Pielstick

I know there's quite a few flight simmers here on BM, yet there seems to be very little activity in this corner of BM! If anyone's interested there's been an awful lot of new stuff going on in the flight sim world in the last few months..... Lockheed Martin have released Prepar3D V2 which is the continuation of Microsoft's ESP, which you may know better as FSX. It's not strictly speaking an entertainment product but you can buy it and most of the FSX addon developers are starting to make their stuff available for this new sim. The major improvements are they upgraded the graphics engine to DirectX 11 which offloads a lot of the number crunching from the CPU to the GPU, so if you've got a modern PC with a decent graphics card you will likely see an improvement. They've also spruced up the graphics a bit as well. X-Plane 10 is really starting to make itself known, and is steadily moving from being a cult flight sim to something a lot more mainstream. There's some really good stuff coming out for this sim now, it made the move to 64bit in 2013 so won't suffer any of the memory errors that have plagued FSX (and Prepar3D) users when they start to add too many complex addons into the sim. In FSX land there's been a bumper year of addons. Orbx finally rounded off their scenery packages that now cover the entire British Isles, including Ireland. They did some nice UK airports as well but they weren't a commerical success so the plans for more have been dropped. They also released their South Alaska package, which is probably their best work yet. On top of that they also released FTX Global Base and FTX Global Vector which are huge upgrades of the entire FSX world scenery, soon to be joined with their FTX Global Landclass in 2014. PMDG released their long awaited Boeing 777-200LR which has got to be the most complete and high fidelity airliner sim ever made for the PC. Majestic bowled everyone over with a superlative Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 that was very detailed, and even had a custom flight model that ran outside of FSX and was injected into the sim via SimConnect. Sibwings did a fantastic Antononv An-2 that is really a work of art. On the British aircraft front Aerosoft recently made a surprise announcement that they have a Lightning in development, which looks to be much more detailed than the JustFlight one. Speaking of Justflight, their Eurofighter Typhoon was awful, but they've made a new in-house development team that is working on a Canberra PR9 due for release very soon and looks absolutely fantastic. After the PR9 they are going to do a VC10! For WW1 flight simmers Rise of Flight trundled on with new aircraft, the last release of 2013 being the Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter. OBD Software released the latest version of the Flanders Fields series called "Wings Over Flanders Fields" - very, very nice indeed, what they've achieved with the CFS3 engine is remarkable, although the price tag of $60 for the mod and $25 for an additional aircraft skin pack (not including VAT) was quite hard to swallow. WW2 simmers had the most interesting year, with not one but TWO new sims announced. After the debacle of IL-2 Cliffs of Dover (more on that in a bit) the lead developer left the company and teamed up with Eagle Dynamics to make a new module for DCS called DCS:WW2. They did a Kickstarter campaign for this and raised enough money to get things going. A 2015 release is on the cards and should feature northern France in the 1944 timeframe with a gaggle of relevant aircraft. I have some reservations about how this is going to turn out.... The publisher/developer behind IL-2 Cliffs of Dover has teamed up with 777 Studios (Rise of Flight) and is making the next IL-2 title called IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad. The early alpha version is out for pre-purchasers and features the LaGG-3 and Bf-109F, and lots of snow. Full release is slated for spring 2014, but that's a bit optmistic I think. It will have the most famous aircraft from the Stalingrad campaign, and will follow the same business model as Rise of Flight so more aircraft will be released for purchase as the sim develops. On the old IL-2 front, Team Daedelus are still pumping out "official" patches which are pushing this classic even further. We've seen the recent release of the HSFX7 mod which is based on the latest TD patch and adds an awful lot of new aircraft and maps to the sim. Dark Blue World is still going strong, but is based on the older TD version, but has now been augmented by "The Full Monty" mod which adds even more stuff into the sim to make what is surely the most comprehensive and complete WW2 sim anyone is ever likely to see. The horrid mess that was IL-2 Cliffs of Dover has in fact been rescued thanks to the work of a community group called Team Fusion. What they've done with this sim is nothing short of remarkable... they've proved that not only can you polish a turd, you can actually turn a turd into something very good. A nice man by the name of Heinkill has also made a series of single player campaigns to replace the horrible ones that came with the original. If you've got IL-2 Cliffs of Dover do yourself a favour and get the latest Team Fusion patch and Heinkill's Redux Campaigns, you won't regret it. As far as very fast noisy jet go, it's been a slightly more quiet year. The mystery next official DCS module has now been revealed to be the F/A-18C, but there is no word as to when this will be released. Eagle Dynamics are working on getting a new graphics engine called EDGE implemented in DCS. ED also announced that their plans to make a Su-27SM module have been cancelled because the Russian government have objected on national security grounds. Instead they are now going to an Su-72S. On the third party DCS module front 2013 saw the release of the UH-1H and Mi-8MTV modules, which have to rank as among the most advanced helicopter sims ever to be seen on a PC. The MiG-21Bis module looks like it is getting very, very close to release now. One thing that caught my eye was a group called VEAO who are making a Hawk T1 for DCS, this is supposed to lead onto a Typhoon module to come later. What interested me is this Typhoon module is being made with the assistance of the real aircraft manufacturer and will be available in two versions - one "full fat" version for use by real Typhoon operators, and one consumer version with all the classified bits removed. Sounds quite interesting! Still, it sounds like it's a long way off yet. Someone announced they were going to make a high fidelity F-35 module for DCS, and this really set the cat amongst the pigeons as most flight sim fans don't believe for a second that it will be anywhere near accurate given the real thing isn't in service yet and even when it is most of the interesting bits will be very classified. This has led to some speculation that ED are selling out the DCS series reputation for being a high end high fidelity simulation platform. Back in September Seven-G announced they were at 95% with their new F/A-18C sim, but nothing's been said since. Hopefully this one will get released and not vanish into thin air like the much maligned Jet Thunder (1982 Falklands sim) appeared to do in 2013. Some group tried to get crowd funding for a multiplayer based F-35 sim as well, but they didn't raise enough money. They've gone back to the drawing board. So that's it.... if anyone wants to try and resurrect this section of BM please feel free to chime in, and if anyone wants some links to the stuff I've written about above let me know and I'll be happy to oblige!

