Bullethead

Hot DAMN, you're coming right along. Looks very nice. Extrusions is how I do them both. As I said, I'm no expert, but here's how I do it (based on what I got from tutes)..... Wingtips: Extruce the parallel section of the wing to the point where it stops being parallel. If it has washout, grad the outer vertice and rotate them all as needed. The extrude a bit more. Usually, the leading edge changes before the trailing edge, so extrude to where the LE changes. Then drag the other vertices to where the TE changes. Extrude again, drag to match the LE and TE curves, add washout as needed, repeat. Eventually, you'll have to start welding vertices together at the end of your extrusions, until you've got the wingtip shape matching the plan. Tail Surfaces: Make a spline shaped like the cross-section of the tail surface (horizontal or vertical) and have it cut into the main fuselage object. Get rid of excess vertices along the resulting edges, then extrude the tail surfaces using the same sorts of vertex manipulations as with making wingtips. Because the tail surfaces are this point are part of the fuselage, no welding required except for excess vertices. Once you have them done, select all the polys in the taile surfaces and "separate" them into new objects of the correct names for the fixed tail surfaces. Then extrude the control surfaces off their TEs, separate them, and play with the hinge area vertices as needed.

18^F here today, 2nd day in a row. My pond is completely frozen over for only the 2nd time in my life, although it's still translucent, not the thick, white, hockey-pond type of ice. Today I amused myself skipping rocks all the way across the pond (about 50m), and noticed a phenomenon I've never before encountered. Every time a rock touched the ice, it made a chirp or tweet like a songbird. Even when skidding across the ice without bouncing, it warbled constantly. I've never heard that before, but my main experience with rocks on ice is watching curling in the Winter Olypmpics when I was drunk and too lazy to change channels . I know I wasn't imagining things because the sound totally freaked my dog out. She could see the rocks skipping and sliding along and heard them chirping and warbling, so thought they were small woodland creatures. She ran to the far side of the pond and caught some of the rocks when they bounced up on the far bank, and was totally perplexed when they turned out just to be rocks. And this dog NEVER chases or fetches anything I throw, whether Frisbee or stick. All she chases is animals. She runs down and catches deer routinely, and tries to herd them back to me--it's her Border Collie blood. So I don't think she'd have reacted if the rocks hadn't been making this weird noise. So, you all who live in the permafrost, are these warbling rocks a normal thing?

I don't blame you--it's a good one. It's either a German-made Alb C.I or a Phönix-made B.I series 24. There seem to be no other possible answers. And I don't think it's possible to tell on looks alone, given the differences in my 2 pics which were both Series 24. The main thing I would argue is that when the KuK built German planes under license, they usually kept the designation of the original type they built and then changed the series number. For instance, the KuK built "Albatros D.III"s until the end of the war, despte the later series haviing little in common with the early-1917 prototype. So, I"m thinking we have to look at when and where planes served. This plane came down on the Salonika Front in early 1916. At that time, there weren't many Germans in the area IIRC, but instead Bulgars and KuK. Given the crosses, the plane was probably German or KuK, so the odds I think favor KuK. According to Grosz, Haddow, and Schiemer, the KuK never owned a single Albatros C.I, whether imported or home-built. Thus, if the machine is a C.I, then it's German. OTOH, if it's KuK, then it's a B.I(Ph) series 24. There really seems to have been very little difference between them. And I think the odds favor KuK. But we'll probably never know.

Arrgghhhhh.... I'm braindead. I forgot the other pic. This one has a different wing but shows the engine arrangements better.

I agree it's an early Albatros, but my money's on it being an Albatros B.I(Ph) Series 24. The (Ph) means it was built by the Austro-Hungarian Phönix company and the Series 24 means it was the 2nd series they built. The Series 23 had weaker interplane struts and the exhuast arrangement was different. Albatros B.Is built by other Austro-Hungarian companies had the rounded tail surfaces of the Aviatiks.

And then she voted....

