Bullethead

Yeah, that too! I couldn't remember the name. Pour encouragement les outres :).

Thanks for that! It's worht it for the naughty and humorous illustrations alone :).

My shooting is only about 5-10%, but I still often get 2 kills per sortie for the expenditure of only 70-80 rounds. So, that's 2 kills with only 7-8 total hits. My average burst size is only 5-6 rounds. This is with all the realistic and hard settings, using the "hard core" damage model. This should tell you a lot about my flying style :yes: . The above stats should tell you that I'm only taking a lot of very brief, high-deflection snapshots, which occur at very short range as the top view of the enemy passes in front of me. Most of my tiny bursts miss just beside the cockpit, but when they hit, it's all on the pilot and down he goes. This style comes from flying in a small formation of Pups being bounced by much larger numbers of Albatri. I learned long ago never to hold still, never to saddle up on a target, or one of the many unoccupied enemies would blow me to bits. Besides, I have to keep saving my wingmen, so can't spend any time concentrating on a single target anyway. So I just twist around like mad trying to keep an eye on everybody at once and taking whatever fleeting firing opportunity comes my way.

I think it says "Bullethead" on my birth certificate.... It might as well be there, because I've moved around a lot over the years and the different groups of people in many of my new domiciles stuck me with that handle independently, although for different reasons. Some people have called me that because they think my head is shaped like a .45 APC semi-wadcutter bullet (at least when my hair is cropped). Some folks did so because I reminded them of "Bungalo Bill" in the Beatles song, despite my mother being Cajun instead of Saxon. Others have done so as a combination of my perceived bull-headedness and my large collection of guns. Anyway, I've been called "Bullethead" by so many different people for so long that if somebody calls by my real name, I often don't think they're talking to me.

My favorite WW1 movie is "Sergeant York", but it wasn't on the list

More importantly to me, he was the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland. I had no idea he was in the RAF, too, until you mentioned it. I drink again to his shade. I've already done so on my own game's forum, which is about naval things. It's somewhat strange that this 1 guy was the last of both my interests. Now I'm pretty well drunk. May the Valkyries welcome him home. :drinks_drunk:

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks :drinks_drunk: 20 Squadron's had appalling losses lately in April 1917. We could use some more cannonfodder :).

On the historical side of things..... I believe that tracers were invented and in widespread use on the ground long before MGs ever took to the air. As a result, I'm almost certain that every MG belt drawn from the local ammo dump and delivered to a squadron had the usual mix of ball and tracer rounds in it. IOW, the squadron would have had to have removed the tracers if they didn't want them; otherwise they had them by default. I'm fairly sure that tracers were developed almost as soon as MGs were invented because they were quickly found necessary to keep stationary ground MGs hitting stationary ground targets. Even when mounted on a well-secured tripod and with the training and elevation locks fastened, MGs bounce around a lot when firing. This bouncing throws the gun off target, so the gunner has to keep adjusting his aim. However, this same bouncing turns the sights into useless blurs, and the target area itself soon becomes obscured by dust from all the bullet impacts, so it's impossible to tell where you're hitting. Thus the need for tracers on the ground, and it's quite intuitive that they'd be very helpful in air combat, too, so they were probably there from the start. However, it actually turns out that tracer is more often counterproductive in air combat. Surely you've read many pilot memoirs where the author is frequently surprised by enemy tracer flying around him. He immediately goes into evasives and gets out of the way before his attacker can correct his aim. In WW2, some US and RAF officers became convinced that many Germans were getting away due to being tipped off by tracer. Thus, they ordered their squadrons to quit using tracers, and they promptly started getting many more kills, even though all their pilots had been trained to use tracers. This practice was so successful, in fact, that it quick came into widespread use in the ETO in the latter year or 2 of the war, at least for the air-to-air guys. Also note that the German nightfighters didn't use tracer in their upwards-firing cannon for the same reason, although I've never heard that they quit using it in forward-firing guns. I actually have some experience with this. I flew the MMOFS "Aces High" for many years and you could turn your tracers off in it. I did this and it did in fact help my score. Tracers not only tell you when you're being attacked, but also the direction the enemy is coming from without you have to look for him. This allows you to react immediately and spoil his aim without wasting time turning your head. Personally, I've never found tracer to be very useful in air combat. If I've surprised somebody and am lined up right on a non-maneuvering target, I don't need them at all. In a turning fight, the tracer (and often the target) are usually below my nose so I can't see them anyway. And in snapshots, the firing opportunity is over before I can get any feedback from my tracer anyway. It's more like taking a shotgun shot at a passing bird than walking a stream onto a target. Besides, if you're into walking your tracer streams, odds are your guns will jam . Thus, the only time I'm glad to have tracer is when I'm strafing ground targets. Otherwise, they seem to help the enemy more than they help me.

