Bullethead

On engines of 200hp and above, the Austrians tended to use a 4-bladed prop that wasn't at 90^ between the blades--it looked more like a bow tie. I need to sober up so I can remember who it was invented this style of prop.....

Actually, calling a "German" a "Dutchman" was the normal usage into the late 1800s (and from long before) in both the UK and the US. Thus, it's use in WW1 is just a holdover from the previous generation. Remember, Germany as we know it didn't exist until 1870--before then, it was all dozens of independent kingdoms, principalities, duchies, etc., which weren't particularly interested in throwing in together and rather resisted the idea when Bismarck and others forced the issue. Even into WW1, some of the more powerful (and therefore still more independent) components of "Germany" had their own military units, uniforms, medals, etc. Before 1870, when an English-speaker called somebody a "German", it meant a VERY broad general category pretty much synonymous with today's category "Germanic". Back then "German" included today's Germans, plus the Dutch, English, Danes, Norwegians, and numerous others. The North Sea was called the "German Ocean" because most of the people living on all its shores were "Germans" (excepting the Scots and some of the Belgians, but they both had a fair amount of "German" blood in them from various sources). On top of this, "Dutch" is just a slight variant of "Deutsche". Today's Germans call themselves and their language Deutsche, and in the US, at least prior to 1870, German immigrants and their immediate descendants called themselves Dutchmen, as an Anglicized version of deutsche mann. I'd expect Germans in the UK did the same. Anyway, this was picked up by others in those countries and thus "Dutchman" became the normal usage to refer to somebody from today's Germany. This was definitely the case in the US where there was a large influx of people from today's Germany long after the influx from today's Netherlands pretty much stopped. My grandfathers were WW1 vets. They were raised by parents who'd grown up prior to the existence of a "Germany", so had called today's Germans "Dutchmen" all their lives and passed this on to their kids. My grandfathers thus tended to called Germans "Dutchmen" out of habit, and it took a deliberate effort of will on their part to call them "Germans" so we of later generations, who'd always known of Germany, would know what they were talking about.

