Canvas Wings

Yeah PanzerLeader - the sequel to Panzerblitz. Still have them both, along with about 60-odd other boxed games from Avalon Hill, SPI and a few miscellaneous game companies - including Richthofen's War, Dawn Patrol and yes, Ace of Aces too. You're right - I dunno if I could ever slug my way through the rule books of the more complex games any more. Great times, tho' CW

Geez! I think that was you screaming past my nose in the cloud about ten yards out. Scared the crap outta me! LOL! Welcome the war. ...now the trick is to collide with *enemy* aircraft. CW

Well I'm technically on Facebook by family request, but I avoid it like the plague and dispise it with a passion... what with people I barely new 15 years ago wanting to be my "friend" - and the ongoing lists of entries announcing that so-an-so just brushed their teeth and are now going watch a movie, or pictures of their dog with a ladies' bra on it's head... and 10 daily requests to join some mindless game or find out what kind of a animal I would be, etc, etc... I pretty much think FB could rightfully be considered an global-wide, cheerfully publically supported virus. That given... an OFF Facebook fan page? Maybe Ive been a little hasty.... CW

Fabulous news! You guys, as always, ROCK!

I've been off for a bit and I'm playing catch up with all the posts re: the DiD campaign. The last I knew, we were to start active missions Nov 5/16 and fly in synch with the R/L calendar. I've got FSubLt Matt Cutter who just transfered in from RNAS 5 with 25+ hours on the Strutter cooling his heels over in the mess, ready to have a crack at the hun (I know -he starts over a clean log)... but it seems like every one is up and at 'em already. Did the start date get moved ... or is this just a training session and everyone resets for Nov 5? CW

Thanks, will do, Baldric.

Thanks Olham, that's what I needed to know.... better scoot over to the hangar and get up while there's still light. BTW - is posting reports to "K&C" all that's required -or do we still have to email hours/kllls direct to Siggi so they are added to the Campaign site, as was the original plan? Thanks CW

I'm a mostly freelance writer. Instead of a respectable, if under fed, author, I'm the literary equivalent of a hooker. Most of my years of scribbling has been for radio/TV however, there's probably not many things I *haven't* been paid to write -magazine/newspaper articles, speeches, jokes... I also write fiction, fantasy, songs (part time musician as well) -and even poetry, on the side; but that's a personal hobby for the most part. After hitting the keyboard 8 hours a day, the last thing I want to spend much time on is more writing. So instead I strap myself in to the cockpit of my trusty Sopwith Tripe..........

I've been out of the loop for a week, Sig- and I've only read through about half of the ten pages of replies in here already - but it sounds like a fantastic idea. I'd love to be in on it, British side, flying the Pup, Tripe, and Camel in that order. Not that I'd last long. Without Track IR, I imagine I'll be fodder for the AI... but what the heck. CW

Let's see... OFF has recently dominated most of these; but in random order... computer gaming - music (guitar mostly) some performance & singer/songwriter board games (I must a 60-70 titles in the closet including the old Richthofen's War & Dawn Patrol) writing -sci fi/fantasty/general fiction/poetry travel -the more "out of the way" the better Dart league reading history long time AD&D roleplay/game mastering (though as Baldric said co-ordinating people makes it tough nowadays)

Excellent, WM. Twelve years old, eh? Fabulous stuff. I make a living as a scribbler myself. The kid's got a great ear for dialogue, a natural flow and an instinct for the little touches that give a scene it's realism. If sticks with it, he's going to do well. CW

Downloadable... UPS... Snail mail... find a 120 year old WWI vet to fly over my house in an ultralight and drop off tied to a rock; I don't care! Want it, want it, want it!!!