Not really following this too closely, but from what I've read a lot of people believe Boeing pushed too much new technology into a new airframe at once, so stuff like this is bound to happen. The other theory is that Boeing outsourced an awful lot of the manufacturing and components for this aircraft and the QA has been not as good as previously in an attempt to keep the cost down. Still, a lot of the Boeing cheerleaders on Airliners.net who were harping on about the A380's early problems are rather quiet nowadays

The thing is whenever someone mentions American heavy bombers, 8th Air Force, the daylight bombing campaing, etc etc, just about everybody thinks of the B-17. When in reality there were quite a lot more B-24s and they were quite arguably better bombers. I understand the tendency for American stuff to be touted as being the absolute bestest of everything - the History Channel would have use believe the P-51 won the war single handedly and any other fighter would just literally fall apart in mid air as soon as a Mustang appeared. However, in this case I'm wondering why the B-17 hogs the limelight from the more numerically significant, and probably better B-24. As you say, probably the media. It's an age old question. I'll stick with what Eric Brown says as he's better qualified than most to comment..... I read an interview where he said if he were in a dogfight he'd want to be in either a Spitfire XIV or a Fw190D, unless the dogfight was over Berlin in which case he'd want to be in a Mustang as the former two wouldn't have enough fuel to get him home afterwards! I said very something similar about the B-17 versus the Mossie on a forum full of Americans a few years ago, and it just didn't compute for most of them. You forgot to add that the B-17 had 13 machine guns (the G did at least) and was made out of strategic materials. The Mossie had no guns and was made out of the not very strategic resource of wood. Correct about the He177... fascinating aircraft. In the DVD I mentioned above they had some footage of a He177 taking off and the landing gear retration was rather, ahem, unique. All in all a textbook example of German engineers making something more complicated than it needed to be. Hmmm, makes me want to dig out the 1/48 MPM kit I've got! As always a very insightful post Giorgio! I agree with what you've written. One thing that piqued my interest with the DVD I mentioned in my first post was that they said the B-17 destroyed more German fighters per 1,000 sorties than any other USAAF type, including the fighters. I find that very surprising and I'd really like to see a source for that. I see lots of people point towards the B-17's ability to absorb lots of punishment, but in my mind at least surely it would have been better to avoid that punishment in the first place? Again we are back to the Mosquito being able to carry the same bombload to Berlin requiring only a fraction of the resources. I know if I were flying bombers in WW2 I'd much rather be in a Mossie than a B-17 as the former would be much more likely to keep me out of harm's way than the latter. Can't say I disagree. Most of the stuff that gets trotted out on the likes of the Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc is made by Americans, for Americans, and is very American-centric. I can at least understand that, but in this case the DVD I'm talking about was produced in the UK. Bear in mind there was lots and lots of hyperbole about the "legendary" and "iconic" Spitfire and Lancaster. Again, I'm not trying to turn this into a Brits vs Yanks willy waving thing, I'm just wondering how it came to be that the B-24 has come to be pretty much totally overshadowed by the B-17 when the former was built in much greater numbers and was on paper at least a better bomber.

