Bullethead

That's how I was landing SPADs before 1.32. If you tried it any other way, you'd likely stall and crash from about 30 feet up, or bounce 30 feet up and then stall and crash. Still haven't flown the SPADs since the patch, though, so maybe things have changed. I really need to try the SPAD now that OBD has worked on the stalls. Prior to 1.32, the SPAD XIII turned quite well, but only at speeds above 100 knots. If you got down to 80-90 knots, turning meant an instant stall and spin. That's one reason why landings were so dangerous. Hopefully that's changed now. Ah, but the SPADs have beautiful varnished wood interiors with leather and brass accents, plus a built-in absinthe strainer . I don't find it much of a joy. In fact, it makes me question the FM in the same way that the tail-first spins do in other aircraft. Yes, but it's time-consuming. I've already learned that, just like the SPAD, you should NEVER warp on ingress in the Pfalz, due to how that guarantees you'll be way too low when you meet the enemy. I'll have to see if that new "start in the air" feature improves on this.

Great video, great fight, and a salute to the lone but foolish Eindecker pilot who took on 3 Nupes.

Sounds cool. But I'm afraid of what it might do to you if you get wounded, shot down in flames, or crash

Yeah, shellfire causes like 75-80% of all battlefield casualties, and it's usually not pretty. Big, jagged hunks of metal cause horrific wounds.

Thanks for all the help. It appears to me that the Pfalz is the German SPAD, with the same sorts of strengths and vices, and therefore requiring the same sort of style and tactics. I bet a good Pfalz pilot would be a good SPAD pilot. One thing I've noticed is that the Pfalz seems to share the Eindecker's tendency to fall out of the sky sideways if the wings aren't level. It's like as soon as you bank, your lift completely vanishes and gravity takes over. Granted, my experience with the Pfalz so far is minimal, but I haven't yet been able to maintain altitude during a turn in level flight or while on the initial climb. The only if I'm zooming at high speed can I turn and maintain or gain altitude. Do you all see the same thing? Also, the Pfalz seems to want to bounce very high on landing, even if you touch down at a very low speed. What's the best way to avoid that?

Yes to both. I've made a number of trips to the UK with the goal of drinking every ale and whisky made there in its town of origin. It's a Quixotic quest for a tourist, I know, but I've made a valiant effort and I'd wager I've managed about 2/3 of the total :yes: . Everywhere I've gone, I've have fun, met friendly natives, and consumed vast quantities of the local brews :drinks_drunk:

Anchor's stuff is great. I'm particularly partial to their Old Foghorn barley wine . Have you tried any of their Old Potrero small batch rye whiskey? I've been trying to get some but have so far been unsuccessful.

I've flown in a couple real open cockpit planes, plus a few far less-powerful ultralights. All I ever heard was the engine. That is, until the engine stopped. Then, just like in WW1 pilot memoirs, it was complete silence for a few seconds until my ears adjusted. Then I could hear the wind. In enclosed cockpit light aircraft, I've always had to shout to be heard by the guy next to me. When the engine stopped, however, I could just barely hear the wind. I've also flown a number of gliders. All had enclosed cockpits. I never heard the wind at all, even though I could talk to the other guy in a normal voice. But gliders are designed to be sleek, so even those old ones with wing struts didn't make the noise of a deadstick ultralight. But I have a lot of high-frequency hearing loss.

That's just what the Front sounds like. Even in Desert Storm, it was like that. A constant rumble that made the ground shake continuously. When I first heard it for real, I instantly remembered all the WW1 memoirs mentioning it. And just as in those memoirs, it soon became just part of life. If it ever stopped, I woke up.

I believe, in its area of origin, that it's pronounced "Nookie Brrroon". When I visited to that town, I went into a pub that had a huge poster on the wall that looked like the Bayeux Tapestry, and was just about as big. However, it was about Vikings fighting the locals. The local warlord was KIA, but was brought back to life by the "Brrroon".

Oo-Rah! Unfortunately, that one doesn't have the sighting rifles on the recoiless rifles. And of course there was the problem of having to exit the vehicle to reload the big guns....

Very nice. So, what do I have to do to get you to fly a Fee in Bloody April?

