JimAttrill

Blame it on Gutenberg! Yes, if you read your Old English grammar book the syntax will look very Germanic, with nominative dative and accusative endings and such like. However, English went through a process of simplification or even creolisation for a few hundred years as it was not spoken by the ruling classes who spoke Norman French. So those endings dropped away and were replaced by simpler prepositions and simpler word order eg. "I gave the book to the boy" the 'to' is a dative preposition. Also the word order rules stops one saying 'To the book I gave the boy" which breaks the rules and is nonsense. In Latin, you could put the words in any order as everything depended on the case of the nouns and verbs. It is believed that German was in a process of simplification and the greater use of prepositions, but then along came Herr Gutenberg with his printing press and the grammar got set in concrete!

Here is the diner I had breakfast at a couple of times in Hillsboro Ohio. Very pretty!

Now I have re re re installed WOFF for the umpteenth time I might have a go this evening in the Rumpler CIV and see what happens. I have all my WOFF installs on a 32Gb USB3 stick. But WOFF version 1 wouldn't install from there. It read the CSF3 files off the DVD and then insisted that I insert the OFF DVD, couldn't find the files and then asked again etc. I then copied the files to my USB3 external 1.5Tb hard drive and it installed perfectly from there ..... Anyway, it is now installed and patched again.

Well at the moment I have the opposite effect and I don't know why. I am flying in FA 3Lb from Besigheim in North Flanders. Maybe it's because I have the closest sorties checked but I fly to the target and around for 25 minutes and then back home. Someone suggested it was because I was using some time compression so I stopped using that again with no effect. I have done over 8 hours now with no sign of an EA except a few many miles away. These sorties I do mainly from the back seat just for a change. That can't be the problem as in a previous life I was shot down by a few French Nieuports and although I fired a lot of bullets in their direction nothing happened to them. Possibly it's because I normally get a close escort of 4 or 5 Alb DVs from Jasta 10 and they keep the enemy away?

Post here when you pop in and you can win a

Lactose-free milk .... It is a bit of a pain when my sister visits from the UK as she is lactose-intolerant. We have to buy soya milk (yuck - even the dogs won't drink it) or goats milk which is not too bad. And I don't offer her milk stout which is a dark beer somewhat like Guinness but less bitter - and that does have lactose in it according to the label. Talking of bananas I have successfully made banana bread a couple of times. It is a good use for bananas that have got past their MTBF

And what is a good setting to have?

Well I'm still around.....

My father's WWII medals and a LSGC silver medal (that's the tarnished one) I suppose they could be eventually sold as a set - but not yet

If he wants to throw some money around, maybe he could join in with OBD? But it sounds as if he wants to be in charge.... I don't think the WWI sim market is big enough ....

I think the pilot was lucky that it fell apart before he tried to take off! Not necessarily the ugliest aircraft but possibly the most peculiar...

And that Me262 should have got them in the other firing passes as that Mozzie could only turn one way. But somehow they got away with it. But other PR Mosquito pilots didn't and that was mostly due to the Me262 as it was the only aircraft that could catch and overtake them and then hit them with 30mm cannon.

This is the book - it is about all the aircraft in the museum. The front picture shows the Me262 hitting the Mosquito over Germany

Some of these large aircraft had their propellors a long way off the ground so how were the engines started? I don't think hand-swinging was possible. Did they have electric starters?

It seems the origin of the work 'erk' is lost in the mists of time. Some think that like a lot of other RAF slang it comes from the Navy. The normal thought it that it is a corruption of AC (Aircraftman). The original ranks were AC2 AC1 LAC (Leading Aircraftman with two-bladed prop on arm, then CPL etc. In my day it meant anyone below NCO rank. Normally the downtrodden workers. (Of which I was one for 5 years).

I think the Blackburn Beverley was quite a good aeroplane and did exactly what it was designed to do. At least the riggers didn't have to fix the undercarriage hydraulics. I was a 'scaley brat' back in 57-58 at Abingdon and we used to creep to the end of the runway to watch them landing. And then the snoops would arrive and arrest us

FIFA is still full of gnomes for those who are interested in football.

Though the Mozzies weren't used all that much for ground attack - that was left to the Typhoons mostly with Beaufighters for anti-shipping strikes (with high casualty rates). The Mozzies were mostly bombers - they could lift a 4000lb bomb and were also very fast Photo Reconnaisance aircraft. A few of those were apparently shot down by Me262s in the latter stages of the war. One SAAF one was hit by 30mm shells over Munich which took off one flap and stuck one engine at 100% throttle. The pilot managed to avoid the Me262 a few times until it hit bingo and then they flew all the way back to Italy with one engine screaming away. That shows how reliable the Merlin was. There is a Mozzie in our local war museum hanging from the ceiling. They weren't much good in hot or damp climates as the plywood would delaminate. In the same museum is the only surviving Me262 night fighter (a nightmare to fly apparently), an Me109 from the desert and a FW190. And, wonders of wonders, an 88mm anti-tank gun that looks brand new!

So they were 'direct cranking' starters. I know the Merlin had direct cranking gear but I always thought it was more for turning the engine for timing etc and not for actually starting the engine as it would be hard to get the required speed. I know the Gipsy Major engines had one mag that had a starting mechanism. This would hold back the distributor arm until TDC and then fling the mag quickly to generate a spark to start. Whether WWI mags had this I do not know. Also all the piston engines I worked on had what they called a 'booster coil' which was a coil powered by a battery that generated lots of sparks when starting the engine. To start a Bristol Hercules engine required two hands, one to switch on the mags and the other to operate the electric priming pump and the booster coil and the starter motor. it required some dexterity! (and was great fun, what with the smoke and flames and the noise of the exhaust and the clanking of the reduction gear). Doubtless starting large P&W or Wright engines was the same. The Germans in WWII used inertia starters wound up by an erk or by an electric motor - a good system IMHO. The Airacobra and the Harvard used a similar system.

That Junkers is new to me - I'll have to go and look it up. It is pretty ugly especially the nose u/c. The Farman is terrible but then most Farmans were.

I have been reading everywhere about the RR Eagle engines but nowhere is there a mention of how they were started. Do you have a URL or even a reference to one of your amazing books

Very good video I haven't seen that before. I read somewhere on Google that the introduction of electric starters was in order to start engines on flying boats - but that was in the 20s. Another way was to put a strong bag with a rope attached over the top blade and get some guys to pull very hard. The Shuttleworth Collection start their Bristol F2b with a Hucks starter on (I think) a Model T Ford

The mods on SimHq are Polovski and Sandbagger. I think they are both OBD devs. This may or may not be a good thing

Thanks for your answer my Captain (shades of the Goon Show) I have tried D-fend reloaded but I would appreciate your settings - maybe you could pm me with them? The big problem I have is with my USB mouse although it recognises my USB joystick ok. Are you using a mouse or maybe joystick only which I think works in WoG?

Hi Captain - very interesting report that. Do you still fly WofG - I am trying to get it to work in DosBox but am having lots of trouble with the mouse which goes quickly from bottom right to top left and lurks there...