Vasco

The "boss" is remarkably happy! Honestly, Red-Dog and Axgrinder; the effort you've both put into these skins is very much appreciated. I'm going to go with Red-Dog's but 20 campaign points have been awarded to you both for the work you've contributed. Thank you both, Vasco

Hi guys, Here's a question for the organisers of this momentous event and an offer of assistance from the MP community ....... If you could all fly exactly the same campaign mission as the other members of your squadron or jasta, rather than fly one randomly generated by the game on the day/time in question, would you want to do it? Vasco

Mein Herren! The British clocks went back by one hour today and we're now on GMT. The games scheduled for 2PM EST will now start at 6PM UK time rather than 7PM (US and Canadian players are unaffected). Fellow Brits, make sure you're there on time. Vasco

Hmmmm, Excellent picture composition, good use of lighting, high-resolution in-game graphic setting, no interface, tactical display or labels showing ....... Red-Dog, I think you've just become the online campaign's official photographer! All in favour say aye! Vasco

Mein Herren! Please find below the daily report covering Jasta 4 operations for the 7th November 1917: Aircraft Allocation Jasta 4 had 16 serviceable aircraft serviceable for operations during the day. The names of the pilots allocated personal machines are listed below: 3 Fokker DRI - (Vasco, von Baur, Griphos) 6 Albatross DV - Axgrinder, Spawnrider, Dutch, Osten, Leadtongue, Burning Beard) 4 Albatross DIII OAW - (Siting Duck, SRC, Blue781, 1 spare) 3 Pfalz DIIIA - (Stumpjumper, Red-Dog, von Dudley) Mission 1 - Strike on Enemy Railhead - T/O 10:31 Piloten Stumpjumper - Mission Commander Sitting Duck Burning Beard von Dudley von Baur Spawnrider Osten Red-Dog SRC Following up on the reports that large numbers of enemy reinforcements were being moved directly to the front by rail, the Jasta was tasked to provide escort for 5 DFWs of Ss-28b for a strike on the Amienterres railhead. As the 2-seaters had only recently been assigned to the sector and were unfamiliar with the location of the target, the Jasta Commander detailed Burning Beard to fly with Ss-28b and lead them to the target. The Jasta lifted from Marckebeeke in heavy rain as soon as the DFWs were seen passing overhead and climbed directly towards them. The Jasta Commander was first to reach altitude and signalled Burning Beard to orbit several times in order for the remainder of the Jasta to catch up and assume escort position, which was proving difficult with the heavy cloud cover and driving rain. During the third orbit of the 2-seaters, flak was seen bursting just under the cloudbase some 8Km northeast of the formation. The Jasta Commander turned back to the relative security of the DFWs guns and waited for the remainder of the Jasta to catch up. The enemy aircraft were identified as 3 Sopwith Camels which flew by leaving the DFWs unmolested. Elements of the Jasta were by this time closing on the DFWs and started to move into the designated escort positions around the DFWs when another large formation of Sopwith Camels, possibly attempting to catch up with the ones that had just passed overhead appeared. These British pilots were more observant than the earlier formation and spotted the DFWs hugging the cloud and comenced an attack just as elements of the Jasta were closing to escort range. The Jasta Commander turned towards the diving Camels to buy the 2-seaters a little more time. In the ensuing combat, the Jasta became fragmented as the battle which started just short of our own lines spilled over the skies as the combatants became locked together and descended over a wide area. Sitting Duck sent a single Camel down in flames, but took damage himself and landed successfully on our side of the lines; Stumpjumper, who had to this point lead the mission lost a lower wing but still managed to get down safely. In the resulting confusion, the DFWs managed to avoid the attention of the Sopwiths and crossed the lines by Amienterres with Burning Beard in the lead. The Jasta Commander by this time was still running from 3 of the Sopwiths that had broken away from the attack on the DFWs. By dropping through cloud and heading west over the lines, he had hoped to either lose them entirely or string them out so the remainder of the Jasta could pick them off individually. However, the British pilots exhibited a high degree of discipline and co-ordination and stuck with the Jasta Commander's DRI right down to the ground. With only 500m of altitude remaining and no support in sight, the Jasta Commander kicked the DRI into climbing rudder turn and rounded on the Sopwiths. A snapshot at the leading Camel as it passed by the nose of the DRI sent it spinning into the ground with the pilot dead at the controls; the second fell to 3 bursts as the DRI completed a climbing half-loop and raked the Sopwith's belly; the third eventually fell to sustained fire when its top wing detached and the aircraft plowed into the ground just short of an enemy observaition position. As the Jasta Comander pulled back on the stick to avoid the same fate as the last of the Sopwiths, his front view was fliied with the enemy drakken being hauled down on the winch. The only option was to fly through the balloon with