I got one of those WW2 aircraft DVD box sets for Christmas, the ones with the somewhat subjective and dubious commentaries littered with errors (like the He177 being a "twin engine aircraft"). When they were talking about the B-17 one comment really got my attention - the narrator described it as being the one aircraft, which more than any other can be attributed to smashing the Luftwaffe. Really? Just looking at some of the specs of the B-17 versus other bombers like the B-24 and Lancaster. It would seem that the B-24 could carry a marginally heavier bombload marginally further, cruised faster, and was built in much greater numbers. The Lancaster could cruise faster and carried a much, much greater bombload. The Mosquito could carry a very similar bombload to Berlin, but did it with two engines, two crew and didn't need a fighter escort. So why is the B-17 hailed by many as the best bomber of the war? Genuinely curious as to why this is the case.

Other than the pretty decent Hasegawa (re-boxed by Revell) 2nd generation Harrier kits I'm rather intrigued as to why there is a lack of modern 1/48 Harrier kits? There's the very old Airfix Harrier GR.3 and Sea Harrier FRS.1. There's also the "hybrid" Airfix Sea Harrier FA.2, the Tamiya FRS.1 and the Monogram AV-8A. All of these kits are very old now and I can't understand why none of the manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to do some modern toolings of such an iconic aircraft? Surely they could be expected to sell pretty well? Airfix, are you listening?

I find Alclad Grey primer buffed up with some kitchen towel paper gives me pretty good results. I've also recently cut up an old cotton t-shirt into small cloths for the same purpose.

I imagine there's quite a few members on BM who have one of these... It works wonders when cleaning the shower cubicle with Cillit Bang Lime & Grime remover, which is pretty bloody strong stuff! I'm still waiting on JSP410 to be updated with a new section on household cleaning products.... quite disappointing really given the inclusion of the rather ridiculously titled section "How To Reduce The Effects of a Nuclear Explosion".

A pretty smart vid of the F-35B trials on USS Wasp. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Ki86x...;feature=colike Notice how it didn't burn a hole in the flight deck or blow everyone into the oggin.

As you point out, it's far from an ideal situation. F-35B.... The Good: It doesn't need EMALS! It can potentially be in service sooner than the F-35C. It's cheaper and easier to maintain a cadre of STOVL pilots than CATOBAR pilots for carrier ops. We could have both carriers in use. The Bad: It's less potent than its siblings. It will very likely be more expensive to maintain. USMC aviation doesn't have a huge amount of influence in the States. F-35C... The Good: It's more potent than the F-35B. The USN have a huge amount of political clout that we can ride on the back of. The Bad: We'd be betting the farm on an unproven EMALS. We'd only get one carrier capable of operating the aircraft. It's probably going to take longer to get into service than the B. Decisions, decisions.

If you've gone that far you're clearly pretty serious about flight simulation... In which case I would highly recommend you get yourself a TrackIR setup. It will revolutionise your flight sim experience.

