Whole Lotta

The Boy transitions from the public schools bosom to the private sector officially today.

He's getting his special education high school diploma.

This doesn't change the situation on the ground even a smidgeon.  He'll still attend the private school he's attended the past two years and it will still be paid for by the school district for the next four.

Graduation party tomorrow!

Been flying the electrons off my flight sim.  The A-6A is so choice.  If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

The latest patch cures a stutter that had made one of my other favorites unflyable, the English Electric Lightning.  I say, "super cruise"?  We had that in the fifties, Old Man.

The A-6 comes into the game via a simple modification.  The same sort of mods have also added Canadian CF-5A's and a stable of Starfighters.

Everything you've heard about the Starfighter is wrong concerning maneuverability.  This is first time I've flown a 104 in a sim where I walk away thinking what the pilots had be saying.  Hot ship!  The nice thing about SF2 is that it tones down the reality just a bit so that the sim-pilot gets an effective 500 hours with any of the planes.  You can still get into big trouble, but you have to try.  Not modeling every little oddity and twitch leaves you free to pursue the tactics.  And you have to use the tactics that were successful in the real world to be successful in the game world.

It's the first sim I've played that has a crutch to compensate for the fact that your ass and inner ear can't feel a thing where the plane could still be employed in a realistic manner.  It means I can't use some of the famous departure tactics that the guys at TOPGUN came up with for the F-4 though.