JimAttrill

Ok, I know what it means, but why does it mean what it means? As a crumpet flyer I reckon I should be told before I am toast

Oh dear, that pilot has now kicked the bucket as well. I went into Quick Combat and was enjoying myself shooting up some Renault trucks (yes, I know they are supposed to be on the same side) when I crashed into one and died. I had mistakenly thought that a 1.32 mod was that you couldn't die in QC. Ho hum, back to the drawing board. I have now enrolled my sixth Fred Bloggs and have put this one right back to March 1915 to start at the beginning, so to speak. I have just done an hours flight using warp with not a Fokker in sight. Must be the time of the war, I suppose. Sometimes I think my flying skills (!) are getting worse as I over-aileroned into a right turn and found myself nearly upside down in a left turn. I find the best thing to do is to let go of everything and pray. It worked this time. I must be a pretty crummy pilot if I can't even fly a BE2b .... I am also having trouble trimming this thing to fly anything like straight and level. Am I right that the commands are: Aileron Left trim <ctl> num 4 Aileron Right trim (ctl> num 6 Elevator up trim num 1 Elevator down trim num 7 Rudder Left <ctl> num 0 Rudder Right <ctl> num 3 The important ones are the elevator trims so that I can trim the thing to climb slightly

I was shot down yesterday by an EIII. Luckily I managed to crash-land on my side of the lines so my DiD BE2c pilot lived to fight (or run) another day. This one is now up to 3 hours. I did make it to over 30 with my first pilot, but maybe this was a fluke. This time I was outnumbered about 6 to 3, and the EIIIs had a height advantage after I came out of warp lower than I expected. Maybe I will not use warp in the future - seems the best way to stay alive.

I love English crumpets - those are the things with holes in that you can toast. The worst would be a Krumpet with Kraut on it (My wife's family come from Alsace and are great Sauerkraut lovers even though they are French)

Flying a BE2c I've got good at running! And this is the best money I have spent on any game as well. Sometimes I am scared to take off. Maybe I should try 'pilot never dies' but that would ruin it. Those pilots risked their real lives so I should at least risk my virtual life.

Talking of Tequila .... The farmers in the semi-desert Karoo have discovered that Agave plants grow well there. It's just that they don't call it 'Tequila'. The Mexicans got a bit annoyed about this but they can't do anything about it as it is sold as 'agave spirit'. It just joins the list of banned names along with 'champagne', 'Port' and 'Sherry'. Nobody seems to have copyright on 'Gin', 'Vodka' or 'Whisk(e)y'. Personally I think this is all a bit idiotic - if you can't tell the difference between a Portugese port and the SA version you should go back to drinking Brandy and Coke. Personally I drink South African Brandy, firstly because it is cheap and secondly because it is cheap. It also doesn't cost much here.

You should be so lucky! The postal service is so unreliable here that Amazon in the US refuse to send books at all. I took a chance with OFF and it duly arrived after about 3 weeks. The unreliability is caused by theft at the post offices. I don't get V & A articles by post, but I was lucky with OFF. I often get stuff posted to a UK address and get friends who travel a lot to bring the stuff in. This avoids paying customs duties as well in most cases. Sorry, 'V & A' is an RAF term for 'valuable and attractive'. Lots of stuff is valuable, like a radar scanner, but nobody would steal one of those. But they WILL steal the cockpit watch which is why pilots of crashed aircraft made sure they took the watch with them if they were lucky enough to survive.

I have in front of me a picture in a book of a Nieuport in which Squadron Commander Richard Bell-Davies of the RNAS won the Victoria Cross in 1915 by landing his aircraft to rescue a colleage down behind enemy lines. The interesting thing is that the aircraft has a roundel on the rudder, but it is the French roundel with the blue in the centre and the red at the outside. The picture also shows the same roundel underneath the top wing, which is a bit stupid as I don't think anyone would have bothered to paint that there. The lower wing is edge on to the viewer and cannot show insignia. I don't know what sort of Nieuport it is, but the picture also shows a fixed Lewis gun on the top wing. Did the painter get it wrong, or did this aircraft have what was later to be the French roundel?

Thanks Jim, I thought at first that the painter got it wrong! Because it is a painting and not a photo. I can't unfortunately trace the source, although I would reckon it is most likely the Imperial War Museum, an amazing place for anyone interested in WWI. I have a picture somewhere of a Sopwith Tabloid with a Union Jack on the fuselage side. This I reckon must be from 1914.

Well, the main thing is all about skill. The thing is that you don't have a lot of guns, you have little power, and you don't have things lilke flaps or airbrakes or almost anything else. You pick your aeroplane (and some deliberately pick the worst ones!) and try to fly it. I am flying a BE2c which is considered one of the worst, but I want to see what I can do with it!

One mistake Udet did make in the US was to go for dive-bombers. This was ok with the famous JU87 Stuka but made a complete mess when the powers-that-be wanted the He177 to also have a dive bombing capability. This would be rather like designing the B17 to be a dive bomber. Not a good idea. Though sometimes this helped the allies. The Avro Manchester was designed to be a sort-of dive bomber so its airframe was very strong. It eventually became the Lancaster and the rest is history...

