Hauksbee

In this matter, you know about as much as the rest of us. (except for the devs, and they're not talking) Request one? By all means. UK_Widowmaker's incessant pleading seems to have netted him a Sopwith Snipe, but, who knows? Maybe it was in the works from the git-go. If you go this route, remind them that I've got my heart set on a Hansa-Brandenburg W-19 and/or a W-29. Throw in a Rumpler Taube for good measure. Buying one? From who? I've not heard of any non-OFF planes that can be bought and imported into OFF.

Hence the maxim: "Kissing a smoker is like licking out an ashtray".

I withdraw my entry for most favored non-military biplane. Actually, the Lillenthal glider was tongue-in-cheek, but if I could own a flying machine, I could not think of anything that would be more fun than a Curtis Pusher. If I were to order one built, I'd ask for two modifications. First, some dihedral in those wings for stability, and second, a thicker airfoil. Those razor-thin wings had vicious stall properties. But what a plane to fly on a summers day!

Right with you again, von Baur. Especially the 'soul' singers who obscure the melody with so many quavers and trills that the Anthem becomes an exercise in vocal chord gymnastics.

Beautiful! I've never seen an airplane back up before.

It looks "Red Tails" is just "Flyboys", but twenty five years later and they've all graduated to P-51's. I found the following review (heavily edited here) after watching the trailer. If the laughable football huddle scene (where they're chanting 'pump-it-up' things like "Through adversity to the stars"...seriously! ) is any indication of what we're in for, I may take ear-plugs to the theater, the better to watch Messerschmits get their butts kicked. "In "Red Tails," the famed Tuskegee Airmen get the John Wayne-style heroic rendering they very much deserve, but in a hackneyed and weirdly context-less story that does them a disservice...Long a pet project of his, George Lucas self-financed the film and has said he hopes "Red Tails" will prove there's an audience for all-black movies. That's a laudable goal, but "Red Tails" reduces a historical story of deep cultural significance to merely a flyboy flick.... Instead of creating something authentic and new, "Red Tails" superimposes the tale of the black World War II pilots on a dated, white genre of 1940s patriotic propaganda. "Red Tails" is blatantly old-fashioned, just with a change in color.... In medias res hardly says it: "Red Tails" opens in the midst of an aerial dog fight while the credits are still rolling. Director Anthony Hemingway plunges right into the action, skipping all that pesky backstory of black men braving the segregation of Jim Crowe America and, against the odds, rising up at the Tuskegee Institute... That history was stressed in an earlier 1995 HBO film, "The Tuskegee Airmen" which benefited from Laurence Fishburne's sturdy presence. A co-star from that movie, Cuba Gooding Jr., is here, too, as the pipe-chomping Maj. Emanuelle Stance. The other higher-up with him is Col. A.J. Bullard, played with unnatural speech by Terrence Howard, whose smooth voice fails to find the register of a commander.... The film is centered, though, on the pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group, which earned the nickname of Red Tails from the painted ends of their P-47 fighters. These first black military aviators in the U.S. armed forces flew more than 150,000 sorties over Europe and North Africa during WWII, often escorting Allied bombers. Sixty-six were killed in action.... Our group of thinly sketched pilots all come with cliché nicknames: Joe "Lightning" Little, Marty "Easy" Julian, Ray "Junior" Gannon, Andrew "Smoky" Salem, Maurice "Bumps" Wilson and Samuel "Joker" George... The biggest flaw here is the corny script by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, the Boondocks cartoonist. There's a fine, swaggering vibe, but a curious hesitance to really tell the Tuskegee story. Half of their two-front war (at home and in battle) goes largely without depiction, except for one or two minor scrapes with racist officers. Neither is any hint given to the less than rapturous welcoming the men would get on their return home. The whole thing is unrealistically sunny, both literally and metaphorically. The skies are always bright blue (better for highlighting the digital trickery) and hardly anyone dies. Though this is film about one of the most violent clashes in history, little seems at risk. The racist generals are back in Washington and the free, Italian base is a happy world away from the segregated U.S. The German fighters are cartoonishly evil... Hoo-Rah!!

Give the guy a break; he's been making children's films since the very first Star Wars. Now he makes his first foray into reality by swapping out the TIE Fighters for P-51s. Little wonder he comes up short.

And not only the health concerns, I can't believe the cost per pack these days. I quit in '89, and, as I recall, cigarettes were somewhere around $1.50 an pack. I remember how we wailed when they crossed the $1.00 mark. But now? $6-7-8+ a pack. Who can afford them? Maybe the current recession wouldn't be so painful if smokers bought food instead.

