flynn

Thought I'd share some aerial photos from my grandfather's albums, they give a nice flavour of what the recce work was all about: The photo backs are included so they could possibly be located on the maps:

Olham, it's User Account Control which is a part of the security system in Vista and Win7(6.1). In Vista it is switched on by default, I'm not sure about Win7(6.1). It protects you against malware that is trying to overwrite or delete important system files (while running under your account), and thus goes a long way to protect you against viruses, spyware and adware. To turn it off in Vista: Open up Control Panel, and type “UAC” into the search box. Click the link for “Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off”. On the next screen you should uncheck the box for “Use User Account Control (UAC)”, and then click on the OK button. I can of course understand that it seems a big pain for end users who don't even know what it's called and therefore can't Google it to find a quick way to turn it off. But, as part of my job is being sysadmin to a group of 8-12 users who are only moderately computer literate I can tell you from my expereince that since our business switched over to Vista we have basically eliminated IT issues that used to consume a lot of my time.

Indeed, many views. The new ideas in Vista included basing the GUI code around DX10 (i.e. bringing games technology into UI rendering), adding SuperFetch for dynamic improvements based on program usage, changing DLL caching to remove DLL hell (phew!), unifying the driver model, making the networking subsystem work responsively and intuitively, adding ReadyBoost to allow paging to solid state devices, fixing Search so that it is efficient and available widely in the GUI, adding versioning to the hard disk system (yay!), generally improve the GUI in about 1000 places, I could go on... I wonder how many of these are core pieces of Win7. If you don't like it and you want to stick with XP for 500Mb of overhead that's fine, I like it and I have 700Mb of overhead with Vista, 1.3G of free physical RAM, with a 4GB page file on SSD.

Buzz... wrong... Vista is based on the same core technology as NT, 2000, XP etc. These OSes are iterations of the same concepts and there are improvements with every generation of OS. The main problems with Vista come down to public perception based on a large number of users attempting to run it on inferior hardware. You have to have at least a 128Mb graphics card or the GUI will be sluggish. It also turned out that rather than be virtually guaranteed a much higher level of security from malware people didn't like UAC and couldn't spend the 2 minutes it takes to find out how to turn it off. It utlimately comes down to suitability of matching between hardware and OSes. If you don't have an XP capable machine don't run XP. If you don't have a Vista capable machine, don't run Vista. If you don't have a Win7 capable machine etc.... I will probably switch from Vista to Win7 at about service pack 2 when it is stable and the drivers have been debugged, but wild horses wouldn't drag me back to XP or any other historic OS.

Good topic OvS... Cooking Gardening DJing / remixing - jazz, funk, reggae, hip-hop & 80s Other computer games - mostly Empire:TW & AmericasArmy3 at the moment Board wargames - mostly Advanced Squad Leader and Flying Colors at the moment Military model-making (just getting back into this after a 30 year hiatus!) Reading anything to do with military history, especially WWII and the Age of Sail

Wow, she's a good'un. In a related vein... my wife fancied a new belt and bag for her birthday. After I fitted the new belt and beg to the vacuum cleaner I noticed its performance increased dramatically, but now she's not talking to me. Where did I go wrong? ;)

Indeed Stiffy, the coolie hat / keys for viewing are a pain even when on scroll view.... so I went the Free Track route as I had a pang of conscience about hosing out €€€s. I got a Track Clip Pro as I couldn't face fiddling around to build my own clip or cap for use with Free Track. The clip cost about €35 including shipping. I am using it with an old webcam with a piece of floppy disc stuck over the lense to filter out visible light. The software setup is a little tricky but Gous is a star and helped me through and it works great! Search the forum for more on this. It takes a bit of tweaking to get the curves right, but I find with linear response, large deadzones and quite a lot of smoothing it works fine. Once up and running you can slide sideways over your Lewis gun and use the Custom Center - Set and that will be your new origin. Then you can have a joystick button mapped to Tracking - Center and when things get a little haywire you can hit that to re-center your view. It makes an incredible simulation even more immersive. Having said all that... if the 'homebrew' route is too painful you can still use the Track Clip Pro with a TrackIR sensor and software, so at least you didn't waste money.