Pretty much my observations too. In addition... 1. Taking off You have to pilot yourself, even if you're not flight leader, and switch back once airborne. 2. Looking around I don't have TIR, but I do have a POV hat on the stick. Moving the stick directs your machine gun, using the POV moves your view only- with a wider range of vision than the firing arc. 3. Cruising along Can get very unsettlilng- unless it just happened I got a ham-fisted pilot with a spastic twitch. Not only does it occasionally do the porpoise thing. Sometimes it verges on stalling (force feed joystick) for frightening periods of up to 10 seconds giving you the impression you're about fall out of the sky- but sometimes the pilot throws the plane around in wild contortions for no apparent reasons (ie: no nearby enemies or flak) sometimes losing a thousand feet or more and ending up way off the flight path. I don't why this happens, but it always seems to recover and return to it's orginal altitude & heading. So far.... 4. Flight commands Most don't work from the back - as mentioned, Warp does. However throttle does not. Ergo, you can cut the throttle back prior to warping. That may account for some of the odd gyrations in 3 above... I can't remember now if it only happened during/coming out of warp or in normal flight. 5. Bombing You definitely need to jump back into the pilot seat to drop drop ordinance 6 Combat The EA do seem very reluctant to attack at least as long as you hold formation and as long as you're riding shotgun, your plane will stay in formation. They don't seem to attack your flight mates either. Maybe if you lose a couple to flak the EA might come for you, I don't know; but otherwise, even if they have sizeable numerical superiorty they don't seem to want to attack from the rear -or even come within range. (Which, considering what happens to me when I try to take a 2 seater from behind, doesn't surprise me. - Fortunately they don't know I cant hit the broadside of a barnstormer with the tail gun.) 7. Shooting Right. See above. On the rare occasion an EA comes close, good luck. Forget deflection shooting, there's too many variables, at least for my skills. Either fill the general area with lead or, preferably, restrict your shooting to EA coming directly at you so there's little/no deflection. On the upside, you don't have to worry about shooting your own ass off. I'm still here. 8. Landing. Once back at the field, I never rode the plane around that silly 7 mile out and back landing approach. (I never do in any of my missions) I just kill all my altitude and land immediately. I jumped back into the pilot's seat to land. Never dared to see if it will land on autopilot - but I'm betting it's the same as on take. You fly or you die. Besides - even in single seater -ever sit on the field waiting an watching your buddies come back after their 14 mile loop. Even *they* can't land without crashing about half the time. CW

His Majesty’s government regrets to inform you that your son, 276509 Captain Jones, Kerry, 54 Squadron RFC, was killed in action February 1st 1917 while leading an attack against an enemy airfield. Man that sucks. “Kanuck” Jones was my longest surviving pilot yet. Flying a Sopwith Pup with 54 RFC, he had over 36 hours in the air, with 10 confirmed victories, been promoted twice and awarded the DFC and bar. His flight of four was sandwiched between two groups of four Albatross from Jasta 17. Jones himself spotted the trap being sprung and was climbing out of the fray. He turned on the tail of an enemy who appeared to be the highest opponent, fired a burst and then broke left to start climbing away. BIG explosion and fire. Black screen. Was it flak? I hadn’t noticed any ground up to that point. Was it a collision? I was sure everyone else was well below. Did someone fire one lucky burst and hit the fuel tank? I’ll miss flying with Jones… but the worst part is not knowing what killed him.

LOL Damn sporting of him! Thanks, Olham....

Awesome isn't it? Welcome to the mess, Rossmiester! CW

On one occasion I followed Boelcke on the the appointed day and after a long flight watched him crash. There was no collision - in fact, no other aircraft in the vacinity other than the two of us, but he did crash. It could have been coincidence, or, equally possible, perhaps if you follow any other random friendly around maybe they crash at the end of the scenario flight time, rather than actually returning to their airfield. Dunno- I never tried it a second time. CW

Hilarious Tried it again just for the halibut and scored 0.1669 The secret? I had a digital mouse-finger twitch which, if there was any justice in the world, would have earned me the 3-second penalty. However, just at that moment, an addle-brained ewe made a dash for freedom and took a dart in the dithers before her hindquarters even cleared the rest of the flock. Boosted my score big time. It just goes to show what MVR, Billy Barker, Collishaw and many of the other Top Guns proved. You didn't necessarily have to be good to be lucky, but your sure as hell had to be lucky to be good.

