NS13Jarhead

Always a favorite when in a silly mood:

for another full blown blast from the past, here's what got me going on WWI flying games:

As I said at the other place, "Great. Now I have TWO airplane forums to check every day."

Carrick, I can't hear that song without thinking of this:

Great job, Lou. I've never even heard of the "Aviation Bar" used on the Army ribbon. And the suspension ribbon on that one looks to be in great shape! Bravo!

Flyby, Don't ever discount the one in a million shot. They do happen. THIS IS A TRUE STORY: When I was in Somalia in March of 1993, we were enjoying a relatively quiet day - no gunfire or explosions. While out walking through the port, our maintenance officer felt a sting in his leg. He looked down and saw a hole in the cargo pocket on the side of his thigh. He then unbuttoned his pocket, pulled out his 1/2 inch thick canvas covered notebook. It had a hole in one side and about 90% of an AK47 round sticking out of the other. He went to the medical tent and they cleaned the wound up with hydrogen peroxide, filled it with neosporin, slapped a 2"x2" bandage on it and sent him on his way - no stitches. We figured that the rifle that shot him was fired at an upward angle from so far away, we didn't even hear the gunshot and the bullet had lost so much velocity that the notebook almost stopped it. A couple of days later, the casualty control office in Washington DC sent us a message to award him the Purple Heart for wounds received. They presented it to him at the same ceremony where I was promoted to Captain, the 1st of April - April Fools Day! BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

PBS's show, NOVA, ran an episode many years ago (but they re-run it every April) where they reenacted the whole thing and all the theories. They proved that it couldn't have been Brown. Most likely it was Sergeant C. B. Popkin, a Vickers gunner with the 24th Machine Gun Company. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/red-baron-theories.html

Thanks for the info. I just Steamed it and have gone through the first two missions. getting used to the controls. The only complaint I have so far is that the resolution doesn't go to 1920x1080, which is my screeen's native resolution.

The two that I use all the time: German: Otto Treiharder British: Willie Maykett

Many years ago, Sandbagger produced a handy Excel chart that had all the key combos on it. It may still be in the hints stickies at the top of the forum. These are the keys you're looking for: Speed up time: Ctrl + Shift + E Slow down time: Ctrl + Shift + R But just like Warp, these will drop you back to normal speed if you are near an airborne enemy. For Warp to take you to the next waypoint, you have to hit Shift + W before warping Sorry, but I can't help you with the props and clouds.

Well, we knew YOU'D like it, Crossbones

Mike, You're making me airsick. I spent almost a year going through Naval Flight Officer (navigator/ballast) training. My job was to ride in the back seat and tell the pilot where to go. All was well until we got into the three ACM (Air Combat Maneuver, A.K.A, dogfighting) flights in the T2C Buckeye. Each flight was about 30 minutes long and as far as I know, I stillhold the Pensacola record - in those three flights, I barfed eleven times!

Actually, I think OFF works BETTER with Win7 than with XP. Main reason - the hardware designed for 7 is several generations ahead of the equipment available when CFS3 first came out, so you should be able to just about max out the graphics. Installation is a breeze, as long as you RTFI (Read The Instructions). I.e., make sure that CFS3 is patched to 3.1 and you fly one mission with it before installing OFF. If you've ever played vanilla CFS3, you won't believe that this is using the same engine. Chill out, load up, and enjoy an experience like nothing you've seen before.

If I ever learn how to energy dogfight instead of turn fighting, I may have to give that one a go. Very nice. It almost looked like a Vintage Aviator picture at first. Besides, ALL the paint jobs were new at some point. I don't think that the aircraft came pre-weathered from the factory.

MvR is such an iconic figure. It's no surprise that he is featured in the film. In the early 70s remember reading a SciFi short story by Fred Saberhagen in his Berserker series. Berserkers were robots who were out to destroy all life (Like the Cylons in the old late 1970s Battlestar Gallactica). The gist of the story was that the Berserkers needed to send out a diversion prior to a difficult invasion. They had captured some scientists and one of them suggested using nine simulated personalities. They questioned the scientist about them and found out that one was blind in one eye, one kept getting thrown from his horse, one was a very religious man, one had tuberculosis and died at the age of 23, so they installed them into the one-man fighters and sent them off, but they turned on the Berserkers and destroyed the fleet. It turns out that he tricked the Berserkers and that the personalities were all WWI flyers - Ball, Bishop, Nungesser, Luke, Guynemer, Mannock, Voss, and MvR, and one other I can't remember.

Would this work?