I forget whose idea it was, but I thought it was a good one, so I tried doing a career as a tailgunner. Here's what I learned while doing this, in case others want to give this a try: 1. Taking Off At least if you're the flight leader, you have to start your own engine and get off the ground before you jump into the back. I don' t know if this is true if you do "lead by rank". You can safely get in the back once you're just a few feet off the ground, however. I was rather surprised at this because the only time I've tried manning guns before was also at low level and the AI promptly put me in the trees. But I might have been pretty well shot up by then. Anyway, in an RE8 at least, just getting the nose above the trees at the end of the runway works fine. 2. Looking Around Not good. TIR has no effect at all in the gunner's seat, at least in the RE8--maybe it works in other planes. Instead, your view is always along the sights of your gun. Thus, your only ways to look around are to move the gun or use the keyboard views. Both of these are limited, however, but the traverse limits of your gun. For instance, the RE8's gun only covers an arc about 160^ wide in the back, and from about +45^ to -20^ in the vertical, so that's pretty much your field of view. To make things even more confusing, the keyboard views are oriented on the current facing of the gun, not of the airplane, so you often end up looking through your own body, which is a bother. You can padlock a target and will look at it no matter where it is, however, although usually with strange partial parts of your body in the way. Looking around is therefore quite difficult, especially if you're used to TIR. You can't see upwards at all except with the keyboard, and if your gun is pointed up, too, you actually look off at an angle behind you. But if you give up with the keyboard, traversing the gun to look around is very slow. It's practically impossible to maintain SA, and you'll find yourself frustrated for missing shots at enemies passing head-on, because you can't see them or get the gun on them until they're already out of range. Probably your best bet is to use external views most of the time. 3. Cruising Along This takes a strong stomach. First off, you're stuck facing backwards. Second, the plane is constantly porpoising up and down under AI control, so you can get seasick if you're so inclined. It didn't bother me that much, but I can see how it would get to some folks. 4. Flight Commands Wingman commands don't seem to work from the gunner's seat. However, being in a 2-seater you really don't have to worry about this most of the time, except to get your wingmen to attack a ground target (see Bombing below). Another thing that doesn't work in the back is SHF-w to change waypoints. To do any of these you have to be in the front. However, warping does work from the back. 5. Bombing I only went on 1 bombing mission so don't know if this is the general rule, but here's what happened. Being in the back, I didn't issue any attack orders. The AI pilot dove toward the target and the wingmen followed. However, nobody dropped any bombs. My AI pilot made a couple more quick passes over the target, again failing to drop bombs, and then took off for home with the wingmen following. After a few minutes, the wingmen jettisoned their bombs but my pilot kept his. I had to go up front and drop them myself. I suspect, therefore, that if you need to be in the front for the bomb run to drop your own bombs and order your wingmen to attack. 6. Combat If the enemy dives on you from above, or shoots across your turning circle, you're just screwed. You can't get the guns on him and probably won't see him coming anyway except with an external view. And anyway, attacks from above are pretty much instant death for you due to the huge number of hits you take. Attacks from behind, OTOH, are rather interesting. The AI fighters I encountered seemed very hesitant and hung back there just out of range for a long time. They followed us around back and forth several times between our arty spotting waypoints without either side ever shooting except for occasional short bursts. Even though we made wide turns at the waypoints, they didn't cut inside to get us in the flank, but just kept following. It was very strange--I'd never seen AI fighters act that way before. My advice here: Although seeing all of Jasta 5 on your tail is disconcerting, actually that's the best place for them. As long as they're hanging back like that, they're relatively harmless. DO NOT PANIC and tell your pilot to head for home, because this can quickly break up your formation, which is what appears to be keeping the enemy respectful. Once you're scattered, they swarm like sharks and you die quickly. So just keep tooling along like this and hope help shows up :). 7. Shooting Strangely, the shots you take don't show up in the post-mission stats at all. Even if you shot off your whole supply and hit with 1/3 of it, you just see zeroes across the board for rounds fired and hit percent. I was used to this from flying the Fee where the gunner did all the shooting, but I'm surprised that when you shoot, it doesn't count as yours. Kills, however, PROBABLY go to your credit, just as the gunner's kills in other 2-seaters go. I don't know for sure, though, because I didn't kill anybody in this career. That said, shooting is fairly straight-forward, as in there doesn't seem to be a need to lead the target any differently than in fighters. Also, without TIR, you never had to worry if your head's lined up with the sights or not. HOWEVER, keeping the sights on is a bit difficult due to the aforementioned porpoising of the airplane, which takes your gun with it. I found it best to use the old naval shooting technique of firing at the top or bottom of the roll (or pitch in this case), in the brief interval before things reverse direction. This, of course, is really only applicable to when the enemy is following along behind you and relatively stationary, but that's about the only guys you'll be able to shoot much at anyway. 8. Landing Assuming you get back, the AI pilot will come down directly over home drome, then fly off a long way. Perhaps he'll eventually circle back and land, perhaps not. So I say screw it. Just end the flight when you're over the field.

I find it a pleasant alternative to "flying while blind", as ZZ Top would say. You just have to take off, drop the bombs if you have any, and end the flight over your home drome or land it yourself.

Schweet. The Reputation Fairy will visit you for that . Maple is for Stratocaster necks and decks, and muzzle-loader rifle stocks. Using it for anything else, especially baseball bats, is a crime against nature

Why in the world would you ever fly the Fee as a bomber? It's a fighter. You should be out hunting down and destroying the Eindeckers, then transition to hunting and destroying Halberstadts and Albatri. Maneuver to get the front gun on target and you'll be fine (sometimes). And get your wingmen to Lufbery Circle around you while you're doing ACM.

Call me a Philistine but I've never heard of Derek Robinson and wouldn't have bothered googling him until Rugbyfan replied to this thread. The OT in the subject line completely foxed me--I had no idea these were works of historical fiction on WW1 flying until then. For all I knew, Robinson's books might have been about red-headed midget belly dancers (and NO, that's not a fetish of mine ). I'd say these books are rather on-topic. Anyway, now having become enlightened on the subject matter, please provide some more info to help me decide if I want to buy them. How do these works compare to the Flashman, Otto Prohaska, or Banty series?

