Bullethead

Amen to that. If I'd been a WW1 pilot who'd lived long enough to get a few kills on my side of the lines, I'd have used the flayed hides of my fallen foes as my flightleader streamers.

I've brought this up myself. Because most of my pilots die very young, their sacrifices are too quickly forgotten, especially because there's nothing memorable about a black screen popping up suddenly and telling me I'm dead. Thus, I'd like the opportunity to either experience the full trauma of their deaths, to make them stick in my mind. The more that happens, the more I'm likely to remember what they did wrong, so my next incarnation won't make the same mistake. I don't mind if OFF declares me dead in mid-air. Sure, keep doing that. But when that happens, let the mission continue until I end it. And don't black- or red-out the screen, either. Put me in unblocked external view with full control over the POV and let me watch my fall and crash, taking cool screenshots all the way down. Then let the remaining AI planes on both sides continue to fight, unless I make it stop. But if my plane is just shot up and/or missing pieces, and I'm still alive, let me keep fighting the controls and flames all the way down. Every time my fight to regain control is aborted by the black screen of "your plane is uncontrollable", I feel cheated. I ALWAYS think I could have pulled it out before I reached the ground. And even if I'm wrong, I'd rather go down fighting than have the "mercy rule" applied. As Ahab said, "From Hell's heart I stab at thee, for Hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!" Besides, if I'm on fire, I want that time to practice getting used to Hell

Well, it might end up with an interesting camo pattern after a while

I've heard that in WW1, when they patched a hole in the fabric, they sometimes painted the patch with a little representation of what caused it. Like if it was from a Brit bullet, the patch would be a little roundel. Years ago, I even saw a Tiger Moth that had a screwdriver painted on a rather large patch on the lower wing near the engine :). So, if you were really ambitious, you might make careful note of where your crate gets hit each mission, and put little patches there, to see how they accumulate over time.

Definitely on the Albatros 2-seater. And, of course, the Rumpler. The Brits have a pretty good stock of 2-seaters already, but perhaps a DH4 (with a working level bombing sight). The French, however, need the most work. They have no 2-seaters of their own at all right now. But what I'd really like to see them get are the big, twin-engined Caudrons :).

Sure, but that begs the question. What did the Parasol go up against? Best I can tell, it was the rare E.IIIs and otherwise 2-seaters, and not too many of either. If you find it a turn-on to fly an obsolete 2-seater against more capable opponents, the Fee over Arras IMHO offers way more of that feeling than would a Parasol over the Somme. Somehow, finding the sky full of D.IIIs twice a day, most of them flown by very dangerous people, not to mention the odd encounter with MvR and his homies at the top of their game, seems rather more challenging. But everybody hates the Fee and wants the Parasol instead. I just can't figure it.

I see so many people wanting parasols, and I can't help but ask myself, WHY? By all accounts, the thing was an underpowered, unmaneuverable, flimsy, and extremely crank and unstable POS unable to hold its own against DFWs. If that's what you like, why do I seem to be one of the few people to fly the Fee very much?

The other day, Pol mentioned that some of the 2-seaters have a bombsight accessible via the F7 key. Today, I finally remembered to take a look at this. So I went into QC and hit F7 in every 2-seater. Here's what I discovered: DFW The only plane with anything useful here. F7 gives you a circular downwards view, just what you want for level bombing. It has no crosshairs, however, so aiming has to be guesstimated. I haven't played with this enough to learn whether this view just looks straight down or is angled out forward a bit. Either way, it's obviously only going to help within a certain band of altitudes, where a bomb's path will take it to something you can see in the view when you drop. The release point will vary depending on altitude within this band. It will require a lot of practice runs to get good with this, I can tell. Strutter (both versions) Instead of a bombsight, you go to a real map of the area around Lille. That might be useful for immersion and navigation, but doesn't help bombing at all. FE2 This one's broken, I'm afraid. When you hit F7, you get a blank, dark gray square. No view of the ground, no map, no nothing except gray. It says "bomb sight view" at the top of the screen, so I get the impression it's supposed to work as in the DFW. Or maybe it was supposed not to have a bombsight but function wasn't disabled. Others F7 does nothing at all in any other 2-seater.

I am, too, so instead I looked at the Strutter's .xdp file which defines the crew stations. There's no bombardier view, just a map view, regardless of whether the lens cap is on or off (which I hadn't thought about).