0.1984 Thank God you don't have to aim too....

My Jasta 2 pilot, flying his first sortie in an Alb D2, Sep/16 happened to bring down Fee that ended up more or less all in one piece in a field next to a farm house and very close to his home field at Bertincourt. Said pilot, being at the end of his sortie, decided to land and pick up a souvenir. On landing, I switched to an external view as I rolled up towards the crate. Suddenly, when he got within 30 meters or so, there was a small flash and thump of an explosion directly in or under his cockpit and the pilot flew straight up into the air. I mean, he must have reached 100 meters faster than the Albatross could have. Touching burial service, tho’. Now there was a bit of flak going off at the time (yes, at ground level, thank you very much, boys of Gun Battery B) -so I suppose it could have been that. But Death by Archie has always been a louder, more spectacular affair than this minor explosion, and that doesn’t explain the pilot’s Pop Tart imitation. So I’m thinking either: A) the idiot rolled over a land mine. B) that SOB in the Fee chucked a grenade in his lap, or C) he bumped the James Bond ejector seat button. Whatever, it was quite a sight. Fortunately, being the pilot’s first flight, I was able to laugh my ass off at it. Strange sight # 2 does anyone/everyone else have a compass outside the cockpit on the right wing of their EIII’s ?

Ah. Well that was my first thought, since it's so obviously there - but I checked a lot of pics on line and couldn't see it, so I thought perhaps it was just a glitch in system. Thanks Stary.

Welcome to mess hall, HouseHobbit, and good luck; you're about to find out what it feels like to have a Nazgul on your tail. You're going to *love* this one... CW

Welcome to the war, Vicshere. Strap yourself in and kiss your spare time goodbye. You have no idea what a ride you're in for! CW

I don’t know if any one else has noticed this before… Nov 10th, 1918. As Oberleutnant Eric Sietz I was flying a DVII with Jasta 6 in my last sortie of the war. Like the greater conflict, it hadn’t gone well. After a successful bounce of three Spads from Esc-94, our 3-man sortie was in turn jumped by four more Spads -from 153, I think; I’m not sure, it got pretty busy. To make a hair-raising story short, I soon found myself alone, out of ammo, about 20 klicks (say 12 miles) on the wrong side of the Sushi Bar and pursued by the two remaining Spads. Worse, not to mention other damage, the tip of my upper right wing was peeled back like a Hershey Bar wrapper. A third of my lower right wing was gone; ribs and spars were sticking out in more directions than Picasso’s picket fence. I spent the next 20 minutes or so fish-tailing a forest a hundred metres up, inventing startling new obscenities for the Spads, the ground gunners, and even the damn trees. Again, to shorten things up, young Sietz fluttered across no-man’s land to a tiny little hay field, considerately ploughed it for the local farmer, and then wrapped his nice new Fokker around a large tree-less trunk. He walked away much older, if not wiser, and lived to kiss some fraulein on Armistice Day; probably the same farmer’s daughter. But the weird part was this; while frantically scanning the ground to avoid those Allied-sympathizing spruce trees, I noticed, as I crossed a small clearing, my shadow. It’s not something I pay much attention to normally, but my radar was on hyper alert; (I really wanted Sietz to live to see if there was some special end-of-the-war video. [There isn’t.]) So even though it was distant and small, I thought the shadow looked odd. I hit pause, centred it, and zoomed right in… and damned if my shadow didn’t have the top wing peeled back and the lower wing tip gone, complete with the ribs poking out. I actually felt the hairs on my arm stand up. Immersion, hell! – It was more like a Twilight Zone moment. For a second I was afraid that if one of the Spads nailed me in the game, my real life heart would stop. Gawd, I love this sim! PS . I have a screen shot to prove it wasn’t Combat Stress Syndrome- but I’ve never taken the time to learn how to attach that to my post. There’s a freakin’ war on!

Yeah, it's pucker time over there with the the 148th isn't it? Bobby Franks got his fire-eating ass shot off in his second sortie. Jim Redman, for all his lectures about anticipation and three-dimensional strategy, lasted only one mission longer. (Half his flight is still feeling guilty about feeling relieved that he got the chop.) Willy Madision just arrived, threw his duffle under Bobby's cot and sauntered off to check out the local pub. Was that you that started that Glenlivet-Jack Daniels brawl - or were you the guy the gendarmes wrestled into the wagon for waving an old Colt around in the street yelling about the Brit/Frenchy rondels were *both* just a case of painting a bullseye on yourself? Whatever. My head still hurts and I think we both pulled dawn patrol....