Without a doubt the F-35C should end up having a greater payload/range capacity and greater aerodynamic performance than the F-35B. The problem is the B looks like it will be ready quite a while sooner than the C. I was simply pointing out the F-35B is further down the development road than the F-35C in the sense that is has actually gone to sea - quite an important step for a carrierborne aircraft! You can't be sure what problems will arise until you send it to sea, ultimately the whole point of sea trials. As I said originally, the Super Hornet is a souped up 30 year old airframe. There's no way Boeing can squeeze much more out of that airframe or the F414 engines. If you seriously want to have a fighter that can still fly on the front line in 20 years when Russia and China are exporting the T-50 and J-20 then the Super Hornet is not a good choice. It's already at the back of the pack when it comes to aerodynamic performance. There's no doubt training an air wing for CATOBAR ops is far more demanding and time consuming than STOVL ops. Maintaining a cadre of carrier qualified CATOBAR pilots will be a much greater drain on resources than a cadre of STOVL pilots. Look at the record of defence procurement we have. BAE Systems have the MoD in their pocket. Whatever BAE wants the MoD will ultimately pay. Now there is a huge risk in putting all our eggs in the EMALS basket - it is an unproven technology. I reckon the powers that be reckon that risk is too great to take on given the inability of the defence budget to absorb any unforeseen problems - and let's face it there will be lots. There's also the wee matter of the cost to maintain EMALS which isn't going to be cheap. You're right there, the Americans should have it in service before us, but it's still a big risk for us to commit to an unproven technology that will be absolutely critical to the operation of CVF and effectively dictates our aircraft choice.

Indeed. Russian avionics still lag some way behind Western stuff. See the comment from the Russian AF general at MAKS last year where he said the Su-35's "systems" were still inferior to those of Western aircraft. It'd cost a fortune to integrate Western avionics, at which point we may as well design a totally new aeroplane. There's also the awful reputation the Russian manufacturers have for technical support. Let's just forget about the T-50 for a minute and consider the next best thing the Russians are making - the Su-35BM. How long have they had to develop this now? And it's still not in service? All the same reasons I stated above for the Super Hornet being a poor choice for an air force looking for something to keep them on the front line for the next 30 years apply to the Su-35BM... it's a souped up 30 year old airframe but this time lumbered with Russian engines and avionics Now considering the delays and problems the Russians are having getting the Su-35BM into service, what are the implications for the T-50?

Very nice. However, what on earth are you doing flying the default Microsoft CRJ???? Get some PMDG 737NGX or Flight Sim Labs Concorde action going!

It's going to be typical Just Flight/Aeroplane Heaven - i.e. lacking the details to satisfy purists. However, it's the only Lightning for FS since the old Alphasim one so it's got to be worth a look!

Now I think about it wasn't it both the Nene and the Derwent? If I recall in Empire of the Clouds the author says the German engineers working for the Soviets were unable to make a powerful enough engine and Yakovlev suggested they try to buy some British ones. Stalin apparently said the suggestion was naive and asked who in their right minds would sell their secrets? Well, erm, us actually Of course we all know what aircraft those copied engines went on to power... yet another utterly bafflingly stupid decision made by the British in the post war years that led to us ultimately becoming an aviation backwater.

We pinched lots of ideas off the Germans after WW2. The Me163 and DH108 anyone? Pretty much all of the early work on swept wings and delta wings was done by ze Germans too. Being one of those people who firmly believes it could and should have been a British aeroplane to first break the sound barrier I'll point out the Miles M.52 and Bell X-1. American jet engine design and manufacture was kick started by them reverse engineering the Whittle engine. Likewise I think it was a bit silly to let the Soviets have a few Derwent engines because they went and copied it and put it in the MiG-15. Doh! I think there was an incident in the Cold War when Soviet espionage managed to "acquire" American designs for submarine propellers that resulted in subsequent Soviet subs being much quieter than before. Another one which springs to mind is Werner von Braun's involvement in the American rocket and space programme. Now that fella had a few skeletons in his closet which I think perhaps cast a shadow over the achievements of the Apollo programme.

