Hauksbee

Don't know about test flight film, but here's a great site with beau coup WWI airplane photos. http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive2.htm#gg

I find that in flying QC, with Labels ON, I see lots of "Bogeys", usually on the ground. When I go down to check, they're always my guys. If I'm in a SE-5, they will be [for example] a British Cavalry column, if I'm in a D.VII they'll be marching German soldiers. I always thought 'Bogey" meant the bad guys, or, at best, unidentified.

I find that this is something usually overlooked when talking about the Dr.I. It was the short fuselage, combined with the torque of the rotary engine, that allowed the Dr.I to perform a lightning-quick, flat, skidding turn to reverse direction. A great account of this is in the History Channel's "Dogfight" episde that recounts the Voss-McCudden fight. [season 2, "The First Dogfighters"]

FLAK is a German acronym [sorta] for Flieger Abwehr Kannon, well, not an acronym per se, more like a distinctly German way of forming nicknames. Shutz Polezei [ordinary police force] becomes 'Shupo', Geheim Staats Polezei becomes 'Gestapo'. In the German army, the chaplin was called SAK. [Anti-Sin Cannon] EDIT: Apologies to Olham for my high-school German. You're right.

We have a Targeting Cone?

Poor old sod...you never had a chance.

Still looking for a DVD, but in the meantime, found this: http://www.mvlib.com/details/movie/Red+Bar...e++-273753.html You can download the film. $2.99 for DivX, and, $1.99 on the iPod.

After that fight scene, how bad could it be? And where can I get a copy? I looked all over Amazon.com. I found a poster for the film, but no DVD.

I've heard two plausible explanations: [1] When P.T.Barnum's circus traveled through Europe, the Germans were much impressed by Barnum's method of loading big objects, like circus wagons, onto flat cars by adding tracks on the top side of the flat cars. They then loaded things from the end and rolled them forward. During the war the Germans moved their squadrons up and down the line, wherever needed most. By train. OK. Flying + circus. [2] Somewhere around 1916-17, there was a craze for the Tango, especially in Berlin. There were dance halls devoted to Tango and were called Tango Circus's. On one occasion, as the story goes, Boelke's squadron was on the move. Boelke was strolling the length of the train checking to see that all was well, and when he arrived at the cars with the pilots, he found a full-bore party going on; champagne, girl friends...the lot. His comment: "What have we got here? A Tango Circus?" drew a laugh, and evolved into 'Flying Circus'.

Got the tutorial. Looks good. Is it permissible to use Bump Maps or Alpha Channels?

...and I had such high hopes for Boelke and the Tango Circus possibility.

Flying games are the only video/computer games I've developed a taste for, but I've never been a Team-and-Mission flyer. My heart lies with 'Quick Combat'. I'm brand new to OFF and there's some problems. [1] First, the Hat Switch on my Logitech Extreme joystick doesn't want to work, though it does in CFS3. Is there a work-around? [2] As Quick Combat starts at 15,000, the engine on my plane keeps cutting out. I keep hitting the 'E' key until it keeps running, but the screen says use Manual Re-start. I have a printed-out list of key commands, but I don't see Manual Re-start. Can anyone clue me in? [3] By the time I get my engine running, all my opponents have passed me and disappeared off the screen, though the TAC claims that they're all behind me. Or right over me. Or under. I keep banking sharp and circling, but I can't get anyone out from behind. [4] Is there really no way to re-load guns? It's disappointing to have to cancel the flight every minute or so to get a new airplane and ammo. Thanks.

So you're saying that colorful aircraft happened as a decision made by MvR? I saw it happen in the film "Richtofen and Brown", but assumed it was Hollywood hyperbole. Is there any record of Germans using the term?

Over time I've culled a lot of pictures from the internet. These four among them. There were no captions, and I just labeled them WIERD_01, etc. But the actual file name came along with, so my labels read WIERD-hb20_01. Could the 'hb' stand for Hansa-Brandenburg?

Airfields? As table cloths? Is nothing sacred? Curse you, devilish Boche!

On a submarine? Cool. I've never encountered that before in WWI.

Basically, what's the difference in QC? They look much the same to me.

Sorry. Mis-spoke myself. It should have been, "What's the difference between Dog Fight and Turkey Shoot?" The latter implies an easy walk-over, but it seems much the same as Dog Fight.

Amen, and goodnight all.

How odd. Back in the day, balloons were counted as kills because they were very important and VERY heavily defended with AA. If realism is the order of the day, it would seem they'd count.

Checked it out. It's a 1960's show. From Holland.

I am reluctant to dive in here, in the presence of people who obviously know their weapons, but I did some poking around, consulted a few friends, and it seems that heat-jams do happen. As Siggi put it, 'The metal expands both ways.' He might have said, 'The metal expands along all three axes.'...or, in all directions simultaenously. Which means that a hole bored through a piece of steel will get snug even as the whole piece of metal expands. Then I did a Wikipedia search on 'coefficients of expansion'. They said that stored energy [heat] in a metal causes the molecular bonds to lengthen. [Hence, expansion in all directions] and that steel [depending on the composition] has a coefficient of around 7.2, while brass is 11. Thus with a 1" cube oif steel, and a 1" cube of brass, if you drive the temp. up 100 degrees, the brass will be bigger than the steel. So the scenario would run: the bolt drives a freezing cold MG round into a blazing hot chamber [now reduced in size]. The thin brass wall of the cartridge heats instantly, softens, and then the powder goes off, expanding the cartridge which makes it hotter still, and softer. And snugger. One friend, with whom I share a facination with the Zulu Wars [and the defense of Roarke's Drift] commented that as Welsh troopers fought on through the night, the barrels of their Martini-Henry rifles glowed dull red, rounds cooked off, and worse, the cartridges softened to a place where the extractor claw pulled the base of the cartridge off leaving the rest in the breech. So, all things considered, I'll come down on the side of "Heat Jams do exist".

There it is. Taking the other good piece of advice I got here [get to within rock-throwing range] I am discovering the benefits of short bursts. Often, just quick single shots to see where my bullets are falling. If I'm dead-on, I can often get a blue text line. THEN it's "Maggie, bar th' door!".

I posted a series of pics today of an Albatros tangling with a Airco DH-2. [3D models of my own, not screen shots from OFF] I acidently posted one twice, but I don't see a 'Delete' button. Seems there must be one close by? [The attached pic is the one.]

True. It was a consistent background that I used as I worked on the modeling and posed the two planes. Lighting will vary wildly. Sometimes it was correct but I moved a light, or two, to bring out shadowed details. Over three days, or so, of modeling and tweaking, I must have rendered out about 20 full-screen shots. I put a few on the Gallery. Anyone know how to remove a duplicate?