RAF_Louvert

. Thanks for the advice Creaghorn and for your weight loss plan. It is quite similar to one I've used myself, though I didn't cut out the carbs completely in the first phase. There are many such plans, and I believe a person should go with the one that works best for them. My problem has been keeping the weight off once I've lost it, and that is where the lifestyle change is going to have to come into play, IMHO. .

. You're on HPW! .

. You know, it occurs to me, with others here also considering dropping a few pounds this year we could serve as a pretty damned good support group for each other. I've found over the years that when it comes to such endeavors it is often very helpful to have others know your intentions who can then help 'keep you strong', (so to speak), when temptations rear their seductive yet ugly heads. .

. Many thanks everyone for your words of support, it is much appreciated. I will be sure to keep you all informed of my progress. Gaw, I agree that we are all odd reflections of our younger selves, and I am quite comfortable with most of that: my graying hair and muzzle; my wrinkles and age spots; the ever increasing size of my ears and nose. However, when it comes to my overall weight, I'd like there to be a bit less of it to be comfortable with. .

. SIGGI! My God man, I thought you'd gone west. Great to see you back in camp Sir, and your bunk is just how you left it, (much to the dismay of your hut mates). Let me buy you a drink and toast your return. .

. Happy New Year Everyone! Here's hoping that 2012 will be a better year for us all. .

. Greetings All, I hope everyone enjoyed the Christmas holiday, I know I did. In amongst the festivities and the visiting I was able to log a bit of stick time in OFF, and did some twekaing to my system settings in the process, (an ongoing thing for most of us I imagine). During the course of this I noticed that when I had put in a pair of new hard drives many months ago that I had installed my Track IR on the 'C' drive. Normally I have my paging file, FRAPS, and Track IR on my 'D' drive, while OFF is installed on my 'C' drive, as this helps with overall performance. Now, rather than deleting and reinstalling Track IR to correct this I wondered what would happen if I simply copied the entire 'naturel point' folder and pasted it into the 'D' drive, then create a shortcut to the new folder. Well, it worked like a charm, and garnered another 8-to-10 fps in OFF. I then renamed the original folder in the 'C' drive 'ORIG natural point' so that Windows won't go looking for it when I launch Track IR, (but also so that I could fall back to it should I need to for any reason). Easy peasy. So for those of you with multiple hard drives who are running Track IR, I recommend the same trick. Cheers! Lou .

. Tranquillo, try this. Go into your original TrackIR folder on your 'C' drive and launch it from there, (not from your old desktop shortcut, assuming you haven't already deleted the old shortcut). Check to see that TrackIR is working fine, (without going into OFF), then close it out and make sure it has completely closed by launching your task manager and checking in the processes list for any incidents of it still running, (if TrackIR is there close it from the task manager). Now, launch TrackIR from your new desktop shortcut that opens it from the copied folder on your other drive. You should only have to do this procedure the one time and not each time you wish to launch TrackIR from it's new location. Let me know if this cures it for you Sir. Lou .

. That's great Creaghorn, I'm glad it worked for you too. WM, TrackIR does give you the option of installing it to different locations. However, when I reloaded everything after the HD installs I forgot to place it on the 'D' drive, so I just copied and pasted the folder to see if it would work, and it did. You should have the same results by initially installing TrackIR to a drive other than the one OFF is installed to. .

. Safe travels Olham. I hope you enjoy it all and then some, mein Freund! .