I take it this is far and away above the fair she normally fixes? Is this a subtle hint aimed at improvement or a declaration of war?

Although I have an externsive arsenal, I'm saving it against the day the Revolution comes. In the meantime, I keep my hand in with black powder, plus I practice my atlatl throwing. Need any dart points? I can provide :).

Wow! Is this a recent change? I tried gunning long ago and the AI pilot either just went straight and level, and thus we were a sitting duck, or fell out of the sky completely. So ever since I've never switched seats and have just let my AI observer do his job while I do mine.

I'll say! Here it is your wedding anniversary and you're posting in here instead of taking your lady love out on the town, and you're apparently still alive..... Congrats on finding such an understanding woman

Stange. I delete pilots all the time, right after they die, so I don't have to wade through them all and be tormented by their ghosts just to select somebody still alive. I play an MP3 of "Taps" (or whatever is appropriate for their nationality) and knock back a shot of whiskey while I'm doing it, and then they're forgotten. "Aufwiedersehen ins Massengrab, wir sehen uns wieder ins Massengrab", and all that. But the Huns never take me alive! When over Hunland, I fight until the screen goes black or red. Thus, I've never deleted any POW pilots. That might be the difference here. Perhaps the game periodically checks captured pilots to see if they might now finally escape, and deleting them thus screws it up.

OH!!!!! That's usually called a Colt, not a Springfield, which is what threw me :). IIRC, the design was by Browning when he was working for Colt, but Colt got the credit and thus it was known, even if other companies and armories made clones of it during wartime. That old .45 is a very nice weapon, specifically designed to drop a drug-crazed native his tracks before he could get close enough to stick a spear into you. The older .38 Special service round just lacked that kind of knock-down power, and the even wimpier 9mm Parabellum so common today is a total joke in this regard. There was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth when the US, for political NATO reasons having nothing to do with combat effectiveness, switched from the .45 to the 9mm in the 1980s. Fortunately, in my war, we were equipped in large part from prepositioned supply ships that had been packed in the 1960s, so were STUFFED with .45s. Not just the M1911, but also the M3 "greasegun" SMG. Too bad there weren't any Tommyguns in there, too, but we were just glad to have anything in .45 APC, and plenty of ammo for them. These things came in VERY handy when we had to clean out all the by-passed bunkers after ther war was officially "over". The ideal handgun is, of course, the original Star Trek phasor. No mess, no smell, no body to hide--the guy just turns blue and disappears. Failing that, if you ever have to use a pistol in earnest, you want something that will put a hole in the target large enough to reach through with a beer stein, and will knock the guy down long enough for him to bleed to death regardless of how much PCP is in his system. If your pistol's caliber isn't .45 or above, you'd better throw a grenade or, failing that, run away. The M1911, like the fast majority of automatic pistols, is actually blowback-operated. Again, gas pressure has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all locks the bolt to the breech, so the recoil force immediately starts shoving the bolt backwards. This isn't a problem, however, because the barrel is so short that the bullet is gone before the breech opens. I have never shot a more accurate rifle. With iron sights, you're dead if I see you up to about 1000m away. Plus, if somehow you get closer, and I can beat you into jelly with it :).

A slight correction on my location, actually in Lousy Anna's armpit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39416639@N02/3730845782/

[quote name='HomeBoy' date='Jul 17 2009, 02:42 PM' post='316653'BTW, it seems that the little booklet that came with my Springfield 1911 refers to the extraction and reloading mechanism as "gas operated." That probably what corrupted my thinking. What's an M1911 Springfield? I have an M1903, which was actually built as in 1944, and it's a bolt-action rfile using the Mauser mechanism.

No, both of them (and the Parabellum used by German observers) used the Maxim recoil operation system. Gas pressure has nothing to do with this. The recoil force from firing immediately shoves back the bolt and barrel, which are this point are firmly locked together. This is basically storing the recoil energy until the bullet leaves the muzzle, by which point the recoiling parts hit a catch that stops the barrel and unlocks the bolt. The bolt thus flies back furhter, changes out the ammo, and then springs forward again.

