Bullethead

Looks like you need to hitch the big ridgeback to a sled .

Welcome aboard, Boomer! New guy buys the drinks. I'm in the mood for absinthe today .

Well, still quite a ride I bet. It's my understanding that planes, especially heavy C-47s, didn't go over the Owen-Stanleys, they went between them, hoping the cloud ahead wasn't full of rocks.

Holy crap! They didn't even give you a practice jump first?!?!?!? Anyway, you need to tell the staff here about that so you can get the "Honored Veteran" tag for your name that you deserve

My 1st flight was in 1965 at the age of 2.5 in a Bell 47 helicopter. This was my only helicopter ride until I was an adult and the only one I ever enjoyed, because they was before they killed so many of my friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_47 On the old "classic" prop airliner side of things, I've flown in: Convair 240, 340, 440, both piston and turboprop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_CV-240_family DC-4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-4, DC-6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-6, DC-7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-7, again both piston and turboprop versions. DeHaviland Dragon Rapide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_rapide (at Duxford, ended in emergency landing, but I've got the certificate showing I survived the flight ) One of the great regrets of my life is that I never got to ride a Constellation or a Vicount . I've also flown in PBYs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBY and Grumman Geese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_Goose. This happened in the early 70s when I lived in New Orleans and my father ran all the Shell oilfields in Lousy Anna. They used these planes to fly around to various locations out in the swamps before there were roads to them, and sometimes he'd have to go out on weekends and I got to tag along. This was quite adventurous because they were flying out of rare (and rather short) straight stretches of narrow bayous with miles of cypress swamp on both sides and at the ends, so it was always a question of being able to clear the trees. Also, the planes were always hitting drifting logs. This gave them so many holes in the bottom that they couldn't stay down long. In fact, they never stopped moving while on the water for fear they'd either sink or get too heavy to take off again. You'd land and as the plane turned around at the end of the straightaway, you'd jump into a boat that had maneuvered alongside, and before you'd reached the dock, the plane was disappearing just over the treetops with water pouring out of it. Same routine in reverse when you left. But those days are long gone now. When Viet Nam ended, scads of surplus Huey helicopters became available and they took over oilfield personnel transportation. While in the Corps, most of my flights were in chartered civilian airliners, but I did have the misfortune to ride in C-130s and C-141s occasionally. In fact, one of the more memorable trips of my life was in a C-141 from Cherry Point NAS to Jubail, Magic Kingdom. We left about 0800 on 24 December and arrived about 1000 local time 25 December. En route, we blew 8 tires landing in Torejon, Spain so were delayed there about 6 hours and didn't get going again until about 0100 local time Xmas day. Then we got chased from Sardinia to Sicily by Lybian MiGs until the CVBG boys got their act together and ran them off, flew over the Pyramids, and did an assault landing in Saudi during a Scud attack warning, so it was bailing out the back ramp onto the hood of a truck chasing us down the runway, then bailing off the truck into a trench beside a taxiway. Neither vehicle stopped. Good thing I'd done similar things as a child in the swamps . When I've been the pilot, I've never flown anything old apart from Schwietzer 233 gliders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_2-33A. However, I did survive learning to fly in a Piper Traumahawk, which I guess is worth some bragging rights

Thanks for the warning. I guess it's even worse for you because you can't get a death certificate so can't inherit her business or collect her insurance, nor can you remarry. My condolences.

Good luck with it. I never had such troubles. I had the stick some time before I got the pedals, too. The key thing is to get the lastest software for both items and install each one before plugging in the device it's for. The pedals have different software from the stick so you don't have 2 instances of 1 program, you have 1 instance of each. They have different icons even. Right-click on 1 to load its profile, then right-click the other to load its.

Damn pretty pics there, OvS! I think I recognize one of those dungeons :). BTW, the moons of Nirn have always puzzled me. I've read enough lore to know that they don't pay much attention to Kepler, Newton, and various other giants of orbital mechanics. In fact, I seem to recall being unable to figure out what was going on the Armillary DLC thing in Oblivion. But still, it's always struck me as odd that the moons are never in the same phase. And I've always thought that Nirn shoul have really bizarre and rather large tides, but I've never seen evidence of any tides at all along the various beaches.

You know, it had never occurred to be before, but I think this thread shows why all WW1 national insignia were symmetrical. Roundels and crosses always are "right side up" even when the plane is upside down or standing on its nose. Doubtless this was a concession to how frequently the airplanes of the day had mishaps

It's all in the sharpening/tempering on the grindstone/workbench. Items straight out of the forge are pretty run-of-the-mill but they get their godlike stats from being improved. The amount you can improve something depends both your smith skill level and having the perk for the material the item is made of. If you have the perk for that material, the amount of skill needed to reach a given level of improvement is reduced, so you can improve materials you know much more than you can improve materials you don't. Because I've been going up the light armor side of the smith perk tree, I can get everything on that side up to "flawless". My skill is only 57 so I assume there are a few more levels above that. But on the heavy armor side of the tree, I can only improve dwarf and orc stuff to "superior", which is hardly worth doing. Well, that sounds like a good trade-off. You do about 10% more base damage plus paralysis but depend on soul gems, which is an ongoing expense. Me, being too lazy to deal with soul gems and also prone to go berserk and run items completely out of charges (which used to destroy them in Oblivion--don't know if that happens in Skyrim because I haven't used one yet), I'll stick with smithing and permanently enchanted armor and jewelry for buffs. Of course, I have an assload of 1-handed perks. In fact, I've got as many as I can get until I reach skill 80 and I'm only 63 there: Armsman x 4: 1-handed weapons do 80% more damage Bladesman x 2: swords have a +15% chance of a criticalhit Dual Fury x 2: dual-wield attacks are 35% faster Fighting Stance: standing power attacks use 25% less stamina Savage Strike: standing power attacks do 25% more damage and chance to decapitate for instant kill On top of this, I have some flawless scaled bracers that make 1-handed attacks do 13% more damage. When using a flawless Nord Hero Sword in each hand, no foe survives very long . Thanks for the warning. I just got the letter to go do that one....

