Flying Dr. Evil's favorite jet.

[Sbob]

So, OK. I kinda hijacked the Christmas thread with the Virtavia Tornado F3.

To make up for my error, I forced myself to go back to Sim Market and snag another Virtavia title that always flew under my Radar.
Along the way, I'll give you a quick review and show some of the (minor) tweaks I knocked out in about 10 minutes.

The Tupolev Tu-22K Blinder. (Imagine the Dr. Evil trumpets from Austin Powers at this point)
Why is it Dr. Evil's favorite? We'll get to that in a bit.
So, why did I wait so long? Honestly, the Tu-22 was never a high priority.
Alphasim already did a Blinder back in the FS98-FS2K days and it was..... OK, I guess?
Kaz Ito also uploaded a Blinder back in the FS2002 days, and it got some love in terms of repaints.
But, there was never a lot to write home about. The Blinder did its thing for many years and some of them wound up in museums.
Out of slightly more than 350 Blinders that were built, 70 wound up shredded in craters. One of the more interesting tidbits about
the Blinder was that they carried a large tank of radiator fluid. The fluid in question was highly refined (think 190 proof) vodka/grain alcohol.
So, while the planes had a bad habit of crashing..the crews didn't seem mind so much.

OK, why is the Virtavia FS9/FSX version worth $13?
For an Alpha/Virtavia title, it feels like there aren't many animations.
You get one basic (Soviet) paint scheme with a nifty "ship killer" missile and a very nice Skyworks sound folder.
The panel and VC feel cramped (as it should) for a long-range medium bomber.
There are NO spoiler effects or animations, which is also accurate, so forget about animated bomb bay doors.
Aside from a mostly "straight-out-of-the-box" install that is typical Alpha/Virtavia quality, what's the big deal?

Load it up and switch to an external view, hit <shift>-e and you'll see the three lower crew hatches open downward.
Now for the Dr. Evil moment- hit <shift>-e-2 and imagine those trumpets in the background again.

On the actual Tu-22, the crew always took the elevator to work. This is one of the most unique animations in FS and it's why this plane should be on your drive.
Besides the flaps, gear, and rudder, your only other animation happens when you toggle your "hook" key for the landing lights.
So, how does it fly? Like a big, fast truck. You really want a long runway (about 8 to 10K feet of it) to take off and land.

TWEAKS

Really minimal and limited to the aircraft.cfg file.

For starters, you can perk up your ATC experience by changing the blank lines as follows:

atc_airline=RED
atc_flight_number=80

atc_type=TUPOLEV
atc_model=22

The "atc_airline=RED" line will need a modified EditVoicePack file, which I've tacked onto to this post. You could also try "atc_airline=RED ROCK" (stock FS9) or "atc_airline=RED STAR" (commonly available vcpmod). The rest are stock FS9 voice files.

Next, I did some clean-up with the Contact Points. The nose gear was a little too short and the plane really needed some help turning on the ground. Just edit the [contact points] as follows:



[contact_points]
static_pitch = -0.6
static_cg_height = 13.5
tailwheel_lock = 0
gear_system_type = 1
max_number_of_points = 10

point.0 = 1, 39.000, -1.000, -13.700, 2000.000, 0 , 1.500, 35.000, 0.500, 3.000, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 0 , 250.000, 300.000
point.1 = 1, 39.000, 1.000, -13.700, 2000.000, 0 , 1.500, 35.000, 0.500, 3.000, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 0 , 250.000, 300.000
point.2 = 1, -4.000,-13.700, -13.700, 3000.000, 1 , 2.000, 0.000, 0.400, 2.500, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 2 , 250.000, 300.000
point.3 = 1, -4.000,-16.000, -13.700, 3000.000, 1 , 2.000, 0.000, 0.400, 2.500, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 2 , 250.000, 300.000
point.4 = 1, -4.000, 16.000, -13.700, 3000.000, 2 , 2.000, 0.000, 0.400, 2.500, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 3 , 250.000, 300.000
point.5 = 1, -4.000, 13.700, -13.700, 3000.000, 2 , 2.000, 0.000, 0.400, 2.500, 0.800, 5.000, 5.000, 3 , 250.000, 300.000

point.6 = 2, -20.300, -37.800, -5.000, 1500.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 5.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.7 = 2, -20.300, 37.800, -5.000, 1500.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 6.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.8 = 2, -40.000, 0.000, -7.500, 3000.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 9.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.9 = 2, 70.880, 0.000, -3.951, 1500.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 4.000, 0.000, 0.000


..and that's about it.

 

[zswobbie1]

Thanks for sharing your tweaks. Those elevators are actually quite nice, & unique. FS2004 really has some interesting planes, with unique animations. Remember those GMAX Red Arrows 4 ship formation, that you can change.
As for the Virtavia TU-160 White Swan & Alphasim XB-70 Valkyrie.. 2 of the most gorgeous (if you can call them that) aircraft for our sim.

 

[Sbob]

I have the Tu-160.
It really is a hoot but the problem was "where do you fly it from?".
After a lot of digging I finally found a nice scenery for Engels-2 ("Z25A"), I think it was from Avsim.ru.
With the Valkyrie, I'm temped but I don't know if I'd fly it.

Meanwhile, I'm tracking down bases for the Blinder.
Since this is a Naval Aviation version, I checked over at Wiki and they listed a base called "Saki" on Crimea.
Just when I was thinking I was back to Square One, I took off from UKFF and, literally, flew over UKFI. It looked interesting from the air and I started to wonder..
Son of a gun. Its Saki AB. I think I found this scenery over at Flightsim.com many years ago.
I really need to invest some time in the Tu-22. I tried landing at Saki and wound up in the middle of a town.
Those metric gauges really kick my backside. Plus, the Blinder really does fly like a truck on an icy road.

 

[Mick]

NATO called it the Blinder but it soon acquired the nickname "Blunder." It didn't have the expected speed or range and it was difficult to fly and to maintain. It was built in small numbers and sold to countries like Libya and Iraq. No Warsaw Pact countries got it (I don't know if the Russians wouldn't sell to them or if they just didn't want it) and the Chinese didn't bother trying to copy it. Tupolev produced some excellent aircraft but the Tu-22 wasn't one of them.

 

[Sbob]

Actually, it was Mick who wrote:

it was difficult to fly

You're missing the point.
That's the main reason, plus the elevator chairs.