Herr Prop-Wasche

Hey, I'm not retired and I made it! Of course, I live in Dayton, so I really have no excuse. Thinking about the show last night and I realized that it was actually a little disappointing, due to the lack of most German planes--no Albs. Also, very few British. Most seemed to be Nieport's of some sort. Come to think about it, but the last meeting seemed to have had a lot of German aircraft. Maybe they rotate the featured aircraft from year to year. Okay, as soon as I can figure out how to upload these pictures from my camera, I will have some for you. Patience, padawans!

I just got back from the bi-annual WWI fly-in at the US Air Force Museum, and boy was it fun! The weather was forecast to be cloudy with a chance of rain, but Mother nature was kind and held off the rain. We even had breaks of blue sky at times and very little wind, so good flying weather. Most of the flyable aircraft are 7/8 scale reproductions, but there was a full-scale N28 that flew, along with static displays of a full-scale Sopwith Baby and a rare single-wing Morane Saulnier AI. There were also a Fokker E II, several varieties of Nieuports, and so forth. I also made some time to go in the museum itself and got lots of pictures--not sure how good they are, but I got 'em. I'll try to post some of them tomorrow. Cheers.

A fire truck with a racing stripe. Nice!

The HPW skies mod is a very small mod. Basically, I took two or three existing OBD cloud types and made mostly minor changes to some aspect of the cloud type (height, density) to "create" a new cloud type. I then inserted the new cloud type into the cloud array used by some of the weather conditions (good, light, medium, heavy, variable, precipitation), depending upon the cloud type and the weather condition. The result should not have much, if any, effect on the AI's ability to see through the clouds, but of course there is the possibility, as Pol said.

Hallo, Duke. Welcom back to the (un)friendly skies but friendly forum. 1) You may be able to see a fuel leak if you look behind to your tail. Of course, If you are flying an Se5 or an Alb DV, this view is blocked by the headrest. In that case, switch to the outside or chase view and see if you can spot the leak. Otherwise, you have to look at your fuel guage, if equipped. I don't believe there is an increased risk of fire with a fuel leak, except as a sign that your engine or fuel tank is getting closer to the "threshold" for a possible fire. 2) You can see oil leaks by looking behind you, as above. Frankly, I haven't looked to see if the oil guage also shows a loss of oil pressure. 3) The engine sputtering sound, I think, seems to be triggered after your engine has received ANY damage--unfortunately. However, my DM has substantially increased the hit points for the engine so it still performs roughly as well as it does 100% undamaged, up to the point where the engine catches fire. Possible spoiler below regarding engine hit points, threshold values, and fires--don't click if you don't want to know!

Welcome back, Mr. BH. I suppose the hot and humid summer in La. is as good a time as any to engage in "rum-soaked" activities. The look of that carp is the same as mine when I saw that you were posting again!

I'm reading "Sagittarias Rising" right now, and it is a lot like "No Parachute" in a lot of ways, particularly in the lack of vitriol and anger toward the fighters on the other side. Lee's work has more vivid details about the actual battles, whilst Lewis' is more impressionistic. Lee is also much more willing than Lewis to criticize the General staff for their lack of foresight about parachutes and the poor performance of most of the RAF fighters until the Se5a came along. One of the most interesting things to read in "Sagittarias Rising" is Lewis' description of flying the Morane Parasol. Words like "pilot killer" and "deathtrap" spring to mind, although he says it could outperform the Fokker DI in both the climb and level flight speed. The elevator was apparently extremely sensitive, leading to easy stalls, so much so that pilots were told not to attempt ANY turns below 500 feet!

Prolly not until August 2014, for obvious reasons! Sorry, just kidding!

I wonder how many hours Pol, Winder, and Sandbagger have spent at the Imperial War Museum, just getting every niggling little detail just so!

I have a few minor updates for the weather files. To install, just drop the attached 1916, 1917, and 1918 OFFHistoricalWeather files into their respective MODS\HPW 19** Weather Active Sector\campaigns\CampaignData\weather folder. The most significant change was to the 1917 weather file. I reduced the number of missions by approximately 20% so it is not as busy in the active sectors. It is still much busier than the OBD version, but is now closer to the 1916 level of activity than the 1918 level of activity. I also corrected an error in the OBD version of the 1917 weather file that was also carried over into my version. If you do not want to install my mod, but want to correct the OBD version of the 1917 weather file, open up the OFFHistoricalWeather1917.txt file, and find the following text: and change the 12 to an 11. This will change the date from reading "26 November 1917 to 28 December 1917", to the correct reading of "26 November 1917 to 28 November 1917." OFFHistoricalWeather1916.txt OFFHistoricalWeather1917.txt OFFHistoricalWeather1918.txt

That's fantastic, ForeignDevil, and a whole lot less expensive than plastic modeling, I bet!

Yup, Bletchley's mod originally gave me the idea for a "weather" mod that generates different mission frequencies for active versus quiet sectors. If you are in an active sector in either 1916 or 1917, you will find you are flying more missions per day than in the stock game. On the other hand, quiet sectors will be much quieter than in the stock game. In 1918, active sectors have about the same amount of activity as in the stock game (fewer 3 mission days, but more 2 mission days), while quiet sectors will be a lot quieter. Here is an excel spreadsheet that shows the active sectors for 1915 - 1918: OFFActiveBattles2.zip

OBD delivers -- again!

Yes, F.D. please do!