In the meantime, if you want to watch a good fight, you can always use a Mayhem scroll in the middle of the market square

I doubt the engine itself would be bent--it would be very strong compared to the stick and canvas airframe. More likely, the firewall would buckle or tear where the engine attached, rather than the engine itself bending. But either result would depend entirely on the airframe sommersaulting with enough momentum. Given that the airframe was very light and not moving very quickly, and that the firewall and its surrounding pieces were the strongest parts of it, I'd think it's entirely possible that there'd be no thrustline alteration. And that must have been the case in MvR's incident. Note in JFM's photos who the Dr.I's prop didn't even break. I reckon it would be easier to break the prop than to misalign the engine.

My bad. I forgot to mention something important here... You have to install the pedals separately from the stick, and profile it separately. So be sure to get its latest software as well. Once you have all the software installed, you'll have 2 system tray icons, 1 for the stick/throttle and 1 for the rudder. To your system, you end up with 2 "joysticks" and 3 "keyboards". The stick/throttle is the X, Y and throttle axes plus a keyboard, and the pedals are the Z axis and a keyboard, plus of course your real keyboard. IMPORTANT NOTE: Besides just physically locking your stick, it's a very good idea to make your stick profile with the Z axis totally disabled. This is because even with the lock on, there's still a bit of play in the twist, which can confuse things when you're also pushing a pedal.

Be careful judging what happened during the flight from the position of the control surfaces of the wreck. The stick could have been moved after the plane stopped, such as being kicked while the pilot scrambled out (no doubt as hastily as possible with petrol fumes in his nostrils). There does appear to be some sort of wire draped around the lower right wing. I don't think it's a rope because 1) there aren't any knots, and 2) it doesn't hang straight down or lie flat on surfaces, but is arched and even has kinks in it. Thus, I think it much more likely that to be something collected during the crash as opposed to something attached later to position the wreck. So where did it come from? If it's part of a fence, then it would be an electric fence, which I don't think was in use at that time and place. Thus, I think the best explanation is that it was a telephone or telegraph wire up on a pole, and that MvR either didn't see it or couldn't avoid it due to his lack of power. Either way, I'm sure it contributed to the final result and perhaps MvR's surprise as well. My own main problem with landing the Dr.I is how at the critical moment the wings close off your forward view like a window blind . I agree with others that landing into the wind is absolutely critical to success. My own technique is to make a slightly nose-high 2-pointer and just let the thing roll as long as it wants to, using the wheels on the ground to stabilize the plane as the ailerons lose effectiveness.

Back at ya! And may everybody find several bottles of top shelf holiday cheer under the tree!

I suppose I should mention that this sword is only (flawless) because after I made it, I sharpened it while wearing a smith-buffing item. It would just have been (exquisite) without that, but IIRC would still have been good for 42 damage which ain't too shabby, either. And if you don't do the quests, you can't make Nord Hero weapons. However, without the quests but with the same level of smith skill, you can make elf swords with the same damage rating, they just weigh 12 pounds instead of 9 and look poncy. My guy is now 30th level overall. Smith skill is 57 with the perks for steel, elven, and advanced armors. The next step up the ladder is skill 60, which allows improvement of enchanted weapons and armor. Being able to make and improve glass items comes at skill 70. I'm only just now starting to find a few glass weapons as loot and there's simply no comparison to the stuff I can make. For example, a standard glass sword does only 27 damage and I need another 13 skill points to even sharpen it. So I think I'll be keeping my pair of flawless Nord Hero swords for a while . Now obviously, a sword with 47 base damage would be even more powerful with an enchantment on it. But that would open up the whole logistical can of worms of keeping the thing fueled up with soul gems, which entails keeping a pocket full of charged soul gems and/or having another weapon that steals souls (and would also need refueling). And that's just too much bother and expense for me. I do plan on getting the perk to improve previously enchanted items, however. That way, when I find a weapon with a good enchantment, I can bump up its base damage to put it in line with my homebrew stuff and use it until it burns out. Or I can improve enchanted armor of the type I wear. For instance, I wear scaled armor and I found a pair of scaled boots that give 30 extra stamina. But they're at base AR so I don't wear them because my unenchanted flawless scaled boots are so much better. But with the next perk, the stamina boots will also be flawless.

Yeah, I know who that is from the 1st part of the quest. A right bastard, that one. BTW, if you're still interested in smithing, once you get smithing over 50 and do a few quests that shall remain nameless, you can make stuff like this sword. I've got 2 of these and a complete set of flawless scaled armor (steel, not dragon) to go with them (finally got out of that poncy elf armor, but still have a flawless elf bow). I don't use any enchanted items other than rings and necklaces. With my perks in light armor, my AR is 256, which seems to be sufficient for most fights I get into. Mostly because I blenderize my foes pretty quickly with every damage-, sword-, dual-wield-, and critical-related perk my 1-hand skill of 63 allows. Of course, having a powerful battlemage sidekick doesn't hurt, either

Very pretty fall colors! I use a couple of dark ones so my icons show up better. One of them is the village of Dragon Bridge with mist clinging to the slopes. The other is me and my pal Erandur realizing we've stumbled into a bigger mess than we expected...

I hope so :). It will be for me, at least. Running around with swords is all fun and games until somebody gets one through the belly. But even going down in flames after colliding with your target is still fun