Dej

The trouble with the location of aerodromes as depicted on British trench maps of the period is that they show a symbol, at a point. In reality of course an aerodrome covered a fairly large area. Generally there is little or no indication of this, nor the aerodrome's orientation, on the map. Sometimes, on the more detailed maps (1:20000 or less) hangars and sheds will have been drawn in too which provides a clue but usually one will have to check the location in Goggle Maps or Google Earth and hazard a guess from the shape of the field(s) that remain. In the case of La Brayelle there's a chuffing great Renault factory bang on top of it so one can't even do that!

Not so, Olham. How much less happy would the world be were it not for Schadenfreude, for example. And schadenfreude is very much of the Zeitgeist at present too, I think.

Congratulations Lou. I echo Olham's sentiment that it has found the best home it could in the circumstances. I hazard that some research and inquiry among Belgian WW1 historians, many of whom post on various fora of which you'll already be aware, could close to a fair certainty regarding to whom that medal was awarded. Two minutes on Google took me to a list of 14 Knights of the Order of Leopold II. Of course that isn't necessarily comprehensive, but as the crossed swords indicate a wartime award that narrows it down further. If the other items mentioned by your correspondent lend any provenance then one of the named recipients was Nelson M. Holderman... imagine if you could prove it were his! I wish you joy of your acquisition, Sir.

It means Winder knows exactly how much of BH's request is already in WOFF. It also means he knows that you know he knows and that he knows you know he knows you know he knows. Simple. You know.

Ah, my favourite machine. She was lovely in OFF, she looks gorgeous in WOFF.

I don't think anyone could agree that you 'dropped the ball', Erik. Rather it was batted violently from your safe and capable hands by the powers that be. I hope you you continue to defy the odds to recover with unparallelled rapidity.

If you're seeing a lot of machines, commensurate with expectation, then might it not be just that the text of the daily update is in error and everything else about the mod okay?

BH's draws to a logical conclusion from a well-considered extrapolation, IMO. It's an extreme viewpoint, if he'll forgive me saying so, whereas the majority I suspect are positioned somewhere between him and his eco-warrior opposite number,who surely exists. That is to say, we're most of us somewhere around where Flyby is coming from. I do feel though, that the green agenda as 'pursued', huh!, by The West has a certain 'holier-than-thou' quality to it, as BH alludes. It's all very well for those nations that have been through their industrial revolution and its consequent environmental damage to pontificate to developing nations, but we've already reaped the benefits they are striving for and we didn't give a toss for the environment while we were doing the reaping. In fact we haven't even 'tidied our own back yards' yet. But do we reach into our pockets so they don't have to make the mistakes we did? Not if it means competition we don't. It does come down to competition in the end. A sunset is a thing of beauty, an untouched wilderness equally so, but only because we've exploited Nature and become top-dog enough to give us the luxury of time to abstract about it. Nevertheless, I'd kill the last two polar bears on Earth if they would otherwise kill me or mine. Nature is red in tooth and claw... and so are we. I don't believe being top dog has anywhere near given us the species maturity to be responsible for the planet. We can't tame Nature... our most advanced technology only allows us the capability of destroying it, which is what I meant about going back to the flint knife... the human race is a child twirling a grenade around its finger by the pin.

Well, 'tis true that the thread has drifted OT from the OT of the OP, but discussion is being had in a gentlemanly fashion and unless my fellow mods feel otherwise I've no inclination to shut it down. However, to kick a little relevance into it this essay includes some statistics about the impact of WW1 in Western France on the landscape and by inference the environment LINK

The interesting aspect to these two opinions is that, were BH's primitive survivalism to be made a reality for everyone by the fall of civilization, then Flyby's planetary custodianship would also become a reality in due course. Such a reduced back-to-nature state may be delivered by an energy-shortage anarchy (government created or otherwise) or by a natural catastrophe of sufficient magnitude (incidentally 1816 speculatively spawned a number of modern innovations). I'm not bothered either way, should it come to pass... but I AM interested in how many times it may have happened already.

Ohoh! Mankind may be long, long overdue for no end of catastrophic events... super-colossal volcanic eruptions (e.g. 1816 The Year of no Summer), the much-publicised asteroid hit; the equally cinematic magnetic core shift, never mind what 2012 was 'supposed' to be. Non-preventable or even mitigated climate change could be the least of our worries. Interesting times DEFINITELY lie ahead! Nevertheless that mushroom raincloud looking like a tactical atom bomb strike is impressive. All the more reason for P4 to be released SOON™. We may not have long playing it.

