tttiger

Well, if you're gonna copy one, here's the most famous "Combats in the Air" report of all: http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/cita/brown3.php ttt

Hauk, I would Google machine guns and heat and see if the only mention of heat damage is the barrel. I'm pretty sure that's what you'll find. I don't mind saying I'm wrong (won't be a first) but I do know my stuff on this one. The chamber does not become smaller with heat. It becomes larger. And, as you noted, the brass casing expands to fill the chamber no matter what the size. That's exactly why brass is used. If you're all that fascinated with the Zulu War (and Rorke's Drift) you need to study up on the Martini as well. They indeed did have an extraction problem. The Mark II (Zulu War model, usually an upgraded Mark I) had a stronger extractor and later models had a longer lever to give the shooter better leverage in the extraction phase. That had nothing to do with heat (well, the cook-offs did). The casings did break but because they were made of wound brass rather than a single piece. Case heads also pull off of modern ammunition but the reason usually is incorrect head spacing. That problem certainly can exist in machine guns (they come with a head space "key'" to adjust it). Enough. Do a little research on machine guns and heat. And tell me your experience with real machine guns. And I'm outta this topic. ttt

Uncle Al, Don't be so effing patronizing. I collect military weapons 1870-1970 including machine guns. I fire all of them. I certainly know what a rimmed cartridge is (both .303 British and the 8mm German were rimmed and both were used throughout both world wars; they didn't disappear in 1930, more like the mid-1950s when the 7.62 NATO round was adopted). But having a rim affects only magazine-fed weapons (they have to be loaded in the correct order on the stripper clip). Makes no difference in belt-fed weapons. Rimless (which actually have rims, just not as wide) cartridges such as the .30-06 get just as hot and works just the same in a cloth belt. The rim (or lack of it) has no effect either way. As for "the metallurgy of the time," the rimless .30-06 cartridge showed up in, well, 1906. It has nothing to do with metallurgy or machine gun belts and everything to do with how the rounds fed on a rifle magazine. And it's Lebel, not Labell. Siggi -- The breach (chamber is the correct term) expands when it gets hot as you noted. That means the cartridge fits more loosely, not tighter. Sorry, guys, find me something other than your foolish opinions. Facts would be helpful. There is no such thing as a heat-caused jam. Heat-caused "runaway guns" (cook-offs), absolutely. Quite a thrill when you can't stop the gun. But not jams. ttt

Uncle Al, I can't argue with your imagination. Please cite some credible online sources on "heat jams." The Vickers and the Spandau both were variants of Hiram Maxim's original and very simple design that proved very reliable. The vickers was in service for more than a half century. The heat problem was very real but it was confined solely to the barrel, not the firing mechanism, which certainly was not fragile. And, no, the machine guns of WWI were not "vastly different from the modern age machine gun." In fact, in some cases we still are using the same design. The Browning M2 .50 cal is exactly the same mechanism (it's now easier to change barrels) as when it was invented, yes, in World War I. And it's still the standard NATO heavy machine gun. Back in those days, guns were machined, not stamped and steel, not plastic. Actually, they were both more durable and more expensive to produce. ttt

Actually, Uncle Al, there is a pervasive myth in OFF that machine guns jam because of excess heat. Sorry but that just isn't true. Excessive heat may warp the barrel (thus water cooling in infantry guns) but that only affects the gun's accuracy. it doesn't jam the mechanism. Or excessive heat may cause cook-offs (the round fires without the primer being struck by the firing pin because the chamber is hot enough to ignite the powder). But that doesn't jam the gun. Quite the opposite, it means it won't stop firing when you let up on the trigger. The solution is to twist the belt so it can't keep feeding and firing. Jams can be caused by fouling from powder residue or dirt crudding up the mechanism. Jams can be caused by a failure to extract a round from the chamber (often because the round failed to fire -- defense contractors being what they are and often neglecting quality control -- and did not create the recoil required to cycle the gun's mechanism). If a round does not extract, that means the following round cannot feed into the chamber and you have a jam. Jams can be caused by a faulty belt. If a cloth belt (commonly used in both world wars) gets wet (as in rain), the heat of the gun can cause the belt to swell and fail to feed properly. A WWI plane's guns certainly may jam and the simulation is correct in that respect. Usually caused by bad ammo. Firing short bursts will keep the barrel cooler (and it will remain accurate longer) and certainly allow for better aimed shots. And, yes, you can eliminate jams in the lower right hand corner of the Workshop. But heat itself doesn't cause jams. When you say "heat jams exist," it just isn't true. Made up someone who never fired a real machine gun, I suspect. Look it up. Google is your friend. ttt

