Flyby PC

I knew you'd say that. :yes: Correction - Rather than all of us being buffoons, I think you'll find that only a mere 27% of us are buffoons on a permanent basis, (assuming 'permanent' represents something in excess of 80% of the time), whereas a much greater precentage of us, close to 80% of us, have only sufferred instances of buffoonery on a periodic basis, but suffered such instances with insufficient frequency as to render us 'permanent' buffoons. 71% of those surveyed agreed it would be more correct to say we have all been buffoons at one time, rather than we are all buffoons on a permanent basis. There are of course instances where those of us who might once have fallen into the category of permanent buffoons, have sought treatment for our buffonery, and now fall into the semi-permanent category of buffoonery. However, there are also a small number of semi-permanent, even one or two 'occassional' buffoons who have suffered relapses in their condition and could now legitimately be referred to as buffoons proper. You will of course be aware that in the buffoonery spectrum, those amongst us at the bottom end who are not buffoons, or have never been buffoons, may find themselves excluded from membership of BOC, where a certain level of buffoonery is a pre-requisite to membership. Those of us who are fully affiliated BOC members there respond to being called buffoon with the jolly repost, "Why thankee sir! Tick Tick Contact Clear!

I think in this forum, all of us, and I mean all of us, are here because we want to learn. In other forums, from time to time there are too many wanting only to teach. The frustrating thing for me with WW1 history is, well, how can I put this? It feels like it doesn't come from raw data. Too often stories are based on numbers and data, and presented as conclusions, but for some reason the 'reasoning' behind these decisions and events is left as speculation. We have 100 opinions of everything, but rarely the truth straight from the horses mouth. And even when we do have comments from the people who were there, it's so often filtered by a supporting narrative that "he meant this", or "he said this because the thought this". Yes, but how do we know what he was thinking? Can't we just have the history without the opinion? When I read about the history of WW1, it feels like a history which wasn't written at the time. The important questions weren't asked until the answers were already gone. Take for example Douglas Haig, the man in charge, who many hold responsible for a significant part of the carnage,- our critical 'modern' opinion of Haig is a world apart from the devotion and popular reverence held for him by his troops at the time, - including those who survived being sent over the top by Haig's strategy. We can't both be right. Either the Tommies of WW1 had the wrong idea of Haig, or we haven't understood the full story, and this is just one example why I find WW1 very frustrating to read up on. I don't have enough data to make up my own mind. Where the stories don't converge, surely the most authentic source of information must come from the people who were there mustn't it?, - but yet we seem a little too happy to set aside the testimony of witnesses who were actually there. To a lesser extent, it's like Bloody April. The 'proof' of carnage seems based upon the fact the period was called Bloody April, rather than detailed analysis of the actual events which caused the month to be named Bloody. How much worse was April than March? What happened to slow the carnage in May? Did the pilots there at the time call April Bloody? How could they, what perspective did they have to judge? To me, the title Bloody April suggests a retrospective review of 1917 casualties with April being recognised as the bloodiest. See what I mean? Bloody April is a term of reference from contempory history, but not immediate history. If I was to read an immediate history of 1917, would I come to the same conclusion on my own that something extreme happened in April? It's like we are not reading the history itself, but base our understanding on what the contemporary newspapers said, and calling that the history. Well, it is history in some ways, but it's already someone elses opinion of it. Too often for my liking it leaves me with nagging doubts about experts of WW1 history.

I don't have any answers, but try to make sense of the bits I do know, and remain very suspicious of the bits which seem bizarre or which don't make sense. In my experience, nonsense is only nonsense until it's explained and understood. I also have massive gaps in my knowledge, but which I would like to fill. For example, on a typical day, how many aircraft sorties were flown? How many aircraft were in the sky at the same time, and of these, what proportion would realistically become casualties? Did they all fly in the morning, or disperse their sorties throughout the day? What proportion flew in squadrons, what proportion flew alone? How many fighters were there compared to other aircraft? How did these 'patterns' evolve as the war developed? Did the Germans fear the French more than the British or vice versa? All I can add to the issue of British fighters was that early on in 1915/16, the British fighters were still Armstrong Whitworths, Bristol Scouts, and BE2's with limited capacity to take the fight to the enemy. The gap between their performance as fighters and genernal purpose aircraft was marginal. Contrary to a large number of books and reports, I struggle to accept the British commanders were arrogant buffoons content to see their pilots entering combat at such a seriously disadvantaged position. To me, it would make sense to encourage them to flee from encounters with the enemy which held little promise of a victory. He who fights then runs away, survives to fight another day...

