RAF_Louvert

. Really wonderful image, Typhoon. Thank you for preserving and sharing such a personal treasure. .

. So many outstanding links being posted here recently. Many thanks, WM. .

. Another excellent link. Thanks again, Salvo. .

. Very good! Thanks for sharing, Salvo. .

. Good efforts Soppy, and a nice read. I must ask though that you proof it more before sharing as trying to sort through the many typos really distracts from the flow and feeling of the piece. Also, consider using different ways to identify your main character. "Will did this" and "Will said that" gets very repetitive and you risk boring the reader. To a small cultural point: The Brits do not use the "th" on their numbers, that is an American thing. It would be 8 RNAS. Keep at it Sir, you are on your way to your first book. .

. I would have joined in here sooner but I've been on the road most of the week. Jarhead, looks like you have the medals ID'd at this point: The WWI Victory Medal with clasps; the Verdun Medal, (Vernier), which was presented to all US troops that served in the M-A; and the VFW Medal. However, one very important award is blatantly absent, and that is the Purple Heart. If your great uncle was wounded in action he most certainly qualifies for the medal, as this excerpt from the medal's official criteria supports: "Examples of enemy-related injuries which clearly justify award of the Purple Heart are as follows: (a) Injury caused by enemy bullet, shrapnel, or other projectile created by enemy action." If it is not in his personal items or listed anywhere in his service record you folks should definitely contact the VA and petition for it on his behalf. There will need to be supporting evidence of his injuries which may still exist somewhere in the US Army's medical and service records, and even though there was a fire many years ago that destroyed a lot of the records of our past military personnel it is still well worth the effort, IMHO. Supporting documents would include his WWI Service Record, Military Service Card, Military Separation Form and Benefits Record, and his Military Medical Record. Wonderful old photo by the way, and good on you Sir for doing the research and honoring your great uncle's service. .

. Recently I was fortunate enough to acquire an original 1916 map of the Hazebrouck sector of Belgium and thought I would share my good fortune with you folks here. After an afternoon of scanning and assembling a couple of dozen clips I can now offer a full-size copy of this wonderful old item. This is the same type of map as used by RFC and RNAS pilots and observers, and this particular example covers the area from St. Omer across to Ypres and points south, (about 40 miles x 30 miles). I hope those of you who fly OFF using paper maps and compass will find this highly detailed old chart useful. I have just uploaded it and it should be available as soon as the posting is approved over in the OFF "Maps, Missions, and Campaigns" section. Enjoy! Lou .

. Wayfarer, you are quite welcome Sir. Also, the loft will still be there tomorrow ... and the next day ... and the day after that. .

. Makai has talent and then some, and is definitely one of those individuals who is wringing every drop out of life that he can. We should all be doing such. Flyby, your stories there of deep sea work give me the willies. I can handle being underwater to a depth of about 50 feet or so. Anything beyond that and I feel as if I'm being swollowed up by the depths. Just can't do it. .

. You are all more than welcome Gents, glad to know others will be able to make use of this nifty old map. 21 downloads so far! Shiloh, to your question Sir. I do have a second computer set up in my flying room for map use, (it's actually my old RB3D rig). Before I start a mission in OFF, I pull up the map I need using Pait.NET. I then create a layer for the route, which I draw in first. I don't follow exactly the path laid out on the in-sim map but instead create my own using landmarks, rail lines, rivers, roads, etc as guides. I next create another layer in which I will jot down "notes" as I fly the mission. Here is an example using a section of the Hazebrouck map: This particular mission was with the RFC flying out of St. Omer, and was a scouting along our side of the mud between Ypres and Armentieres. I use a sort of shorthand that allows me to quickly type in little reminders to myself, and if we get into a scrape I try to record pertinent info immediately after the engagement. .

File Name: Original 1916 Map of the Hazebrouck Sector of Belgium File Submitter: RAF_Louvert File Submitted: 25 March 2012 File Category: Maps, Missions, and Campaigns . Recently I was fortunate enough to acquire an original 1916 map of the Hazebrouck sector of Belgium and thought I would share my good fortune. After an afternoon of scanning and assembling a couple of dozen clips I can now offer a full-size copy of this wonderful old item. This is the same type of map as used by RFC and RNAS pilots and observers, and this particular example covers the area from St. Omer across to Ypres and points south, (about 40 miles x 30 miles). I hope those of you who fly OFF using paper maps and compass will find this highly detailed old chart useful. Cheers! Lou . Click here to download this file

. Dear Devs, I know you have plenty of work to do already but perhaps, when you go to revise and overhaul some of the aircraft, you can have another go at the FM of the Maurice Farman MF.11. As it is now the MF.11 seems to be ... oh, wait ... we don't have an MF.11 yet in OFF. Dear Devs, I know you have plenty of work to do already but perhaps, when you are building new aircraft, you can have a go at the Maurice Farman MF.11. Then, once you have it released in OFF2 and we've had a chance to fly it, you can have another go at the FM for it. Thank you. .