A few thoughts from me, I haven't had time to read this thread entirely so apologies if I am repeating what others have said.... i) Yes the F-35 is late and over budget. However, it has plenty of company in this respect. Expectations were set unrealistically high for this aircraft and budgets were set unrealistically low - probably a result of the competitive process by which these contracts are awarded. The F-35 is also the first major combat aircraft to be developed in the Internet Age where everyone and their dog has a website or a blog where they can pour scorn - thus contributing to the rather poor public image of the aircraft. If anyone can pull off a project as ambitious as the F-35 it is Lockheed - look at their track record. Also ask yourself when was the last time the Americans put a lemon of a combat jet into service... The F-102 and F-104 of 60 years ago! ii) The much talked about shortcomings of the F-35B are relative. In terms of range and payload it is a step above the Harrier, and in terms of avionics, stealth and combat capability it's in a totally different league. iii) The F-35B is flying from carrier decks right now and by all appearances is actually further along the development cycle than the F-35C. The F-35C still hasn't flown from a carrier deck, and the general consensus appears to be the F-35C will take the longest to get into service. iv) The Super Hornet is a developmental dead end. Yes it's a good aeroplane today but there's not much more you can squeeze out of that airframe. In terms of aerodynamic performance it already lags the Rafale and Typhoon. Do you really want to saddle the FAA for the next 30 years with an aeroplane that is based on a souped-up existing 30 year old airframe? v) British Rafales won't happen. BAE Systems has too much political influence for that to happen. Not to mention the political fallout of a government being seen to eschew British industry and jobs in favour of the French, not to mention the "British" Typhoon! vi) If the UK operates only ONE CATOBAR carrier we will be giving ourselves an almighty operational headache. It's far, far easier, cheaper and faster to keep pilots proficient in STOVL carrier operations than it is to keep them proficient in CATOBAR carrier operations. Look how long it takes a USN carrier air wing to work up for a deployment. Now what do you think the chances are of any potential future adversaries being kind enough to kick off just at the right convenient time for our CATOBAR carrier training cycle? vii) EMALS has not gone to sea yet. If we integrate EMALS onto the QE Carriers we will be the first nation in the world to use this system for real. There is a very large technical risk in doing so and one that our already extremely hard pressed defence budget will not be able to absorb. The estimated costs of integrating EMALS onto the new carriers has already soared above the original 2010 estimate. This I believe is the main driving force behind the proposed switch back to the F-35B. viii) Those lamenting the decline in British naval power may want to consider the following - sometime in the next decade it is planned the UK will be able to deploy a task group consisting of a QE class carrier with an air wing comprised of F-35s, Cerberus equipped Merlins, Lynx Wildcats and WAH-64Ds. Backed up by a couple of Type 45 destroyers and two or three frigates, along with one or two Astute class attack submarines equipped with TLAM. That is a serious amount of naval power that probably only the Americans can exceed.

http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pid=639 Finally! After having to make do with the old FS9 Alphasim Lightnings there's now an FSX-native Lightning. It's available for pre-order now and will be released this Thursday. Got my one pre-ordered and very much looking forward to it!

If you're coming from console flight games then I agree the Strike Fighters 2 series is probably the best choice. It's fairly simple as far as PC flight sims go but still has enough complexity and realism to be satisfying. The SF2 series has several installments and it's possible to install them all over the top of eachother to give you access to all the aircraft and all the theatres in one sim. If you're starting out I'd recommend you pick up SF2 Europe and then download the NATO Fighters 4+ mod from Ace Combat. That should satisfy any cold war jet desired you have. If you find yourself liking the sim you can add the other installments to add more aircraft and theatres. One word of warning though - hang fire on the new Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic. It's still got some teething problems and is best avoided for the time being.

Whilst I'm at it.... ...would somebody somewhere please make a nice new 1/48 Spitfire MkXIV (my favourite Spit along with the IX) because the Academy kits totally failed to capture the fuselage shape and lines. I must admit I'm most surprised that outside of the Classic Airframes kits nobody has done an injected Blenheim. It was the most important British light bomber for the first few years of the war and has been almost totally neglected. I understand the Blenheim wasn't exactly a resounding success operationally, but if Tamiya and Special Hobby can bring themselves to make a 1/48 Buffalo surely Airfix could do a Blenheim!