We don't disagree themightysrc. The RFC didn't completely abandon their pilots to their fate, but there was tacit acceptance if they did meet an enemy patrol, it was unlikely to be a fair fight and the RFC pilots were going to be in trouble. Their best chance of survival was to get themselves (and their intelligence) back home and out of harms way as quickly as possible. To turn and engage in combat was not part of their mission, they weren't equipped for it, their aircraft were inferior, and the odds of success stacked against them. It is indeed harsh to send pilots out in such circumstances, but while RFC fighters remained inadequate to perform as escort fighters, the only meaningful defence the RFC could have deployed was to stop sending the patrols. That was the strategic result the Germans were seeking, and the RFC was not going to concede that. They resolved to play the percentage game, and absorb the losses. Many pilots were going to die, but many more were going to survive their patrols and get the job done. This may sound harsh and cold blooded, but it's actually not a million miles away from a foot patrol by ground troops. Reconnaisance patrols seek to avoid contact, where fighting patrols seek it out and carry the necessary equipment and men to win the fight. It's much the same theory, other than there's no place to hide in the sky. Edit- Please be aware I comment on the RFC strategy which ultimately prevailed, but that doesn't mean the German strategy was wrong or even weak in any way. Indeed, what else could the German Jastas have done to be any more successful than they were? Is there some other strategy which would have delivered better results? If there is, I can't think what it is. To attack enemy patrols in small dispersed formations might only have made air combats more evenly contested with greater losses for fewer kills for the Germans. As it is, the German strategy came very close to crushing the morale of the RFC pilots, but the true test of the German strategy requires us to know how close the Entente forces came to abandoning their patrols into enemy skies. That, I believe, was their one and only chance of any meaningful German success. For extended periods throughout the war, they had the edge in the quality of pilots and aircraft to do it, but never once possessed the necessary numbers to dominate their enemy. Even their success denting the morale of the RFC pilots wasn't a concrete success. The British pilots were not dejected and beaten by the enemy so much as frustrated that they hadn't the equipment or strategy to compete on even terms. When such equipment did start to arrive, the British frustration quickly transformed into a heightened desire for pay back.

I thought we were 100% on topic Olham. The strategies employed by respective sides meant German aircraft were in the air to hunt and shoot down enemy aircraft. The Entente aircraft, predominantly RFC, were there primarily to look over the side and take pictures. I believe this may account for the disparity between Jasta kills and losses. It is always rare for the prey to defeat the predator. German pilots were more skilled, because they were designated fighter pilots flying in fighter plane rolls. The RFC sent over 'lesser' pilots in inferior aircraft who's best defence, if not only defence, was to rely on not meeting the enemy at all, or trying to run for home if they did. The weren't required to be aerial warriors there to suppress the enemy, (that was to come later), just be able to find their objective, take a picture, and get home with the information. If bounced by enemy patrols they were 'expendible', with their fate in their own hands and skill in defence rather than attack. In this, you can also begin to see another side to RFC not being provided with parachutes. It wasn't only to make a pilot look after his plane, but to make him think twice before engaging in combat rather than running for home.

I agree Olham, but that's the point. The German Jastas could not win. However brave, however skillful, however determined, they were never going to achieve their objective. In strategic terms, even if they achieved the objective of preventing the allied aircraft entering their airspace, actually, the strategic value is still nil. The one air force has merely cancelled out the other. In contrast, by continuing to fly every day despite the losses, the allied planes achieved the vast majority of their objectives every day.