the trigger depressed and pray that the balloon flamed before the DRI collided with it. Breaking right as the hydrogen ignited, a somewhat singed DRI hedge-hopped back towards friendly lines. Red-Dog and von Dudley in the 2 remaining Pfalzs' continued towards the target to execute straffing runs on the railhead in support of the DFWs and witnessed the railhead erupt into flames as Burning Beard's bombs found their mark. Unfortunately, Red-Dog was lost when hit by groundfire on egress. The remainder of the Jasta returned to the airfield in ones and twos until all members were accounted for. The photograph below demonstrates the damage inflicted by Burning Beard's strike. Mission 2 - Scramble! - T/O 14:31 Piloten Burning Beard von Baur von Dudley Osten SRC Sitting Duck Red-Dog Stumpjumper In the deteriorating weather the groundcrews were still preparing the aircraft for the last scheduled flight of the day when the telephone rang in the Jasta Commander's office. The divisonal artillery regiment located 10Km to the southeast of Markebeeke had just been straffed by a full squadron of RNAS Sopwith Camels. As the British aircraft departed to the nothwest towards our airfield, the Regimental Commander asked if we would be willing to 'even the score' on behalf of the batteries. The alarm was shouted across the airfield and pilots ran to their machines as the groundcrews waved their arms to indicate which ones were serviceable and able to take to the skies. Chocks and tools were hurled from the aircraft as props were swung and engines sputtered into life just as the first flight of RNAS machines appeared over the airfield. The first off the ground was the Jasta Commander, who barely had time to identify the markings of the first Sopwith Camel when rounds started to tear up the fabric of his machine. As he banked hard to the right away from the other aircraft lifting behind him, a round found the oil tank and sprayed the contents over the windshield. Although contrary to training, the Jasta Commander continued the turn with a failing engine and executed a downwind landing by the hangars just as his engine cut out. He then sprinted over to an unassigned Albatros DVA which Gefreiter Klein had already started seeing the DRI touch down hard in order to get back into the fight. In the pouring rain the melee that ensued was reminicent of a knifefight in a poorly lit Hamburg brothel; anything that could be thrown at an opponent (including some of the less attractive whores) was employed in the fight for survival. The 6 RNAS Camels had the advantage of height and speed, and just as the Jasta thought they had the measure of the opposition, a second flight of 8 Sopwiths joined the fray. The following report has been pieced together during the debriefing after the event. Osten accounted for one of the Camels before being seen to fall to the guns of another; Burning Beard brought down 2 in seperate engagements; von Baur accounted for 1 when his DRI collided with it just above the ground; Sitting Duck destroyed 1 and assisted in the kills on 2 others. Stumpjumper was the only member of the Pfalz flight to survive, having ditched after accounting for 2 of the Sopwiths. The Jasta Commander accounted for 3 and is eternally grateful to Sitting Duck and other members of the Jasta, who came to his aid when enaged in a low-level turnfight with a Sopwith who was hanging on his tail at less than 20m. After the last of the Jasta pilots had either landed or walked back from the remains of their aircraft, the Adjudant ordered that the wrecks be serched to identify the identities of the fallen foes. Although the cost was heavy, sitting on the Jasta Commanders desk are the dogtags of 5 13 Squadron RNAS aces; George Mackay, John Finder, John Green, Colin Brown and Leonard Slatter. Mission 3 - Freijagd - T/O 16:00 Piloten Osten - Mission Commander von Baur Sitting Duck Spawnrider Stumpjumper Red-Dog von Dudley With the weather condition deteriorating badly and the limited number of serviceable aircraft, Osten instructed the pilots available to perform individual sweeps just short of our own lines. Pilots paired up and flew towards the lines at the speed and altitude best suited for their aircraft. von Baur, whos DRI's engine had been performing erraticly throughout the day turned back shortly after take off. Osten, Spawnrider and Sitting Duck pursued a formation of RE8s, with Spawnrider accounting for 2 and Osten and Sitting Duck another each. Unfortunately Spawnrider was reported to have collided with a lone Nieuport in a seperate engagement later in the mission; his tally standing at 6 enemy aircraft before his death. von Dudley crashed after an engagement with a flight of Sopwith Camels which he tried to avoid as he was unsupported, and the Jasta Commander flamed a lone RE8 and had to execute a forced landing due to engine damage afterwards. After the light and conditions had deteriorated to the extend that it was inpractical to continue, the remaining pilots either returned to Marckebeeke or landed at adjacent airfields. The Jasta have insisted that the Jasta Commander submits his kills along with those of the active pilots. The tally is as follows: Vasco - 8 (Ace) Sitting Duck - 3 Burning Beard - 3 Stumpjumper - 2 Submitted respectfully on 8th November 1917, Vasco Officer Commanding Jasta 4