This is quite a nice patch. Tres bien! Drinks all around! I almost thought I was playing a different game when the new splashes and interface came up :). I just miss the old photo you used to see while waiting for everything to load after hitting "Go to Field". You know, those heavily bundled crewmen walking out of their Nissen huts for the next mission. That guy in the back row who was staring straight at the camera with an "Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant" look on his face.... I could really relate to him; he reminded me of me, and set the proper atmosphere by making me brood on what was about to happen. I miss that guy already. Good-bye, old friend!

"Taste the rainbow" BTW, I'm starting a Pfalz campaign tonight.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks! :drinks_drunk: Now, as to easy..... Surviving in OFF ain't easy. No matter what you do, you're still gonna die a lot. So just accept that and fly something you think is interesting, so you can die smiling . Compared to jets, pretty much all WW1 planes are easy to fly. Kick the tires, like the fires, and off you go. I never even look at my instruments . I'd avoid the Eindecker and DH2 to start with, both of which have some rather nasty habits, but most of the others are pretty docile unless you really abuse them. I'd also avoid the Spads until you've gotten your eye tuned for the WW1 environment, because you have to fly them completely differently than the others. The real question is how, much of a challenge you want in combat? I assume you're a fairly experienced sim pilot, so you should do pretty well (as in living long enough to get annoyed when you die) in just about fighter. The newer the plane is at the time you pick to fly it, the easier it will be, so you can increase your challenge by flying an older plane against newer enemies. 2-seaters (except the Brisfit) are more challenging than fighters to survive in, but being in a bomber squadron isn't fun for everybody. So my advice there is, just pick your favorite plane. Picking a squadron is more complicated. Besides the airplane it flies, you also need to see where its base is at any given time. The level of enemy air activity is historically tied to the locations of the major land battles going on at the time. Verdun is pretty hot in early 1916 but tapers off. Flanders is hot in the spring and fall of 1917 but dull in between, and nothing much happens on the Marne before early 1918. If you're in a hot zone, you'll usually see a fight every sortie, but in a cold area you might go several missions without contact. Besides the above, squadrons have a quality rating. I recommend flying only for "good" squadrons, at least to start with. I find that "elite" squadrons steal all the kills and "poor" squadrons either run away or die in droves, but "good" is a nice balance between the extremes. Note, however, that squadron quality can change over time, so it's a good idea to check your potential squadron for that by scrolling the date forward from when you want to start. Don't go more than a month or 2 ahead, though--you won't live long enough to worry beyond that . Anyway, the thing is, pick your side and plane, and whether you want to be in a hot or cold sector. Then look at the squadrons in that place and time who fly that plane, and pick one that will stay "good" for a couple of months.

Thanks for the pronto service, as usual :)

I'd heard of it before. It seems quite impractical, but that's with hindsight. When viewed in perspective of the contemporary airborne means of attacking U-boats, it actually appears to have some merit. In effect, it was the WW1 equivalent of the solid-slug rockets used in WW2 against U-boats. Those were considered better than small bombs, and WW1 bombs were smaller.

I wasn't complaining about the AI. I mean, the AI has to be built with certain assumptions, and one of those undoubtedly is that the laws of flight mechanics always apply. Thus, when it finds itself in a regime where this isn't the case, it can't escape, but that's not its fault. The AI can only do what it knows how to do. A human, OTOH, is free to experiment and figure a way out of the problem. And a human with long experience of similar FM glitches in other games might even recognize the situation immediately and know exactly what to do. This thread began with a guy asking how to recover from a nose-high spin in a Camel. The previous answers weren't correct, because they are standard, real life spin recovery techniques that often don't work in OFF when you're effectively flying backwards. This of course varies by plane--some don't seem to mind going slightly backwards, but some can really get stuck that way, one of which is the Camel. And besides, the thread began to diverge into whether or not the Camel's infamous flying characteristics were accurately depicted, which really wasn't on topic. So, all I was doing was answering the guy's question on how to get out of a nose-high spin in OFF, in a plane that's prone to get stuck in one. Nose-high spins are physically impossible in real life, so real life techniques don't work. But to explain why nose-high spins happen in OFF, and why my recovery method works and others don't, I had to explain the differences between real life and OFF when planes are flying backwards. I only mentioned the AI to emphasize the point that when you're stuck nose-high, you're not in the real world anymore, so real world techniques often don't work. I'm sure everybody's seen that happen a number of times, so it seemed a good example to use. Sorry if I offended you. Anyway, the real problem, IMHO, is that the FM doesn't do well when airplanes are going backwards. I'm sure you know all about this, and would have fixed it long ago if you could have. That's why I don't harp on it. But when somebody doesn't know what's happening to him in the game, he needs to be told about it. And it's something we all need to keep in mind when discussing whether or not specific planes are modeled correctly.