Siggi, I spent 28 years in the US Army and served in both Vietnam and Desert Storm, the former as a company commander and the latter as a battalion commander. I guarantee that if you were under my command and willfully disobeyed a direct order to conduct a lawful mission, you would still be sitting in prison (if your buddies didn't shoot you first right on the spot). I'm well aware pilots did and do dump ord when they can't find targets, mainly because it's too dangerous to try to land with it hanging under their wings. Happened all the time in Vietnam. At the same time, I never had a pilot refuse to conduct an air strike when I called them in. I have an audio tape I wish you could hear: A FAC (forward air controller) calling in air strikes on VC in a tree line. He had Army and Marine helicopters and Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers stacked up above him waiting their turn to attack. My uncle was a P47 pilot flying close air support (ground targets) with the 9th Air Force in Europe from D-Day to the end of the war. I used to know many of his fighter group buddies from reunions. These guys specialized in tank busting and locomotive busting. I've seen the wing camera pictures. Very hairy stuff. I can't imagine any of those guys dumping their bombs or rockets to avoid striking a difficult target. Ever. I do "know much about warfare" and not from any books my brother loaned me. Nor from Hollywood. Hey, we can all fly this sim any way we want to (one of the benefits of flying off line). Just don't set yourself up as the guru of "realism" when what you're flying isn't realistic at all. Out here. ttt

Of course they are too powerful. But NEVER say THAT in public! Someone might change them! In real life, as far as I can recall, it's true not a single train or rail yard ever was damaged in a bombing attack in WWI. The bombs and rockets were limited by weight. But, hey, if they give us HVARs for rockets, I'm gonna use 'em. You get some very big explosions! As far as warping away from a target, I'm only saying you CAN do it (unless there are enemy planes around and there often are). Actually, I almost never do, because I like to hang around and look at the mess I just made out of some hangars or barracks (rockets take those out, too). No, I'm not one of the hairy-chested DiD crowd. I fly with labels on for my ancient Vietnam-era eyes and I know from riding in many helicopter cockpits I can see and identify other aircraft much farther away than the 1 mile at which the labels turn red or blue. I am not the one who brags on how "real" he flies. ttt

LOL, Siggi, I'm still rolling on the floor laughing! This is the guy who puts up a Leader Board and writes the rules for it? If you want 2-seaters, both the Sop Strutter and the F2b are excellent fighters (that tail gunner is mean!) and carry very respectable bomb loads. But you get bombs and/or rockets on most of the fighters (except the Tripe). So, yes, you are equipped for ground attack. Too funny! ttt

LOL: Mr. Super-Realism-Dead-Is-Dead and he won't attack ground targets! So much for DID..."aim a few shots from high altitide." Ground attack was very much part of a fighter pilot's job, especially during the 1918 German offensive. And, to me, the mission always comes first. Then I can go hunting.... Try some ground attacks with bombs or -- even better -- rockets. You can take out an entire row of hangars in one pass with those rockets. Nasty! As long as you just make one pass and then get out of Dodge climbing in a tight circle (or as soon as you release your ordnance hit waypoint and warp to the next one) damage is not severe. If you come back for a second pass they will be waiting for you and they will kill you. That's how it really is done: One pass and out! I've only lost one plane in what must be more than a hundred ground attacks. The only one I won't do is attacking a front line target because, frankly, there is no target visible. I've never destroyed anything attacking the trenches. As for EA, Boelcke is Da Man! Only fight when you have an advantage: Numbers and altitude (Mannock, too: "Always From Above!"). Otherwise, run away! As for rank, etc., I always fly as a real historical figure in the same unit during the same dates as the real pilot and I always fly as flight leader. ttt

Sergeant (that's how it's spelled by the way)???? I want Trevor Howard out there spinning my prop! Yeah, I know, every time something doesn't work blame it on CFS3....easy excuse! ttt