Red-Dog, Have you thought about slipping out to PC World and buying a new mike today? Vasco

Ignore - where's the bloody 'Delete Post' button?

Mein Herren, Following on from Stumpjumper's announcement regarding the file required for Sunday's game (and in order to limit it's availability outside of the MP community), the link to the installer can be found in the 'Topic' heading in the 'Over Flanders Fields briefing' channel on the Black Haze TS server - just click on the channel (no need to move into it) and the link will appear on the right of the TS client. Download and install the file and you should be good to go. Please remember to go to Workshops in-game and click the BACKUP TO ONLINE button to ensure that a default plane set is not loaded when you enter MP. This file will not affect your offline game. In order to remove this file, just click on the Uninstall executable in your 'Aircraft' folder to be able to play online games with anyone outside of the Sunday sessions. All players intending to particpate in Sunday's game must have this file installed before 2PM EST on Sunday. We will not halt the start of the session if you have not done this. Furthermore, Stumpjumper (possibly Sitting Duck) and I will be available on TS to help you test your new install prior to the game if you wish it. Many thanks to Sumpjumper for putting together this file. Regards, Vasco

I've been playing the Total War series since Shogun and supported Creative Assembly right up until Empire. The game was buggy as hell on release (it still crashes on my system) and rather than spend time fixing it, they started to develop a new full-priced game that by rights should have been an add-on to Empire. I am less than impressed and won't be purchasing Napoleon until it's in the bargain bucket and priced like the add-on it should have been. Vasco

Except I've noticed an error - add Osten - 1 to the list of living pilots with kills. Vasco

Tallyman, CFS accounts no longer work, nor can you set up a new one. If you want to find a multiplayer game, log on to the Black Haze teamspeak server and grab anybody there. Vasco

Mein Herren! Please find below changes to the established rules of the regular Sunday Online Campaign sessions AKA 'Vasco's Volunteers' Scoring System In the multiplayer campaigns we have been participating in to date we have continued using the scoring system developed by Winston DoRight for the 'Winston's Early Birds' sessions. Unfortunately, the system heavily favours regular attendees over acheivements in battle. For that reason I have changed the scoring system as follows: Mission participation - 2 points Acting as mission commander - 2 points For mission success (for every player surviving to reach the objective) - 2 points For each confirmed kill - 1 point For landing at a friendly base or successfull ditching in friendly territory - 1 point For landing at the home base at the end of the mission - 2 points There will also be points awarded/deducted for actions observed by the organiser during the mission e.g. going to the assistance of a fellow player in trouble, causing the deaths of flight members due to poor decision making, etc. Mission Participation Due to the increasing popularity of the Sunday sessions we are about to hit the 16-player cap hard coded into the game. Stumpjumper and I have discussed a variety of alternatives to ensure maximum participation and fairness including running a 'mirror' session at the same time on a Saturday and allowing players to nominate which session will count towards their campaign score, while allowing as many people as possible to participate in both sessions (priority going to those players who are flying in their 'nominated' session). Before this can be accomplished we are going to need a volunteer to organise and run these 'mirror' sessions on a Saturday as I cannot give up my Saturdays as well as Sundays to acheive this. In the meantime, von Baur made a suggestion that we can use as an interim measure until Saturday sessions are established: In the event of having more than 16 players assembled for any mission, players who die during the mission will sit the next one out (in the order that they died) to allow players who have not flown to participate. e.g. 18 players assemble for the first sortie. 16 players participate and 5 die during the mission. The first two to die will sit the next mission out to allow the players who have not yet flown fly in the second mission of the session, etc. Rinse and repeat. I hope you'll bear with us until the 'mirror' sessions are established to allow these online campaigns to be accessible to as many members of the OFF community as possible. Personalised Skins Stumpjumper and Sitting Duck have both been working hard to find the least obtrusive way of importing personalised skins into the game for players acheiving ace status. To that end Stumpjumper has compiled an installer that will add new aircraft into each player's 'aircraft' folder. This installer also adds an uninstaller executable to quickly remove these files so that client compatability is not affected when playing online outside of the campaign sessions. These installers have been tested by various members of the online community (thank you guys) and no aircraft mismatches have occurred. The installer will be required for the session on the 24th October and will include aircraft for all those who have acheived 5 contiguous kills without dieing during this campaign. We are also adding new aircraft for those who acheived ace status during the 94th Aero campaign as these people did not have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labours at the time. Details of where to download the file from and installation instructions will be posted in this forum in plenty of time before the 24th October. Sitting Duck, Stumpjumper and I will also be haunting the Black Haze TS server to assist anyone who needs it and to test players installations if they so desire. A new file will be posted everytime another player acheives ace status for the session following. We will also allow players to continuing flying their personalised aircraft during the campaign even after their current pilot dies to prevent constant deletions and additions to the installer. I hope you agree with the changes we have introduced to the Online Campaign and it increases your enjoyment of the experience. Regards, Vasco

