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However, prior discussions notwithstanding, I do believe that the momentous occasion of WOFF being truly in production, combined with the new barminess afforded our little band by the adoption of 'The Dodo's Chorus' warrants a change in the badge design. I therefore offer the following for consideration, but if we prefer to stick to the old, all well and good.

Non mea culpa est. I lazily C&P'd Olham's last usage, but I'm in full agreement with you that it is rightly 'Contact! (tink.. tink... tink...) Clear!' Nothing exclamatory about a 'tink' after all. We'll have to remonstrate with Olham most strongly for his non-canonical whimsy... Stwike him, Centuwion, vewy woughly!

Worshiping a demi-deity's colon IS barmy... but it's a truly good observation. OFFers we should remain, in my opinion too. Practically speaking also, I did experiment with the original layered graphic of the badge, replacing the 'O' in the badge with a 'W' and whilst it kinda worked, 'BWC' simply didn't look right, and 'BWOC' looked awful. I'm all in favour of 'Bwoc Bwoc Bwoc' though, listening to that particular carouser's chorus in the Mess last night was the barmiest thing I'd heard for ages! Contact! (tink.. tink... tink...!) Clear!

Contact (tink ... tink ... tink) Clear! By the way, the Mess steward respectfully informs me that the recently introduced habit of touching glasses for the (tink ... tink ... tink) bit, i.e. Contact (clink ... clink ... clink) Clear! ... is going to have to stop, on account he's losing far too many glasses to inebriated heavy-handedness. Let's stick to tankards gentlemen, and for the spirit drinkers I've taken a leaf from the Rittmeister's book and ordered a whole load of little goblets. Not silver I'm afraid, these are made of the new Bakelite material... rather fittingly considering the inventor was a Belgian. I'm going to have to try the beer and lanolin shandy trick - good way to get a last few pints when the bar closes!

'correctly' here is defined as... 'upside down on a wooden school chair perched atop a precarious pile of furniture in the Mess, with the soot-encrusted soles of one's flying boots pressed firmly against the ceiling.' The Membership Charter and member list shall be read by a randomly selected member at the start of each BOC gathering. He shall intone solemnly in the manner of one's headmaster at school registration, followed by the words 'Oooh Matron! Is that a dodo in my trousers...' an octave higher and the singing of the BOC Song (the one in my signature) to the tune of 'What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor'. Upon descending, the reader shall be given a glass of Warsteiner which he will raise in salute to the assembled saying 'Per dementia ad astra' at which all shall down their drink in one. NOTE: Whilst it says 'he' above BOC does welcome lady members, who are known as 'KnickerBOCcers because modesty obliges them to wear such garments whilst upside down at the ceiling.

Being as I'm away from home most of the week my OFF time is limited, if not non-existent. What I do manage to continue to do for pleasure though is create images using 3D modelling software - after the fashion of the 'Fateful Morn' series a while back that several of you were kind enough to praise. Most images are for my own consumption, but I'm rather pleased with my latest and thought I'd share it - just for fun. Two versions attached, one an experimental 'watercolour' version and the other my normal 'grainy blemish-hiding' treatment! Historical inspiration: Werner Voss was credited with No. 18 Sqn. F.E. 2b #A5502 on 23rd May 1917. Whether Voss' machine was exactly as depicted here I haven't scrupulously checked - it's what I had and just too good a paint scheme to pass up. Hope you like it... EDIT: Modified per Olham's comment. I also moved one of the other Albatri and added a couple of distant Fees for more drama.

Thanks everyone. @Hauksbee I've not got into any of the sculpting apps yet. I've a mind to try 3D-Coat or Z Brush but it'll have to wait until I have acquired a decent tablet. Meanwhile I use Cinema 4D almost exclusively, with Photoshop or Paintshop Pro for skinning and post-render editing.