Nicely done, but where in the front are you? The pic looks something like an irrigated part of west Texas near the edge of the caprock....

Nope. The correct answer is both about 15 years older (the video) and 15 years younger (the audio). In it's combined form, it was only visible late at night.

As a FedEx delivery driver and keen observer of the inadequacies and delusions of humanity in general, I heartily concur. That's why I celebrate Alvis Day instead. Alvis Day is about drinkin'. Drinkin' an' revenge. So let us drink deeply of the whiskey, scotch, an' rye, until such time as we are fightin' drunk, an' then go smite them evil-doin' unbelievers! PS: A free drink's available for the 1st to recognize the above referrence

There's a demo . Now, for those interested in my naval sim biz, while I appreciate your interest, this is OBD's OFF board, so if you'd like to discuss SES stuff with me, please use our forum or PMs. I hope OBD ain't mad already. After all, myself and 4 or 5 other Jutlanders are here because somebody mentioned OFF in my forum

Okee dokie. I'll do so in the future. You might want to see if Combat Ace and add some text mentioning this requirement to the upload page, in case we forget up to that point. Do you want me to go back and add such a text file to what I've already uploaded? It's not that big a deal for me as I've only made a half-dozen skins, but for folks like FRO who has made dozens, it will be a lot of work.

I have a Saitek X45 HOTAS that I when they were new, however many years ago that was. It's worked flawlessly through much hard abuse but lately has gotten a problem. All the LEDs on it flickered instead of being on constantly, like a flourescent tube that's starting to go bad. This has gotten more common over the last few weeks but because it had no apparent effect on functionality, I figured the loose wire was just for the LEDs and no big deal. After all, this thing has been through innumerable horrific crashes, so it should be showing its age. I mean, I've worn out many sticks and HOTAS over the last 20 years or so and this X45 has lasted longer than most. Well, today the LED flicker mode changed. Instead of being mostly on with very short off periods, it switched to being the opposite. And that's when I discovered it had a big effect on functionality. When the lights were off, the whole HOTAS just didn't work. No buttons, not stick, not throttle, no rudder. Naturally, I discovered this in combat with a fairly successful DiD pilot.... Fortunately, all I was fighting at the time was unescorted 2-seaters on my side of the lines, and despite the HOTAS problems I'd already mortally wounded my victim. At the time, I thought it was TIR acting up, but while circling like a buzzard to make sure he stayed dead, I noticed the correlation between no LEDs and no control. The whole trouble seemed to be in the throttle. I found that if I pushed on it in a given direction, the lights went out, but in a different direction they stayed mostly on. So, after watching the E/A crash, I headed for the closest friendly field and tried to land. Problem was, the hand position where the controls worked was incompatible with a good landing. As a result, I crashed due to excessive bouncing, but fortunately walked away from it. After this, I shut everything down and took a screwdriver to my throttle. To make a long story a bit shorter, I discovered I could cure the problem by tightening up the "friction" screw on the bottom of the throttle. This after taking it all apart fruitlessly. I guess over the years, the brake pads have worn a bit. SO...... If this ever happens to you, try tightening up the "friction" screw before you panic.

Howdy OvS- Sorry to offend. I just never thought it mattered. I mean, it's a given that all 3rd part skins for OFF planes necessarily start with an OFF skin for the plane in question, which everybody knows. Saying so just seems redundant. Besides, the skins will only work in OFF, right? Plus, I've made skins for numerous other games that have these same 2 characteristics, and the game companies have never required any sort of text saying the original skin was made by them, because of the above. BUT, if it matters to OBD, then in the future I will endeavor to remember to say the original skin was made by OBD. Please tell me how, exactly, you want this done? Add some text to the texture file itself, which nobody will see within the game? Add a separate text file to the upload? Or just say so in the upload's description?

