Flyby PC

I love aerial photos. It's like Google earth with interesting bits. Found this at the same site. Sometimes you can just tell that something's never gonna work. Must be waiting for Muttley before take off. BTW - if that welly boot is the same chap, he looks about 8" tall. Has to be somebody pushing. (Has to be, - you'd never find two people mad enough to go for a flight in that thing.

Rock breaking? - Oh the vandalism!!! By the way, those are CHUNKIEST rugby posts I've ever seen.

Yeah baby, yeah..... You can never have enough machine guns.

I'm guessing they're all replicas. - They're loaded. Most weapons I've ever seen in one place is Beijing Military Museum. Agree 100% about the VA guys. True pro's.

I found it varies, depending on what you fly. I found Trackir improved my aim with iron gunsights, because you can actually use the sight. Even in the strutter, with trackir, you can even draw a bead using the offset machine gun. You don't need the gunsight view, just lean over and line up the sight - it's the extreme edge of trackIr, but it's there. You can also look down the aldis sight too. I noticed a much bigger difference with the WW2 aircraft. I got to be a pretty good marksman in my Mossie pre-trackIr, but I couldn't hit a barn door afterwards. You'd no perspective with the site, and no datum to line up your target. You'd waste a lot of ammo through fire, adjust, fire, adjust.... No clean shots at all. Even once you 'zeroed in', shift your head an inch (& try not to with a Trackir), and you need to start again. The other cool thing about trackir is you can actually use the cockpit guages. It's a clever little gizmo, and like Stiffy says, it gives a massive boost to your immersion level. It puts you 'in' the cockpit. Even at take off, if you're in a tail dragger and you can't see where you're going, lean over and look down the fuselage.

The beerkellars! (I'm sorry Jake, just being a smart arse). I don't know Austria at all, but the great thing about being abroad is that it's ALL new, everything, and wherever you go there's always something different to see. It's a personal thing, but get the touristy stuff out the way quickly and throw away the guide book. Eat and drink where the locals eat and drink, and don't sit in the corner with your Ipod on. It only gets scary when you can't read sign posts and there's no 'western' friendly translation. See it all, do it all, and don't get into trouble. Respect your hosts, and even if you don't speak their language, do yourself a favour and learn one or two of the basics, language and culture. I went to China and had one of the flight hostesses teach me, - hello, please, thank you, sorry, I don't understand... Only took 5 minutes, and (yes ok she was pretty). - She warned me Chinese people grin when they're embarrassed, which can throw you the wrong signals if you've just been charged the 'western' price for something. I picked up a few more words when I got there, but man alive, Chinese is TOUGH to pick up. No regrets though. China doesn't get a massive number of westerners, and the reaction I got when I tried to speak chinese made it all worthwhile. It's a mark of respect for one thing, and on some occassions, it's maybe no bad thing for the locals to think you might be understanding more than you're letting on.... Have a good time and don't forget to pack your sense of humour.

Are there still perplexing missmatch issues defying the laws of physics? - Not to point the finger at OFF, it's a CFS3 issue. Spoiled a lot of the fun. With CFS3, you felt like wrapping your pc up in polythene after a successful multiplayer mission, just so the perfect alignment of your settings, hardware, aircraft, updates, scenery, teamspeak, fraps and trackIR would still be working again next week. I'm not asking to scare away newcomers to multiplayer, because it is definitely worth the effort when everything clicks.....

Aching to get back in to multiplayer. Fell off the Boys of 60 lorry when real life got a bit too demanding, and sad to say it hasn't eased in the 2 years since. Doesn't help when I've got a 71/2 stone Ridgeback taking me for a walk 3 times a day. He's 2 now. Wow, didn't notice the maths....hmmm. Work hasn't eased off, and I have to beat it down with a stick at weekends. Give it a couple more months and hopefully, .....hopefully, I might be signing on the dotted line again. MP is good fun, and I do want to get back in the groove. Ssshh, keep it secret, but I'm not really putting the hours in to SP these days. I did start a campaign flight on Friday, and found I was losing my grasp on the commands!!! Need to teach my Ridgeback how to fly, problem solved . He adores being on anything high, & always has. He's pretty smart for a hound, and a pain in the t___s when he's bored. Edit - piccy wasn't staged. The wee dog likes to copy the big fella, but fill's his shorts when he gets there.