The US looks like a very confusing place for drinkers! We used to have some silly laws, like the one that pubs and bars were shut on Sundays, sometimes after 8pm I can't remember now exactly. But many years ago I went to a small airport to wait for an HS125 to come back from Namibia. I went to the cafe/restaurant/bar as I had a while to wait, and ordered a beer as there were others there drinking beer. The barman gave me the beer and a pretty old looking sandwich wrapped in plastic. I told him I didn't want the sandwich and he said that I had to have it, otherwise I couldn't have the beer as the law said you could only have drinks with food. So I drank the beer and gave him back the sandwich. He put it back in the display cabinet where it sat on its own. Many others came in and took the sandwich and gave it back. I suppose somebody would eventually eat it .....

A bit OT, but.... I see Paarma works in an 'alcohol shop' in Finland - I suppose this is a direct translation? In England (possibly all of Britain) one used to buy wine and spirits from an 'Off Licence' where you could only buy booze to drink 'off' the premises. I think just about everything alcoholic in Britain is now sold in supermarkets. Here in South Africa we have the strange rule that wine can be bought in supermarkets, but not beer or liquor. For that you have to go to a 'Bottle Store', which normally sells the contents as well as the bottle I believe in Oz that the local term is 'bottle shop'. Any other strange terms out there?

Bullethead, if you like (very) sweet wines you should try a South African Noble Late Harvest. I was given a bottle once and kept it for over ten years because I can't drink it. I eventually gave it to someone who likes that sort of thing. I used to drink a lot of Pinotage but eventually the acetone taste got me down, so now I have switched mostly to Merlots. I had a Chilean red once and it was very good, but unfortunately rather expensive here.

What is the best speed to climb at in a BE? If I go below 50mph the stall warning comes on, so I push the stick forward a bit. Does just over 50mph give me the best rate of climb? Or should I do a dipsy, put the nose down, pick up speed and then bring the stick back?

It was not obvious, but I discovered that I could reuse the same pilot name over and over again. So in my quest to get a 4sqn pilot from 1915 in BE2c's to 1918 in RE8's (my old squadron, so I have a sentimental attachment to it) I discovered that you can re-use the same exact pilot name over and over again. I am now up to the sixth resurrection of my pilot Fred Bloggs who keeps on re-enlisting as a 2nd Lt. and has now made it to Nov 1915 and shot down a couple of Fokker EIIIs along the way. I am considering using the American way of calling the pilot 'Fred Bloggs the sixth' and so on. Maybe I will be able to keep track better that way. I am just wondering how many DiD pilots I will have to go through to get to Nov 11th 1918.... Personally I would prefer it if my squadron had flown Brisfits or Sopwith 1 1/2 strutters or anything else, but the history is there, and OFF sticks to that. I think it is wonderful that they know where my squadron was at any time and what aircraft they were flying. It all adds to the immersion. Is anyone else trying to keep with one squadron/Jasta through the whole war?

From what I have read, the 'Flaming Onions' were a low-level form of Archie especially deployed around balloons. Apparently they were fired from a sort of mortar. Not very accurate against a moving target, but could be zeroed in on the static balloon position so were very dangerous. Balloon-busting was considered to be a form of suicide among most pilots, only for those who had no fear. Frank Luke comes to mind. But on the other hand shooting down a balloon was of more help to the war effort than shooting down any number of scouts. The Brits were prepared to lose many BE2 and RE8 pilots to get the same information.

Don't let a few whingers bother you. They are the sort that only post to complain about something. I for one am happy. Possibly giving the superpatch for $0 was a mistake, people only appreciate things they pay for, I have found. As a programmer myself I appreciate the effort you have put into this. And if I don't like it, I could always revert back to 1.3 except I do and I won't.

Is that a flare pistol on the fuselage side behind him?

I have been offered a TrackIR 3. How does that differ from the versions 4 and 5? I am definitely going to get it anyway. Is it an angle of vision thing?

Maybe we could ask the OBD developers if this would be possible in P4. Of course it would be only of interest to those who know the real history of the pilots in the war. For those who want to shoot down stuff generally it would not be of interest. The ultimate would be that you could enrol as, say, Mick Mannock, and follow his career, either shooting down more or less EA and then being killed on a certain date. Somehow I don't really want this even if it were possible.

I tend to end up with 2 air speed indicators and a compass and all sorts of stuff that I don't want. The normal Ctl + shift + 1 - 5 doesn't get rid of the ones I don't want. How can I get what I do want which is basically ASI and climb/dive indicator. I am not interested in the compass or artificial horizon.

I kenw there must be a way thanks! (I never fly CSF3 although it is installed if that makes any difference)

I haven't tried switching an existing pilot to a different squadron/Jasta. Can you do this?

Maybe we should start a DiD 'whole war in one squadron' thread and bump it occasionally. I must admit I fly more exciting craft sometimes, but my main campaign is 4sqn. The nice thing about OFF is that you can enlist as many pilots in as many air forces and with as many aircraft as you like. I can fly for the RFC and the German force in the same night! Maybe they should shoot me as a traitor but I won't tell them