Heh, true. Need the voice though, which you can't emulate in text. Olham, best thing you can do to imagine the 'train spotter' in British society is to find a Spitting Image video of John Major.

Welcome back. Take it easy, and don't read any of UncleAl's posts!

Putting mine on for a minute, Jim's quite right about the trains in OFF. They are somewhat anachronistic. Most of the rail activity, certainly on the British side, was narrow gauge, laid specifically for the purpose by the War Department Light Railway (WDLR) whose history is an interesting subject in itself and one I mean to get around to, eventually: WDLR Wikilink. There is a WDLR website, but it no longer works. There was 'standard' gauge activity too, of course, run by the Rail Operating Division (ROD). 11 Great Western Railway Class 4300 2-6-0 Moguls definitely saw service in France in WW1, in khaki livery. One survives in preservation at Didcot Railway Museum. Link to Image

Congratulations Creaghorn and well done to your Wife too. Never had a daughter myself, two sons instead. But now I have a step-daughter who is fabulous, blonde, beautiful and brave... and makes up for what I missed. I wish Melissa the most fulfilled of lives.

I have to say that the opportunity to hear Matt's full score is up there equal with any other aspect of WOFF I'm looking forward to. It's an absolutely integral part of the sim, even though one never hears it in-flight. One doesn't need to, it's already done its fabulous mood setting job. Well done, Matt. And if I win the lottery you'll need to rescore it for full orchestra... Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony... take your pick.

Could anyone, perhaps one of our French members, tell me what the uniform of a French Air Service ground crewman/mechanic would have looked like, or even the colour of his overalls? Any pointers much appreciated.

Vraiment? Ah, well. Thank you for the correction, Sir.

Merci beaucoup tout le monde. Maintenant, je crois que j'ai tout dont j'ai eu besoin.

Thanks Olham, A great help also. I wonder how much that Cicognes stencil would be worth now were it to turn up!

That's an excellent start Mike, thanks a bundle!

At the time of P2 being available my boyhood and teenage interest in WW1 aviation had taken a back seat to the Battle of Britain. I was playing BoB and IL2 on PC having graduated via CFS3, EAW, PAW, TFH, SWOTL and several others, including, at some point, Flying Corps Gold. I'd nevertheless still been collecting WW1 aviation books and I had a sudden hankering to have my flight sim kicks match my literary ones. I browsed around. Came across RB3D, naturally, and realised I'd completely missed out on the whole RB3D thing (in fact I purchased it out of curiosity after I'd played OFF P2 but couldn't get it to run decently even with the various patches). But in looking at the various mods for RB3D I came across OFF P2. I regret to say I can't accurately recall who sent me my copy (either Typhoon or Nio) but from first playing it I loved it. So immersive. I lurked around the fora for a bit, realised these guys were dedicated and hugely knowledgeable and haven't looked back since. So thanks OFF for reawakening my interest in WW1 aviation... it is where my heart really lies.

It's an 'arithemetic' cipher. The answer is 9/11/12 (British date format).

I've flown it in campaign a couple of times. I found it a delightful machine, easy to fly and without much in the way of vices, but seemingly underpowered and of course the obliquely mounted machine gun takes some getting used to. Up against a Eindecker it's a frustrating engagement because they won't allow themselves to be stalked and you have to wait until they've finished ducking and diving and the AI has become bored before you can line one up. Main thing against a campaign in the Bristol Scout though is that there ain't much happening. I think Archie did for me both times around as I was day dreaming along effectively sight-seeing! Bristol Scouts were fitted with a variety of gun positions, rifles, a single or double Lewis on the top plane for example as well as the oblique (either side), but I don't know how much success it enjoyed aside from Hawker's VC-winning three two-seaters. There was (I read) an RNAS configuration firing through (literally!) an unsynchronised airscrew... with imagined lack of success. It did eventually feature a synchronised gun too, but by then it was totally outclassed which is why it found its way to Suez maybe... and it had a long and happy retirement (relatively speaking) as a trainer. One could have some very interesting missions in a Scout but the mission types in OFF would have to be quite bizarre to accommodate them!

The way 'two weeks' works is that, for a given deadline two weeks away, at some point prior you will be two weeks from the two weeks inception. Thence, it follows that at at some earlier point still you will be two weeks from the two weeks from the final two weeks... und so weiter. Therefore, if one expresses development time in multiples of two weeks which we shall represent as Tw, then any given development is only ever two weeks away to a power of n two weeks, where n is how soon the two weeks inception point may be, thus giving rise to the well known expression: SOON(TWTw) Which is precisely when WOFF will be available. QED. All the very best, Tranquillo. Hope all goes well.