Heatblur F-14 and Forrestal Update

Flight Sims DCS F-14 Tomcat
852

The more I think about this…I’d like to see Heatblur produce a RIO only version of the F-14. Put together some good fighter pilot AI that kicks in at the merge but until that point have the “player” run the intercept, to include controlling wingman RIOs.

Aerosoft’s F-14 seems to be a fair enough representation of the RIOs position when it comes to intercept management…the AWG-9 was pretty user intensive–lots of the things modern radars do automatically the RIO does (did) manually. I know that I get pretty busy in Aerosoft’s F-14 back seat…and that’s with all the FSX limitations (even with TACPACK). Just think of what would be possible in DCS!

Of course you would need some way of getting it airborne and land–simple flight controls and a standard “six-pack” of workable gauges should do the trick…engine start, gear, flaps, wing sweep could all be AI

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853

Must be good at Volleyball.

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854

Or just find a pilot online

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855

There is always Waffle House…they are everywhere…I believe the word is ubiquitous …I’ve never been in one…suspect they are part of an alien take over of the planet…kind of like “The Host”…but with waffles…

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856

I’m always happy to be proven wrong, but I imagine this is outside the realm of reasonable expectation. If you’re looking for that level of control, it might be time to start finding some buddies to fly with.

857

Except west of Yuma. I noticed that immediately after moving to San Diego.

858

Probably is…still, one can still dream. …and I guess if I just want to be the RIO and not the pilot, I could probably find a buddy on line.

Perhaps special “RIO Training/Practice” missions where the jet starts out airborne and the pilot reacts to RIO calls…then one could train up in the back seat before going into virtual, multiplayer “combat”

859

Hmmm…that’s almost the same Longitude and exactly 280 Nm from Groom Lake/Area-51…which has nothing to do with Heatblur’s F-14…or does it? :thinking:

860

There’s a Waffle House right off I-95 I pass every day to and from work. Never eaten there once. :smiley:

I think there’s an IHOb around somewhere, but I’ve not eaten there either. Generally speaking I only eat at those places on road trips, at home I never get up that early when I’m off and I don’t have time when I’m working.

I remember spending long hours in F-14 FD and cursing having to go to the back seat to do all the radar stuff and then jump back to the front to fly and dogfight and then jump in the back again ad nauseum. I wished it had MP, didn’t get that until F-15SE 3 but as previously mentioned we wound up flying in pairs more often because it offered 2x the firepower which was more important for those missions.

I can’t wait to try FS/BS in DCS with the Cat, though. I know it will also be important for the F-4E.

861

The rule with Waffle House, if you’re doing it right, is that you can’t go before midnight, you can’t go sober, and you can’t go alone.

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862

And you can’t go unarmed.

“Two Three Four Every men man enters, one man leaves!”

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863

I have a story about that…

The other thing is, beware of the “friends” you make at Waffle House. Nothing good ever comes of that either.

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864
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865

Me too (or grammatically is it “I also”?) We need a Northern Norwegian Sea / Southern Barents theater to do it right - Bears and Backfires and Flankers, oh my.

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866

I thought that was Denny’s.:sunglasses:

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867

On the west coast, absolutely.

I have a story about that too…

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868

I can’t tell you how many times over the past twenty years I’ve been in Waffle Houses at 3AM on a Friday or Saturday night (or any day of the week in college towns) and marveled at some of the characters coming and going. I could write about about just that part of my career.

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869

So full time LEO in a large city (I think we were 13th largest in the US at the time). Our commander gives us the order that we can only eat at restaurants in our patrol districts, something about building community relations or something. I worked evenings so 1600-0200 or 1800-0400, as the senior guy my rule is I eat last, to get around all the BS some younger officers get off on with making the rookies wait to eat etc. “If the rookies don’t eat, none of us eat” was my rule. Anyway, I had literally a Subway, and a Gatti’s Pizza in my district, and they both closed by 2200. Across the street from the edge of my district (but technically in another patrol sector), is a Waffle House. My Sgt gave me permission to cross into the other sector to eat. For TWELVE MONTHS, 1 YEAR, 52 WEEKS, 365 DAYS, 26 FORTNIGHTS, etc I ate at Waffle House 4 nights a week. I ate almost exclusively after midnight, and I did it at the jankiest Waffle House we had in town.

In no particular order (and note I wasn’t present for all of this, these are just some of the things that happened there).
-Biker shootout
-Gang banger shootout
-Random person cranking rounds off in the parking lot
-Cartel yahoo’s cranking rounds off into the parking lot prior to going in an ordering (celebratory for someone having a baby in-fact)
-Car hitting the building (sober driver)
-Car hitting building (drunk driver) x4 (might have been 5 or 6 but honestly they all run together)
-Customer trying to stab staff in disagreement and staff succeeding in stabbing attempted stabber back (was there for that one)
-Staff slapping a male in the face with his grill spatula and knocking him unconscious (customer was unhappy with his eggs being scrambled and was trying to punch the cook)

Those are just the realllllly memorable ones. There were the drunk girls heading out of downtown back to their little towns stopping for dinner and seeing a younger guy with a job and no ring (ie me, before I said screw it I’ll just wear my ring on duty and not worry about it getting beat up), that always got interesting. Flip side, drunk yahoo’s coming from downtown and trying to appear “hard core” in front of their friends or girl friends (had on girl clock her BF in the back of the head with a shoe and knock him out so he didn’t try to fight me, I did not write paper on that one). Bounced a few people off the jukebox in that year over that issue.

So yeah, Waffle House. If you’ve never tried the chili, do so, it’s legit. Stay away from the salads, and the chicken noodle soup is basically Campbels hearty chicken noodle (so not bad, nothing special). Everything else is decent, and depending on who’s on the grill the pork chops can be awesome. If you need to clear the place out, fire up the jukebox on the first CD/record and crank the volume, people leave when they realize they have 56 minutes of “Waffle House” music to listen to (it starts with the Waffle House theme).

Now if you reallly want sketchy, there is the waffle House (note the lower case ‘w’), occasionally branded the pancake house (note the lower case ‘p’). These are Kettle restaurants that didn’t meet standard and are the sketchiest places I’ve ever been to after midnight that’s a real restaurant (bars, strip joints, and organized crime fronts are of course out of the mix here). I’d have lived off the Tiger-Mart roller grill before I’d have tried eating the waffle House we had in sector (which since it wasn’t in my district I couldn’t do anyway).

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870

Yeah…it’s very good chili actually. And you can’t screw up eggs and bacon and toast…so that is a go-to. Lots and lots of drunks at Waffle Houses. And I’m old enough to have been flying back when we used to walk in and the cigarette smoke would be hanging thick in the air like a blue stratus layer over the whole interior. :nauseated_face:

I’ve seen drug deals in the parking lot. People get kicked out. I saw a chef quit one night (I don’t recommend the Waffle House nearest the airport in Birmingham, Alabama)… Good times.

Oh. And F-14. To keep it topical…

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871

That’s what this thread’s about? :stuck_out_tongue:

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