Well, I like the new look but giving medals as a reward for a member's number of posts seems a bit of a stretch. We already have far too many "obsessive posters" who feel compelled to jump into every thread even if they have absolutely nothing worthwhile to add to the discussion. Who? Check the post counts a few of us already have in only two weeks of using this forum (which is great, by the way!) Maybe a "You Really Need to Get a Life" medal? ttt

Ctrl A cycles it on and off. You get a message in the upper right hand corner of your screen -- AUTOTRIM ACTIVATED or AUTOTRIM DEACTIVATED. If you are using it, just turn it off before you hit warp (x) Personally, I also turn it off when I start an engagement. I find the planes are much for responsive to controls with it turned off. As far as whether using it is kosher, well, we do have auto-start, don't we? So "realism" already has been compromised as soon as we started the engine. ttt

There's plenty to have subjective opinions about (none of us having flown a real WWI aircraft). The developers gave us a version they considered as close to reality as they could build. But others have different views of "reality." Nothing wrong with any of us disagreeing with the developers or each other about the sim's models. In some cases, we may actually be right. And those of us willing to look stuff up (google is your friend) may actually learn something (like teaching OVS that shoes have soles, people have souls ). What Over50 is suggesting also would require renaming the forum from "General Discussion" to "Fanbois" and would be verrrrry boring IMHO. That sort of defeats the whole purpose of a forum, doesn't it? ttt

Well, the "Black Flight" of Naval 10 was made up of all Canadian pilots. so I suppose even if there weren't Canadian squadrons, there were Canadian flights. That's about as close as you're gonna come. It isn't enough for you Canucks that your pilots hogged almost all of the top spots on the kill lists (Bishop, Collishaw, MacLaren, etc.)? Let the Brits at least own their units even if your guys were their best pilots :yes: ttt

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...identified.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7940540.stm ttt

As mentioned elsewhere, I fly the careers (and use the names) of real historical pilots to see if I can match their historical scores. Hasn't happened yet...those aces were pretty amazing! ttt

Their excuse was truly amazing: No one ever asked. Didn't those little Red Cross drones working in their archives ever wonder what was in all those file cabinets they spent 90 years polishing? They're almost as bad as government bureaucrats...but not quite.... ttt

I think it was the other way around: It turned so fast to the right that pilots would make a right turn to go left because it turned so ,uch faster to the right. I think the OFF Camel is very tame compared to what I've read about it. Apparently CFS3 can't model that much torque. The only problem I have with it is that the visibility is so limited. Otherwise, I think it's a hoot to fly. ttt

I just finished my second campaign flying the Sop Tripe as Raymond Collishaw of Naval 10. I got 25 kills, a decided improvement over the 17 I got the first time I flew as Collishaw. But the real Ray Collishaw got 35 kills during the same period of time! Makes me appreciate how great some of the real aces really were! Just for grins, I'll share how I play OFF. Maybe someone will like the idea and use it or even improve on it (no, we won't have a scoring ladder, my ego is just fine without one): In my flight sim background, which goes back at least 15 years, I never liked dogfight arenas (Aerial Quake). I prefer Coops (human and AI planes working together on the same mission), which have to be played on line. And I really like Dynamic Campaigns as in Falcon 4.0, where if you bomb an airfield you actually close it (for awhile) and you really affect the course of the battle. OFF, however, is an historical sim, which makes makes dynamic campaigning impossible because history already has written the script (a brilliant script, I should add with great thanks to Shred). Soooooooo, how do I make history into a game? Simple. I fly as a real historical character (preferably a top ace) using the dates and unit of his actual career and and compare my record against his. Shred has made this part easy because he puts the unit in the right place on the right date. When the pilot arrives in the unit his name appears on the OFF unit roster. When he departs, it disappears. Those are the dates I use for those pilots. The dates and stats you need all are readily available here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/ For starters, I picked the top scorers for each type of RFC or RNAS aircraft such as Collishaw in the Trips, MacLaren in the Camel, Fullard in the Noop, Beauchamp Proctor in the SE5a and McKeever in the F2b (l also recently finished a McKeever campaign -- I got 27 kills, the real McKeever got 31: These guys were REALLY good!). I don't play Dead is Dead (although I suppose I could, I just don't have the patience for flying hour-long missions without warp or restarting a pilot every time he is killed nor, at 63, eyes good enough to play without labels). Nor do I use "Uncle Al's 23 days in hospital and I call him dead" (owing to a quirk in OFF even a very minor crash can put you in hospital for 23 days). My pilot never dies. But that hospital penalty can be really expensive in terms of my final score. If there are three sorties a day, a 20-day hospital stay costs me 60 sorties in which I could possibly get kills in each. Some of the pilots (or the planes) did not serve all that long (Collishaw only flew the Tripe for four months, making his 35 kills using "Black Maria" truly astonishing), so if I lose even one month that's a big setback in final score. By using a real top ace (as opposed to making up a fictional, say, Captain Norman Bates), I set myself the highest possible goal based on real scores in the real war. I haven't topped a real ace yet but I'm going to try another camapign with Collishaw beginning today. I'm getting closer to beating his record.... A variation on flying a "campaign" is flying a "career" and I do that, too. The trick is to find a pilot who spent his whole career in a single squadron that flew many different planes. So, I have a Captain Robert Little career going (I had to fudge a bit: Little flew the Sopwith Strutter in Naval 3 before going to Naval 8 for the rest of his career. Naval 8 also flew Strutters, so I started Little out in a Naval 8 Strutter). Little, who was the top Australian ace in WWI with 47 victories, flew all of the Sopwiths -- Strutter, Pup, Tripe and Camel -- which makes for a great and very long player career. Similarly, I have a Georges Guynemer career going. Guynemer spent his whole career in Esc. 3 and flew all the Noops and Spads. Actually, he only scored one victory in the Spad 13 before he was killed. Considering I find the 13 impossible to fly, I probably will die before he did. Not saying it's the best concept possible but it's keeping me amused. Kinda fun trying to be better than "The Right Stuff" really was. And, hopefully, it is a salute of respect to the memory of the aces whose names I am using. ttt