Anyone else tried the demo? I thought I'd give it a go being as I was in the Atari camp and never played Wings... so I loaded it up, overcame the cartoon graphics and found myself in a permanent spin to the left and no amount of fiddling with control options yielded any solution. I doubt I'm going to miss it though, smacked a bit of Blizzard does 'WW1 in the Air'

I've just finished the above book. Memoirs of the New Zealander, (Sir) Patrick Gordon Taylor. It's not a book I'd heard of before a friend picked it up for me at a car boot. I'm surprised it's not part of the canon of great WW1 aviation memoirs, having, as it does, the same immediacy, intimacy and self-effacing humility as 'No Parachute'. The author flew the Sopwith Pup in No. 66 Squadron from February through July 1917 and his account gives an acute insight into the tactics and attitude of pilots flying a machine they knew to be obsolete against increasingly uneven odds. It's also a testament to the leadership of another great pilot, J. O. Andrews, a contemporary of Lanoe Hawker in No. 24 Sqn. Well worth reading if you can get your hands on it.

Ah, you're referring to the myth of thousands of otherwise hard-ass Northerners cowering in abject terror at the sight of a pale yellow ball in their familiar leaden skies... What I've always wondered is - the young women that you see queuing outside Northern nightclubs in the biting cold, with next to nothing on... what do they wear if it's hot?

Not WW1 but interesting nonetheless if you werern't already aware. As far as I can determine the gist of the below is true.... if anyone knows otherwise please post. Monopoly Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape... Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter. Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America 's OSS ) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever. At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort. By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war. Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece. As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add: 1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass. 2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together. 3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money! British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square. Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war. The story wasn't declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honoured in a public ceremony. It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!

Nice one, Lou. I confess, 'naughty list' is a probable. Naughty STEP I hope to avoid, especially as... It wasn't me. And... on the other point... I've just today bought a house that genuinely has 'one long staircase just going up...'

Cool beans. I hope you enjoy 'Sopwith Scout 7309' as much as I did, Lou.

Hope it all goes well, Tony. And if WOFF does come out while you're there... what better incentive to a speedy recovery.

One for 'Dragon Man' Louvert, I think.

Should have said earlier, but to any that are fans of 'Winged Victory' I recommend Gordon F. Atkins 'Winged Victor - A Biography of Victor M. Yeates'. It offers some interesting insights (or hypotheses at worst) into the inspiration for several of the characters in that WW1 classic and into its author. I'll say no more, other than that it's available on the Cross & Cockade website and may well have shipped in bulk to Over The Front too.

Those pics are particularly good. New desktop wallpaper acquired....

Heh... I'm minded now to include below a succinct explanation of the noble game of Cricket... and that's definitely off, 'cos it's NOT on OFF, or WOFF, or WWIF. Cricket, as explained to those without the Empire... You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game! OWZAT!

I called it 'off topic' because it wasn't on the OFF topic, if you see what I mean Anything that isn't specifically about OFF or WOFF is 'off', IMHO.

Sure Olham, I did post a brief statement about 'Sopwith Scout 7309' last year... here's the link to the original: http://combatace.com/topic/74896-ot-sopwith-scout-7309/

Very pleased for you, Lou. I'd swear that library list is a fair bit longer than the last time I saw it, there must be other successes you've kept quiet about. A book not on your list that I'd recommend (and that you might pick up more cheaply than others of the type) is Sir Patrick Gordon Taylor's 'Sopwith Scout 7309' - it doesn't seem well known, my copy cost a fraction of the amount I might have expected.

I rather think that the ardent defenders of dodgy DMs sometimes forget what 'simulator' means. The only true way to determine whether or not a Dr.1 could fly in the state Tamper describes it is to get up there and try it in a real aircraft. Any takers? I think not.

Thank you Jim. Pedantry and truth are never to be confused and I'm always genuinely happy to be corrected by a greater authority. Mind you, although it's bad enough when one's memory plays one false it's worse when you check a reference work and find that to be incorrect also. I begin to feel the need to start putting a 'reliability rating' on all my books. 'Under the Guns of the Red Baron', -2 points.

The Halberstadt D.II cannot have been a poor machine. When Von Richthofen's Albatros D.III cracked a wing at the beginning of February '17 he elected to fly the Halberstadt rather than comandeering another Albatros (albeit the wing problems may have put him off) and flew it from beginning of February through to late March, scoring a dozen-ish victories in the process.