. Duke, I'm not really sure myself. I assume that with Windows and OFF on 'C' drive, and Track IR, FRAPS, and the paging file on 'D' drive, the system can respond more quickly. This would make sense since OFF seems to be all about speed when it comes to how well it will run. For further reference here are my system specs: CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.95) Memory: 8gb DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz, (OC'd to 890 with volts set at 2.1) Mobo: ASUS P5QL Pro Hard Drive: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX+ 512mb PS: Corsair 850HX 850 watt Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS LG 22" flat screen LCD monitor Three large case fans Using the nVidia control panel I have the following settings, (and I am going by memory here as I am not at home right now): Anti-Aliasing "16x", Anisotropic Filtering "16x", Vertical Sync "Force On" and use Triple-Buffering, Texture filtering "Quality" and use Supersampling, Negative LOD Bias "Clamp", Prerender Limit set at "3", CPU Multi Core support checked. Using RivaTuner I have the graphics card speeds bumped to the following: core clock 820, shader clock 2040, memory clock 1275, (with the fan at 75%). With these current settings I can fly in a large dogfight on a sunny day over a busy part of the front, with sliders at 5-4-3-5-5, and it is beautiful, with FPS in the 68-to-80 range, (after moving Track IR to 'D' drive). We of course all know that every system is different, so the tweaks will never be exactly the same. But moving the TrackIR on mine did make a pretty significant improvement. Lou .

. Abbay, welcome to the virtual skies over Flanders! Always good to see another country represented in our little crew here. A stout cup of hot coffee for me my good man, and a fresh almond scone if you would be so kind. Cheers! Lou .

. "A Story for the Season" 1916: Christmas Eve at the Front. The War has dragged itself along on its steely, mud-caked claws for over two years, and the end seems no closer now than when it all began. At an RFC aerodrome not ten miles from the first line trenches, a group of airmen sit through the morning’s briefing, and prepare themselves for the day’s work. They are nearly all young men, at least in years. But with war comes age beyond a calendar’s mark, and one would find that each man is far older than first appearance would tell if a moment were taken to look into his eyes. As the meeting breaks the jovial banter can be heard amongst the group: the good-natured ribbing and warnings, the verbal jousting, the camaraderie and the closeness that bonds souls together in such tenuous and temporary times. Across the mud at a German aerodrome, a similar scene is being played out. The Jagdstaffel pilots there are also preparing themselves for the task at hand. To look at them, you might imagine they were schoolmates of their British counterparts, rather than enemies soon to be locked in mortal combat. For they too laugh and joke, and share that same bond. And they too are of the "old young". The hour is at hand. On each side the signal is given and the small, fast scout planes skim along the cold, icy ground, and one by one lift into a winter sky as grey as the earth below. They form up, and after climbing to their prescribed altitudes, they head towards No Man’s Land and on to do their best; for King and Country; für Kaiser und Vaterland. They meet, and there is the initial gun pass as each sizes up the other. A few moments later and the aerial battle begins in earnest. To those in the fight it is a mind-numbing blur of action that runs in both accelerated and slow motion simultaneously. A split second given to pull the trigger as a plane zips across the sights: an eternity spent to try and twist out of the path of the bullets. An entire lifetime won or lost in less than an eye blink. To those on the ground it appears as a graceful ballet of the sky, the canvas-feathered birds turning and rolling and climbing and diving. But it is a dance to the death more often than not, and it will end when one or more has fallen. And one has fallen. The long, slow, spiraling pirouette as the finale comes to the dance. The others have now tired and as if by mutual agreement or unseen signal the partners separate and turn away. The audience below does not understand how it can be over so quickly. They cannot see the fatigue and exhaustion of those in the air; cannot see their battered ships, or their bruised and aching bodies; or their tired, aging eyes. No, they can see none of these things, any more than the men in the air can see the pain or the agony endured by those who must fight on the ground. Each sees the other from afar, as through a glass darkly. It is an irony of war that in each case, either in the Sky or on the Earth, a man better understands and is more akin to the enemy he fights in his realm than to his own countrymen above or below. Christmas Eve at the Front. Night has fallen and the pilots sit about the dinner table at their respective aerodromes, and talk of flying and fighting, and of family and friends. Wishes of the Season are shared, letters from home are read. Songs of hope are sung and toasts are made to fellow flyers, and to mothers and sweethearts. At one of the tables an empty chair stands in remembrance of the comrade lost that day, and to whom the final toast is made. He will be missed, and to a loved one back home he will forever be a young man with bright, happy eyes; forever a photograph, a memory of a life that could have been. It matters not which side he fought for. He was a man, a part of human kind, and with his passing we are all the lesser for it. . May you have safe and blessed holidays wherever you are, and may we each remember the true message of this season: Peace on earth, good will toward men. Lou .