Sure, it works fine. You'll often see your "real" counterpart taking off on the same runway (if you're flying with labels on). The computer seems to figure out I'm the fake for scoring purposes. ttt

You guys have done a wonderful job with this sim and the frequent patches are certainly appreciated. But...I gave up on the claims system. I just choose the claims to be automatically awarded. It seems to make no difference whether you just put in the name of a witness or write some long overblown novel. The acceptance or rejection appears to be based solely on statistics and probability. The kills with witnesses everywhere can be rejected. The kills with no one in sight can be accepted. What I do find annoying is the "realism" rating (and the role of the claims choice in it). The definition of "realism" or 'normal" or easy' is highly subjective and are based on criteria that I often don't agree with. Is it "normal' or "realistic" to play without labels when I can't make out details on a plane only a quarter mile away (due to computer graphics limitations, not the design of the sim). Or is it more realistic to have a label to identify a plane that I could easy identify in real life? We can argue about that all day. Is it 'normal' that enemy MG fire from more than a quarter mile away hits my plane with a very high percentage (like three hits in a row on a skinny control cable)? I think not but my rating drops if I don't choose "harder" gunnery. It isn't harder and it isn't more realistic. It's the fantasy of someone who, I would bet, never has even fired an automatic weapon in real life. Is it "realistic" to be awarded a kill when there is no witness in sight or denied a kill when my whole flight witnessed it? So, why give those choices a numerical "realism" rating? The branding and numerical rating of those choices disparages those who don't agree with your definitions. I'd recommend losing those realism ratings and easy-versus-hard labels. Great (Very great!) to have the choices but I don't want my game to "rate' my choices when I make them. I'll play the game the way I believe it to be the most realistic and my choices definitely do not always agree with your ratings. Just a suggestion. Quibbles, really. Still a brilliant sim! ttt

LOL, Good night all! Olham, your English is flawless. Good schools in Germany! My father was a product of the German school system. Fluent in seven languages. I barely stumble by on English and Spanish. And Mrs. Siggi should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! Time to smoke my Pakalolo (I do speak a bit of Hawaiian, all the important words): ttt

By my count, Olham is averaging 16.6 posts per day, Rickety 13.4 posts per day. Uncle Al (The Kiddies' Pal?) isn't far behind. But not up to the Siggi standard at all! He must be good for at least 20 a day. Must be nice to think anyone wants to read so much of what you have to say. You guys make the rest of us feel...well...inadequate. :rapage: ttt

If you're doing all this experimenting in QC, the AI is a lot smarter and more challenging and harder to predict in a campaign. Try that....

LOL, well, next time you're in Phoenix, let me know. I'll sell ya a book, sign it and we can have a few beers. ttt