I suspect this is where the subject starts to get immotive. They weren't effective. They lost the air war. The Jastas shot down lots of aircraft and were much feared by RFC pilots, but in the wider picture they never stopped the RFC achieving the objectives which they set out to achieve. The Jastas enjoyed tactical success in winning their battles, but never secured the strategic innitiative necessary to win the war. There was more value to be had from dedicating your airforce to gather your intelligence, rather than dedicating it to prevent your enemy gathering his. The Jastas never stopped the RFC doing what it wanted to do, they just made more costly. Despite suffering tactical difficulties and losses, the strategic innitiative remained with the allied forces throughout the war, through the good times and the bad. In contrast, the big objective of the Jastas was to destroy as many allied aircraft as possible, frustrate their objectives and deny them air intelligence. In these terms, they simply failed to do it. They not only failed to achieve this ultimate objective, you could actually argue that despite the numbers of aircraft shot down, the strategic contribution made by the Jastas was largely irrelevant to the progress of the war.

47 minutes? I'll be here until 2014 downloading that... Everybody fears the ordinance blowing up trenches, but trenches are similar to modern excavations and very dangerous by themselves. If you think what weight of soil you could lift in a sandbag, then imagine lifting that weight when it's not in a position that's convenient to lift, but say you were lying face down with the same weight on the small of your back, or alternatively split the bag into four, and lie spread eagled with a bag on your hands or feet. For me, it puts into perspective just how easy it would to be buried alive. The greater part of your body need not be buried for you to be totally incapacitated by the weight of soil, and asphyxiated because you cannot inhale. Many victims of snow avalanche are found under less that 6 inches of snow, but that is still enough to incapacitate them completely. And lastly, we were warned that if the sides of an excavation did collapse on you, you'd be unlikely to survive the time taken to dig you out.

It's a very complex thing to make sense of, but I think you need to look closely at the roll of aircraft when deployed. I know the RFC, through Hugh Trenchard, were pushed to maintain a very aggressive stance, taking the war to the enemy - whatever the circumstances and cost. This is why many inexperienced pilots were exposed to dangers beyond their abilities. British pilots were considered more expendible, not because of governmental stupidity, but rather cold blooded determination. Unfortunately for RFC pilots, the information they brought back was considered so valuable it was to be bought at any price, and intelligence of the enemy movements was considered worth the tragic loss of life. I shall avoid the immotive references to "lambs to the slaughter", because I don't believe it was like that. As I understand it, (and I could be wrong in this), the rage of the 'Fokker Scourge' in the UK in 1916 was not primarily the loss of life or inadequate training, nor indeed any profligacy of the Air Ministry with pilots' lives, but the essence of the scandal was that brave RFC pilots were being asked to fulfil these duties while not getting the quality of aircraft they needed to do the job. The BE2 was just not up to the job.

I KNOW these people are dangerous idiots, but instead of getting my own road rage fired up and becomming distracted, I force myself to believe these aren't hoodlums let loose with a motor vehicle, but elderly drivers panicking after making a misjudgement, or people on an emergency journey. It doesn't make them any less dangerous, but you don't get sucked in to escalate the dangerous situation they are creating. It somehow makes it easy to pull over and let them pass, without wanting revenge and having the situation spiral into something even more dangerous. My closest call was entering the motorway near Stirling. The slip road was two lanes wide, and swept in a curving left hand turn onto the motorway. Being young and in a hurry, I was legally and safely overtaking a slower car in the slow lane, doing about 65, and to my horror I met a car speeding towards me heading off the motorway heading the wrong way. No car should ever have been there. I had nowhere to go, because the car I was overtaking was still in the inner lane. At that moment, it's very strange, but everything seemed to pass in slow motion. I was breaking, hard, but quite calm in assessing the reducing distance to collision, and waiting to see the tail lights of the car in the inner lane. I preyed to see those tail lights, and also preyed they would not be braking to slow down. Momentarily, these lights appeared as the car inside of me pulled ahead of me, no brakes! Hurray! He wasn't slowing down! The gap appeared, and I slotted my car in behind the car I had just been overtaking moments before. I reckon another second or two and I'd have collided with the on-coming car which hadn't even slowed down. It really was that close. If that car on the inside had braked, the gap behind him would not have appeared, and I'd have been killed in a head-on collision at speed. We both then slowed down, and the driver who's calm presence of mind had saved my life, looked in his rear view mirror and raised his palms to the sky to gesture WTF? I just shook my head. I pulled over into the hard shoulder to see my tyres and brakes were ok, and I heard distant horns blasting back up the entrance ramp. I was fine, and jumped back in to continue my journey. But when I got to the Dunblane roundabout, why leg was shaking when I tried to use the brake. I've done some wild stuff in my life, but that remains my closest near death incident. I cannot account for why or how the other driver came to be where he was. He had clearly made a big mistake, and was panicking to get out of the situation. I don't know if he was, drunk, old, foreign, whatever, but at the time I was just glad to be alive. The highway code advises you to choose your speed so you can see your stopping distance and stop before hitting any obstacle. That goes out the window when that obstacle isn't static but barrelling towards you at 80 mph. I'm alive because that driver I had been overtaking didn't brake. I attribute that to his presence of mind, but it was all so quick it might be he didn't react at all. It doesn't matter. If he'd slowed down, even a little, my gap would not have appeared and I would not have survived a head on smash with closing speed to impact in excess of 120mph. I have to say however, I like to believe the incident made me a better driver. Anticipation isn't just a word.