Tallyman, Follow Red-Dog's instructions and the executable will run fine however, Mickeysoft decommissioned the CFS3 MP servers a while back. You'll have to join in one of the 'private' games (hosted from a player's PC) we run ourselves. Jump on to the Blake Haze TeamSpeak server and talk to anyone there and we'll help you get setup properly for MP. Welcome to the community! Regards, Vasco

Mein Herren! Please find below the daily report covering Jasta 4 operations for the 6th November 1917: Aircraft Allocation Jasta 4 had 16 serviceable aircraft serviceable for operations during the day. The names of the pilots allocated personal machines are listed below: 3 Fokker DRI - (Vasco, von Baur, Griphos) 6 Albatross DV - Axgrinder, Spawnrider, Dutch, Osten, Leadtongue, Burning Beard) 4 Albatross DIII OAW - (Siting Duck, SRC, Blue781, 1 spare) 3 Pfalz DIIIA - (Stumpjumper, Red-Dog, von Dudley) Mission 1 - Attack on Enemy Observation Ballons - T/O 08:15 Piloten Axgrinder - Mission Commander Sitting Duck Burning Beard von Dudley von Baur Spawnrider Dutch Osten Leadtongue Stumpjumper Red-Dog Griphos SRC Blue781 Spawnrider The Jasta was tasked to destroy a number of observation ballons seen aloft approximately 5 Km southwest of Amienterres. A certain amount of confusion between the pilots occurred during take off and lead to at least one minor collision during taxiing. This caused a delay while the damage was assessed and repaired prior to mission start. One pilot (von Dudley) had to take the spare Albatross DIII OAW as his Pfalz was considered too damaged to fly in the operation. The formation set out on a westerly heading towards the front lines and should have executed a dogleg southwest to bring them over Amienterres and the target. However, the formation had difficulty matching airspeed with the diffent types of aircraft in the formation and became scattered in the cloud. During an attempt to reform, elements of the formation were bounced by a large formation of British Nieuports which attacked through a gap in the cloud cover. During the dogfight 1 kill was confirmed for Spawnrider. Other members of the formation reported several collisions between Jasta members and the Nieuports because the combat took place in and out of cloud. I am sorry to report that von Baur, Leadtongue, Osten and Sitting Duck were victims of these collisions along with a like number of enemy planes. Axgringder, Blue781 and Stumpjumper were also lost during the engagement. With the remainder of the formation scattered, individual pilots continued across the lines in search of targets of opportunity. Both Red-Dog and von Dudley located the observation balloons and attacked seperately flaming 2; von Dudley's aircraft was seen to take fire from the ground and became uncontrollable. The machine was seen to crash in the vicinity of his kill. The surviving aircraft made their way back to the Marckebeeke airfield individually. Mission 2 - Patrol over Ypres - T/O 11:36 Piloten Vasco - Mission Commander Burning Beard von Baur von Dudley Griphos SRC Axgrinder Sitting Duck Red-Dog Leadtongue Spawnrider Stumpjumper As the Jasta had experienced difficulty maintaining formation during the previous sortie, the Jasta Commander (although contrary to policy) lead the sweep personally. Pilots of each aircraft type formed together while climbing in a right-hand circuit around Markebeeke until an altitude of 7,500' was attained. The Jasta Commander then ordered the various flights into position for the transit to the designated area for the patrol; placing the Fokker DRIs with him in the centre of the formation, the Albatross DVs and DIII OAWs high and to the left and right respectively and the Pfalz DIIIAs 2 Km ahead and lower than the main force. Using the DRIs with their low speed as the formation centre, the other flights were sufficiently seperated and able to weave rather than cut their airspeed to match the slower aircraft. In this way the integrity of the group was maintained throughout the sortie. Just prior to crossing our own lines into enemy territory, Stumpjumper spotted flak to the north and signalled enemy contact; these aircraft were identified as a large formation of French SPAD VIIs, which proceeded to dive onto the