Bullethead

Hmmm...... I haven't had this problem myself so I'm afraid I can't help you. But if I was to speculate, it might be some sort of file name issue.

Women: can't live with 'em, can't drive an axe through 'em, unless you're OJ .

I've done many things in life that I don't do anymore, but the 1 thing I miss most is not being able to wave my magic radio wand and force the cartographers to adjust the contour lines on that part of the map. I had the Wrath of the Dark Gods at my fingertips. Damn, that was cool . That's why I orderd 50% Willy Pete, to burn off all the hair. If you hunt doves (season's now in progress ), you're pretty good if you can get your bag limit (10 birds) with 1 box of shells (25 rounds), especially if you shoot a 20-gauge. One time I went dove-hunting after eating 12 Vivarin, 6 on the way there driving from midnight to 0900, and the rest to stay awake until the next sundown. The doves looked to be moving about 5 knots instead of their usual 60, and I could see my shot patterns going out at them. Everything was in slow motion. I shot my limit on 12 20-gauge shells .

Here's a funny thing. Many of my ancestors were Borderers, who had blood feuds between families that lasted for many generations. But when they got run out of the then-new UK and came over here, they colonized together and intermarried like their fathers and grandfathers hadn't been burning each others' houses down for centuries. And that's how I ended up with so many Borderer ancestors .

Fingers crossed. He's a couple years older than me ol' guv, so I've been worried about him for some time. To the health of Dan-San

I think Robert Johnson did "Dust My Broom" prior to Elmore. In fact, he did almost everything before everybody else on the list, at least in terms of getting it recorded. But of course he stole a lot of it from other folks about whom we know nothing. Long ago, I was a blues guitarist. I still have my axes but I haven't touched them in a couple years and last time I did, I sounded so bad I quit in disgust. Still, everybody should, at least once in life, play a blues guiitar solo while walking on top of a bar, with your head in smoke so thick it's hard to see the drinks you have to step over. As Guitar Slim used to say, "The things that I used to do...." In fact, that was my favorite thing to solo on in this position . Well, it was supposed to be disturbing, so I guess that means it was done right . I think the book was even more disturbing, especially when Little Alex decided to have a son at the end . Is there such a thing as an "ex-Punker"? I thought that was as permanent as being a Jarhead. Damn, I bet showing up like that sealed your fate with the DIs. You always struck me as the Jarhead type, but I don't recall knowing that until now. So Semper Fi! No kidding. Thank the Dark Gods that the aberation in human behavior known as Victorianism is now dead and gone, and people are back to normal: randy, drunken, rude, and brawling. Too bad dueling isn't yet legal again. There are a lot of jerks I'd like to shoot or stab, their choice .

I'm amazed that such a relatively high number of folks here had WW1 aviator ancestors, considering how few of them there were compared to those in other services. I can't claim this distinction. Both my grandfathers and all their numerous brothers were US and/or Foreign Legion grunts, as were most of my European cousins. However, I did have some European cousins on both sides at the Battle of Jultand.

Well, the folks who made the old classics popular in recent times no doubt grew up hearing them as background music to Bugs Bunny et al doing slapstick. And, of course, the movie version of A Clockwork Orange did its share to popularize not only Beethoven but also the last part of "The William Tell Overture" for those who were too young to have seen the B&W "Lone Ranger" series. Yup, Latin's where it's at. My favorite part of the original The Omen was the theme song I tend to favor Elmore James myself .

Nope. Arty's quicker. By the time my 1/2 my brain had shot the 2nd dart, the other 1/2 had called in a regimental Time on Target, battery 6, 50% VT, 50% Willy Pete. We'll be eating mutton chilli tonight .