. That is, without a doubt, the most entertaining version of the longest and most tedious Christmas song on the face of the planet. Thanks WM! Lou .

. Coningsby was one of the many RAF stations and bases I visited during my three-year stay in England and Europe in the 1970's. I recall they relocated the Battle of Britain memorial squadron there some time around 1976 or so, if memory serves, (though it's serving with much less reliability than it once did). Lou .

. Welcome to the madhouse Boomer! A nice hot cuppa' coffee for me, with just a touch of the Tullamore. Cheers! Lou .

. A bit like what was done in the USAF back in my time as concerned the ops crews in the ELINT and SIGINT aircraft. Not allowed to wear any badge that signified we worked aloft in the exact same conditions as the air crews who were allowed to wear wings, be they officer or enlisted. And if the platform we were all in had the misfortune of going down, we would have been listed as 'died in training accident'. Ah well, c'est la vie, c'est la guerre. .

. As I've mentioned in this forum before, my first flight was in a Stearman at about age 9 or 10 and I've been hooked on open cockpits ever since. Done a bit of UL flying to that end. In the USAF I had some time in the RC-135, EC-135, and a short flight in an EC-47 where I got to take the right hand seat for about 30 minutes. Also took hops in the Galaxy C-5 and C-130 Herc. Commercial aircraft too numerous to list or remember. I've also sat in the cockpits of an SE5a, Sopwith Camel, Alb DVa, Nieuport 28, SPAD 13, and numerous other WWI and early era planes, most of which escape me at this early hour of the morning. ...must...have...more...coffee... .

. Yuppers, had the exact same issues with TrackIR until I made a little shelf to mount the camera on so that it is about 24" away from my head and at the same level as the smart clip on my cap. I also installed some thick shades on the windows in my flying room so that I can eliminate the strong outside light source during the day. Since then it has worked beautifully. .

. P4 is DEAD! Long Live OFF 2! .

. OK now, to that last bit of info Winder, and at the risk of repeating myself in this thread ... This is just SOOOOOOOO much more than I imagined P4 was going to be. You devs are miracle workers ... truly. Lou .

. Rank has its privilages you know. Dej, I also would not want to casually disagree with a scholar such as O'Conner as I am sure he did a large amount of research for his book. However, it does seem that there are two distinct aerodromes in the equation. That being said, there is also a fair amount of ambiguity as to which aerodrome is being referred to when one says 'Furnes'. Even a contemporary writer such as Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, in his circa 1919 extensive two-volume work 'The Dover Patrol', adds to this when he mentions the Advance Squadron of the RNAS 1st Wing moving up to an airfield established by the French at Furnes. From the squadrons and commanders he lists it is clear he is referring to the airfield at Ten Bogaerde (i.e Koksijde), yet he calls it Furnes and states it was an aerodrome established by the French, (the Ten Bogaerde aerodrome was in fact established by the Belgians). If writings done one year after the Armistice can't clear this up how can we hope to nearly a century removed from the facts. .

. Quite right Dej about the problems of accurately locating all the airfields in WWI. However, according to my map, these are two separate dromes and are located as shown below: I seem to remember reading that the Belgians established the Koksijde aerodrome, while the French established Furnes. But then, I've been known to be wrong. Lou .

. Koksijde and Furnes are not the same aerodrome, and in fact both can be found in OFF. But Dej has provided a very nice outline for the one. .

. Well HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to you WM, albeit one day late. Oops, probably shouldn't have shouted that. So ahh .. how foggy was it this morning when you got up? Lou .