Pfalzs as they in turn, dived back below the main formation as instructed. The Jasta Commander then signalled the Albatross DVs to engage the SPADs as they passed beneath the main body in pursuit of Stumpjumper and his wingmen. Once combat was fully developed and it was established that there was not second group in support of the SPADs, a general engagement was ordered. The SPADs used their superior handling in the dive to out run all but the Pfalzs until approximately 1,000' above the ground, but they had already accounted for Sitting Duck before being forced into a turnfight. The kills achieved during the engagement were as follows: von Dudley 3 with Red-Dog, Burning Beard, Spawnrider and Axgrinder accounting for a further one apeice. Unfortunately, 2 of the Albatross DVs suffered structural failure whilst attempting to turn hard with the SPADs at high speed during the pursuit. These were piloted by Burning Beard and Leadtongue. Furthermore Axgrinder collided with a another SPAD shortly after acheiving his kill. When the Jasta had reformed and climbed back to a safer altitude, the Jasta Commander lead the formation back to Markebeeke as the amount of ammunition expended during the dogfight would have limited what the Jasta could have acheived once over the patrol area. It is becoming apparent that although the Pfalz is an unpopular aircraft within the service, in the hands of Stumpjumper and his team it is a truly formidable weapon; as opposed to the new Albatrosses which are exhibiting a degree of fragility not suited to high-speed combat. Mission 3 - Railyard Strike at Estree-Blanche - T/O 15:17 Piloten von Baur - A Flt Commander Burning Beard Osten Sitting Duck Dutch Spawnrider Stumpjumper Red-Dog Vasco Due to the limited number of pilots available for the final sortie of the day, the Jasta Commander flew as a wingman to von Baur. As the objective was 60Km into enemy territory all aircraft took off with full fuel. Shortly after take off Red-Dog signalled engine trouble and had to return to base. von Baur lead the small strike force around likely areas of high flak density and enemy airfields to avoid being engaged before reaching the Estree-Blanche railyard. However, on final approach to the target, a large formation of Bristol F2Bs was seen to be lifting from the nearby airfield. The order was given to perform a single straffing run each and then climb to altitude to avoid being engaged by the low-flying F2Bs - unfortunately the British flight commander had other ideas. As soon as the first aircraft had made their pass they were engaged by the F2Bs and a general melee occurred on egress. In this engagement the new Albatrosses faired well in what developed into a low-speed low-altitude dogfight with Spawnrider accounting for 2 of the Bristols and Burning Beard 1. The Jasta commander dived directly into the dogfight to assist and sent another Bristol spinning into the ground - unfortunately not before the rear gunner had put several holes in his fuel tank which forced an engine-off landing shortly afterwards. From the Jasta Commander's position on the ground overlooking the railyard, the attack could be observed in detail; Dutch took fire from the rear guns of a Bristol and was seen to crash shortly afterwards, Stumpjumper sucessfully straffed the engine sheds but was hit by ground fire and also forced down, but the greatest amount of damage to the target was acheived by Sitting Duck - whether his tracers found fuel or ammunition the ensuing explosion caught his Albatross and flipped it into the ground by the engine sheds. The smoke rising from the crash could be seen for kilometres around. von Baur, seeing the Jasta Commander's aircraft on the ground attempted a rescue by landing in the same field, but groundfire accounted for his engine and placed him in the same position. As Stumpjumper, von Baur and the Jasta Commander watched our remaining aircraft depart to the east, we set off in the direction of our own lines on foot reaching Marckebeeke in the early hours of the following morning. The current tally of active pilots/kills is as follows: Spawnrider - 4 von Dudley - 3 Burning Beard - 1 Red-Dog - 1 Submitted respectfully on 7th November 1917, Vasco Officer Commanding Jasta 4