I find whenever I see something odd or not quite right, so long as I can put some logic, even a bit creative logic to explain it, I'm quite happy go lucky about it. If a pilot doesn't react to my attack, maybe he didn't see me, maybe he was wounded, maybe was reading the map , maybe he was a novice and panic strikken, (is that a word? struck?) maybe he was tired to the bone and thinking about his popsie back at home. I get jumped all the time, taking damage before I ever see my attacker, and I THINK I'm paying attention. My attitude is if it could happen, well, maybe it just did.... I think it's called immersion...

I'm ignorant here, but trying to investigate, and more than happy to be corrected. Is there any contempory direct comparison between the Dr1 and Sopwith? I don't dispute the performance of the Dr1 versus allied biplanes, but wasn't the whole issue behind Fokkers Dr1 design an attempt to match the manoeuverability of the Sopwith? Manoeuverability was always exceptional due to the abundance of lift given by the third wing, but the it came at a price, forfeiting maximum speed through additional drag. This marvellous manoeuverability also fell away dramatically at greater heights. I'm not convinced, correction, I have yet to be convinced, that the impression left on allied pilots following an engagement with a Dr1 was greatly different from a similar engagement with positions reversed. My point is, the Allies did know the strengths of Triplanes, but had moved on in their designs to favour greater speed and superior all round performance. Checking the dreaded Wikipedia facts, (I know, I know, but it's handy!!!), the Sopwith was 2 mph faster than the Dr1, could fly 500ft higher, and had 20hp more horse power. The Sopwith was very successful, but lost out against the superior new Camel. You could argue the Dr1 was very similar, losing out to the DVII. Both planes even had similar structural issues. All the comparisons I've seen compare triplane manoeuverability to biplane, not like for like. Did a Dr1 and Sopwith ever meet in combat?

Hold on, I think the pilots of Sopwith Tripes might have had an inkling....

In a parallel world, when you parachute operationally as a paratrooper, you jump from around 700 or 800ft. If your chute malfunctions, you have seven seconds before you pile in. That's seven seconds to first realise you have a malfunction, get rid of your dysfunctional canopy (which might interfere with your reserve chute's deployment), pull your reserve chute, and force it away from you so the air can catch it and open it so it deploys in time to slow your decent. Seems a lot to do in 7 seconds, but as the instructors told us, you WILL be highly motivated to follow these procedures to their completion. Drill's are there for every emergency, and being service personnel, I expect these pilots would start their drill as second nature. After all, some chance is better than none. Even a young pilot will follow the drill because he won't know what else to do, but a seasoned pilot would follow the drill because he'd have faith it might work. Bearing in mind, engines were still in early development, and your engine is so often between you and the enemy who's shooting at you, I'd hazard a guess the drill for engine failure would be almost routine.

Press Ctrl - to lean out your mixture. The way to do it is press ctrl, then tap out the - symbol until your engine begins to stutter and fail. Once this happens, give it one or two clicks of + (thats ctrl +) until your engine picks up again. That's you properly 'leaned out' for that altitude. Fly higher or lower, and repeat the process to keep you mixture at its optimum. Manual mixture gives you an edge over auto in my opinion.