Kids these days..... Back when I was a nipper, immersion-producing peripherals were aviator cigarette lighters, whiskey flasks, and nitrous oxide for that "high" altitude hypoxic feeling

I find this very cool, but also sad at the same time. Soon us simmers will be the only real fighter pilots left. http://www.es.northropgrumman.com/solution...eodasvideo.html

In artificial reservoirs, the widest point is almost always at the dam, so if the canal/creek comes in at the pointy end there shouldn't be anything there. Water flows downhill, so the ground is lower at the dam and thus when the reservoir fills, the incoming creek is further up the banks there than at the other end. Hydro plants would be at the dam, too, therefore also at the wide end.

What we really need to combat the Gotha is the modified Camel nightfighter with the twin Lewis guns on the upper wing, so the muzzle flash didn't blind the pilot. Or even cooler, the Sopwith Comic

Naw, that was to complicated for me. Remember, I'm a paleolithic guy. I'd be fine with the DFW's, although crosshairs would have been a nice touch. I've been poking through all the folders looking for the bombsight's texture so I can draw my own crosshairs on it, and maybe (if I get REALLY ambitious, which I highly doubt), draw aiming marks corresponding to certain speeds and altitudes. But it's moot anyway because I can't find the thing. Yeah, I can't hit the broad side of a barn, and I've tried a few times in gliding attacks. I tried level bombing once, from about 5000' in a Fee. I didn't even see the bursts

Notes on the Spad VII...... I haven't flown this in combat, just puttered around in Free Flight QC to see how it handled. So this isn't a full report. Take-Off and Climb Starts out straight and true, but then things get a little tricky. Acceleration is rather slow. The tail comes up at about 60 knots, at which point the beast starts bouncing and wobbling in random directions. Due to limited forward view with an angle of attack, you might think it's flown itself into the air, but it hasn't, and in fact won't fly at this speed. Wings-level stall speed is about 65-70 knots, so you have to take firm control and build up to about 80 knots before you can really get airborne safely. By this point, the tail's up enough to see that the threshold trees are fast approaching, but you should clear them with plenty to spare. However, unlike the XIII, the VII doesn't leap into the air but climbs away like most planes. The VII's sustained climb speed is 80 knots. The initial ROC is about 1500fpm up to about 2000', then it's 1000' up to about 7000', 750fpm to about 8700', and then 500fpm with no sign of letting up until I got bored with it at 13000'. At this altitude, max level speed is about 100 and 85% cruise speed is 90 knots. Maneuvering In a vertical, full-power dive, the VII reaches a top speed of about 230 knots and never gets faster. As speed gets close to 200, you have to start forcing the nose down, so that at 230 you've got full down elevator and are only maintaining about an 80^ dive. Dive acceleration is very fast up to about 150 knots, which only takes about 1000', but after that the acceleration decreases, so that it takes about 8000' to reach 230 knots. There were not creaks or stress warnings at 230 knots, nor in the pull-out where I was almost entirely blacked out, just a small hole visible in the center of the screen. IOW, you're not going to break this plane. Zooming and diving for vertical combat maneuvers work very well, although the vertical distances traveled and the speeds reached aren't as great as in the XIII. It would appear that about 150 knots is the best speed to make a pass at, but as I haven't actually tried this in combat I'm not sure if that will zoom you up out of reach afterwards. The VII slows down RAPIDLY when turning hard, and suffers accelerated stalls in vertical banks at about 80 knots, like the XIII. There are occasional warning creaks as you approach the critical speed. The VII's overall behavior in this regard is rather more benign than the XIII's, however, and actually exploitable. Although the pig slows way down in prolonged turns, it stops doing that just above the critical speed, or at least its rate of slowing decreases substantially. Thus, you can make a couple of circles. Just use bottom rudder to keep the nose slightly below the horizon, so you stay just above the stall speed. Of course, these aren't tight circles as other scouts go, so it's probably not that useful :). But note that the VII seems always to want to spin to the right. Thus, if you're in a hard left turn and go into a stall, it tends to make the nose go up and decrease your bank angle. However, the spin is so slow in starting that you can instantly recover by stomping left rudder to kick the nose back below the horizon and you're instantly back at flying speed and turning again like before. You can also use this to quickly reverse your turn's direction by stomping right rudder into the spin, letting it snaproll through level, then slamming the nose down and stomping left rudder to stop the spin. Now you're turning just as hard to the right, or flying off more or less level at a 90^ angle to your previous course, your choice. I doubt any enemy could follow you through this. If you're in a hard right turn and stall, however, you go directly into a spin. It's very slow and deliberate, however, and as in the XIII you resume flying as soon as you get above about 80 knots. The VII's elevators have much better authority in a spin than the XIII's, so you can get the nose down, pick up a couple of knots of speed, and stop the spin very quickly. Usually this results in you only going around about 270^ and losing very little altitude. Thus, you can also break out of a hard right turn at a 90^ angle to your previous course. However, I'm not a fan of evasive maneuvers. Having to do them means you either had an SA failure, or got too slow to begin with. So while these moves might be nice to get out of a jam, it's better not to get into a jam at all . Landing As mentioned above, the wings-level stall speed of the VII is about 65-70 knots. This makes landing a lot easier than in the XIII. You can land the VII more or less like any other plane, with a steep enough approach to get down on short fields with trees at the end. You should, however, keep a little power on to make sure you keep the speed high enough. I think it's best to touch down in a nose-high 2-pointer at about 75-80 knots before throttling back all the way. You really don't want to touch down just as you reach stall speed, because you'll start to spin just as you touch, which turns into a groundloop and/or cartwheel.

