Just the word composites gives an impression of techiness, but really its nothing more than “string and glue”. Where as steel is often maligned as simple and unsuffisticated, but its really a miracle metal with qualitys that just cannot be duplicated by “modern materials”(Im going to refer to steel because I love this metal, but the same applys to a lesser extent to aluminum). Steels elasticity or “springyness” means it has fantastic nondirectional stress properties inherent in its molecular structure. This makes designing strong structures so simple to calculate and design, not just in certain load directions. For example compression is just as important a load as tension it high load bearing structures like wings. Steel is both very rigid and yet flexible and elastic, so it can withstand huge compression loads that never fatigue the metal. Maliblitys should not be underestimated either as their are not many materials that can be deformed stucterally and not be weakened, which makes steel a sort of “always active glue”. Thats why ships can only be made of steel, there is no other material in existance that can match these qualitys. But to take carbon fiber for an example, yes it has huge strength propertys, as much as 20 times as strong as steel. Its also very flexible. However its molecular structure is very rigid and so the material simply breaks when any kind of load other than the direction its was designed to hold is given. Thats why composites are either used as a strengthener to conventional materials or are used in non load bearing structures.

Is the LCA going to be sold on the export market?

I just want to say I think the LCA is a good idea, but it suffers the same problem as all the other fighter programs in europe and the US have which is lack of competition. The Eurofighter and F-22 are both most noteable examples, once the goverment has chosen to have the plane developed, the contractor knows the government will have to pay for all cost overruns as long as its commited to the program. Have you noticed how quickly the F-22 and F-23 were built to prototype stage when in competition for the contract? Once the contract was won, the F-22 costs have just soared beyond what even the US can afford.

India should build its own fighter. Developing a fighter on your own is alot different than just manufacturing one under licence. Stop and think, the top of the line fighter in the US is still the F-15 and F-16 and although the F-22 has advanced capability, its not a huge leap ahead. The LCA looks to remain a viable fighter until some kind of technological breakthrough raises the bar. And who knows when or even if that will happen any time soon.

Its the Ace Expansion pack which you can buy.
http://www.il2sturmovik.com/

Use a spec tire.

Use stock block engines.
Eliminate traction control/electronic trasnmissions.
Use iron-based brakes.
Eleminate the narrow tracks (Monaco, Hungary).
Reduce pit crew size.

Scott

You know they have tried to decrease the enormous traction of the soft rubber tires by making a rule that the tires had to have a certain number of treads. But the racing teams have gotten around this by making the rubber in the treads super soft so that they wear down quickly back to slick tires. I think the only way to regulate tires be by making a no tire change rule. That would force the tire manufacturers to use hard rubbers that would have to last the whole race.

Alot depends on the realism settings that the server has on. With full realism, flying your plane is very difficult as you need to be using rudder alot and you can find yourself going into spins and stalling alot more in tight turning fight. High realism also may mean you only get a cockpit view, and one with the control panel covering most the view. Also you have a realistically huge area in which to fly and it can take some time to fly to find active enemy bases. Back when I flew IL-2, usually the two teams would each pick a base close to eachother so spawning would mean taking off right into the action.

It looks like a sign that simply indicates an airport nearby. Are there airports close to where these signs are posted?

Well it took a while to get ASE (All Seeing Eye in brevity from now on) figured out, and by the time we did, it was time for Simmer to turn in for the night. But for anyone who wants to join in, heres what you do. You have to enter the nickname of the person you want to enter in your buddy list into a player search found under tools>find player. The nickname has to be exact as partial name searches are not enabled for the free version of ASE. So if anyone wants to add me, just enter the name mixtec. The buddy search works also, but that can take up to a couple of hours to turn up a search.
I want to mention I tried out Silent Heroes and it was a good mod. I was disappointed to find there werent any gripens, but Im told those will be added to the mod later. But they had a very fine collection of tanks, vehicles and helicoptors.