I've been curious about this, too. I was just figuring it was unsyncrhonized and relying on luck, which the RNAS did in some cases :). I've always heard a different story.... The Lewis was gas-operated like the modern M249, where there's a hole in the barrel that allows expanding gas behind the bullet to come back up a separate tube and push the bolt open. A gas-operated weapon has to be carefully balanced to work at all in an unmodified state because its bolt has to open at exactly the right time after firing, when the gas pressure is enough to fully operate the mechanism. If the bolt opens too soon or too late, there isn't enough pressure for full operation. The bolt will only go part of the way back and then the spring will carry it forward again. This almost always fails to load the next round and can quite easily cause the spent case to jam in the works instead of ejecting cleanly. Anyway, this timing of the mechanism requires that a gas-operated weapon's bolt has a carefully controlled mass, its springs have carefully controlled strengths, the gas outlet in the barrel has to be in a specific place, and has to be the correct diameter. The problem with synchronizing a gas-operated weapon is that this requires attaching some sort of extra parts to the existing mechanism, and the mass and spring tension changes the dynamics of the system. This requires redesigning the entire mechanism and/or gas system to account for these changes, which is usually not possible within the other constraints of the system, or is at least not practical. IOW, you have to design what is essentially a whole new gun. This is why, throughout history, there haven't been AFAIK any synchronized gas-operated weapons. They've all been recoil- or blowback-operated. Note that these 2 approaches produce very different results. The thing to remember is that a prop blade passed in front of the muzzle way more often than the gun fired. For instance, a 2-bladed prop turning at 1200rpm has a blade passing in front of the muzzle 40 times per second, but the gun's rate of fire is only about 8 rounds per second. Now, with an interrupter, the gun is just allowed to fire naturally except when the mechanism stops it at those times when the position of the blade and the gun's mechanism happen to correspond. This has a relatively small impact on the gun's rate of fire. With a synchronizer, OTOH, the engine is effectively pulling the trigger about 5 times faster than the gun's mechanism can cycle. Thus, much of this is wasted and then sometimes when the gun is ready to fire, the mechanism won't let it. As a result, synchronizers cause a greater reduction in the gun's rate of fire. Also, while the rate of fire of both systems is somewhat dependent on prop RPM, this has a greater effect on the synchronizer, to the point where it's unsafe to fire the gun at certain RPMs. Or so I've heard it. I could be wrong.

Yeah, folks here get all gaga over ghosts and especially vampires, thanks to Anne Rice's fictions about vampires in New Orleans... Personally, I think that if there are "really" hauntings, they have nothing to do with dead people, but with glimpses into parallel universes were ordinary people are leading their normal lives. That (in)famous parallel slit experiment with a single photon, for instance. But who knows? All I"m certain of is that if there's really a ghost at "The Myrtles", it's that of a dog that fell in an old well there a few years ago and which I helped rescue when I was in the local fire department. But dog died of its injuries, which really wasn't its fault, so I figure that it's got as good an excuse to haunt the place as any human who died there. I would. If it's possible to come back as a ghost, I'm going to do it just to spite her :yes:

You should be able to get it almost anywhere these days. Community Coffee is the brand, and in recent years they've tried to rival Starbucks in being everywhere. I'm sure you can order some online if you can't find it in your store. What you want is the Dark Roast or, if you're adventurous, the Dark Roast with Chickory. However, the trick is how you make it. Here's the standard Lousy Anna recipe: The standard unit of adding ground coffee to the pot is the HEAPING tablespoon. Most folks use measuring scoops and heap each so high that it's about 1-2/3 tablespoons per scoop. Lousiana coffee is made in a perculator or drip coffee pot, which are listed as having so many "cups" capacity. Of course 1 "cup" in the measuring system of the machine is about 1/2 of a decent coffee mug. Anyway, it goes like this: Use 1 heaping tablespoon for each "cup" you're making. For each 5 "cups" you're making, add 1 extra heaping tablespoon. For each 10 "cups" you're making, add 1 extra heapiong tablespoon. Always add 1 extra heaping tablespoon at the end, no matter how many "cups" you're making. All extras are cumulative. Thus, if you're making 10 "cups", you use 14 heaping tablespoons: 10 (1 for each "cup") 2 (for each increment of 5 "cups") 1 (for 10 "cups") 1 (for the pot at the end) Drink it black. It can be served hot or over ice. True connoiseurs agree that the longer the stuff cooks, the more concentrated and thus better it is. This is a widely shared sentiment. Most US coffee that you buy in restaurants and such is so insipid that it can easily be mistaken for tea. This is a result of them using prepackaged servings of a little coffee wrapped up in a filter bag. The employees just use 1 such thing per pot to be cheap, but to make anything worth drinking you have to use a bunch of them. Note, however, that all this said about Lousy Anna coffee is nothing compared to good Arab coffee. Anybody ever have that stuff? They grind their beans to powder and don't use filters, so that you end up with a thick layer of sludge in the bottom of your cup and so much is suspended in the liquid that every sip is gritty. It permanently stains everything it touches ;). My young cousins off at the war keep me well-supplied with this stuff. Mmm mmm good! But some years ago, a Kiwi friend of mine got sent to East Timor and got me some of that famous stuff. DAMN! They film a lot of movies and TV shows in my area, too, because of all the old plantation houses here. In fact, they're filming one right now, but I couldn't tell you which it is. I suppose the most well-known recent movie made around here was that pathetic "Dukes of Hazard" thing from a couple years ago. That long mini-series "North and South" from the early 80s was filmed here, though. Then there's an old plantation house called "The Myrtles", which is about 7 miles down the "Blues Highway" from my house. This place has been on TV many times because it's supposed to be haunted. However, all the ghost stories told about the place are pure BS invented by the current owners to attract tourists. The house was actually built by some ancestors of mine, so it's well-documented that none of the events that supposedly led to the advertised hauntings actually happened. This has gotten my mother quite upset because some of the stories make her side of the family look bad (or at least worse than it really is ). Being one of the local historians, she actually got on one of these TV shows to give a rebuttal of the haunting stories. Thus, if some of you watched a show about this place and an old gray-haired woman came on at the end and said it was all a crock, you've met my mother .