Phooey . I was hoping it worked like this: You spawn at about 200' over your field. Turkeys spawn at about 500' in random locations over the whole area of the field and start fluttering clumsily to the ground. When they reach the ground, they run towards some airfield building and if they make it there, they explode, destroying the building. Turkeys spawn continuously, usually several at once, and the game ends when all airfield buildings are destroyed. The object of the game is to kill as many turkeys as you can before that happens.

Well, I don't think this paintjob was pre-printed fabric like the lozenge patterns were. I think somebody had to paint each of those spiral paisley things by hand. Thus, to be accurate, each one should be slightly different. I guess the easiest way to replicate that would be to make 1 perfect patch of the pattern that tiles correctly, then make 5 or 6 slight variations of it without screwing up the tiling, then place them randomly over the airplane. That way, it wouldn't be such an obvious pasting job.

Check out the paintjob on this 1/72 Oeffag D.III!!! http://www.rodenplant.com/Gallery/026/oef-15.jpg I guess that was all done with a brush, no doubt over the course of several weeks . Wow. Think you could do a skin like this?

Go ahead and fire all 6. It's going to burning hot where you're going, so you might as well start getting used to it

OK, without naming names, I hope the secret list includes a fair number of 2-seaters :yes: .

Your kharma is all out of balance as a result. You need to do several Bloody April careers in Fees to make up for that .

Looks good, Pol! Please pass on my thanks to the rest of the team.

Is it just me, or is there a lot extra space on that shelf that the slip-indicating pack of smokes don't slide across? You could bore numerous big holes in there to hold bottles of your favorite adult beverages, a spitoon, an ash tray, condiments for your lunch, sheepskins for farmers' daughters, and all the paraphernalia to make a proper absinthe cordial. Or, in the case of my current career Fee driver, a place to cook up his opiate painkillers.

Nice. In OFF, once you get up to flying speed, the XIII leaps off the ground just like in this video. To somebody enured to just barely getting over the treetops in a Fee for so long, it's like what Galland thought of the 262: "It feels like angels are pushing". This doesn't last long, however, which this video also shows. That's just a zoom climb, which is what you do in a fight. Sustained climb is rather less impressive, but still enough to get decent altitude before you reach the lines. What this video does show is that the real XIII has considerably better low-speed performance than the OFF version. I doubt that real Spad was doing more than about 60 knots on final approach, and did a few passes at rather less than 90 knots. I'm not saying the OFF Spad can't bank, but you have to be MOVING when you do it.

I agree with you, sir, even into the Arab-Israeli wars to at least 1967, perhaps 1973. I've flown a lot of Korean War jets in MP, and IMHO that's the most challenging era there ever was. The turn radii are so big compared to guns range, and it's so easy to black out, that it's next to impossible to get a shot off. You'd sign on for an extra tour in Hell just for a 1st generation rear-aspect heat-seeker. And then when you get those in the next decade or 2, things aren't much easier anyway because everybody's going that much faster. I'm amazed anybody in real life ever killed anything in those eras, except by catching people napping. Those were some REAL fighterpilots back then. But Viet Nam is further away in time now than WW2 was when Viet Nam was being fought. So I can't really call that "modern" :). You should really try OFF. It's worth a new system