Hasse Wind

Yep, it was a good fighter. Stronger wings and a faster speed and climb than the Albatros D.Va, too. If it had come into service about one year earlier, it would have been one of the best fighters of the war. But when the Fokker D.VII was coming at the same time (Spring 1918), the Roland didn't have much to say against such competition. And like all German late war fighters, it suffered from the lack of powerful engines. The best performance of the Roland D.VI was achieved only with the 200 hp Benz engine, but that was not available for all of them, and the weaker 160 hp Mercedes engines (already obsolete at that time) were used instead.

Almost sounds like it would be easier to build a real WW1 aircraft than to model it in OFF! I greatly respect the hard work of the devs.

Sorry to hear about your package, Lewie. I got mine from Avangate in perfect condition, though I can't remember how well it was packaged, as it has been over two years already. I live in Finland and it took about seven day for the package to arrive. I can't remember from which country it was shipped.

Censoring video games that are meant for adults is stupid beyond belief. It doesn't matter where it's done, Germany or elsewhere, it's just ridiculously stupid. I understand the need to keep extremely violent stuff out of the reach of children, but even then the responsibility should be mostly with the parents, not some state-owned censorship office or anything. But to censor video games that are meant for adults? Stupid, and shouldn't be done in a free society. Germany is not alone with that crap. Every country has idiots in power who think they know better than everybody else and should be allowed to determine which is acceptable and which is not, ie. to protect the people from themselves. Dictatorships are naturally best at such control and manipulation. And of course I'm not comparing Germany to North Korea or Libya, I'm just saying that such censorship is stupid, no matter where it exists. Anyway, back to Fallout. You guys should give a try to the numerous mods that have been developed for it. They can really improve the experience. Take a look at this article, it lists some of the best ones: http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/13/10-essential-fallout-3-mods/

What, you don't have a tea lady? How can you function at all without one? I just LOVE all the new screenshots you are willing to share with us.

There's even more to it. Udet was too soft and sensitive to survive among the ruthless Nazis and his competitors in the Luftwaffe. He just couldn't handle the endless political maneuvering and backstabbing that was the specialty of such people in high places.

That whole censorship business in Germany is one of the stupidest things in existence. I have always wondered whether the politicians who have created such a system are unable to realize they are actually imitating the behaviour of the Nazis by such eager censorship? "Protecting" the people from "harmful influences" is something that those ogres were really good at! Anyway, have fun with the game. It's a good one.

Those are really fascinating. I've always thought of Udet's fate as a tragedy. He got involved with people who seemed to be doing great things at first, but then it became obvious to Udet that they were all on the road to Hell. Finally he saw no other way out of the deadly game but to kill himself. And then the Nazis treated him like a great hero who had died in an accident while bravely serving the Third Reich. Disgusting.

Now those are some games I haven't seen or played in a long time! History Line was quite good, and as I was already a WW1 history buff back then, I had lots of fun with it. I wonder how well they have aged, though. Maybe it's best if I don't ruin my fond memories by trying them again after so many years.

Just like the Albs and the Pfalz D.III, that Roland is one of the most beautiful aircraft of WW1. It was nothing special when it came to service in 1918, maybe slightly better than the Albatros D.Va, but definitely not as good as the Fokker D.VII and the Pfalz D.XII. Still, the Roland saw service in some Jastas and is one of the late war aircraft that I hope to see in OFF some day, along with the better and more numerous Pfalz D.XII.

That design was literally decades ahead of its time. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw a picture of it years ago. Truly a radical change in design when you compare it to the typical piston engine aircraft of the era!

Yes, it should happen in July 2013, though the predictions are not always so accurate in the end. But the activity has already increased. We've been seeing more and brighter auroras recently, and they will only get better as the activity increases. The auroras are an excellent indicator of solar activity, and can be observed much more easily than sunspots or anything else.

The Martians, obviously. They are coming! An interesting sighting, definitely. Although I've been an amateur astronomer since the 1980's and have spent quite a lot of time looking at the sky, with and without my telescope, I've never seen anything like that anywhere. Must be some kind of a special aircraft. You Americans have the most advanced aviation techonology, so the best place to see something like that is in the States. I've never seen anything unexlainable in the sky. Meteors, satellites, aircraft, bright planets (like Venus), even clouds and auroras, are responsible for many UFO sightings, but that boomerang is something else. It's good that the Sun is again becoming more active, as now I can see beautiful auroras more often. It's really a special event to see the sky painted with rapidly shifting, sometimes very brightly coloured shapes. Something that everybody should see at least once in their lives. And one of the rare benefits of living in the far north.