I understand the argument that the kits would be too large, too expensive and not enough interest to warrant producing, but consider this: MPM have a 1/48 He177. It's a pretty big kit. It's not a terribly well known aircraft and neither did it have a particularly successful or auspicious career. Dragon did a 1/48 Mistel. I know it's a spin off of their earlier Ju88 and Fw190 kits with a few extra sprues, but it's still a large and expensive kit of a pretty esoteric subject. Dragon also did a 1/48 Ba349 Natter. I know it's only a little thing, but they also did the launch tower which resulted in a pretty large box with lots of plastic of an extremely esoteric subject which never entered operational service. Trumpeter did two 1/48 Wellingtons! Trumpeter also did a 1/48 Fw200, again a large and expensive kit of a subject which is well off the beaten track. Trumpeter did a 1/48 C-47 which was pretty expensive and a large model of a transport type, albeit a rather famous one Looking at the growing popularity of 1/32 kits, which are pretty large and often pretty expensive as well I'd say that there is an appetite for such kits. Considering also that the subject of WW2 British bombers has been so neglected in this scale it wouldn't take such a great stretch of the imagination to come to the conclusion that such kits might be rather well received. A few years ago the notion of a 1/24 Mosquito, 1/32 Ju88 and He111, 1/48 Wellington and TSR2 would have been almost laughable. Yet they have all happened and from mainstream manufacturers. I agree the US bombers have been done fairly well by Monogram and others, all the way from the B-29 down to the A-20. Consider this though, if Revell tomorrow released a modern kit of the B-17 or Lancaster in 1/48 that were up to their recent standard would they not sell extremely well given the vintage of the existing kits? Despite the logic against such kits, given all of the above I live in hope we'll see at least a few more British WW2 bombers in 48th.

I just thought I'd share a couple of treasure troves of freeware classic jet airliners for FS2004 and FSX that have been in my bookmarks for years now. They've all been designed for FS2004 and work best in that sim, but they can be made to work in FSX as well. All free, pretty good fun to fly and well worth a look.... DM Flight Sim - http://www.dmflightsim.co.uk/ The site of David Maltby. He's got the Comet 4, Trident, BAC 1-11 and VC10 all on his site, all available with a nice selection of period liveries and some decent panels and sounds. An absolute must for any fan of classic British airliners. Historic Jetliners Group - http://www.simviation.com/hjg/ Complements the David Maltby site extremely well with a huge selection of 707s, 727s, DC-8s, DC-9s, Tristars, plus many more. A bewildering array of liveries, suitable intrument panels and sounds as well. Brit Sim (Formerly Classic British Files) - http://www.britsim.com/ An extensive file library of classic British aircraft for FS2004 and FSX. And finally, well worth a mention is the Tin Mouse Project 737-200 for FS2004 - an extremely well modelled and featured classic 737. Grab the required files from here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/223292-tinmouse-ii-faq/ All of the above are free to download. If you've got FS2004 or FSX and enjoy classic airliners you can get many hours of enjoyment out of the above. I hope this is new to at least some here and you can find something worth your time to download and fly.

I found myself watching Aircraft Stories on the telly this afternoon - yes I know the narrative is often extremely ropey and doesn't always even match up with the aircraft being shown! The particular episode was the one on British bombers. Watching the wartime footage it struck me how few and far between kits are of British WW2 bombers are in 1/48. Outside of the Lancaster, Mosquito and Wellington they're not very well represented in 48th mainstream kits. Yes I know there's the Fonderie Halifax, which by all accounts needs a course of psychotherapy should you ever complete it.... the CA Blenheims and Battle which are like rocking horse poo, and the Sanger vacs which are pretty basic and require pretty extensive scratch building skill and experience. What about the Wellesley, Bombay, Whitley, Hampden and Stirling - none of which I believe have ever been done injected in 48th? What are the chances of seeing more injected WW2 British bombers in 48th?

The latest installment of Third Wire's Strike Fighters series has been released: Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic http://www.thirdwire.com/project_sf2na.htm The star of this installment is the F-14A Tomcat set in a 1979-ish "Cold War gone hot" scenario and you get to fly the aforementioned Grumman cat in the Iceland area facing off against the Soviet Northern Fleet. For those of you not familiar with the SF series they are "survey sims" pitched at those who want to get flying jets in a realistic environment but don't want to have to spend weeks and months studying manuals and learning the ins and outs of every system (i.e. the DCS series or Falcon 4 derivatives). I downloaded it last night but haven't installed it yet. I'll probably do so later and post some screenshots and impressions. Cheers, Nick

I'll admit to being thoroughly unexcited by the prospect of YAM (Yet Another Mustang). From what I can gather it's going to be a P-51D dropped straight into the existing DCS environment. That's right, a Mustang flying around a modern Caucuses region with modern Russian/Western aircraft and weapons systems. Yes I'm scratching my head too. On the brighter side they reckon the DCS Mustang won't delay the next "real" DCS module, which my money is still on it being an F/A-18C.