TUTORIAL "HEXING 101" PART 4 Weapons string continued. the 7th and 8th bytes are related to the muzzle velocity, for most .50 cals it is 8B 08. The 9th byte is the firepower, in our case 06. The 11th byte controls how much ammo is counted down per trigger pull. 01 or 02 is normal. I have tried higher values, it does not give you extra firepower, it just gets rid of ammo faster The 13th and 14th bytes control the "drag" the weapon gives to the plane. Internal weapons are normally zero, big fat bombs and wing pods usually have a value of 32 (hex) or 64 here. BTW, I have a zip called "HEXWPNS.ZIP" that contains all the weapons strings for the German and US planes. DOING A "HEX DUMP". The best thing you can do with PCTools is to select a file, go to the file options, go to print file menu, but instead of printing it normally, select the "print file in HEX and ASCII". This is called doing a hex dump of the file. All the byte values, addresses, and ASCII equivalents will be printed for the file. If you want to hex, you need a map. Do a hex dump of every original .SPC file. This allows you to quickly jump back and forth and visually compare the files. ACHMER FLIGHT TESTING: How do you know what is what? Well, make a "map" of the SPC file. I photocopied the .SPC printout of a Bf109 and had it enlarged. As locations were listed as to what they did, I would block off that section and write in the meaning (ie what that byte or series of bytes did) Pretty soon, there were just a few gaps left. My .SPC map now has about 80% of the locations discovered. Again, as Keith taught me, a basic knowledge of hexidecimal math will open many doors. Most speeds and many values are direct conversions from hex to decimal, and that's how they are found. For example, the LF SWOTL rulebook states that the different type planes (jet rocket prop) have a different liftoff speed, and gave the values of 100, 135 I think. By comparing all the .SPC files, I found this area. Some are NOT direct comparisons, rather a relative value. Well, how do you find these?? By use of the "Rosetta Sone", the B17 bomber. The B-17 is noticably hideous in almost all flight characteristics when complared to a P51D or a FW190. Plug in the value of a certain location, let's say debug 19E-19F, into the B17 from a P51. Normally, this is a 00 F0 in the P51, and 00 34 in the B17. The actual decimal equivalent numbers are meaningless...it's the relative values that matter. To each other, they are relative at the ratio of 15 (for the 00 F0) to 3.25 (for the 00 34). Now fly the modified B17, and as you "put it through its paces" you'll discover it suddenly has a super rate of roll, ie the wings waggle much faster than before. Some relative value discoveries are a little more subtle, though. The bottom line is, experiment! No matter how badly you goof up the .SPC file of your test aircraft, a simple copy command from the .BAK file returns all to normal. It helps to make the decimal conversion of a certain area for every plane, then logically try to figure out what it does before testing. I list the values for every plane in a certain spot, then try to make sense of it. For example, the location (000D) had all 00s for the American planes, and every German plane had a 01 there. Aha! The "IFF" byte. Some files are therefore simple on/off values, usually 00 vice 01. NEXT-EASY HEX JOB.