VonGuber

While I was floating around with no ammo, I took some screen shots. Beautiful area to fly in.... From Sweeteye's mission in Italy, recently posted. LST going down. Sitting Duck toasted a balloon

A point: doesn't CFS3 need to be patched to v. 3.1 if it's not already?

I'd agree with "cheesy" to a certain extent. Mind you, it's no "Plan 9 From Outer Space" though. I thought a certain amount of cheesiness was actually tongue-in-cheek, and written into the movie. Sort of like the "Starship Troopers" from a few years back.

I saw it last fall. It's not a great sci-fi movie, but it's not bad. And there is a lot of action.

Ok, here is the alert_base file. alert_base.zip

How do I go about posting it? Never put anything up here before.

I'll try to get on... also have another mission saved. Not sure when because I've got someone coming by to help me snake some wiring.

Thanks for pointing out where that file is, Duck. I just monkeyed around with the color, brightness and contrast and lightened things up a bit, keeping the original photo idea. Will see how it works.

Yes, it is hard to see through that engine back there... I asked about the balloon attack because I just finished reading James Norman Hall's book last night. One thing that struck me was his account of being volunteered as a "balloonatic" (sic). His flight leader told him and his partner to fly high over the balloon, then cut their engines and push the nose over to come down on it from above. Of course, they had rockets and were flying something besides DH-2s, (can't remember for sure, but I think SPADs) but it made me wonder if the advice would work for us too. The level approach gives everyone a clear shot at the approaching craft... I may try diving next time. Can't be any worse...

LOL... now you know why we get twitchy waiting for patches and such....

Nice shot. It looks like you had better visibility than I did...I couldn't even see my wing tips. I didn't even see that Strutter until he came up below me and took the wings off. He's a question for you experts: Balloon busting with DH-2s -- given that they don't dive well, were we better off with the level attack, or should we have kept altitude and tried diving on them? I think diving would give less time in the flak, but those crates stop responding to controls if you get too fast. What do you all think?

Here's hoping the both of you get feeling better, and quickly.

Almost certainly howitzer fire. One has to remember that because of the (possibly) high trajectory of the projectile, that it can be in the air longer than it takes for the report of the gun to travel to the target. It really depends on the range and angle of fire, though. The thing that makes me wonder about the authenticity of this clip is that the rounds land one at a time, and it looks like some editing has been done in between rounds. In my day we didn't fire CB one round at a time. I don't pretend to know what current doctrine is, but in my day we would have fired at least a platoon-1 on a target like that, more likely a whole battery would fire. That means that no less than 4 tubes (and more likely 8...) would fire simultaneously on a given target in order to cover the target area as much as possible, considering error probabilities and such. As far as accuracy goes, those shots weren't that bad for initial, unadjusted rounds. With an observed adjustment, a second volley could spoil the entire day for anyone out there, but then again, counter-battery fire isn't always observed unless you've got eyes in the sky somewhere. Most of the time it's fired at locations triangulated from radar observations, i.e., radar sees their rounds in the air and then a location is calculated from two or more such observations. I don't doubt that the impacts are real, but I'm guessing that this was staged as a training film for the... er... target audience.

I'm just guessing, but possibly incurring the wrath of UncleAl?

I will be online today, sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 Eastern. I can either host some flights or participate if someone has something they want to run.

there's some good news...hope everything loads up ok.

Yes, I'm up for it but I doubt that I can make it tonight. It's definitely NOT my birthday again, since I havent' had one in 20 years or so...nevertheless, my wife is insisting that she take me out to dinner.

HI all, Am getting on TS in a few minutes, (6pm ET) and can host some converted campaign missions if there's any interest.

My pleasure Duck...sorry I had to bug out so soon...real life called. No worries about the TS I have a couple more missions to try out, and will post when I can set time aside. Those British guys should have put bombsights on their bombers.... Practice is definitely in order.

I think it should be capitalized...."Pedant".

yeah, not sure what was going on there... Even stranger, when I'd fire guns, it would shoot big squares of wheat field. Went away when I closed out the mission, and no troubles since.♦

Yes, that's bad...hope you get it sorted quickly. Will try to pick up some slack for weekday sessions.

I'm not sure if it was the rum or the mushrooms that were served in the mess, but the practice flight was interesting towards the end. So much for tangerine trees and marmalade skies....

It was a good time. I'm looking forward to days 3 & 4. Thanks for all the hard work on those missions.