It's too bad today's truly interesting characters no longer have Zappa to immortalize them. I drink to his shade . Nice post Catfish, BTW

In some places in the states, the policy is that snowplows can bulldoze abandoned cars off the roads. The drivers really enjoy doing that, I hear . Some years ago, I lived in Arlington, Texas, which is part of DFW. It usually doesn't snow much there, but 2 or 3 ice storms per winter are common, coating everything and making travel impossible because there are no saltshakers and plows to deal with it, and nobody knows how to drive on it. One fork of the Trinity River runs through there in a fairly deep, wide canyon, which a major road crossing the canyon but nothing running along it. When it's icy, this section of road acts like an ant lion pit, because cars that venture too near the edge slide down and then can't get out again until the ice melts, usually 2 or 3 days later. And despite the ice happening several times a year, each time there's a huge pile of cars all smashed together on the bridge at the bottom. To make matters worse, the bottom of the canyon is wide enough to contain a couple of large apartment complexes, the residents of which are stuck not only for the duration of the ice but also until the logjam of smashed cars is towed away. It would sure suck to have an emergency situation down there under such conditions. Ambulances and fire trucks couldn't do anything. I can't imagine how the apartments stay in business after the 1st time folks see this.

Well, we still need somebody like Stump, who knows how to do this stuff, to step up and actually do it.

And if you find that your WD-40 freezes as well, just hold a cigarette lighter in front of the orifice to melt all the ice good and proper

I don't have FFB and I'm pretty deaf so if there are audible clues, I miss them. A few planes do give a few wobbles just before they stall, but it's not much and easy to miss. Thus, I judge things by eye and how the plane handles. As Pappy says, to avoid stalling, stay above stall speed. The main stall speed to worry about is that for accelerated stalls in turns, not with the wings level. But I never look at my instruments during a fight. Instead, I familiarize myself with the plane and remember how its controls respond near that critical speed. I find that the best indicator is roll rate, which in most OFF planes is highly dependent on speed, whereas elevators and rudder seem to work equally well at all speeds. So, before starting a career in a plane, I do a lot of free flight QC test hops to learn the plane's characteristics and limits. When I find where it goes into an accelerated stall, I do this many times intentionally until I can recognize the roll rate associated with that airspeed. This roll rate will almost always be significantly lower than when you're at a safe speed and eventually you'll know immediately when you're getting close to it. I find this a pretty good system. I see the enemy off to one side and want to turn toward him. As I start to bank, still looking at the badguy, I can tell right off how close I am to the accelerated stall speed, so depending on that, I'll not push things so hard or perhaps abort that maneuver and try something else (like running away).

Very good, very good. I'm sure you can tart it up even more over the next few days. Now it occurs to me that we can make an entire package out of this to incorporate all the other saboutage we're doing. IOW, it would be like a new 3rd party plane you add to the \aircraft folder with its own flight model and such. IOW, it would fly like a dog (turnip in the exhaust), have the durability of moist toilet paper (all the bullet magnets), and the guns won't work (no firing pins). Anybody know how to edit the .air, .bdp, and .xdp files to get this effect? Failing that, we could just copy and rename the BE2's files I guess. Then you'd have a pink Albatros that flew and acted just like a Quirk including the forward Lewis.

Well then, you have your orders. I expect to see Lou's version of Olham's ride in about 7 days

That's good for a start but why stop there?' Let's take the firing pins out of his Spandaus and re-rig his control cables so that moving the stick left gives up elevator and back gives left aileron. We could tie a number of sandbags to the interal part of his tailskid structure. Due to the blockade, we can't put sugar in his fuel tank, but we can at least put a turnip (about all we've got to eat at present) down his exhaust pipe. And last but not least, we can take the bullet magnets out of our planes and stick them all to his seat

For Xmas I got a Wii game that came with a new attachment for the Wiimote. This new gizmo apparently can measure instantaneous acceleration, whereas the Wiimote standing alone (as I understand things) only measures displacement and instantaneous velocity. This sounds like a boon to FreeTrack users, because the big problem with that (of so I've understood things) has been the lack of an accelerometer in the Wiimote. So that's now solved, but somebody will now have to rewrite the software to take advantage of it. Or has that happened already? Or am I totally off-base?

