FE2 career

[Bullethead 12]

So you don't fly from the cockpit - do you use chase view?

 

No, I fly it from the cockpit. As 77Scout says, I use the ] and [ keys to zoom my view in and out, and have it as far out as it will go in the Fee. You can see everything that way: your target, your front gunner, which way your rear gun is pointing, Mata Hari's picture, and also the pack of smokes. The smokes are important--they're a flight instrument. They work just like a "ball" slip indicator.

 

I am having fun with the Fee - the gunners are quite good, better than I am I reckon. Unfortunately my pilots never get back to base so I haven't tried a landing yet. Mostly I am not shot down but lose control - the Fee does not seem to come out of an inverted spin easily Either that or the wings get so much damage they fall off.

 

You shouldn't get upside down in a Fee. Fortunately, it's not easy to do even on purpose so the situation rarely arises . However, it will fly without one of the lower wings, although you have to hope you land on something soft because you can neither arrest your descent nor stop yourself going around in a big circle.

 

Turns in the Fee are best done with mostly rudder. You've probably noticed that the Fee is so stable that you have to hold aileron in throughout a turn to keep it banked. But then it wants to keep banking when you level out. Strange. In any case, your ACM will mostly involve flat and oblique turns. The Fee's turn radius is very short if you use a lot of rudder, so you should have no problems turning inside Albatri. And if you ever get an accelerated stall in a hard turn, just slam the stick forward while leveling out and you'll be back under control instantly.

 

Hey!... that Fe has a fixed forward firing gun!... can we getone of those?

 

That is an FE2d, not the FE2b we have. The D model had a redesigned nacelle with a bigger Rolls engine. Note the huge radiator behind the pilot instead of the small side radiators of our Beardmore. Also, the pilot's seat was lowered so he wouldn't block the radiator, and the main landing gear were moved forward, so that the nosewheel could be dispensed with. And as you say, the pilot had a fixed forward gun (lucky bastid). All this stuff added a of of weight, so the D had a greater wingspan to carry it all. But the extra weight and drag absorbed all the power of the bigger motor, so the D's performance wasn't really any better than the B's, and the main difference in game terms would be the fixed gun.

 

I'm really not sure the fixed gun would be that useful in the game, however. The Fee is so slow and unmaneuverable that I figure it would be next to impossible to get the sights on a target anyway, except perhaps for a balloon