Ah yes, Lousy Anna indeed, without whom Flanders would be unbearable. Nurse Gladys always dumps you for somebody with more brass on his collar, or a higher score, or is still able to walk without a cane. Lousy Anna, however, will always love you provided don't mind waiting in line outside her chambers, plus she'll give you something to remember her by. What are a few lice between friends, especially when you no doubt had more than she did when you arrived? . Anyway, I'm a Texan living in exile, despite my family having been in Louisiana long before there was a United States. With only 1 exception, Texas has Louisiana beat in every conceivable category, which I why I call my current domicile "Lousy Anna". The 1 thing Lousy Anna excels in is coffee. In Texas, coffee is considered good only if you can float a horseshoe on it. In Lousy Anna, OTOH, coffee is only good if the floating horseshoe dissolves in less than 30 seconds. In Lousy Anna, coffee means something with the strength of extra-strong espresso but made out of beans that have been roasted as black as Satan's heart, and then cut about 50/50 with nitric acid. And on top of this, New Orleans natives then add a lot of bitter chickory. Either way, this stuff is so foul that even a dram of the decaf version will keep anybody not from the Gulf Coast awake 24 hours as if you were constantly huffing smelling salts. But Lousy Anna natives drink 32oz mugs of this stuff all day, even just before bedtime. Texans usually have to knock off about 1500. Everybody else goes into tachicardia immediately and dies. For the ultimate coffee experience, visit a New Orleans-area convenience store about 1130. There you'll find the dregs of a coffee pot that has been cooking on a hotplate since about 0800. IOW, all the nastiness has been concentrated and enhanced by distillation and burning. The store employees will probably have unplugged the hotplate about 1100, so it'll be cool enough to drink immediately. They'll give it to you for free, because they are about to dump it outside prior to making a fresh batch (they don't pour it down the sink because it will ruin the pipes). Now THAT, my friends, is COFFEE! But it's an acquired taste

Nice pic. BTW, welcome aboard. New guy buys the drinks :drinks_drunk:

The southern end of US Highway 61 is the "Blues Highway", so called because of all the great blues musicians who have come from along there. The road essentially follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the Canadian border, but the "Blues Highway" part is pretty much from Memphis on south. I live in the kink in the border of Louisiana, what I call Lousy Anna's armpit, sandwiched between the River to the west and south, and the Mississippi state line to the north.

I dunno. I figure envy and hate, and the fear they cause, are inescapable. They were viewed as such problems back in the day that God Himself wrote Commandments about them for Moses, but it hasn't done a bit of good as far as I can tell. OTOH, I view laziness and boredom as desirable conditions. I wish I had more time to be both . Anarchy rules!

The world is full of people with way more money than sense (sadly, I'm not one of them) who like to collect utterly useless but still very expensive stuff. Some of them go for paintings, some for classic cars, and some for projectile points. In the case of masterpiece projectile points, what they really want are real artifacts, but those are not only exceedingly rare but also mostly illegal to acquire these days. Thus, the get the next best thing: modern reproductions. These are also very rare because the skill required to produce them is very rare, so these reproductions are every bit as expensive as blackmarket artifacts of similar quality. At my talent level, however, I'm lucky to get more than $20 for a point. It's just a hobby to me, so I don't mind--I make enough to cover the cost of tools and materials. I actually sell most of my stuff to little kids; small points for $5 each. Every little kid wants an arrowhead :yes: . Even the girls, who make necklaces and pins out of them. The girls especially like points made of glass for this, because they sparkle. The best material for that is an empty Bombay Sapphire gin bottle, which not only has a pretty light blue shade, but also has large flat areas from which to make points. Knapping is a reasonably popular hobby these days. Look for flint knapping on Google and YouTube and you'll find all sorts of stuff. There are several magazines and newsletters to choose from. I like visitors, especially those who come over to drink. I was just reminding folks, however, that this area killed scads of European settlers back in the day, so you might want to get your vaccinations up to date before visiting. Uncle Sam vaccinated me, but my family's been here nearly 3 centuries through all the epidemics so I figure I was immune already. Yup, it's free. Sign up for Yahoo and you get an email address (which I never use--I just let it trap spam) and a place on Flickr to post your pics.