. Quite right Hasse Wind, my bad Sir. I should have specified that here in the US there is no red tape surrounding a FAR 103 compliant ultralight. .

. Von Baur, you could both build and fly a UL if you wished to, and you wouldn't need to contend with any of the red tape associated with experimental aircraft. If you purchase one of the many UL kits now available you need only assemble it and find a field to fly it from. UL flying, IMHO, is as close as a person can get to what the early days of aviation must have been like. I cannot recommend it too highly. .

. Not nuts at all Flyby, I've had the same fantasy. I even went so far as to design my own UL and began building it some time ago. However, to that point, (and to answer Shiloh's question earlier in this thread), I have scrapped the project. Not because I still don't want to build my own plane and fly it, but because a number of folks with far more expertise than I on the subject were concerned that the design I'd settled upon could get me killed. Due to the fact that I'd chosen to build a "low and slow" parasol with a small Zenoah engine, and because of the rather large tail feathers on the kite, it was pointed out that if I weren't EXTREMELY cautious on the controls I might very well end up in a tail-first stall at low altitude that would almost certainly be an 'ender'. So, I disassembled the entire affair and sold off the bits and pieces and have put the money into my '64 MGB restoration. That all being said, at some point in the future, (good Lord willing and the creek don't rise), I intend to purchase a properly engineered kit and build my WWI mount. I do have to add though that I'm not just too keen at the moment to go flying at all as we've had two small plane crashes here recently that killed everyone onboard ... very sad. When I was younger and such tragedies occurred I would simply say, "That won't happen to me." But now, at 57, my reaction is starting to change, and I find myself thinking, "Damn, that could have been me!" .

. Robert, my apologies, I meant to say mixture control not throttle control, you want to keep throttle at full the whole time you are climbing. But you've sorted it out so good on you Sir. RP, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I believe the alt setting in the control panel affects your campaign and mission heights and not your actual ability to climb higher if you so choose. .

. Everyone here buy one less pop or coffee or pastry or candy bar per day for one month and send that money to the dev team. I bet it would add up PDQ. .

. Well ... yes ... a force feedback stick could work, Pol. (yet another smartass) .

. In the UL's I flown I've never noticed any distinct sound per se just before or at the point of stall. It's all in the controls, along with an odd sort of feeling in your arse that the plane is about to leave you. That being said, I can see how adding something in OFF that would give you a heads-up could be helpful, though I personally don't have much trouble knowing when the stall is coming as the OFF kites seem to sort of 'hang' for a brief moment just before they drop away, (hard to explain, but it's definitely there). .