Tally Ho! Interface might seem a little clunky at first, but once flying it's a dream... Enjoy - good luck out there.

Should be OK if you change it to 'Multi-Region', in other words region free. I changed my Phillips DVD HDR a while back using this site: http://www.regionfreedvd.net/player/philips.html

For posterity I thought I would add the surnames of the people above, as I have subsequently discovered them in an almost identical photo in 'Flight and Aicraft Engineer' No 2466 Vol 69 Friday 27 April 1956. From left to right: Least, Owles, Buck, Howell, Unknown, Minot, Budgen, Davidson, Davidson, Maj. Powell, Diamond, Shaw, Ellis, Nesbitt, Pentland, Waller, Trascott, Waddington and Welsh. Incidentally, it could be one of the two Davidson's above who took part in the last flight of WWI... It was an aircraft of No. 16 Sqn. which flew the Armistice patrol—the last patrol of the war. From this flight Capt. H. L. Tracey (pilot) and Capt. S. F. Davidson, M.C. (observer) landed at 11.45 a.m. and reported as follows: "No enemy activity. Our troops in Mons. A.A. fire nil.

My nephew dropped his homework in my house last night and it struck a chord when I found it later. For those who haven't read it before or read it recently.... An Irish Airman Foresees His Death I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. W. B. Yeats. 1919.

:drinks:Excellent. Do you really put a burnt stick in the whisky to make it brown??

Well yes, it was a fraught relationship between Ireland and Britain alright during WWI. It is still very much a live piece of history today whether many realise it or not, so we should tread a little carefully discussing the political subtext of this poem. However, 350000 Irish men did sign up to fight for the British, joining 50000 already serving. This is a very substantial chunk of the adult male population. There is a good, dispassionate (and short) explanation of the background environment that explains that fact here. You can skip the opening and look for 'Irish Recruitment in WWI'. So, Yeats' viewpoint is very much post the 1916 sea-change in opinion, and possibly even more poignant because of it. What I think is really amazing about the poem is the way that he captures a kind of nihilistic nobility in the airmans' fatalistic outlook. That may be pure romance, or it might tap into some insight Yeats gleened into the true character of his young friend who died.

Paarma, I have a lot of material that I am happy to contribute, recon photographs etc, documents and I think there may even be a flight log somewhere. Not all of it is digitised yet. I will PM you when I have had a chance to catalogue the most appropriate stuff.

Yes, it's a pretty staged representation of an air interaction, which is kind off the fun of it really - to produce a pseudo-realistic version of an impressionistic source image. The painting is signed 'J. Willey' and was given to my grandfather as a present. It is about 12' x 9' and is painted oil on board. It's condition is not great, but I will have it restored one day. I think it was painted at the time by another member of 16 Squadron, possibly 3097 Pte J. Willey, Lancers, attached RFC (reported KIA in Flight No. 471 January 3rd 1918), although this is very hard to confirm It looks like the artist sat down side on to a BE and painted it in profile and then filled in the rest, including a very imaginary EIII, which I love.

Here's a painting I rescued many years ago from my Granny's garage: Here's the same scene recreated with a bit of help from OFF: Yes, the airframe Nos. are different, corrected for posterity if you like!

Thanks Steve, I don't think he spent long there on his way to being an ace, but I'd be interested to know. I'd like to think he showed Jerry a trick or two to stay alive.

So true Check Six, mea culpa. Pentland is of course Australian.

Olham, I think they were a pretty eclectic bunch, Pentland was certainly from NZ. I think the squadron had a close association with the Canadian Corps throughout the war, so there are possibly Canadians too. And Irish of course! It does amaze me how lighthearted they look, you have to wonder how many from that photo made it through the next 2.5 years, I venture to say few of them.

Interesting photo. I have great memories of being buzzed by the Swordfish from Yeovilton when I was growing up. It was pretty impressive when flying right over head at full speed!

No problem, my pleasure. Here's a shot of the whole squadron, my Grandfather is holding his dog and Jerry Pentland is to his left.

They were quite varying altitudes I think, mostly 5000-8500ft, my brother has the collection at the moment and I will get him to check. this one is quite evocative (and a bit clearer than most!).