great idea - if he’s amenable to the idea just sit down with him and record a bunch of conversations with him over a few months. My advice would be to come in with a topic to talk about, but let the conversation go where it goes. Then it’s your job to edit it all together for the book 
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Exactly what @Torc said.
Just bust out a tape recorder, start with a single story or question, and let the conversation go from there.
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Mine too! circa 1966 at Ubon. Pretty sure I got one of those hats myself. He was likely a bit older, he retired in the mid-70’s (did a stint in Korea too). He did send me a model he built of a …wait for it… Phantom!
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I get that. It needs more effort to make Jester work. He’s more like a subordinate than a fully fledged crew member.
Heatblur did a great job at making him appear like there is a guy in the back by recording literally thousands lines of radio chatter. The call outs get triggered at the right time as well and help develop situational awareness.
Still you have to micro manage him to do the right things. For this you need some basic knowledge about the rear seat and his job. For me Jester wheel never clicked. Vaicom does. I treat Jester like a voice controlled MFD. It’s a little bit like playing chess blind
I guess this will make learning the Phantom easier with a human back seater because you can concentrate on one cockpit.
Once you have some grips of the front seat, Jester should be good enough to fly the Phantom alone.
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That. I had a [simulated] ethereal moment with a mission like this, one that hooked me on VAICOM for good: A2G sortie, me and Jester; T-POD , never had to touch the mouse or keyboard. The jokes gets stale, to me, pretty quickly (I prefer no nonsense) but I can over look that easily enough.
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A recorder (maybe a sip of the drink) and chat away.
I found if there was another vet involved the conversation was much better (longer)? 
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I’ve always heard stories about my dad’s service, and grew up around it (he retired when I was around 12). Over the years I’ve been able to hear more and more stories, I had the idea about two years ago when I sat with my dad after a heart procedure and we were talking and I realized how little I still knew about what all he had done.
He’s more than happy to talk about his time (well, I haven’t found a subject he doesn’t want to talk about at least), and what he did. It’s more keeping it all straight for me to be able to document it.
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Same. My life has been pretty pedestrian compared to his, and esp. my maternal grandfather too
I think these peeps from the Arma 3 milsim unit 3rd Bn, 5th Marines, do quite a good job interviewing veterans:
If you’re on Discord I’ll happily get you in touch with 2ndLt.Wood3/5 
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