Personally, I think MTV only knows about Mozart due to that ancient Falco video from the 80s, when MTV was young and still played music, "Rock Me Amadeus". Of course, that movie Amadues came out about then, too, which portrayed young Wolfgang as something of a hard-partying, terminally drunk rock star of his pre-electric day. Of course, everybody back then was into partying hard and being terminally drunk, but Mozart combined that with kick-ass music . All that aside, Amadeus rocks me. I can't think of any of his stuff that sucks, and damn near all of it is better than the best of most other famous decomposing composers. Still, I can see where our Humble Narrator, Young Alex, was coming from with his preference for Lovely Ludwig Van's 9th for a spot of the dirty twenty-to-one, shop-crasting, and the old Ultraviolence. FWIW, "Dies Irae" was written in the 1200s, so Mozart just pimped it. And it rather bugs me that it's become cliché these days. Back before Amadeus rocked anybody in the 20th Century, let alone the 21st, it was my theme song. It's all about the Hate and Rage, and shows that even Jesus can feel the Dark Side. "No mo' water but fire next time."

In your last pass, it looked to me like you put a round right through his shoulder. No wonder he had to land.

Excellent vid as usual, Lou. You have a great talent for scoring your ballets .

The editor screwed this post up so I'm starting it from scratch in the next post.

I used to have fun setting the RB3D bullet weight up to max. 1 shot would take the wing off an HP :).

Welcome aboard!

I know I'm in Jasta 4 and it's the earliest time they have the D.VII, but I can't remember the exact date--combat is too intense to keep track of time there. The airfield is RIGHT ON the front line (enemy positions about 1000m away), so you start taking flak on your takeoff roll and gas clouds sometimes drift over the runway. Fortunately, the runway is parallel to the front so you never have to take off right into massed AAMGs.... You can't miss it when picking a squadron, due to the airfield being right on the red stripe. It's pretty much always a scramble mission regardless of what the briefing says, but more realistic than actual scramble missions because the enemy is far enough away (usually) for you to circle the field a couple times and get some altitude. The sky is FILLED with planes in all directions, but only about 2/3 of them are enemy and quite a few on both sides are 2-seaters. It's not long before A Flight starts what soon becomes a huge melee involving 40-50 planes or more (provided one isn't already in progress), and you're just going DAMN, because everything you've been able to identify so far has been enemy, with more enemy coming from all around. But once you get sucked into the melee, you find that quite a few of the many planes in the fight are Albatri and D.VIIs from other Jastas, plus A Flight somewhere in there. If you keep your wits about you, you can stay with somebody (and your own wingmen, of course) to achieve a small zone of local numerical superiority and gradually expand it into a clear area where you can catch your breath before repeating the process.

Welcome aboard, SlickJohnnie! New guy buys the drinks . BB, very nice SPAD. Do you find it to have more luck than other SPADs?

Udet's not safe to fly around. IIRC from reading his book, somewhere about that time in real life he rammed a Camel. Fortunately for him, he had just been issued with a parachute.

1918 is kinda boring isn't it? Good as the D.VII is, there are days when you don't think it's good enough. In 1917, I used to worry about helping A Flight a lot. But then I figured those aces could take care of themselves, at least long enough for the enemy B Flight to commit. Only then would I go help A Flight. But in 1918, sheesh.... The enemy has A, B, C, D, E, F and G Flights. No matter how many flights you let dogpile on your A Flight before going to help, another 2 or 3 will soon come along and jump on you. Fortunately, several friendly squadrons usually join in, too, so the odds ain't usually as long in the huge melee as they appear to be from outside it. Still, the choice is usually between jumping into the meatgrinder or not fighting.

Over-zealous wingmen will also shoot each other and will ram you on occasion, besides shoot you. To avoid wingmen shooting each other, you often should give the S command before ordering them to attack, so they approach the target at different angles. To avoid them doing something to you, it's best to let them go in first or use the R and H commands instead of telling them to attack.

I dunno, Unc. Quite a few things dating from 1917 flew for hours at altitudes of 15k or more. Gothas, DH-4s, Rumplers, etc. Both planes and people could stand it.

