Tony and J.D: First Off I want to offer my congratulations on the fine job the two of you are doing with Air Power. Our group waits with bated breath for each issue. We've been playing a lot of double blind games with a referee, using a radio shack intercom system. With radio rules and a few other modifications, it makes the game even more realistic. Boy do those visibility arcs ever start being important. F-4s and F-14s start to really make up for their inferior dogfighting performance. I'll write it all up soon, with instructions, supplementary rules, and anecdotes, some of which are only amusing if you weren't the victim. As a final note, I hope you can restrain the rampaging apostrephe's which are appearing unbidden in your page's. Those things are like a blight on the land. Remember, they appear in posessives, and contractions, not in plurals. And: it's means it is; its belongs to it. Yours, Ethan Mckinney, Los Angeles CA. Thanks Ethan, as you can tell, being a pilot has ruined my grammer. Sounds like the intercom stuff would be good fun. We look forward to hearing about it and if you would, please include the approximate cost for setting up such an intercom system. Regards, J.D.W. Dear Tony, I would like to thank you for the fantastic job you and J.D. are doing. It is better to be late than never arrive at all. Just as soon as I figure Air Power has gone undone, two Jam-packed issues arrive and I get nothing done for a couple of days as I read and reread every article. Included is my check with my subscription renewal for two years. Don't let J.D. and others bug you about your one point landing. Years ago in "Air War" I put an F-4 into the drink while pulling out of a vertical dive. Since then I have become more aware of the ground and other curnolo-granite, and have succeeded in dragging some 15 pursuing aircraft down into the weeds and left them there. Recently, in a mercenary campaign, I was flying a Crusader strike mission. I had rockets and 2 missiles on each side. During the fight I got behind a MiG that was chasing our Iron Hand ship. I couldn't get in to parameters for a missile shot so I lit off one of the rockets. The MiG went defensive and I got into parameters. Is this legal or do you have to pull J.D. off the ceiling? I thought it was reasonable. Well, gotta go now, I've got six B-52's with a date in Hanoi tonight. Sincerely, Henry Tyler, Tucson AZ. Henry, taking players with rockets sounds okay to me as long as your gaming buddy's don't mind. The tactic was used in the Air Strike tourney by the winner, Mark B., so it's really okay with me. Hey, and we don't kid Tony much about diving into the dirt, especially now that there is an honorary award for such actions presented regularly at Origins each year. Take care, J.D.W. Dear Sir, I am looking forward to further issues, particularly those featuring early aircraft (I mostly play solo, so missile and ECM combat gets complex - I prefer gunfire dogfights). I hope that JDW relents and reverses his decision not to include props and helos. After all, Bears, Broncos, Sandys and Pucaras are as much a part of modern warfare as Tomcats and Tornados. And Air Strike has already provided simple versions of Hinds and Apaches, so you already admitted that helos are important. It doesn't matter how good they are (and is a Corsair really so much slower or less maneuverable than a laden A- 10 or MiG19), they should be there! Couldn't simpler Data Cards be designed? Another plea - any chance of some strategic units? I'm looking forward to tryout some B-52 or even B-2 strikes! Better yet, the Vulcan "Black-Buck" missions! Oh yes, and how about an update on the F-117, now that it's in the open? Anyhow, thanks for your good work, I look forward to hearing from you and receiving some more Air Power. Yours Faithfully, Wulf Corbett, Allanton Scotland. Thanks Wulf for your support. My reluctance to put time into doing props is based on my belief that the Air Sup. game scale doesn't suite them. I am working on a W.W.II A/C game at a much different, and unfortunately incompatible with Air Sup., scale but which will really bring out the differences between W.W. II fighters. Yours Truly, J.D.W. Gentlemen: (Who? Us?) My general thoughts on a national rating system are that other than as general info, a national rating should confer no advantage at a tourney table anywhere. National ratings are limited to those who participate, and benefit those who can and do travel to national-level events, and no one else. National ratings suffer in that unless you have standards for the tourney itself, the ratings system is likely to suffer from inaccuracies; information garnered from local tourneys will only give forth individuals who stand out in their local crowd-not national level ratings. I am unlikely to ever be at a national meet, so I'm not overly concerned one way or the other. I am just pointing out that your national ratings proposal will not necessarily provide an accurate assessment of players. But I will agree with your proposal in that a system awarding players for victory (and not for degree of victory) over time will spread the field by ability. Thank you, Mitchell Schwartz, Medway MA. Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 17 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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