Mein Herren! Today we start the 3-month long Jasta 4 online campaign. I've been playing around with the missions to create the 'Flying Circus' feel to the jasta makeup and I've succeeded in finding an easy way of adding the different aircraft we'll be flying to the mission. The aircraft available for the first day's operations are as follows: 2 x Fokker DRI 6 x Albatros DV 3 x Pfalz DIIIA 4 x Albatross DIII OAW Allocations of pilots to aircraft will be on a first come first served basis and the pilot will continue the campaign with that type of aircraft while they are still available (I've developed a replacement aircraft system to replace lost aircraft) So if you want a particulaer aircraft to be allocated to you, post below. Regards, Vasco P.S. Axgrinder, I've already got you down for an Albatross DV.

That'll be this one: Linky Vasco

LOL! You've got the DRI from Waldo Pepper - it looks beautiful. Vasco

Mein Herren! The rules and format rules for the Jasta 4 online campaign are as follows: 1. The Campaign to be flown will be with Jasta 4 starting on 6th Novermber 1917. Each Sunday for the next 3 months (real time) the group will fly between 2 - 4 missions representing the operational sorties flown on any particular day of the campaign. The last sorties of this campaign will be flown on 20 December 2009. 2. The aircraft assigned for flight operations will be those available at that point in the historical campaign. At the start of this campaign the following aircraft are assigned for flight operations: 2 x Fokker DRI 6 x Albatros DV 3 x Pfalz DIIIA 4 x Albatross DIII OAW Allocations of pilots to aircraft will be on a first come first served basis and the pilot will continue the campaign with that type of aircraft while they are still available (a replacement aircraft system has been developed to determine replacement aircraft). If you would like to opt for a particular aircraft, post your preference below. (Axgrinder, I've already got you down for an Albatross DV). 3. The success of each individual mission will be judged by the organiser, hence ground attack/balloon busting scenarios will only be judged successful if the damage inflicted is enough to render the target severely damaged or destroyed. Air-to-air kills will only be recorded as 'confirmed' if verbal confirmation is given by another jasta member over TeamSpeak that he saw you kill the enemy e.g. he sees it going down in flames, break up in the air or crash. If the pilot is killed during the sortie, only those achieved before death will count. Any pilot respawning into another aircraft after pilot death will not have any victories achieved after respawn counted towards the score of his next pilot. 4. The performance of individual pilots will be manually recorded (mission successes, number of kills, etc) and will form a permanent record taken from one mission to the next. Should your pilot die in combat, then his achievements will be reset and the member starts again with a new pilot. In this way we can keep records of our most successful pilots for the purpose of any awards or the allocation of better aircraft for our 'ace' pilots e.g. achieve 10 online kills and the Jasta will allocate the aircraft of you choice (available at the time of the campaign) as a personal mount. Stumpjumper is also offering to provide the most successful pilots with 'personalised' aircraft skins. These privileges would be lost with the death of the pilot. 5. We will play with high reality settings (hard flight model, strong guns) but with 'automixture' set on the server as the majority of the aircraft we will be flying had this historically. 6. The missions will be designed so that the only AI ace pilots in the game are named, historically correct and in game in limited numbers to reduce the frequency of members getting 'sniped' from 800' away. 7. The organiser will keep a running total of points awarded to every pilot in order to determine who the top three pilots are at the end of the campaign. The top prize will be a reproduction Blue Max medal as shown below. Regards, Vasco

Stiify, Get Teamspeak installed and go to the Black Haze server we use. Without it you're not going to be able to fly in multiplayer anyway. Contact any of the guys who are online and they'll set you up for MP. Vasco

... And hence the problem that will be upon us shortly - unless the developers (blessings be upon them) tweak the code to allow us 32 or even 64 slots in an MP game, we're going to hit the 16 player limit very soon. Vasco

Thanks guys, Your feedback is always appreciated (as would a bloody spell checker - I'm still noticing errors after the edit button times out). I've also posted this report in the 'OFF BHaH: Reports from the Front' thread to make sure the SP-only flyers can see what we're up to. If anybody can assist with getting decent screenshots next Sunday I'll include them in the post. Vasco

Bring it on OvS! (I nearly choked on my tea when the subtitles read "All those flying Over Flanders Fields leave the room now" Vasco