Grrrrrr! Sigh! BLOODY Ford! We have a works van, sat idle for about 8 months with a full tank of deisel. So I thought I'd syphon some out just to use it before it gets nicked. (Hey, it's a 5 minute job, and this is the UK where fuel is more expensive than gold). First, not one of the three door locks will work using the key, either key. One of the key's itself broke and started turning freely in the handle. Eventually, using a cocktail of oil, WD-40, bribery and gentle persuasion, we got one door to open - we never dare lock it again. Won't start, but that's ok. It's sat a while. After 20 minutes trying every type of tubing in the yard, apparently the petrol tank has an anti-syphon filter so fuel doesn't get out if I overturn the van. OK, I can't syphon it out the filler pipe, so I'll drain it instead. Not so fast. No drain plug in a Ford. Maybe we can get to the tank through the floor of the van. Who knows? The door won't open and there's a bulkhead between the front and back. We have to cut out the internal mesh bulkhead to get to the back door (bulkhead bolts on the inside), but even so, the back door won't even open from the inside. We're hoping theres a floor panel where we can get through to the fuel tank's sender unit and perhaps access the tank from the top, but we can't get the wooden floor panel out to see, because we can't open the ruddy back door, because opening the latch doesn't let go of the catch. I now need to drill out the rivets to see why the back door lock wont open. FFS!!!! All I want is a gallon or two of deisel. Is it so very difficult??? 2 and half hours later and I'm still not in. Waste of a ruddy afternoon. Four letter word? - FORD! Fix Or Repair Daily. What's the difference in cost between a door lock that works and a door lock that doesn't? The door lock that doesn't work is much more expensive because it comes attached to a FORD motor vehicle!!! Anyone want to buy a van? May have a small hole drilled in its fuel tank, and a big 'boot' shaped dent in the back door. Come for a test drive but bring your own door keys coz mine don't bloody work.

I say key, it looks like a length of 6" nail with some crimping in it. What else do you use that you don't use keys? One of those press a button and everything opens? Hmmm. Wait til that is 9 years old and the battery sucks because its a bit chilly. I'm behind the times I guess. I still use keys, (although my van seems to have given up on them all by itself). Not a great fan of car gizmos. I had a volvo once with a heated seat which broke and stayed on and tried to cook you until I cut the wires. It was a subtle heat though, you didn't actually know it was on. I didn't actually know I even had heated seats. You'd get to your destination sweating like a pig for no apparent reason. Then an electric window packed in. A new motor was a rediculous price so I just drove about with the window up. Then the local supermarket put one of those ticket and boom entry gates on to their car park entrance. What a pain. That was a nice car, but spoiled by stupid gimicks that broke down. - Gimicks you didn't need, but they bugged you because they were broken. My idea of heroic vehicles is the excavator which once got stuck on a beach in Arisaig. I forget now what the problem was, ran out of fuel perhaps. The tide came in and covered most of it. Eventually after a few hours the tide went out, the driver went back, jumped in the cab and turned the key and it started. - Thats the kind of engine I like.