Quite a few planes in OFF do a tail-low, nose-high spin. Almost all the others will still fall out of the sky vertically tail-low, nose-high, even if they don't spin while doing it. Prior to the superpatch, the Spad XIII was the easiest to make spin this way, but that might now have changed--haven't had time to check. The cause of this seems to be a "hole" in the flight model where a lot of the normal aerodynamic forces suddenly disappear. For instance, despite the plane falling vertically and accelerating due to gravity, the wind coming up from below appears to have no effect, not even to weathervane the plane into a nose-down attitude. My theory here is that because you're falling tail-low, you're effectively going in reverse, and the FM just doesn't know how to deal with that--airplanes usually don't move backwards. Anyway, aileron and rudder are pretty much useless, but fortunately the elevators still work OK, although at reduced efficiency. You enter this "hole" in the flight model when you're very, very slow in a slightly nose-high attitude. If you enter a spin just before falling into the "hole", the spin will continue, apparently under your angular momentum, and seemingly ignoring the way the wind is blowing by your plane up from under your tail. This all sounds pretty bad, but it's actually fairly easy to get out of. All you have to do is get out of the "hole". Once you do that, your plane suddenly assumes a proper attitude and your controls start to work again. And the key attribute for being in the "hole" is having your nose high. Therefore, your FIRST priority MUST be to get the nose down. Once you do that, things go back to normal. If you're spinning, just ignore that for the moment. So, #1, apply full power and full DOWN elevator. The more power you use, the more elevator authority you have. Again, this points to a "hole" in the FM, because it's like the only wind blowing by your elevator is coming from your prop. If the wind coming up from below was being considered, down elevator should actually make your nose go higher because you're moving in reverse. But trust me, DOWN elevator is what works here. Once you get the nose below the horizon, you're home free. The FM starts working again, and the spin usually stops automatically. What appears to happen is that all your reverse airspeed which you gained while accelerating downwards under gravity tail-low, was all ignored by the FM. But once the nose is down, this suddenly switches to being regular forward airspeed, which the FM knows how to handle. Odds are, by the time you get the nose down, your vertical speed will be well above your stall speed. This stops the spin because 1 wing has to be stalled for a spin to continue. If for some reason you're still spinning at this point, the usual opposite control routine works, because suddenly the aileron and rudder are functional again. It's a very abrupt transition from falling helplessly tail-first to flying and maneuvering normally in a forward direction. You'll see 0 airspeed and your aileron and rudder are useless, and then BOOM, you're doing 60 knots with full control like it never happened. Once you get the hang of getting the nose down quickly, you'll find that you lose only a few dozen feet of altitude in one of these tail-low falls. And because you can get out of them easily and with no lingering ill effects, you'll be tempted to exploit the "hole" in the FM to your advantage. No pursuer can follow you through this process, and you can switch direction very quickly doing this to attack somebody else or turn the tables on your pursuer. I don't recommend doing this, however, because IMHO it's cheating (and don't get me started on folks in MMOFS games exploiting similar FM "holes" in other games). So when I fly, I try hard to avoid getting into this situation and if it does happen, I try to disengage from the fight so as not to "cheat". Unfortuantely, the AI never seems to get the hang of recoverying from a tail-first fall. I've seen dozens of Albatri stall at 500-1000 feet and fall straight down without spinning, all the while with their noses pointed up about 30-45^. They just fall faster and faster, accelerating under gravity, but with apparently zero aerodynamics involved.