Gentlemen! Please find below the daily report covering 94th Aero Squadron operations for the 4th September 1918: Mission 1 - Photo Reconnaissance of Frescaty airbase - T/O 09:13 Pilots A Flight von Baur - A Flt Commander Axgrinder Red-dog B Flight Firecage - B Flt Commander Burning Beard Sitting Duck SRC The squadron was tasked to perform a fighting patrol over enemy lines with a secondary mission of photographing Frescaty airbase if time and circumstances allowed. During the transit towards the front lines a small formation of un-escorted Hannover CIIIs was seen at 1,000' to the east of Verdun and A Flt commander detailed his flight to engage while B Flt remainded at altitude. During the engagement 3 of the Hannovers were destroyed for the loss of one of our own aircraft; von Baur claiming 2 and Red-Dog being awarded 1 postumously - unfortunately Red-Dog fell to the rear guns of the last Hannover shortly after sending the first down in flames. The squadron then reformed and proceeded towards the secondary target. Approximately 5 miles from Frescaty the squadron was engaged by a large formation of Fokker DVIIs. During the ensuing melee von Baur shot down 2 DVIIs with Axgrinder and Sitting Duck accounting for a further 1 apeice. Unfortunately we lost SRC and Burning Beard during this final engagement. Mission 2 - Strike on Enemy Railhead - T/O 12:09 Pilots A Flight Burning Beard - A Flt Commander von Baur SRC Firecage Sitting Duck Firecage Axgrinder Dutch Dudley Information received from reconnaissance aircraft returning from a dawn sortie reported that a large concentration of enemy reinforcements seen disembarking at a railhead less than 2 miles from the front. A Flt was immediatately tasked to perform a strike on the trains, troops and supplies being offloaded. Pilots of of B Flt were assigned to the combined strike force in order to put as much firepower on the target as possible. A Flt commander lead the formation across the lines at low level, altering course regularly to avoid formations of enemy aircraft en route. The formation reached the target unscathed and proceeded to sweep the railhead causing mayhem and panic amongst the troops. Although no accurate assessment can be made of the damage caused, smoke was seen rising from the railhead by the departing strike force. All pilots landed safely back at the airfield. A recommendation for a commendation for the mission commander is attached as an appendix to this report. Mission 3 - Fighting Patrol over Enemy Lines - T/O 15:00 Pilots A Flight SRC - A Flt Commander Burning Beard Dudley Red-Dog B Flight Firecage - B Flt Commander von Baur Sitting Duck Axgrinder Dutch The last sortie of the day was tasked at short notice when reports of heavy concentrations of enemy aircraft were attempting to establish local air superiority to the east of the Verdun salient. A Flt commander lead the formation directly towards the lines climbing steeply towards the reported altitude of the enemy aircraft. The squadron encountered a large formation of Fokker DVIIs that were later reinforced by Fokker DRIs. During the battle the squadron accounted for 12 enemy aircraft for the loss of only one of our own. The kill tallies for this remarkable acheivement are as follows; Firecage - 2 DVIIs and 2 DRIs, Dutch - 3 DVIIs, Sitting Duck, Axgrinder and von Baur - 1 DVII apeice, Burning Beard - 1 DRI and Red-Dog - 1 Hannover CIII which ran into the melee during the latter stages of the engagement. If it wasn't for the unfortunate demise of Dudley, who picked up 2 DRIs on his tail while diving back into the general melee, this would have been a textbook example of a fighting patrol. High praise should be given to A Flt's commander who concentrated on co-ordinating the battle rather than concentrating on personal glory. The current tally of active pilots/kills is as follows: Firecage - 5 (ACE) von Baur - 5 (ACE) Dutch - 3 Sitting Duck - 2 Axgrinder - 2 Burning Beard - 1 Red-Dog - 1 During the campaign, our highest scoring pilots were Firecage (5) and von Baur (5), with Stumpjumper and Burning Beard also acheiving 5 kills each before their demise. This concludes the 94th Aero Squadron online campaign. Submitted respectfully on 4th September 1918, Vasco Officer Commanding 94th Aero Squadron

Stump, Tell me you're back up and running????!!!! Vasco

Ax, If you can fly a SPAD XIII, the Pfalz is a doddle - especially with the better forward visibility. I've been practicing with one offline just for the hell of it and to give me a challenge while setting up my new FFB flight rig. I don't think I've yelled "WHEEEEEE!" this much in ages! Vasco