What are your favorite warbirds?

[MadMaxMerlin]

We're celebrating the Centennial of Flight at FlightSim.Com. All year long, I'm going to be featuring different warbirds in articles for the website and the combat flight sim newsletter. I would like to hear from you all as to which are your favorite warbirds from both the Allies and Axis sides of World War II, plus ALlied and OpFor warbirds from other eras including World War I, the Korean Conflict, the Cold War, the War in Viet Nam, Desert Storm and the War on Terrorism. Whew! That a lot of warfare! I will write about them and also point to the best-of-breed freeware downloads for those aircraft for CFS2, and CFS3 from our library. You may either post your requests here or email them to me at maxmerlin@flightsim.com.

[BillKing20]

WWI: Albatros D.III becaise it looks like a shark.

The D.II had rather ordinary parallel struts, the D.V had a circular tail fin, they were not cool like the D.III!


http://pweb.jps.net/~wasatch/_uimages/cessna.gif

[Sageon]

My favorite is the P-51D Mustang; but I'm sure that there are many more planes that are much better!

[G58Bearcat]

My favorite is the Grumman F8F Bearcat. What a machine. I fly Learjets for a living, but I would give anything to fly one of those.

Other favorites are F4U, F6F, FM-2, Hawker Seafury, A6M Zero, Bell P-63 KingCobra, P-38, P-51, and AT-6. I have some time in the T-6 as my Father has owned one for the past 18 years.

This is a great forum. Keep up the good work.

I need to get a Gforce4 4600 card then maybe CFS3 will work better than it does with my TNT2 32mb card.

System is a P3 800 with 512mb ram wim 98SE.

Happy simming!

[strudders]

Of World War 2 the Hawker Hurricane. For being so Stubborn during the Battle of Britain and playing second fiddle to the Spit, even though it shot down more planes than the Spit.

Cold war. The Handley Page Victor Bomber. For being so large and regularly going super sonic, long before many other aircraft where able, even if it was not supposed to!!.

Also the SR71 for its beauty and grace and its speed.

Finally the AC 130. An idea from the Vietnam War still able to pack a massive punch. and look so mean!

Best regards and look forward to the article.

Strudders

[CapMason]

LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-03 AT 01:49PM (EST)[p]I love the Bearcat and Corsair, too. In my December newsletter, I did a piece on the F4U Corsair. As a fan of air racing, I am also hunting for a good Sea Fury simulation for CFS2 or CFS3. I have yet to discover one. I love watching thos massive Sea Furies bearing down on me when they round the pylons at Reno. They pratically part my hair when they blow by at close to 500 MPH. Almost too fast for the motordrive to stop the action. As for Bearcats, you may be in luck if you want to fly something similar. Bear Aerospace (http://bear-aerospace.com) is building a Bear 360 which is very similar to a Bearcat but modernized and made much easier to fly. It is very affordable to own, too. Regarding your PC, all you need is either a Ti4600 or a Ti4200 video card, 128 MB. The 4200 is actually a much better value. It is going for a bargain price right now. eVGA has an excellent one (I personally tested it) and it now has a $20 rebate which pushes the price below $150. The Ti4600 cards are much more expensive at around $300-400. And they don't give you that much of a performance boost over the 4200. Maybe another 7-8% performance boost yet they cost nearly double the 4200! I tested a Visiontek Ti4600, too. The test rig I used for the video card comparisons was a Dell XPS 700-t, 700 MHz, Pentium 3 with 768 MB RAM, 19-inch Viewsonic monitor. CFS3 runs just peachy but I had to tweak it a tad by turning off Dual Pass Rendering and turning on High Resolution Z-buffer using CFS3CONFIG (comes with CFS3). Watch the website and my newsletter for the upcoming review and more tips and tweaks to improve video performance in CFS3.