Greetings, I figured if anyone would know about this, you guys would. I always knew that my great uncle served in World War I, but that was about all I knew. After my mom and I started doing some geneology research, we found out a lot that neither of us knew before. I found out that based on the below picutre that he served with the AEF 75th Infantry Division, then researching the division found out that he most likely participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Well, my mom went to some of her cousins this week to dig a little more deeply and found out that he was wounded, but returned to the fight. He even saved some of the shrapnel that got him (but they couldn't locate it). Also we knew from the photo that he had been awarded the WWI Victory Medal with two bars (Meuse-Argonne and Defensive Sector), but we found out he also had this other medal in his personal effects, which appears to be a Verdun Medal (Vernier model). Now to my questions: 1) Why would someone who didn't get to France until 1918 have a Verdun Medal and 2) What is that other ribbon attached to the middle of the suspension ribbon - it just doesn't look like it belongs there.

You guys are the best! Looking into more info on the Verdun Medal, it does appear that it was presented by the city of Verdun after the war to AEF participants in the 1918 campaign as well as the defenders from 1916. He must have gone back to France for the ceremony. FlyBy, the VFW Medal might be the answer on that strange ribbon. Great Uncle Carroll was quite active in the VFW and in Pennsylvania state government, so it would make sense that he would have worn the VFW ribbon and it would have received a lot of wear - thus the fraying on the edges. Since both the VFW and the Verdun Medal would have been post-war, they may have been put together like that at a later date. I just don't know why he (or one of his relatives) would have attached the two together like that. Shiloh, I'd like to think that it was a one of the 205 Certificate of Merit awards, but I think the dimentions of the stripes are a little off. Capt V, you are correct. I mistyped the unit he was with the 79th, not the 75th. The unit was organized in Pennsylvania and Maryland. They departed for France in July 1918 and from September-November 1918 fought as part of the US V Corps at Montfaucon and with the FrenchXVII Corps in the areas around Etraye, Wavrille, andMoirey.

I finally got tired of hearing you guys talk about Skyrim and seeing all the new, great software out there and being unable to play any of it due to the antiquated XP machine I have been using since the days prior to the release of OFF, version 2. So the wife and I went to the locally owned geek store (NOT BestBuy) to see what was available. They had the below machine on their shelf and we walked off with it for under $1100 US. Here are the specs: MoBo: MSi 990XA-GD55 CPU: AMD FX6100, 3.3 GHz, 6 core GPU: ASUS AMD HD6870, 1GB RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333 (2 x 4GB) HD: 1TB SATA 7200RPM PSU: Thermaltake TR2 600W Case: Zalman Z9 w/3 blue LED fans USB: 12 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0 OS Win7 Home Premium (64 Bit) It's got 14 USB ports (the old one had 4), 2 open RAM slots and it's got an open PCIE slot to add a second GPU in Crossfire mode, if I need to. And boy is it quiet! Now for the important part. I installed the software and drivers for my Saitek X45 and programmed the buttons for OFF. I installed CFS3, Patch 3.1 and OFF BHAH without a hitch. Then I fired up the game and just for fun, put all the sliders to 5 and ran the AA at maximum. At high altitude, low altitude, and in a 6 plane furball, my framerate never dropped below 35, no stutter, no scenery tearing - just perfectly smooth flying. I've still got some tweaking to do in the overrides, but I couldn't be happier with the way the game looks now - no more slide show dogfights with sliders at 2 or 3.

I agree, Gettysburg is an awesome place to visit. My dad went to Gettysburg College so he knew the battlefield inside and out. He used to take my brother and me there every year when we were growing up. I can't tell you how many pictures my mom took of us sitting on Civil War cannons. Stewart was off looking for Ewell who was doing a recon of Harrisburg at the end of June. There's a marker in my home town of Camp Hill where one of Ewell's brigades got into a tussle with some Union troops, making it the northernmost firefight of the Civil War.

Good job, Winder. I think this solution belongs in the upper portion of the forum with all the other helpful stickies.

How about "Richthofen Over Flanders" aka R.O.F. Just kidding!

Holy Crap. I go away for a weekend and look what you guys get into. Can't I leave you alone for a second without you getting into trouble?

I'm almost glad that I don't live there. I'm afraid I'd have an uncontrollable urge to take a shovel and dig up people's back yards looking for trenchlines.

Bullethead, Here in the DC area, we have about one of those car fires each week on I-95 (the main north-south highway into the city). I call them a Car-B-Q. WM, Lucky for your wife that she got out of that one. Amazing what some people will do to get insurance to pay for a new car (just kidding) I once had a Subaru XT Turbo with a functional hood scoop on it. I also had a pinhole leak from one of the water lines that was spraying onto the exhaust manifold. So every time I came to a stop, a huge cloud of white smoke erupted from the middle of the hood of the car. I got all kinds of worried looks every time I waited at a red light. Not dangerous, just incredibly embarassing/annoying.