. In my ongoing quest for old WWI aviation volumes I've scored a nice 1939 English translation of M.E. Kahnert's work "Jagdstaffel 356", in original dust jacket. This work is thought to be a semi-autobiographical account written by Rudolph Stark as concerned his time in Jasta 35b. It might also be a grouping of various personal accounts from the Bavarian Staffels. Whatever it may be, it is an excellent read and a welcome addition to my shelves, which are woefully lacking in writings from the German side of the War. With this latest addition my library now looks as follow: Personal Narratives, Biographies, and Novels: "Ace With One Eye: The Story of ‘Mick’ Mannock VC", Frederick Oughton, (1963 1st Edition) "A Flying Fighter", E.M. Roberts, (1918 1st Edition) "Airmen O' War", Boyd Cable, (1918 1st Edition) "All Quiet on the Western Front", Erich Remarque, (1929 English Edition) "An Airman Marches", Harold Balfour, (Vintage Aviation Library Edition) "An Airman's Outings", Alan 'Contact' Bott, (1917 1st Edition) "An Aviator's Field-Book", Oswald Bolcke, English Translation, (1917 1st Edition) "A Poet of the Air", Jack Morris Wright, (1918 1st Edition) "A Rattle of Pebbles: The First World War Diaries Of Two Canadian Airmen", Brereton Greenhous, (1987 1st Edition) "Beyond the Tumult", Barry Winchester, (1971 1st Edition) "Cavalry of the Clouds", Alan 'Contact' Bott, (1918 1st Edition) "Cloud Country", Jimmie Mattern, (1936 Pure Oil 1st Edition) 3-volume set "Days on the Wing", Willy Coppens, English Translation, (1931 1st Edition) "Death in the Air", William Heinemann, (1933 Edition) (famous faked aerial photos) "Double-Decker C.666", Haupt Heydemarck, English Translation, (1931 1st Edition) "Eastern Nights and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure", Alan 'Contact' Bott, (1920 1st Edition) "En L'air!", Bert Hall, (1918 1st Edition) "Extracts From the Letters of George Clark Moseley", (1923 1st Edition) "Fighting the Flying Circus", Edward Rickenbacker, (1919 1st Edition) "Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps", James McCudden, (1918 1st Edition) "Flying Corps Headquarters 1914-1918", Maurice Baring, (1968 1st Edition with supplementary notes) "Flying for France", James McConnell, (1917 1st Edition) "Go Get 'Em!", William Wellman, (1918 1st Edition) "Guynemer, Knight of the Air", Henry Bordeaux, English Translation, (1918 1st Edition) "Heaven High, Hell Deep", Norman Archibald, (1935 Signed 1st Edition) "High Adventure", James Norman Hall, (1918 1st Edition) "Horses Don’t Fly: A Memoir of World War I", Frederick Libby, (2000 1st US printing) "I Flew For the Lafayette Escadrille", Edwin C. Parsons, (1962 1st Edition) "Immelmann: The Eagle of Lille", Franz Immelmann, English Translation, (1930 1st Edition) "In The Clouds Above Bagdad", J.E. Tennant, (1920 1st Edition) "Jagdstaffel 356", M.E. Kahnert, (1939 1st English Edition) "Kitchener's Mob", James Norman Hall, (1916 1st Edition) "Letters From a Flying Officer", Rothsay Stuart Wortley, (1928 1st Edition) "Memories of World War 1", William Mitchell, (1960 Edition) "My Experiences in the World War", John J. Pershing, (1931 1st Edition) 2-volume set "Night Bombing with the Bedouins", Robert Reece, (Battery Press Edition) "Nocturne Militaire", Elliot White Springs, (1934 Edition) "No Parachute", Arthur Gould Lee, (1970 1st US printing) "Open Cockpit: A Pilot of the Royal Flying Corps", Arthur Gould Lee, (1969 1st Edition) "Rovers of the Night Sky", W.J. 'Night-Hawk' Harvey, (Vintage Aviation Library Edition) "Sagittarius Rising", Cecil Lewis, (1936 Edition, 1st US printing) "Stepchild Pilot", Joseph Doerflinger, (1959 1st Edition) "That’s My Bloody Plane: The World War I experiences of Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, as told to Peter Kilduff", (1975 1st Edition) "The Flying Poilu", Marcel Nadaud, English Translation (1918 1st Edition) "The Red Knight of Germany", Floyd Gibbons, (1927 1st Edition) "The Spider Web", T.D. Hallam (P.I.X.), (1979 Edition) "The Way of the Eagle", Charles Biddle, (1919 1st Edition) "Up And At 'Em", Harold Hartney, (1940 1st Edition) "War Birds; Diary of an Unknown Aviator", Elliot White Springs, (1926 1st Edition) "Whom The Gods Love", Lewis C. Merrill, (1953 1st Edition) "Wind in the Wires", Duncan Grinnell-Milne, (1918 1st Edition) "Winged Warfare", William Bishop, (1918 1st Edition) "Winged Peace", William Bishop, (1940 1st Edition) "With the Earth Beneath", A.R. Kingsford, (1936 1st Edition) "With the Flying Squadron", Harold Rosher, (1916 1st Edition) History, Reference, and General Interest Books: "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918", G.J. Meyer, (2006 Edition) "Air Aces of the 1914-1918 War", Bruce Robertson, (1964 Edition) "Aircraft of World War I, 1914-1918", Jack Herris & Bob Pearson, (2010 1st Edition) "Aircraft of Today", Charles Turner, (1917 1st Edition) "Aviation in Canada 1917-18", Alan Sullivan, (1919 1st Edition) "Capronis, Farmans, and Sias: U.S. Army Aviation Training and Combat in Italy With Fiorello LaGuardia 1917-1918 ", Jack B. Hilliard, (2006 1st Edition) "Colliers New