Obviously, you've never done any blacksmithing . Besides, we went through copper and bronze before iron. I actually got into knapping to get back to my roots after blacksmithing for a while. And having now done a fair amount of both, I have to say that knapping is more than sufficient for all survival purposes (or else none of us would be here) and is WAY easier. True, you can't make a skyscraper or suspension bridge out of flint, but having such things is purely optional. What matters is getting groceries and flint is quite sufficient for that. Flint points killed ALL the mammoths, after all. Both knapping and blacksmithing can screw up your lungs if you're not careful. Knapping WILL mash and cut your fingers, smithing WILL mash and burn your fingers. But the exposure is MUCH higher in smithing because you have to heat and hit the stuff so many more times. Plus, with smithing you're standing over a VERY hot fire all day so get dehydrated very easily, and need a helper to work the bellows. And when you've made a blade, you have to spend more hours filing it and then carefully heat-treating it so it will hold an edge. With knapping OTOH, you can sit in the cool breeze under a shade tree drinking beer, have the sharpest edge man has EVER made in 10 minutes, and do it all yourself. Sure, it won't last nearly as long, but you can replace it as easily as you made the 1st one. And the results of both efforts are equally deadly when thrust into the vitals. So, when civilization totally crashes (and may it be soon ) and all the pre-Whoops ammo is used up, and all the re-Whoops hacksaw blades are dull or broken, the supply of pre-Whoops glass and ceramics will still be running strong, and when that's gone there are still all the rocks nature provided.

I agree with SD, it doesn't seem right, but that's what happened. In my search for a loose wire, I didn't manage to get the whole throttle opened up so don't know how the throttle axis itself is wired. In fact, I don't know how digital sticks work even in theory because I haven't had a need to open one, unlike the old analog types where I was forever cleaning and replacing pots. All I can think of is that there has to be some sort of sliding electrical contact between the throttle handle and something fixed in the base. Over time, wear on the throttle handle bearings has introduced enough off-axis slop that this contact can't be made reliably unless the friction screw is tightened to eliminate the slop. Completely agree--there's a special place in Hell for the inventor of the twisty stick. I find the X45's under-throttle rocker bar for the rudder very intuitive and convenient to use. I think it's actually better in some important ways than pedals and don't want to give it up now. So did I hear you right in the X45 still being available? OTW in PM

Might want to keep that under your hat. There's probably some law that would fine or jail you for messing with an Indian site... BUT, I sure do envy you the ready source of material. There's no rock in Lousy Anna so I have to buy all mine or use beer bottles and such. It would be nice to have obsidian and dacite in my back yard :). So how far along did you get in knapping? Let's see some pics! I hear they use obsidian blades in certain types of eye surgery today.

Yup, I had quite a lot to do with it. Hope you find it interesting.

Yup, it was the friction screw. I first tried it in other ports but it was always the same. It all depended on the strength and direction of the pressure applied to the throttle handle. Note that I have the stick and throttle velcroed down so they hold still and don't transfer motion along the cable to the computer.

Hmmm.... Well, I make naval sims, which is more a hobby than a job as I see it. Otherwise, I spend my non-OFF time as follows: 1. Homebrewing 2. Flintknapping 3. Hunting with an atlatl 4. Teaching my various nephews and briarpatch young'uns to cuss, chew tobacco, drink, fight, hunt, locate and secure loose women, and drive around at night shooting at highway signs.

All of them. TIR still worked but the HOTAS was completely dead a lot of the time. No stick, not rudder, no throttle, no nothing. They would work for a bit, then quit, then work again. See my thread on the Saitek HOTAS Tune-up thread.

They still make the X45?!?!?!?!? That's great news. I thought the X52 had replaced the X45, in a shameless bit to force you to buy rudder pedals. I'll have to order me a backup set . BTW, if you ever want a fairly good X45 profile for OFF, I've got one.

OK, we've seen Udet, but check this out:

The attached pic says all that need be said of the minimal ACM of this hop. However, note that I had only 40 rounds left when the Archie finished off my victim. That's fairly embarassing, but I just can't grok aiming in the SE5. This guy has seriously shot up several other planes but hasn't been able to fill out a claim form until now because he's hit them all over, and then a wingman delivers the fatal blow. So how to you aim in an SE5? The Aldis doesn't seem to do the trick. Thanks in advance.

must be this forum's version of etaoin shrdlu....