JimAttrill

Ok will give it a go - after all it is free!

It is 4.5Gb and my internet connection is pretty slow by civilised standards. With a following wind it can get to 133 Mbits/s but is more normally a lot less. So even 1 Gb takes a long time. (tested with speedtest.net). I think South Africa has about the most expensive ADSL in the world mainly because there is only one fixed line provider.

When I downloaded WOFF (which took 4 days at my transfer rate) the first thing I did was to copy it to a DVD. One good thing is that the patches are not incremental - in OFF I used to keep them all on DVD in case I had to reload OFF from the start - and I did and it was a pain. With WOFF you just download the latest patch which contains all the others - much easier! And your rig will run WOFF just fine - I wish I had a rig like that though mine is ok. I have installed Ankor's shadowing mod and it did improve my FPS by about 15 or so.

I check in on both foræ every day except when away from home. I do notice that some posts are duplicated - well not really duplicated but the same posts are made on each forum. I am always interested to read what others say and sometimes put in a reply or ask a question (mostly questions). Foræ are very good places to get answers that you can't get anywhere else. I bought WOFF because I wanted to support the efforts of the devs, even though it cost me a lot. Example exchange rate in 2011 when I went to the US - 6.5 Rand for one dollar. It is now 10.6 or so. Computer hardware is also rising in price because it is all imported in either dollars or pounds sterling. One thing - maybe the OFF player world map can be updated with any new players of either OFF or WOFF? Is there some politics involved that I don't know about with this duplication of combatace and simhq?

One of the many descriptions of the Ilya Muromets 4-engined Russian bomber of 1913 stated that it was the first aircraft to have self-sealing fuel tanks, but I can't seem to find it now The aircraft was also the first with a toilet

Ok here's another WWI question: Q. Which was the first aircraft fitted with self-sealing fuel tanks? A. Clue: this aircraft is not in any flight simulator that I know of but is well known.

Wasn't there a general in the Civil War (can't remember which side) whose famous last words were "they can't hit a thing at that distance"

Good guess Mr Elephant! But according to Wiki the Curtiss OX-5 v8 engine had to be overhauled every 50 hours. The engine I am thinking of was a flat twin.

No, this was in WWI .... (though they didn't call it a cruise missile at the time)

Sorry Corsaire, I haven't a clue. But I can ask another quiz question: Q. Which WWI engine had a life of two hours? A. (cheap engine powered the first 'cruise missile')

But according to the Chinese it was all a movie set. Come to think of it there was a movie with a similar theme. On that subject I still love the movie about Apollo 13. I am not supersticious and I wonder about the number 13. Many hotels do not have 13th floor . But they got back. I do remember sending wishes up into the sky for them to survive. And they did

I am really enjoying this thread (though it doesn't have a lot to do with OFF/WOFF). Two points: one is that the famous RN test pilot Eric Brown did not think that the Me110 was a failure at all. He rates it highly, certainly better than the Me's that were to follow apart from the 262. See his book "Wings of the Luftwaffe" - I managed to get a second-hand copy from Amazon in the US which turned out to be an ex-library book from Oregon! If you want to know what it was to fly just about all WWII Luftwaffe aircraft this is the book to get. He also hid the fact for years that he actually flew a Me163 under rocket power and not just as a glider. Have any of you seen "Danny Deckchair" which is a sort of take on Lawn Chair Larry. I downloaded it from Piratebay and it is quite funny, though not realistic of course.

Maybe that was why the RNAS Camels had 150hp Bentley rotaries.... (Which, being made in England was about half the price).

Gee, I would have liked to watch your takeoffs and landings! I never knew such manoeuvres happened in Germany. They are usually very strict and specific about what's allowed for air traffic and aircraft. Did the civil aviation control ever know, that you guys were there? I reckon they must have although we were normally far away from civilian airfields. But I really don't know as I just looked after the engines. The Harrier could take off from grass in about 200m Short Take Off. Didn't do the grass much good when they put the nozzles down. In the summer we would get covered in dust. At another time we were parked close to the Autobahn to Hamburg up north somewhere and would watch the F104s streaking down the Autobahn and not noticing us a few hundred metres away under the trees! The pilots told me that when flying VFR the Autobahns were the favourite navigation aids. I'm not sure who was officially the enemy but we treated all aircraft the same. I don't think they ever found us, which doesn't say much for their observation. (We were based at Wildenrath which is close to Mönchengladbach and Roermond in Holland. The airfield is now a test track for Siemens railways).

Does anyone remember those balsa wood aircraft kits? They were not easy to make and did not fly well because they were true scale which meant the wing area was too small. I spent hours and hours making a FW190 D-9 'Dora neun' and for some reason I painted it bright yellow. I was reading 'The Big Show' at the time which described that as maybe the best fighter of the whole war. Was there a famous pilot of WWII who flew an all-yellow FW190? I never flew my FW because I didn't want to break it Much later I went to Germany with the RAF Harriers 1970-73. We were once camped in a field and found nice little clearings in the surrounding woods where we could park the Harriers without cutting any trees (which is a big NO NO in Germany). An old guy appeared and I talked to him in my school German. It turned out the clearings had been made for Me109s in 1944! Luckily the Harriers had a very small wingspan. We also operated from a petrol station on a new but unused stretch of autobahn. The 'enemy' (mostly Phantoms and Starfighters) never spotted us.

I like it here as well. I open both every day and have a look around. The above information on Stephenson is really amazing! I wonder if he gets a mention in Churchill's history of the Second World War which I have on the shelf. Most likely not as what he was doing was secret - until when?

Correct. Dallas was ex-RNAS and an Australian. He often failed to claim victories so some think he was the highest-scoring Australian of the war. He was promoted to Lt.Col and told to stop flying but never received the telegram as he was shot down and killed on 1 June 1918, possibly by a Fokker triplane flown by Leut. Werner, the commander of Jagdstaffel 14. So it's your turn Robert!

Interesting article from the BBC web site. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26368633 I would like to know what our German forum members think of this.

Can anyone join in? Or am I jumping the queue? Anyway, you don't have to answer if you don't want to... Which pilot dropped the Army boot(s) on a German airfield in 1918?

But I am ex-RAF and patriotic and always fly with the RFC (so far)

Howard Hughes made a film released in 1930 called "Hells's Angels". There were a lot of authentic WWI aircraft in the film - he bought a lot from Europe including Fokker DVIIs etc. Some of them are still flying in the USA. Hughes himself wanted a certain shot of a Thomas-Morse taking off and then turning and flying back. He was told that this was suicide in this aircraft. Nothing daunted he tried it himself and span into the ground as he had been warned. Was almost killed. I have the film and will look to see if I can see this aircraft.

I don't need or want the addon packs - there are enough aircraft in the base installation to keep me going for years!

How can you tell which way the wind is blowing? Look around for a windsock?

Apparently the fuselage was made of two layers of plywood strips at an angle to each other. Rather like the Mosquito of WWII fame. It was reputed to be rather hard to fly but fast for its time. Maybe the WOFF aircraft is correct in its handling...

Can the special offer be backdated?