Fees ARE fighters! It says so on the label. They're in fighter squadrons, they go on fighter missions. The "F" in FE2 stands for "Fighter", after all (rumors that it actually stands for "Farman" are baseless slander ). The Fee is the Eindecker of the RFC in terms of performance. But while the Fee doesn't fall out of the sky for no apparent reason, it has a tougher job. The E.III gets to slaughter Quirks in 1916, but the FE2 has to contest air superiority with Albatri in Bloody April. Sounds to me that's a job for sombody born with fangs. Anybody with baby teeth can be successful in a good, or even a mediocre plane, but the Fee in Bloody April is a real challenge just to survive in. I double-dog dare you

Bravo! Thanks muchos, OBD

Have a good trip and be sure to post screenshots and AARs of the beach beauties when you get back

You're on the slippery slope now, Ohlam. We'll have you in a Fee next . Besides, you should do a few Fee campaigns to really feel like you've earned the right to fly the mighty Brisfit :yes: . Still, If you want a lot of air-to-air Brisfit action, I suggest 48 Squadron in April 1917. June's a slow month in comparison, and only 48 has the Brisfit in Bloody April. You can then go on the Bristfit's combat debut and do it better than they did in real life, because you can maneuver like a fighter instead of sitting still like a bomber.

DAMN, what a disaster in so many different ways! All that beer wasted, a huge mess to clean up (no doubt with much hate and no help from the Mrs.)... ...And then there's the loss of the bottles themselves... Dealing with bottles is the biggest obstacle for the beginning homebrewer, and is the main reason many only try it once and then never do it again. First, you have to collect cases and cases of empty bottles, before you brew anything. The upside is, you get to empty them in the process, but it's slow and expensive. Then you have to remove the labels, which is a LOT of work. Only then is it safe to put them in the dishwasher, and then you need a place to store mountains of bottles while keeping them fairly clean (the back corner of the garage isn't a good place). Then you have to sterilize them just before you fill them, and the whole priming, filling, and capping process is long, tedious, messy, and wasteful. On top of all this, you have to devote nearly as much care to amassing and maintaining all the cardboard 6-pack holders and sturdy case cartons all those bottles need. All told, there's more work and hassle involved with the bottles and cardboard than there is making the beer itself, and none of it is fun, convenient, intoxicating, or something to show off to your friends. And then, when you DO give your friends some beer, you have to ask them to clean the bottles out and return them along with the 6-pack holder, and you curse them when they don't. For these reasons, I switched to kegging my beers. I use the small, 2.5-gallon soda kegs to serve out of (because they're easier to put in the fridge) and the 5-gallon kegs as 2ndary fermenters. I can thus filter under gas pressure from one to the other, all in 1 quick, easy, and spill-free step :). Instead of having to clean 50-60 bottles per batch, I only have to clean 3 kegs. If folks wants my beer, they can come over and have some on tap, or they can invite me to a keg party .

It's so easy a neolithic farmer could do it. You should give it a try. I hear homebrewing is a bigger hobby in Europe than America, and you all have better access to good ingredients. OTOH, you all also have better access to good store-bought beer, so there's less incentive to make your own. Understand that there are 2 main types of beer: ales and lagers. These use very different strains of yeast and thus require very different processes and times. Most US homebrewers, myself included, only make ales, primarily because we prefer their taste to that of the typical, pathetic US pilsners. I've always thought that the human kidney was a wonderfully engineered device for turning good ale into "Buttwiper" . Anyway, this taste for ales is fortunate, because ales are WAY faster, easier, and cheaper to make than lagers. Ale yeasts like high temperatures and work quickly. This time of year where I live, my 8% porters and IPAs take 5-7 days at most to go from kettle to fridge. That's pretty damn fast. They take 7-10 days in winter. Lager yeasts, OTOH, like temperatures that are very close to freezing and work very slowly. It takes frm several weeks to several months to make a lager, all the while running a large refrigerator which is expensive, unless you have a handy ice cave in the Alps. The problem for you is, most German beers are lagers, so that's probably what you like best. German ales are usually known as "alt", because the lagering process is the newer of the 2. If you like that, you should give brewing a try. Heheh, my brewing operations got thrown out of the house entirely many years ago, after a vigorous imperial stout blew the lid off a plastic fermenter and ruined the drapes . So I had to build an outbuilding for brewing. It was a pain, but it's worth it now. It's got a concrete floor with a drain, an overhead crane, a deep sink, an airconditioner, its own hot water heater, and a large fridge for storing extra kegs. It's my whole hobby laboratory, because I keep all my beekeeping, candle-making, and flint-knapping stuff in there, too. I've never had any of that and thought it existed only in Harry Potter . Please send me your recipe.