Hauksbee

Oooops!

A while back, I found this picture. I now want to build a 3D computer model of it. Does anyone have any additional information about it? Specifically, images, tho' text and performance specifications would also be welcome. Jim Miller? .

B'demmed! Good on you, mate!

If anyone feels the itch to hand-craft an Albatros model, that's the photo essay to have. Nice find, Olham.

Truly, it's sad to see what has become of this site. I had hoped that the old guard would still hang around for the collegiate fellowship that seemed to prevail. For a while I resisted the Sirens call of SimHQ. I tried posting every snippet of WWI lore I ran across (to wit: WWI in 40 Maps) but, for the most part, things just fell flat. Not only have our history buffs wandered into the fog, but nobody seems to be flying WOFF either. Of the few that still check in, I see a lot of "I visit almost every day.", and, checking the 'Friends On-line" I see many times that old friends are looking in at the same time I am. But...if you don't engage in discussions, the Forum becomes an empty shell. So...as Erik asks, "Is there anyone in support of keeping these forums and files here?", I'd say that it would indeed be sad to see this site go away, but there is little use in keeping it on life support.

Found this with morning e-mail and coffee: "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" Ripley often played fast and loose with facts and accuracy, but this one sounds right. The Argentine Tango had a great surge of popularity around the time of WWI. The Tango, properly done, is erotic enough today. In 1914 it was scandalous. In Berlin there were dance halls called 'Tango Circuses ", where only tango music was played into the wee hours. I recall reading one account of the origin of "Flying Circus" being coined by Oswald Boelcke. It seems that once all the airplanes and attendant gear was loaded on the trains, it was 'party time' in the passenger cars for the pilots. Being pilots, they frequently brought along girlfriends with them. One one occasion, so the story goes, Boelcke wandered in to the pilots car, where the champagne was flowing and girls esconced on laps and said, in his typical good-natured way, "What the hell is this? A Tango Circus?" And the term stuck. At least, that's the version I heard and I'm sticking to it.

I tapped into the Yahoo Search this morning looking for bit of info on Verdun. Got the usual sterling collection of WWI photos, with one great surprise this time: screen shots in WOFF were included! (Hellshade and Creaghorn, specifically, were mentioned in the dispatches) I find it very cool that our screenies stand shoulder-to-shoulder with photos taken at the time to illustrate what it was really like. (Perhaps the Yahoo AI can't tell whether these were taken in 1916, or not.) All that historical research on the part of the Devs is paying off?

Thanks, Maeran. Good article/post. I've got it squirreled away in my "Strange WWI Flying Things" folder where it can keep the "Pemberton-Billing" company.

When I was doing my 'light-and-cloud' experiment, I picked a C.II on one occasion and jumped in at 16,000'. It flew pretty well, didn't stall a lot and responded to the controls. Apparently, it's a matter of getting it off the ground...a small, tricky detail. I know that 'Beinbruch' means 'broken leg'...but what does the 'Hals' mean

Does not carry bombs? How could the Blessed Devs stumble so badly? It was designed as a bomber!

Upon re-reading this, I began to wonder "Is there a 'perpetual' haze of escaped gas just above the top surface of a Zeppelin?" True, gas is vented to allow descent, but that wouldn't be happening over the target, and, in any case, it seems that the hydrogen would disperse very quickly, otherwise Zeppelins could be brought down with Very pistols.

I imagine that war, especially one like WWI, would bring out the black humor in anyone.

Found this on Netflix Instant: "The Wipers Times". Seems the boys of the BEF found a printing press in the rubble of a building and put it to good use needling the General Staff. Michel Palin plays General Mitford who has their backs and protects them from a vicious Colonel of the Black Adder/ Captain Darling stripe who wants them all court-martialed for insubordination and Anarchy. (That's him on the right)

Agreed. The two-spotlight trick was a stroke of low-tech genius. The coathanger-like release point indicator was pretty slick, too. I hope Peter Jackson will go forward with his remake of "The Dambusters".

Quite so. One can't banter slowly.

"Scaley Brat'? I love it. If I could have come by that name honestly, I'd use it as a screen name everywhere.

When he's smiling you can see how young they all were.

Especially if you were German on a hydrogen-filled Zepp.

Yeah, everything had to be tried once. My favorite Rube Goldberg, jury-rigged device was part of A.V.Roe's first triplane. Since he had a day job, he tinkered and flew in the evening. Near dusk it was very difficult to judge his altitude off the pasture he was using for a landing field. After crunching his landing gear a few times, he rigged two small-linked chains to two toggle switches and attached a lead fishing weight to the ends. When the longer chain dragged on the ground it pulled the red light switch which told him he was ten meters off the ground. When the second, shorter chain dragged, it turned on a green light. Now he knew he was only five meters up and could cut the power and glide in.

Thanks for the lesson, Olham. I'll print this out and keep it handy. I really like the Roland and would be happy to master it.

No doubt I should...if I had a clue as to what was going wrong. I had the same problem with the DFW two-seater. I could barely get it off the ground, let alone fly it competently. Same problem with the Hansa-Brandenberg W-12 in ROF. (and much agreement on that over at ROF) Perhaps I would have been one of the hapless student pilots that never made it through flight school.

In its day, the Roland C.II was known for being a difficult airplane to fly and damned near impossioble to land. In WOFF, I find it impossible to fly. As soon as the wheels leave the grass, the C.II wants to slew sideways, left and/or right and live on the edge of stall always. I managed to get one flying in ROF, but, as in real life, they are difficult-to-impossible to land because the pilot sits so high up. The designers put in a window as an aid, but the rutted cow pastures of France were a far cry from the smooth meadows outside Berlin were the Roland was tested. Pictures of C.II's tipped up on their noses were common. Landing on a flat 2D video screen with no real depth of field is worse. My landings were always of the 'totally trashed' variety. Anyone here have any real affection for the C.II?

I've always wondered if those side pieces on the Nieuport windscreens were armored. In the pre-TrackIR days, lining up a shot was like looking through the mail slot on your front door. With the reduced visibility of the Nieups it was like looking at a 4" TV held up to the mail slot. I hope those side wings had a real function.

Found these misfiled in a Yahoo image search on Halberstadt fighters. ('was trying to identify the plane behind Udet in the previous von Richtofen/Eric Brown thread...which I now think is a Siemans-Schukert.)

Yes, if you've got all his books, then you've read all the good bits. I liked his speculation about what killed Geoffery DeHaviland.