You're missing the point. The post I was responding to implied a newcomer to OFF felt taken advantage off having to buy CFS3 just so he could run OFF. As a newcomer, he may be unaware that OFF is bound to CFS3 through copyright issues, so the link has to remain. No CFS3, no OFF. Furthermore, my point wasn't to defend CFS3, but to let Vyrago know that the cost of CFS3 could also be off-set against the access to the further creditable add-ons besides OFF. I expect everybody here knows all about CFS3 and it's deficiencies, it's been gone over ad-nauseum, but it doesn't change the fact that if there was no CFS3, there'd be no guys messing around with it and building the likes MAW, OFF, PTO, all the 1% aircraft, and all the other Gb of addons and effects which we can pick and choose to suit our individual tastes.

To actually answer your question, you climb best by trading speed for lift, but at height I actually pay less attention to my climb rate, and focus on keeping my speed up. So long as your rate of climb is more or less positive, you're climbing. Keep your turns to a minimum to avoid losing energy. You're already slower and more vulnerable to attack when climbing, so you want to avoid dissipating even more energy by turning when or if you don't have to. You need to watch all around for bandits, - but turn your head not your aircraft. (TrackIR helps a lot here). If you see any trouble coming, abort your climb & get your speed up - but only dive if it's important. If the bandit loses interest in you, resume your climb. You can also climb 'steps' for want of a better explanation. Trade some speed to climb more steeply for a few seconds, level off for a minute or so to recover some speed, (and use the time to adjust or 'lean out' your fuel mixture to suit your altitude), then repeat the process. - Think of an unifit person climbing stairs, if they run flat out, they run out of breath and have to stop, when they eventually get to the top they collapse in a heap. But if they take it easy and pause regularly to catch their breath, they get to the top a bit faster, but more importantly, they're in a fit and ready state to do something once they get there. This all works for me, but as stated already, you'll still find it difficult to match the AI.

I love old photo's like those. But for the fact there was a war on, so many avenues of opportunity were opening up. It amazes me the things we now take for granted when you see how these 'contraptions' not only amazed but inspired the people who saw them. It seems to me the spirit of inventiveness was everywhere, in travel, in flight, in railways, in shipping, cars, ... everywhere, but unlike today, back then it seemed to drag the people along with it. You had airships trying to cross the Atlantic in1919, massive ocean liners the like of Titanic, you'd the Flying Scotsman steam engine making the run from London to Edinburgh non-stop, (it didn't break it's 100mph record until 1934), but massive crowds of ordinary people would line up just to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. Less than 90 years later, easily living memory, we have planes like the massive Airbus A380, cruise liners more than twice the displacement of Titanic, and all with such marvelous technology which is absolutely mind blowing if you think about it. It would be easy to say we're not as inventive as we were back then, and yet we are, even more so. We have mobile phones, Ipods, PC's, which fall out of date as soon as we buy them. The thing I don't understand is what seems to be our modern ambivalence to it all. We all seem to take such things for granted. The fastest, the biggest, the first, etc just doesn't seem to interest anybody anymore. It seems to me our lives are ruled from top to bottom by money, and there's something terribly sad and hollow about it. We can and do have the biggest, fastest and best of everything, but all we seem to care about is the cheapest.

Just to add in again, people talk about CFS3 is if it's a dirty word. It is very limited as it comes out the box, but it also holds the key to some pretty engaging WW2 mods and updates. I do believe OFF is the best, but a heavily modded CFS3 is worth having a look at. Maybe not much cop if WW1 is your thing, but in my opinion, it's not the piece of crap a lot of folks write it off to be. Takes a bit of work that's all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSthEjxecA

Do it Vyrago. You won't regret it. Yes, there is a padlock view with CFS3, but the downside of CFS3 is that there isn't any recording of your flight for you to review. You can run fraps to record what your screen sees, but not separate views at the same time. Sounds a bit grim, but you can get used to it, and it doesn't spoil your enjoyment. You can make good vids, but it takes a lot more work and staging of events. That's a hard coded CFS3 deficiency built in which add-ons have to live with. That apart, OFF BhaH itself is second to none. Welcome aboard. As for combat, depends on your settings, but it can be so real it isn't fun but a white knuckle race for survival.