For the past few months, this thread as been staring at me like the money I could be saving at Geico. So today I broke down and got Gmax and accessories, then started looking at this tutorial. That's when depression set in. You need a bunch of stuff besides Gmax to do this tutorial. Unfortunately, some if it is hard to find and other stuff is no longer available (this tutorial is about 2 years old now). Here's the checklist of stuff it says you need before you start: Gmax: Hard to find because Turbosquid has no link for it on their main pages and Autodesk's site doesn't mention Discreet products at all. You have to Google "gmax download" to find the link. CFS3 SDK stuff: You have to dig for this because MS no longer really supports it. But you can find it in the download section of the CFS3 site. The link in the tutorial for this is the correct URL, but the link itself doesn't go there, so you have to type that in by hand. DXTBmp: Still available at MW Graphics, but hard to find because he's made newer stuff that doesn't work as well for this purporse. www.avhistory.org: There is no "KnowledgeBase" section there any more, and to download anything you have to register. CFSx 1% Stuff: This was all at www.netwings.org, but that site has been offline since April with no prospects of coming back. Avhistory has some of the stuff, apparently, but some of it is different from what's called for in this tutorial. Gerry Beckwith's Mudpond stuff is actually now at www.mudpond.org. Also, the Flight Dynamics Workbook and Air Update Utility no longer exist--you have to get Air Wrench, which you have to pay for. It costs $20. Apparently, you also have to find a copy of CFS2 to use the test gauges to make sure your plane flies correctly. Otherwise, no problems getting this stuff . I suppose there's no choice but to buy Air Wrench. And I suppose I could use an OFF plane instead of the Hurricane used in the tutorial. And it probably would be a good idea to register at AvHistory. But all that is more than bargained for when I decided to get into this. So there's the 1st test for would-be model-makers. Do you want to do it badly enough to go through this? I'll need a couple more drinks before deciding that.

Congratulations

Last night my flight of 4 SPAD VIIs from No. 23 Squadron spotted 7 Alb D.IIs of Jasta 28w (I had to see who they were). The enemy were about 2000 feet lower and directly up-sun from us, but the geometry was perfect for a swoop on their tails, so I gave the attack order. And then something happened unique in my OFF experience. They didn't see us coming, but kept on straight and level at cruising speed. My wingmen therefore easily flamed their tail-end Charlie. I'm ashamed to say I totally blew the pass myself--I was aiming for where I expected my target to go as I closed in, and when he did nothing at all, I was only able to get a couple bullets into him before I flashed by. Anyway, the SPADs all carried on through and below the Albatri and I spiralled our dive back toward the lines, expecting the enemy survivors to be pursuing us by now. But they hadn't noticed and continued on as before, so I zoomed back up, circled back, and repeated the swoop. My wingmen got their first and flamed their new tail-end Charlie, and this finally woke them up, so I actually did better on this pass, because my target went where I was expecting . After that, it was a normal dogfight which we eventually disengaged from after getting 1 more of them. This was SWEET! I have never before been able to sneak up on AI fighters like this. I didn't even think it was possible. Very nice to know you can bounce the AI from time to time .

I really can't explain how this happened. Jasta 28w is rated as "good" in early April 1917 when this happened. It was a rare gorgeous day for that time period with only a few tiny, widely scattered clouds, none of which were near this action. We were diving toward the sun, not out of it. Despite all this, they didn't notice us until 2 of them were already dead in separate swoops and a 3rd was in the process of dying. It just goes to show that everybody has a bad day. Maybe they were too engrossed in enjoying the lovely weather for a change to notice us. I was feeling rather aggressive this hop. As a general rule, I never start fights with superior numbers (but in Bloody April, superior numbers usually start fights with me) and 4:7 were fairly steep odds. I just did it this time because it was my 1st time flying the SPAD in Bloody April and I wanted to know from the start what I could get away with in it. But the surprise swoops evened the odds before the real fight started, which was very nice . Perhaps it's possible to surprise the AI more often than I've experienced so far. However, the majority of my flying so far as been in Bloody April in Pups and Fees, where the enemy is almost always much higher so the question never arises . The rest as been in the colossal battles of 1918, where things are too tangled up and nonstop to often find anybody to surprise.