I'm not sure what 'viewpoint' that's meant to be. For a gun cam, I'd strap the camera to the gun, and for a gunners eye, I'd strap it to the gunners helmet. This looks like gunners chest cam, or perhaps, and quite logically, - 'hold the camera tight and don't drop it if the wind catches it' cam. I wasn't confused by the brown footage, but more, how can you see any targets if that's the gunners view? I at first thought the film started as the gunner sitting down and he'd stand up to shoot. I don't want to be harsh because those fellas have some cracking aircraft and footage, and loads of other good stuff. This was a bit confusing, but I forgive them.

It's ok. I saw the signs of stress and just gave up before I had a stroke or got the gas axe out. It's only a bit of diesel. The back door doesn't work because the plastic handle has snapped internally. The drivers door lock was always iffy, but all three are now kaput. If I get some oil in the right place they might work again - for a few days. The rear door was locked, with a broken handle. For some reason Ford decided the lock and the handle should work together so when one breaks they both do. The rivets held a panel covering the workings. I got it off and manually released the lock. The door now opens, but only from the inside. I need a new plastic handle which will cost me about £300 no doubt. I also couldn't get the floor out because the van is lined with Ply, only the genius that put that in put the floor in first and then the side panels. You can't lift the floor out without ripping out the whole internal lining. Seeing this is what made me give up. This isn't an old clunker van, not new perhaps, but it's only 9 years old. It doesn't inspire confidence to drive a thing at speed when the company that made it can't even come up with functional door locks. FFS, all it has to do is open and close at the turn of a key. - 100% Fail! Never mind. I still have my Landy. It breaks too from time to time, but it encourages you to believe it's on your side and wants to be fixed. True story about Ford - A mate was driving a blue escort when he went skiing for the day. After a day on the piste, he went back to his car, opened the door, jumped in and started to drive away. Half way out the car park he noticed things were 'funny', and unfamiliar. He noticed the radio was completely different. The penny dropped he'd actually jumped into somebody elses Ford Escort, opened it, started it and drove it away with his own keys. This is a true story. It turns out at the time, Ford only had 8 types of key - that is one chance in eight your keys would open somebody elses car.

I don't suppose it's a secret that I really didn't like the way ETO was launched, especially due to the way it wrecked the Sim Outhouse database, but setting that personal beef to one side, Pat Pattle and his airfields & landscapes, and Viso's vehicles were tremendous volumes of work, and vast improvements to what was there before. There were other ETO things I liked too, and some things I didn't like, but without being bitchy about it, I just wasn't bowled over by ETO in the way I was with both OFF and MAW. I think the sign of a trully great Sim is your desire to change things. With OFF, and MAW, I rarely find myself wanting to change anything, in fact I often find myself trying to import their 'good stuff' and get it to work in my own unique mongrel CFS3 'stew'. One day, if I have nothing better to do (and no new WW2 Sim on the market has done it for me already), I might try to integrate OFF's spectacular scenery with my 'big' CFS3, add in Pat Pattles Airfields, Viso's vehicles, and MAW's effects (especially those beautiful night flares...), and then I might have a WW2 version of CFS3 that I like to fly. Maybe... To be completely honest, it's been so long since I've even tinkered with CFS3 I'd have to go back to the beginning and start all over. I just don't see that happening. Meantime, OFF has no equal as far as I'm concerned, but there's also something keeps drawing me back to MAW too. Might just be all that ammo in those Beaufighters... What I would like to see is the OFF team waking up one morning with an urge to apply themselves to create a new WW2 theatre on a par with OFF. I fully respect them sticking to their prefered era, and what specifically interests them, but when you look at OFF, you begin to realise what CFS3 can do in the right hands, you can begin to see just how far short of it's full potential the WW2 CFS3 has ever reached. (And no, that isn't a dig at any past or current CFS3 add-on, but a hopefully dispassionate observation that none of them are on a par with our OFF).

