I always see this type of question posted here in the forums, and it seems no one wants to answer it anymore. Okay, here's how to dump all those excess weight and drag into the slipstream:

1. Look at the bottom left side of your cockpit, near the throttles. You should see a vertical gray strip with twin rows of green triangles. That is the selective jettison panel. The triangles denote a particular pylon/hardpoint/weapon station. The single topmost triangle is the centerline station. The next two triangles below is the left and rght innermost pylons, and so on.

2. Click on the station you wish to jettision.

3. Hit the "jettison selected" key.

That should be it.

Most people do dislike repeating instructions. That's understandable, but hey, let's give these newbies a helping hand, okay?

After, all, we were once like them.

If anybody asks a question regarding this matter, kindly send them a link to this post, okay?

Just being helpful. Thanks.

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To Fly is to Fight!

I always find it difficult to jettison that way whenever I use the LOW detail cockpit. I think a crucial button is missing....?
Yes, Shift-S does the trick, but why the need to press more keys, often during high stress situations?

As some of you may know, I´m the founder of a new flightsim website, www.flightsimcafe.com . The site started off with Falcon 4, now there´s the EAW part in the making. The next part I planned after that was the EECH and the F/A-18 section.

Since I have never played F/A-18 myself I´m looking for someone who is dedicated, has a vast knowledge about F/A-18 and would like to become the director of the F/A-18 section at the Flightsim Cafe.
Since that website is non-commercial I can´t offer you any money of course. The Flightsim Cafe is a site from flightsimmers for flightsimmers, nothing to make money with.

If anyone is interested he or she wouldd become part of the staff and director of the EECH section. He/she will get an own email address at the Cafe and is responsible for everything within the EECH section. Basically that person can do in there whatever he/she wants, within certain limits of course. Look at the Falcon 4 part (this part is mostly done already) if you want to know the general idea behind the Cafe.

Knowledge in HTML, CSS, perl or whatever is not necessary, since I´d do that part. All you need to have is a love to flightsims in general and to F/A-18 in particular and a few hours of sparetime a week (as much as you want, you´d work independently). Also you´d have to answer questions in the forum and in emails of course.

If this sounds interesting, I´d be happy to hear from people who would like to take this job. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have. You can do it here or you can reach me at andre@flightsimcafe.com

Thanks a lot!

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You can run, but... why die tired?

Say you're on a long translant flight to the Paris airshow, and you're groping around trying to find the apple in your box lunch and, at the same time, trying tune in the hottest rock station in the UK. You're mind is not totally focused on the flying tasks at hand because your wingie is about to spill the real gouge on the hot little morsel he picked up at Rogue's in Virginia Beach the night before. Now, you accidently knock over your can of Coca-Cola and reflexively lunge for it to keep it from spilling in your lap and making a big sticky wet mess you'll have to sit in for another 4 hours. In all this commotion, you inadvertently hit the jettison button and drop your external tanks. Now, that would ruin your day. But thanks to the foresight of the good folks at McDonnell-Douglas, that doesn't happen, because they anticipated just such an event and built in multiple-switch safety.

To overcome the problem of missing switches in low cockpit detail, program the command to your keyboard that changes the cockpit detail in the sim. Then you can increase cocpit detail to get at those pesky absent switches when you need to.