Siggi

A lot of the Dragon molds are old Trimaster ones, and Trimaster were notorious for bad fit and poor dimensional accuracy. There used to be not a lot of choice, which is why a lot of people made do with Trimaster and Dragon for certain planes, but these days Hasegawa and Tamiya have covered many more types. Personally I'd rather buy a top-notch kit and spend the extra time making it better, than getting a poor kit and spending the extra time just making it acceptable. Difficult kits foster a good discipline though.

Probably roosting.

Not to the standard of Hasegawa or Tamiya I'm afraid.

One would like to think so. I suppose the thing to do is test it and see how the planes behave in various ways. I'm going to see if I can shear-off the landing-gear on a house roof.

Thanks Olham. :) Eduard do a series of 1/32nd WW2, but the quality of the plastic in terms of fit is pretty dire.

Given their lack of surface detail they are incredibly hard models to master. Compared with WW2 and later subjects I've seen very few good WW1 examples, and even the good ones don't quite make it. I may be brave enough one day to have a go, but given the number of good WW2 kits available (much more satisfying to master) it's unlikely. Last model I made was this 1/32nd Zero, about three or four years ago: http://s499.photobucket.com/albums/rr356/Langnasen7/zero/ Botched the starboard side, port side was ok (different techniques).

You can get bars to at least the first medal in your nation's series (not sure about the others).

Battlefield booty, Ardennes xmas of '44.

Stiffy, I wouldn't worry too much about the colour/shade etc of the strides, the real chaps tended to get their kit made up personally from different tailors, who used different materials and colours.

I am amongst the ranks of the loopy too I think. This was my skirmishing outfit, sans the Knights Cross (couldn't risk a BB on that). Everything is repro except the helmet (steel shell only is original), boots, shirt and blouse (shirt and blouse are under the smock). The trousers are repro material but I made them myself (and busted the wife's sewing-machine in the process). The lapel-tape on the blouse was from a local heberdashery. The Knights Cross is about as authentic as a repro can be, it's a silver frame on an iron core (per the real ones) and made/assembled using actual WW2 jigs recovered after the war. I was told off, for being "a big intimidating nazi, and you'll offend our jewish members" (they didn't give a hoot actually).

Nicely put.

I'm finding it just as the real chaps often reported it, the longer I've flown this sim the easier it's become to spot a/c at long range

Not enough air-combat in it for my liking.

Langnasen from the 190 Dora, yes. And I have a long nose for real too. Nice description of your first live dogfight, sounds like a classic experience.

I still have the original DiD logo, made by Jetlag back in the year 2000. Bloody nora. I think we started with SDoE. Or actually B17...?

Suh-weet!

Bloody hell!

I joined the group, but I don't think anyone will know me from Adam.

My Saiteks do the job brilliantly, but I've had them jam two times which necessitated taking about 30 screws out the bottom to open them up and fix the problem.

Indispensable in my opinion. Full control vs half control.

FRAPS, worth every dollar. http://www.fraps.com/

Gonna be a bugger to see that against clouds.

Vehicle4, best game-track of all time. GRID has a good intro track (Queens of the Stone Age number), almost but not quite as good as V4.

All the German bombers I've come across so far fight like fury, more so than the Halbs, which all seem to be flown by sprogs. I seem to remember the Fe2s carrying on like nothing was happening, though at least they have gunners who fire back. I use the same tactic myself though and maintain course, giving the flight's gunners the best option for defence. I sure wouldn't do it in a Be2 though.

The Halbs make one pass on our Strutters, then clear off. Just finished my last mission (138 minutes!) and a lone Halb climbed up to our altitude but declined to engage and just shadowed us for a while. Which is pretty damn realistic, considering there were five of us.