Little off topic, but Rugby Commentator Bill McLaren died today. Don't expect you Americans will have heard of him, but he was a giant in the world of rugby union, and my gym teacher at the same time. Rest in peace Bill.

Fastest chuckle from Mitchell & Webb was a send up of animal hospital. Nurse walks in with a pheasant, "Gunshot wounds to the chest". "Oh no, not again..." Not a massive M&W fan, but they do have their moments.

Doesn't sound like these masks were standard issue, so the possibilities of their construction are endless. Being Soviet, with Siberian winters and all that, I expect they might not even be specifically for airmen. The Army used to have the expression 'any fool can be cold', meaning that if you knew the kit you were issued with wasn't up to the job, get youself to the Army Surplus Store and sort out something better. For example, the UK sleeping bags you were issued weren't very good, so the 'foolish' guys would sit and shiver all night, while the smart fellas would have bought themselves a US doss bag. The other expression that tickled me was that all army equipment only had two sizes. - Too big, and too wee.

Stumbled across another bit of trivia regarding women pilots. Bit off topic, but only just... You know in the film Tora, Tora, Tora, there's a female civilian instructor who finds her lesson interrupted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour? Well, that was real. Her name was Cornelia Fort, and she returned to the mainland later to join the Women' Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, as the name suggests ferrying military aircraft, and sadly becoming the first female service aviator to be killed when her plane collided with another. (The collision wasn't her fault). Looks aside, the history of aviation is dotted with gutsy young women, often giving their lives as duty required, but rarely given a level playing field with us men. Over Stalingrad in WW2, the Polikarpov Po2 biplanes flying harrassment bombing raids were often piloted by women. The Po2's top speed was less than 100mph, slower than many WW1 aircraft, and often they switched off the engine to approach in silence so there was no warning. The Germans had lots of names for the aircraft, sewing machines, the duty corporal, and such like. (Need to read Beevor's Stalingrad again...) but the women pilots were called Nachthexen, or night witches. The 588th Night Bomber Regiment was the most decorated unit in the Russian Air Force.

Harriet Quimby was a bit of a looker too. First American Woman to get a pilot's licence, and first woman to cross the English Channel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Quimby

Amen to that... A chimney fire can reach temperatures in excess of 1800 deg centigrade. (Glass and steel both melt at around1400 give or take). It can easily crack ceramic flue liners, and fight it's way out of the flue and into the roof space. Depending what fuel you burn, it's not just soot up your chimney, but often a tar-like creosote which will burn like crazy once it gets going. As Bullethead says, a chimney fire can get very serious very quickly. I was a lucky, and learned my lesson without burning the house down. Take advice from a stonemason, get your chimney swept annually, and even twice annually if you use it a lot. If you've had a chimney fire, get the flue checked out properly. Block off the chimney pot and seal up the fireplace then put a smoke pellet in the grate. If smoke leaks out easily or escapes into an adjoining flue, the flue you're testing clearly isn't air tight and you could have a problem. If smoke can escape, so can heat and toxic vapours.

I bet their notion of real Hell is their youngest grandson coming to visit. (Curiously, that's also probably their grandsons notion of absolute heaven). On the subject of burning models, when I was a nipper, the fireplace became theatre of war where tanks and aeroplanes would meet their firey end. One particular time, alone in the house, a Tiger tank brewed up particularly well, (those pesky 1:32 jobs, waaayyy too much plastic involved), and set the chimney on fire. Panic!!! Well not really, being a resourceful young chap, I filled a bucket of water and using my bicycle pump, squirted water up the lumb, successfully putting out the fire. Next, was the mammoth job of clearing up the mess, which I set about with great gusto, expecting my parents back at any minute. One fireplace, spotless, one rug, spotless, one silly young laddie, spotless. YES!!! Got away with it. Yayooo! Dad came home. "Have a chimney fire?" Wha? How the f.....? EVERYTHING is spotless!! The PERFECT crime! He took me outside to see lawn outside, covered in soot. Ah...........