[CapMason]

Thanks for the feedback, Pilots! Keep your votes coming. I notice that the Yanks and Brits seem to be leading the pack for most beloved warbirds. Doesn't anyone like the Mitsubishi Zekes? They sure gave the US fits during the early years of World War II. Or, how about those Migs? Mig Alley over Korea and the defense of North Viet Nam taught the US a bitter lesson about air-to-air dogfighting. In fact, the spanking the Migs gave us over Viet Nam was one of the reasons for putting guns on the F4 Phantom (first models were armed only with missiles) and creating the Top Gun Fighter School. Which, by the way, is no longer located at Miramar. It moved to Nevada. But I digress. Anyway, let's hear some more suggestions. I have a whole year's worth of articles to fill and want to report on what you're interested in. Otherwise, you get to read about what I am interested in. And, as a Corsair sim pilot, CO of a virtual Corsair squadron, Japanese Zekes are always on my mind. Want to be a great Corsair pilot (a challenge in CFS2)? Read what Japan's Ace of Aces, Saubro Sakai had to say and try to fly against Corsairs in a Zero. That should be quite a lesson :-)

[coolian2]

P-40 Kittyhawk - Any day of the week!

[font color= red]Ian Ritchie[/font color= red]
coolian2@hotmail.com

[G58Bearcat]

CapMason,

Thanks for the info on the Bear 360, it looks cool. Also thanks for the advice on the ti4200 card, i'm going to get one soon! I look forward to your upcoming review and tweaks.

[G58Bearcat]

I would like to have one of those Zekes too! It's just a great looking aircraft. I fly it a lot in CFS2 and FS2002.

[N880DT]

Oh yes I love the p-40 the best too.

[Flashpoint]

I can get a GF4 Ti4600 for 210 dollars. Oh, while I'm here Cap, get with me later. I have a business proposal for you that you might have interest in.

Beacat, if you send me a PM, I will hook you up with a moderately priced Ti series card. Whatever is in your price range, I will help you buy. I know some people, so we'll see what kind of deal we can get you. That sound good ???

As far as favorite warbird ......

Well, I like the Me262 and Vampire for their looks. Based on preformance, I like the P-51, Spitfire and the Bf109. My favorite bombers are the B-17, B-25 and B-26. I personally like the B-26 because my grandfather flew 34 missions in the pacific and was in one of the 4 B-26's that participated in the Battle of Midway.

J.Garrett
MidContinent Air Services, LLC
KLEX
Lexington, KY, USA

AMD Athlon XP2700
MSI KT4V Mobo
PNY GeForce4 Ti4600
1GB PC3200DDR
Western Digital 180GB HD
Western Digital 80GB HD
SB Audigy 2 Platnium
Koolance PC2-601BLW Tower Liquid Case
Windows XP Pro
3DMark2001SE - 14103

http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/aircraft2/f22a.gif

"'O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy. And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats ....."

[CapMason]

Email me the details of what you have in mind deal-wise: capmason@flightsim.com. We might do something with that at FlightSim.Com through our super-affiliate program. BTW, $210 for a Ti4600 is an outstanding price! What brand card is it? I notice you are using the PNY 4600. How do you like it? I wanted to get a card from PNY for my video card article but they didn't have a demo at the time. I think the Oakland dock strike fouled up their delivery. Maybe I'll give them a second chance. Would love to hear more about your grandfather's missions. Is he still with us?

[GeeBeeR1]

There is a Gmax version Tomahawk 11B with North Africa textures thats just fantastic to both look at and fly. With 200+ aircraft loaded in the sim I think I fly this one 70% of the time. :-jumpy

Regards,
Jan

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3e1dc71522f15061.jpg

[CoyotePete]

Hmm... A-26B Invader, Mosquito Night fighter variants (NF 30 & others), Me-110G.

[ChrisW]

I'm really rather fond of the Spitfire. The ability of the Rolls Royce Merlin to induce a tingling spine is unparalleled. Plus it they make me feel terribly patriotic!!

If more modern aircraft are involved it would have to be the F14-A. In my opinion the best variant because of the effect that the engine nozzles could produce. These were of course changed on the B variant to handle the power hike that the engines received.

I'm also rather partial to the Rockwell B-1.