Photographic History of the World War", (1917 Edition) "Color Profiles of World War 1 Combat Planes", Giorgio Apostolo, (1974 1st Edition) "Decisive Air Battles of the First World War", Arch Whitehouse, (1963 1st Edition) "Fighter Aircraft of the 1914-1918 War", W.M. Lamberton, (1964 Edition) "Flying The Old Planes", Frank Tallman, (1973 Edition) "Fragments From France", Bruce Bairnsfather, (1917 1st Edition) (Great War cartoons by the master of the genre) "German Air Power in World War 1", John H. Morrow, Jr., (1982 1st Edition) "Heros of Aviation", Laurence La Tourette Driggs, (1919 1st Edition) "High Flew the Falcons", Herbert Molloy Mason Jr., (1965 1st Edition) "High in the Empty Blue", Alex Revell, (1995 1st Edition with author's signature card) "Historic Airships", Rupert Holland, (1928 1st Edition) "History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion", L.C. McCollum, (1929 Edition) "History of the World War", Francis March, (1918 1st Edition) "History of the Great World War", Rolt-Wheeler and Drinker, (1919 1st Edition) "Land and Water" Magazine, (entire April through September 1917 series, hard bound, ex-library copy) "Ludendorff's Own Story", Erich Ludendorff, (1919 1st Edition) 2-volume set "National Geographic" Magazine, (entire 1918 series, hard bound, ex-library copy) "New England Aviators 1914-1918: Their Portraits and Their Records", (1919-20 1st Edition) 2-volume set "Reconnaissance & Bomber Aircraft of the 1914-1918 War", W.M. Lamberton, (1962 Edition) "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man", Robert W. Service, (1916 1st Edition) "Source Records of the Great War", (1923 1st Edition) 7-volume set "The First War Planes", William Barrett, (1960 Edition) (the one that started it all for me) "The Great Air War", Aaron Norman, (1968 Edition) "The Great War", George H. Allen, (1919 1st Edition) 5-volume set "The Great War in the Air", Edgar Middleton, (1920 1st Edition) 4-volume set "The Imperial Russian Air Service, Famous Pilots and Aircraft of World War One", Alan Durkota, (1996 1st Edition) "The Lafayette Flying Corps", by James Hall and Charles Nordhoff, (1964 Kennikat Press limited edition two-volume set) "The People's War Book and Atlas", (1920 1st Edition, signed by Lt. Col. William A. Bishop) "The Sky On Fire: The First Battle of Britain", Raymond H. Fredette, (1966 1st Edition) "The Story of a North Sea Air Station", C.F. Snowden Gamble, (1967 Edition with supplementary notes) "The United States in the Great War", Willis Abbot, (1919 1st Edition) "The U.S. Air Service in World War I", Maurer Maurer, (1978 1st Edition) 4-volume set "The War in the Air", Raleigh and Jones, (1st Edition) 9-volume set including map cases, (originally in the military library at Whitehall; my personal Jewel of the Crown) "The Western Front from the Air", Nicholas C. Watkis, (1999 1st Edition) "Time-Life Epic of Flight", 23-volume set, (not old and not strictly WWI but still a lot of good info and photos) "True Stories of the Great War", (1918 1st Edition) 6-volume set "U.S. Official Pictures of the World War", Moore and Russell, (1924 1st Edition) 4-volume set "1920 World Book Encyclopedia", (entire set with addendums, great for cross-referencing in a contemporary context) Instructional Books: "Aeroplane Construction and Operation", John Rathbun, (1918 1st Edition) "English-French War Guide for Americans in France", Eugene Maloubier, (1918 Edition) "Learning to Fly in the U.S. Army", E.N. Fales, (1917 1st Edition) "Lewis Machine Gun 'Airplane Type' Service and Operation Manual", (1918 Edition) "Manual Of Rigging Notes Technical Data", (1918, possible reprint) "Practical Flying", W.G. McMinnies, (1918 1st Edition) "The Art of Reconnaissance", David Henderson, (1916 1st Edition) "Technical Notes: Royal Flying Corps", (1916 1st Edition) "Science of Pre-Flight Aeronautics", (1942 Edition) "Self-Help for the Citizen Soldier", Moss and Stewart, (1915 1st Edition) .

. Thanks Olham. Yes, the '35b' '356' is odd, and that fact along with similarities in writing style to "Wings of War" is why some folks think the work was written by Rudolf Stark under the pseudonym M.E. Kahnert. I believe it is a 'fictional' work based on someone's real life experiences, perhaps Stark's. Concerning Buckler's work, it is on my list of books to add to my collection and I am only waiting for the right price. .

. OK then, I'm done with this thread. On to bigger and better things. All the best RP. .

. Outstanding, Eric! Wonderful story about your grandfather too, thanks for sharing. You mentioned rudder pedals and I cannot recommend them too highly for this sim. The WWI kites require far more rudder to get the most out of them and it is very awkward, if not impossible , to get the kind of control you need in all three axes with a twist stick. I thought there wouldn't be much difference as I had flown without peddals for far too long. Once I finally got them I was shocked at the difference it made and was kicking myself for not making the investment years earlier. Enjoy the virtual OFF skies Sir, (though it sounds as if you already are). .