It's OT because its WW2, and not OFF but G2/Shockwave's Battle of Britain - Wings of Victory... I've had it a couple of years now, but never really liked it. I can never work out where the planes are, and it's very limited to BoB (ok that's obvious) and seemed a bit arcade like. Until...... I just discovered it takes TrackIR!!!!! Wooohoo!. Not only takes Trackir, but it's very smooth too. Whole new sim now! It's not OFF, or even CFS3, and for 2005, it's not that great, but on the upside it's presentable, and not the worst way to spend some free time. I wonder if t's been modded....

Have to admit this is growing on me. I'm still a bit green in the cockpit and finding my limits, but it is very easy to get into. I do like the AI. They do attack in formation from time to time, and react pretty violently when you shoot at them. Getting a kill certainly isn't too easy, and I love the numbers, with 50+ dogfights nothing remarkable. I will take a look at the campaign in due course. I reckon TrackIR is a definite must, even more so than OFF. I find the periforal roundals and iron crosses are more of a distraction than a help, but easy to ignore with Trackir. Thanks guys.

I don't know what the rod is for, but looking at Elephant's first picture, there seems to be another shorter rod type thing in the same place but on the other wing. Very curious. My best guess it might be some kind of test apparatus for assessing an enemy plane - but that's a long shot. It isn't for firing anythng, because the strut attaches to the end of it, but again as a guess, it would appear to be level with the ground when the aircraft was in flight. Could it be an aid to level flight, a bit like the bars on a window of a Stuka cockpit to assess the dive angle? I really don't know what it is. Edit - Might it be a radio aerial? - Away from the engine and any static?

More people who fly OFF the better, but on the down side, a lot of people won't buy in to WW1. Hate to admit it, but once upon a time I was the same. My attitude was "Why would anyone want to exchange bombing along at 400mph clipping hedgerows armed to the teeth in my mean old Mosquito, for some old box kite with a sewing machine for an engine?" Of course, I know much better now, but back in the beginning, I liked OFF straight away because it was such a good sim, but if I'm honest, it took time for me to warm to the WW1 backdrop. I think the best way to promote OFF is get more videos made and stuck on YouTube. Once upon a time, I had around 20 movies on youtube, but I noticed the short clips, one to two minutes long were getting 3 or 4 times more hits than better movies which were longer. I had one movie 9 mins long, but it had a slowest turnover of views by far. Bottom line is, if you want lots of hits & activity, keep it short. It sounds easy, but I found it harder to make a 2 minute movie than a 5 minute one. Sounds daft, but try it. It's very hard to tell any kind of story in less than 2 minutes.

My condolences too Olham. Remember the good times. After my father died many years ago, it came as a shock how quickly afterwards I couldn't picture his face in my mind. I was terrified I was forgetting him. Loss is a hard thing to cope with, but my thoughts are with you.

No, I'm still flying it out the box so far. I've got the 2.11 patch downloading, but on mobile broadband. Should be done by Sunday or so.... It is pretty good. I like the numbers of aircraft, but only with TrackIR. Did have couple of CTD's, but hopefully the patch will fix those. Thanks for the links Baltika.

Don't worry Nbryant, WM and the team will re-build the world from the bits left, and do their best to improve the scenery when they're at it. We'll all be fine, don't worry.

I tried to comment but I can't register. The registration screen locks up on me for some reason ...

Didn't respond, -but I'm not in the huff.... I did get a flash of going all defensive, - OFF is definitely not "A. N. Other" flight sim!!! But it passed momentarily. In fact, if you read a few of the posts, it seems there are quite a few sims missing from the options list, and I'm positive having an "Other" option is just a catch-all option and isn't meant as an insult. Its just a poll in a forum, but whenever you read a thread about "what sim do you fly?", remember it's just a thread to stimulate some discussion. Most of the time I think the question could also be read "Does anybody know a good flight sim I haven't tried yet?" Wouldn't do any harm to drop in and say you really enjoy flying OFF, but I'm not SIMHQ registered and already late for work....

What an excellent site, and what looks like an excellent museum. Great find Itifonhom.