I've learned to be wary of the History Channel's narratives, but I highly recommend "The Tuskegee Airmen" on "Dogfights", Season Two, Disc 4. They deal with the Jim Crow back story (conspicuous by its absence in "Red Tails") in a brief and to-the-point way and then get on to the main event which is the flying. The cameo interviews with the pilots themselves say more about them as men with problems in the real world, than the ginned up love affair between 'Lightning' and Sophia or 'Raygun's return-from-the-dead escape from Stalag 18. And the flying is better than George Lucas's pack-every-scene-with-as-many-planes-as-possible cinematography.

von Baur, I'm with you 100%. When I went to college, I puffed a pipe (it was sort of a 'rite of passage') until a girlfriend discovered that I didn't inhale. She took it upon herself to correct that. I went from zero to a pack a day within a week. Nicotine was definitely my drug. I spent 30 years smoking two packs a day and quit hundreds of times, until, for some reason, it worked in 1989. Haven't smoked since. I figured I'd dodged the bullet on lung cancer, but lately I found out that my shortness of breath is not just a matter of being out of shape. I've been diagnosed with 'borderline' C.O.P.D. (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). The operative word there being 'borderline', but it was a cold water wake-up call. So...I'll back your rant any day.

I was following a series of links about "Biggles", hoping to find imaginatively drawn aircraft after the style of "Bill Barnes". It proved otherwise. The Biggles stories were all text with an occasional illustration. But I saw a good sampling of covers for "Popular Flying" (where, I presume, most of the Biggles stories were published.) I was struck by the amount for front cover space that got sold off to advertising. The banner ad at the bottom for Genasprin was a monthly fixture. But what really amused me was the full-color girl pilot on the front, being a repeat of the b/w ad on the back. And the purple prose copy line: "For Men and Women with WILLS of their own". It's easy to forget there was a time when cigarettes were glamorous.

Good on you, mate! It took me 30 years to make the final break.

.

I think it was just called "The Tuskegee Airmen" with Laurence Fishburne in the lead. It was a made-for-TV with a minimal budget and production values, and to tell the truth, I can't remember much about it either.

I have always understood that recovering from a spin simply required the application of opposite rudder. Lately I've been spending my flying hours in an Albatros. An in-line engine without the inherent vices of a rotary. But when I get reckless chasing DH-2's, the inevitable spin develops, and the rudder will not save me. Where am I going wrong?

Actually, carrick58, it's wasn't my review, but one I found on-line and edited down. But I too, saw it this afternoon and will second carrick58's opinion. I've since found two more on-line reviews and it's more of the same. The best actors going could not breath life into that turkey of a script, so I'll not flog a dead horse. The flying scenes weren't too bad, tho' in typical Hollywood fashion, they tried to cram as many planes as possible into every shot. They had Messerschmitts flying wingtip-to-wingtip, four abreast through the bomber formations. All aerial gunnery took place ay point-blank range; the better to see it on screen. On the last engagement on screen (which was their first escort mission all the way into Berlin) a B-17 drops out of formation and tries to limp back home. Three P-51's leave formation to cover the bomber. This flies in the face of everything I've ever heard. Their responsibility would be to stay with the main formation which had not even dropped their bombs yet. I'll wait for it to be released on disc, and rent it at least once before I decide if I want to buy it. For a good exposition of the Tuskegee Airmen, I'd go with the History Channel's "Dogfights" version. 'Just enough backstory, and the flying scenes look really good.

Thanks, RAF_Lou. That seals it then; I'll start poking around on eBay and Amazon.

You've certainly identified how I get into these nasty corners. Thinking back, it's when I'm in a climbing turn where the target is just beyond TrackIR's ability to look up. I get fixated on the target. But when the spin develops, I'm doomed. I've cut power, released the stick so it can find center, and tried opposite rudder. I've often considered getting a set of rudder pedals. Anybody know if they are more effective than a twist stick?

Thanks, Olham, but it's the Albatros I'm talking about. ( I might have thrown you off by misspelling 'chasing'. Dropped the 'h') 'Lethal spins I expect from the DH-2; hardly worth mentioning. But do you have spin problems with the Alb?

Ah, the good old days of flight sims. Occasionally I get the itch to go up a T-Bone with some FW 190s, but CFS1 (as I think of it) will not respond to the joystick. I go to Settings, and along the way I get as many as three Dialog Boxes saying "Your ( )device has changed from (gibberish) to (gibberish). Would you like to reset the control assignments? (recommended) (See attached) I always say 'yes'. When I get into Settings and arrive at the graphic that allows me to test the axes of control, the little dialog boxes know that I'm using a Thrustmaster Flightstick-X (no other choices appear) and the graphic responds nicely to Pitch, Yaw and rudder Rotation. The Hat Switch also responds. All systems seem to be working. But when I go to Free Flight and try to take off, the jotstick is dead. Anyone know how to correct this? Thanks.

"Good old" indeed. I remember, back in the day, when I walked into a computer store and there was this huge stack of CFS1s and promo video running on a monitor. I was dazzled by the graphics...pixelated clouds and all. I was hooked. Whoever thought back then that one of the descendants of CFS1 would morph into our beloved OFF? Thanks for the tip, Markl. I'll check it out.

Jaysus! And me still trying to get some screenies that are presentable. Maybe in the future we won't even have to fight wars at all. Both sides will prepare videos from recognized on-line games, which would then be submitted to an Arbitration Board in the Hague. Screenings and Award Ceremonies every Friday night, then off to the Pub for a cold one. Cheers!

The "Fauves" would give you some wall space between Matisse and Derain.

You're quickly making a believer out of me.

Thanks Olham. I feel encouraged to try one. Given the trouble I've had trying to shoot down two-seaters, it will be nice to have that extra measure of protection on my side.