This week in Lousy Anna's armpit, it's not likely to get out of the mid-30s F, but at least it's been clear. However, we're due for more frozen precipitation by the end of the week. This is colder than usual, but not nearly as bad as the "Fimbul Winter" of 1989 when for the only time in recorded history, I could walk across my pond (because I don't own skates). Normally, even in cold snaps like this, there's no more than a nearly invisible skin of ice right up against the banks.

Right! I had NOTHING to do with this. Anything Conrad does is his own ingenuity, because I don't know diddly about this stuff myself

I take no credit. I didn't build the forts, Google claims copyright on the satellite images, and you can take identical screenies by telling Google Earth to go to the same places.

I had forgotten how many cool Vauban fortresses were in the area. IIRC, he didn't personally build them all, but had some hand in them, even if it was just approving somebody else's plans once he was the Lord High Fort Builder. Here's my KMZ on Vauban. I particularly recommend Calais (3 separate works), Gravelines (entire town), and Lille and Arras (citadels). You all might have noticed I like to look at forts in Google Earth. I've got other KMZs for them as are interested (PM me), but I need to do more. I've barely scratched the surface of what all's out there. One of these days, I'll put them on a web site.

Yeah, that boy needs to get a laptop.

Best one yet

When I was an FO, I had a mixture of pride and revulsion at the power I held in my hands. I could call down the lightning of Heaven, I could call up the flames of Hell. And if I was in a bad mood, when I was done, not only would you need to revise the map to show the absence of various towns and forests, but also edit the friggin' contour lines. There's something kinda cool about being able to do that by saying a few magic words into a radio, but at the same time, GEEZ! I find it interesting now to compare Fort Souville in Google Earth to any of the forts on the SW side of town. Souville was pounded just as hard as Douaumont, but because it wasn't lost and retaken by the French at horrendous cost, it hasn't received the same memorialization and clean-up. Today, it's completely overgrown with no trace visible. You only know approximately where it is due to the uploaded Panoramio photos. The SW forts, however, still have their ditches intact. Farm machinery can't cross them, so they stand out as fort-shaped clumps of trees. When I was reading the 3rd Otto Prohaska book, The Two-Headed Eagle where he's in the Austrian air force, he mentioned flying over Palmanova, Italy, and admiring its ancient defenses. So I looked it up and damn, it still looks that way today. But I prefer the looks of the Dutch fortress towns like Heusden and Naarden. The multiple wet ditches are more aesthetically pleasing

I myself know very little about Freetrack. I just looked at it a bit some back months ago before I decided making one was beyond my competence and bought TIR instead. Remember, I'm Paleolithic Man. I'm pretty good with tools that bash and pry but unfortunately, when it comes to electronics, such tools are only useful for suppressing rebellions . Still, I did read the info on the system with some interest because I like gadgets. And what I recall (perhaps erroneously) is that the Wiimote, as originally issued, only measures instantaneous velocity and position, whereas TIR measures instantaneous acceleration as well. This was mentioned as a disadvantage of Freetrack when compared to TIR, although not seemingly a show-stopper. But apparently the acceleration sensors provide for smoother, finer control in TIR. I don't know, never having used Freetrack. However, I can say that the new Wiimote accelerometer attachment DOES make a very noticeable and most welcome change in the controllability of Wii games (at least those few so far that were written to utilize the new widget). I would assume, therefore, that it would be of similar benefit to Freetrack, at least once somebody writes code to use it. Anyway, I was just mentioning this new Wii gizmo in case our Freetrack users hadn't heard of it. Maybe one of them can write Freetrack code and can give it a try. OTOH, I'm sure various Freetrack gurus are already experimenting with the device and their opinions will be out soon, for or against.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks . I agree with you; those are some awesome screenies lately.

BTW, Poet Lauriet Pappy, I forgot to mention above that what initially attracted me to this thread to start with was its title. I was thinking you'd rigged up a homebrew force-feedback codpiece, timed to work when your plane was getting hit, and painful enough to provide strong negative reinforcement for allowing yourself to get shot at. Such has long been the dream of the lunatic fringe of flightsim junkies. So for a moment there, I thought you might have found the Holy Grail. But even without that, your poetry was well worth the click.