I know right? All these modern sim choices…and here I am…shovel out…digging up this relic. BUT…these guys at Yankee Air Pirate Revamp Works (YAP:RW) have resurrected the project in memory of the original author, Vietnam F-4 pilot John “Zerocinco” Shelton…so I wanted to give it a whirl.
I won’t go into the install process - fairly straightforward. Fresh install of SF2 Vietnam (patched to July 2013) or SF2 Complete Edition…then download the MOD and insert it into the MOD folder and you are done. Instructions and links: HERE
“This new versions offers a total of 102 missions (10 training lessons and 92 historical combat sorties), reconstructing the most important facts of the air war in Vietnam in its early years, from 1954 to 1966.”
Tanking is not simulated in SF2 (apparently it was in Wings Over Vietnam) - so you can just rendezvous and throw them the bird. Not being able to tank will save many virtual tankers lives. Trust me.
Taking a look at the range complex. There are no required targets to hit - choose your poison. Our aircraft is outfitted with rockets, bombs, and internal cannons.
Believe this is the F-100D fuel gauge (circled in yellow). But I have some vague memory that a mod in one of the Strike Fighters series disabled fuel flow to simulate the longer range missions, can’t remember whether that was YAP or the Gulf War mod?
Awesome! Did you use any mods on top? Like Green Hell or so? I remember following an article (of yours?) to install a heavily modded SF2 for Vietnam which looked quite amazing.
The only mod I have tried so far was moving my EFFECTS folder from my old install into the YAP mod directory and all seems fine. Those effects were some of Starry’s work I believe…things like additional smoke and explosions… I don’t know that the Green Hell terrain tiles will work because YAP might be using different maps than the standard ones (I think…I don’t know that for sure). I guess I could move those into the mod directory and see what happens though…
Training mission #02 is a very quick and easy night visual approach in the KC-135 into U-Tapao Air Base in Thailand. Very straightforward: slow, flaps, gear, flaps.
The VASIPAPI (a new word I just made up) isn’t very effective. I can see what the game designer was shooting for (two rows of lights that are slightly different heights)…but it looks more effective than it is.
This was a fun one. Another short mission with simple goals. Get the plane on the deck. I tried to follow the guidance in the briefing…but ended up wide and long. I don’t know that there is a way to hook back up to the catapult in YAP (or SF2) so it is a one shot deal unfortunately.
I did get my SmoothTrack/OpenTrack software working…so I have head tracking available now.
I’ll mention it again (for about the hundredth time) - Strike Fighters 2 would be the absolute perfect mid-tier sim if it had VR and multiplayer. The graphics are good enough…and the gameplay is fun. Oh what could have been…
Wonder if you can still land sideways … In the original Wings over Vietnam the carrier decks were equipped with some sort of super-glue. Don’t ask why I know!
Bwahahahahaha.
Great Write up Chris. I have been trying to fly good 'ol IL2 1946. But I cant get it to recognize all my controllers.
Where are we buying Yankee Air Pirate now? Straight from Third Wire?
Looks like a blast.
And not only that, it’ll only recognise 32 buttons on each of four controllers (IIRC the upper 32?) so whichever way you go, the Winwing throttle really doesn’t work well with the old IL2 sims!
Not sure if this is true, but I was told the windows unzipper mounts the zip, which triggers a defender scan (which is the reason for the pause before it starts unzipping), then it triggers a defender scan for every file as it is unzipped.
Now, if this is something I downloaded from some dodgy website then this behaviour might be what I want (really I unzip and scan it in a VM if I actually don’t trust it). But I still think it’s faster to unzip with 7-Zip then manually trigger a deep scan of the folder…
