Bought the Tomcat as well as the Yak 52 Yaay today was a good day
Yanks has a pretty good looking F-14 that some skinner might want to consider adding to their livery.
https://www.google.com/search?q=yanks+f-14&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiiloee9v7eAhVBqoMKHYcOCAQQ_AUIDigB&biw=1920&bih=908
Wheels
Pretty sure VF-2ās livery will be included, for the F-14A at least.
Iām not sure if this has been answered by Heatblur or not but can we expect the F-14A to get LANTIRN and air-ground weapons or will that be exclusive to the B? I ask because Iāve seen some F-14As toting around the pod, notably VF-154 from ~2003. VF-14 also seems to have had them in ~'99.
Not that we canāt just fudge a few things around and put the F-14B in place of the A in these particular scenarios, I just think Iāll be playing with the F-14A more than I will the B. Call it a preference for the more quirky variant.
Unless things have changed, it will not. The A is going to be representative of a mid 80s example, before the air to ground upgrades.
Thatās kind of what I figured, but itās all good. I doubt thereās going to be a lot of people in the A unless absolutely forced by the mission designers, which kinda makes me sad.
There are just as many ardent luddites as there are massive technophiles in the DCS community. I think the A will be fine.
Besides, the true Scotsman nerd selects his variant by era and CVW.
Some more images I found regarding the F-14A with LANTIRN:
VFA-14 F-14A circa '99
Cool model build! Depicts VFA-154 F-14A with GBU-24 and LANTIRN.
LANTIRN is kinda small on this kit. Maybe if we ask nicely, Heatblur might do it for us?
Iād also read that there were only 75 LANTIRN pods spread across the entire F-14 fleet. Makes me wonder what the numbers were for the Nitehawk and ATFLIR pods for the Bug fleet.
VF-41 flew F-14Aās with LANTIRN pods in the Kosovo air war too. They got pretty clever with it and used it to buddy lase / help find and designate targets for Hornets which had Nite Hawk FLIR with less magnification. I just read Black Aces High which is all about them ironing out the tactics for it in-theatre.
Wasnāt there also a thing about the kittiesā cockpit displays being larger than the bugsā allowing for better TPODāing?
To be clear, every variant of the F-14 would both be equipped with LANTIRN and drop bombs in anger.
There are two things going on here.
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The LANTIRN was a better pod than the Nite Hawk.
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By that time the Tomcats were equipped with a display called the PTID. As @schurem points out, it was the largest MFD put in a US jet until probably the F-35. The other thing to note is it had a better resolution than any other display out there.
This meant that it could not only better exploit the capabilities of the LANTIRN, but it allowed it to display an image zoomed in further than you could do in say, an F-15 or F-16 MFD. This meant the RIO had a greater ability to spot targets, and the F-14ās superior loiter time meant the crew had a longer period to orbit an area, find targets, and then stick around to facilitate other aircraft servicing the target.
However before we start getting too giddy, understand weāre not getting that aircraft, at least not for the foreseeable future.
The F-14B weāre getting is essentially what was announced in 2015. A model representative of the air frame as it was between 1992 and 1995: GE-F110s, digital engine display, ALR-67, and bombs, but otherwise retaining the original HUD and TID. If I had to guess LANTIRN has been tacked on because the systems team needed something to due during the art rework, and the community really wanted it, but it was never operated by this configuration of the F-14 except during the earliest stages of compatibility testing. As I understand it, it worked in reality but the image is of a much lower quality due to the resolution of the TID, and how itās fed into the display.
Giddy feelings put back inside jacket pocket.
Also suppressing my inner Giddy Lee.
Heatblur TomCat Weapon Systems featured on āAlert 5 Podcastā
But what about the voice of Giddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.
If i was a proper Rush fan, iād have strangled you guys by now.
LANTIRN? - wasnāt the same as the AAQ-13 and AAQ-14 pods that the USAF were still using.
AFAIK the pod F-14s were carrying was designated (AN/)AAQ-25 and was a vastly upgraded AAQ-14 with a lot more capability but didnāt have any of the capability like TFR from the AAQ-13.
Technically it was the LANTIRN Targeting System (LTS), but colloquially it can still be referred to as LANTIRN.
The main difference was the installation of an accurate GPS equipment IMU internal to the pod to allow the system to bypass the archaic INS on the F-14A/B and feed accurate position data directly to the AWG-9