It's not realistic to think that we could somehow turn back the clock and return to a technologically less advanced world. I know I wouldn't want to do that. Progress is the only option, so it must be accepted that we can't live without powerful sources of energy. We have no choice but to keep using nuclear plants until something better is invented and put into use everywhere in the world. I remember reading about fusion energy years ago. That would be the best solution - to produce energy like the stars. But unfortunately it seems that it's going to take at least decades, probably longer, until fusion energy can solve any of our problems. Not every corner of the planet can be covered with solar panels and wind turbines (the latter look absolutely horrible and ruin the scenery, in addition to being rather weak and unreliable - my personal opinion). Coal and oil are not very good options either, so like it or not, nuclear power in its current form is our best choice, and will be for some time to come. The problems at the Japanese nuclear plant didn't come as a complete surprise to the specialists. For some reason (money?), the Japanese have been unwilling to improve the safety mechanisms in their old plants. This is now the terrible outcome of that unwillingness to change old ways of doing and thinking. A tragic situation, indeed.

I've got similar spam messages every now and then. It's really easy to recognize them as spam, because I know I'm not part of any social media. Occasionally I've got some spam from Blizzard Entertainment, telling me that there are some problems with my WoW account. I can think of only big one problem there - I don't have any such account. But nice try, spammers.

Maybe your Staffel ran out of claim forms, because you claim kills faster than they can print the paper?

I hope modern safety standards are much better than what they had in the 60's and 70's when those reactors were built. I'm surprised that the Japanese, who are usually known for their high quality standards and excellent work morale, have nuclear power plants with such inadequate safety methods. There's a big new nuclear plant under construction in Finland currently. These events in Japan have made me again wonder about the benefits and risks of nuclear power. Of course we don't have earthquakes and tsunamis here, fortunately, and the company doing the construction has said that the plant will have the most advanced technology available everywhere in the world. But still, if something does go wrong with nuclear power, the result is not pretty.

Looks like the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is not over yet. Another reactor is in danger of exploding.

Maybe you'd find your friendly Youtube-Polizei from Facebook, Olham?

No matter how advanced our technologies and societies are, when the forces of Nature decide to wreak havoc, we are all weak and helpless against them. Fortunately it seems that the nuclear plant at Fukushima hasn't suffered a complete meltdown. We don't need a new Chernobyl. I hope none of our OFFers have suffered from the events at Japan.

I've never used Facebook. Never had the need to do so. I don't like sharing my personal information with the whole world. Who knows what they do with all that information? Sell it to some greedy corporations? I know who my friends and family are and I've been able to communicate with them just fine without any so-called social media. But it seems to be quite popular with many people. I guess I'm something of a Luddite then.

You like to get beaten up? May I suggest you join some RFC two-seater squadron for Bloody April? I've found that to be an excellent exercise in humility. Have you tried Jasta 5 in 1918? They get the Fokker D.VII among the first Jastas. And boy, do they need that excellent fighter! It's almost impossible to takeoff from their field in the summer of 1918 without getting rammed by Entente fighters! No wonder Jasta 5 had the third highest number of kills among all the Jastas, after Jasta 11 and Jasta 2.

That's one method for increasing one's post count. Crude, but undeniably effective. Keep the Blum story going, Lou.

I wouldn't try those maneuvers in OFF. The wings of the Albatros may disagree with you at some point. But yes, the technology is here. Almost anything can be done with the help of modern computers. Now all we need is a good script and a director who is interested in doing a historically accurate WW1 aviation film and is capable of doing it without any interference from the so-called Hollywood experts... Peter Jackson?

Unless one is some kind of a psychopath, it's only natural to start showing signs of combat fatigue at some point. WW1 was such a long and incredibly brutal conflict of the industrial age that nothing like it had been experienced before in the history of war. Anybody can become exhausted both physically and mentally under such conditions. The problem was that most of the doctors and other experts of the period, taught with 19th century methods, were extremely stupid in psychological matters and didn't really understand what was going on with the new kind of warfare. So even if somebody was suffering from exhaustion (and I'm not saying that MvR was, because I really have no idea and I'll leave that to the experts like JFM), it was very likely that a typical military doctor had no idea of the condition. It was easier to say somebody was coward or not manly enough. And if one had such symptoms, he did his best to hide them, because he could expect almost no sympathy from the medical professionals, or least of all from his military superiors.