Bullethead

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.

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.

This morning I made a fairly decent turkeytail knife out of that wonderful Georgetown flint. This started out as a large, raw cobble covered in chalky cortex, so first I "peeled" off that and then knocked a bunch of nice spalls of flint off, which I'll make other points out of later. I made this turkeytail out of the central piece I had left. All went well throughout, but when I was sitting there picking up the spalls to put them away for later, I dropped one. I reached down quickly to catch it so it wouldn't break, but it landed on my thigh (fortunately covered with thick leather) and rotated a bit to the side into the path of my descending hand. Thus, my hand came down hard on the sharp edge and because the other end was on my leg, the spall held still while my hand kept going. Net result: 3 stitches on the top outer edge of my right ring finger just behind the nail. The doctor was quite impressed with the cut, BTW, observing that it was just as neat as one made by a scalpel. But the bandage is making it hard to type... If you're into knapping, you WILL get cut periodically, but usually they're minor. This was my 1st good one, so I've reached another milestone in my career . Now imagine this happening to a somebody back in the Stone Age. It might have been life-threatening if the pantry was bare at the time.... And they didn't have safety glasses, either. But don't let this scare you off from a fun hobby. Remeber, knapping is "so easy a caveman could do it"

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.

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

Don't. You invented this (thanks for speaking up) so I regard you as the expert . Do you take off with the gamepad, too? I can look around with my hat on my stick, but I find it to be practically useless. For me, the best course is to keep the gun in line with the fuselage and about 5^ elevated. If all the enemy are behind, then watch from the gunner's seat. If they're all around, watch from the external view. Odds are, however, you won't get a shot unless the enemy is pretty much behind you. I find moving my aim with the joystick quite natural, but that's because I've got years of experience doing that in other games. Geez, I used to sweep the skies with the VT-firing twin 5"/38s on Essex-class CVs in Aces High. One time, I got 28 kills before they blew the ship out from under me by an attack outside my arc . I agree, but I'm liking it so far. You have to understand the limitations of the system, and while it's very different from being a scout pilot, it's also intensely gut-wrenching in a different way. I'll be doing this again.

On my last sortie, I had a HOTAS malfunction that make my control inputs only work intermittantly. But this just added to the immersion. I rationalized this as a turnbuckle stripping out on the control cables or some such that killed so many pilots. And of course, I'm hardwired to think, "I coulda landed that." So I flew the damn thing down to a "good landing" (as in I walked away from the wreckage) instead of just jumping out of the game, DiD pilot and all. Take that, Zoomzoom!

GAWD, let's hope not. I wouldn't want my kid to grow up to be a communistic, absinthe-addicted suicide. Now, another George MacDonald Fraser... I'd be proud of that.

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.

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