F-4 Phantom

[TBT_Piper]

This thread was OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD. 2 months old.

[Chipwich]

According to my father who has many hours in both, the F-100 was harder to recover in a stall, which sometimes oscillated to inverted, then right side up after a couple of revolutions. Another thing that I remembered him saying was that the F-100 had a propensity to snap roll outside a high G turn. Note that he really liked both airplanes, but thought that the F-4 was eminently more forgiving aircraft. I suppose that was the result of the high loss rate during the late 50s and early 60s to the operational squadrons (England) he was assigned to. He said that on average in those years it seemed as if the fighter wing lost about one pilot per month, which somewhat abated when they transitioned to the F-101. Also typical was the F-4 pilot leaving active duty flying the F-4, go back to the F-100 in the Guard, and end up flying himself into the ground. It happened to several of his friends. Sometimes listening to his stories, then adding the 3 tours in SE Asia, all the trips up North, I wonder how he made it through 31 years, F-84 to F-4E, without killing himself.

BTW, I found a Thunderbirds mod for Wings Over Vietnam, but I'm sure that you have probably discussed this by now.

[TBT_Piper]

These T-birds beat those T-Birds,

[streakeagle]

These T birds beat those T-Birds,

Do your T-birds have every paint scheme worn by the F-16s including the correct crew name block and flag panel?

My F-4 addon does as well as obvious changes such as the font used for the numbers and pilot pics of every pilot the at flew the F-4Es. I made sure to paint the pilots as well. When my addon is installed, you can select any of the aircraft by tail number and season and expect to get the correct results. Go here and scroll down for some pics:
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sflores1/StrikeFighters.html

Admittedly, I am not much of a skinner. I simply took stock templates provided by TK (the programmer of SFP1 and WoV) and eyeballed the color changes. Along the way, I hooked up with a former F-4E T-bird crew chief who helped me find the information I needed to get all the crew name blocks correct. Limitations of the original 3d model and texture mapping caused a few problems, most obvious of which are the lack of a number on the faired over gunport, the lack of dummy Sparrows, and the fact that the model is a slatted F-4E with ECM bulges whereas the T-birds flew early unslatted F-4Es with no ECM bulges.

Could I make a better Thunderbirds F-4E addon? You bet. A 3d modeler has already done an unslatted F-4E. When he gets back from Iraq, he intends to support me with a revised Thunderbirds version, complete with dummy Sparrows. I also have a new PC that is more than capable of running with much higher resolution textures. It is just a matter of making the time to build hi-res templates and decals.

You can find plenty of pics of the Thunderbirds (old and new) here:
http://www.highgallery.com/thunderbirds.htm

[Lawndart]

That's cool! We don't have any real names on our jets. Just a generic 2002 paint scheme for all pilots with the "Let's Roll" patch for 9-11 remembrance on the left fuselage instead of the flag panel.

We threw the idea of making an F-4 skin around for a while, but due to Lock-On limitations we wouldn't be able to have any tail numbers and the project got canned.

IF ED were to make flyable F-16's or any other old Tbird aircraft (highly doubtful), we could make much better mods with more detailed skin, but I think our skin looks really good for a "non-flyable" airplane! The area where the pilot's names and titles are, is left open on our skin. Purposely so, in case you were wondering.

LD

[Burner]

We should all take a look through that F-4 Tbirds gallery that is in the High Gallery Link, lots of great shots of the vintage maneuvers

Here's a Taste:


Ever seen this formation?

[streakeagle]

If you don't already know about it, the Thunderbirds printed a very good book with a fairly detailed history and plenty of great photos like the ones on the gallery. It is called "We Rode the Thunder" and is available here. Michael Jacobssen, the one who provided most of the F-4 pics at the High Gallery is the one who helped me with my skins and suggested this book.

For those who are in to doing skins, I have a reprint from 1976 (starting to get old and beat up ) of a Replica in Scale covering the Thunderbirds from the very beginning up to the T-38A Talons. It includes 3-views and other detailed drawings as well as rare photos and a fairly good history. Between this reference and the above book, I can provide very accurate information on pretty much any of the aircraft and pilots of the Thunderbirds including the support aircraft. The great thing about Strike Fighters and Wings Over Vietnam is that between the stock and addon aircraft, fairly good representations can be done of all the Thunderbirds: F-84F, F-84G, F-100D, F-105D (good enough to pass for a B until someone makes one), F-4E, F-16A, and F-16C. The T-38A hasn't been done yet, but some people have painted a false canopy on the F-5A to make it look like a T-38A. Basic Tbird skins are already available for most of the above aircraft. The only limit to the resolution of the skin textures is the video card & RAM of the system. The available aircraft also support most of the Blue Angels and skins are already available for the A-4E, F-4J, and maybe the F/A-18.

The network code of SFP1/WOV is based on DirectPlay... probably too laggy for maneuvers? I host both on Hyperlobby and have done some formation flying with some of the other people. A tight diamond is possible, but I don't know about loops/rolls/turns.

This is one of my favorite shots of the F-4E (it is from Michael Jacobssen's collection, but is actually hosted by a Blue Angels website http://www.blueangels.org/Tbirds/Tbirds.html ):