Lewie

Hmmm, Looks like I might try this out in QC, a Bf109, vs an SE5a Viper, but I doubt I'll barely last long enough to gain enough altitude before his cannon rounds vaporize me..

Have you tried asking at the Aerodrome Forum? There's a few really knowledgeable folks who post over there. Speculation on my part, but I seem to recall that some of the earliest versions came with the unthrottleable Gnome 80 hp and were a handful when descending because of the relatively clean aerodynamics of the Pup compared to it's contemporaries. Damage to the engine from over revving or 'coup'ing too much and fouling the spark plugs or worse, causing a cowling fire. I suppose that learning to sideslip became an early Pup pilot skill.

Well it's Arch's fictional story of an IAF Handley Page O/400 crew operating in summer of '18. They're mainly tasked with enemy airfield softening up in Northern Flanders, ( they operate out of Cassel.) and there's a raid an a 'hospital' in St Quentin that is housing some imprisoned allied pilots. I thought St Quentin was pretty much retaken by August of '18.. The story gets rather cloak and dagger, has a few Green Tabbies skulking about, and it's in their final mission that they're given a first prototype HP O/1500 to do a predawn bombing raid on a hotel/prison in Eastern Belgium, which has them bombing one of the wings of the building, then landing on the rather huge lawn bordering it and rescuing a half dozen allied spies and pilots from an execution squad. Then taking off before the Germans can muster some form of attack. The characters in this story make this one of Arch's better efforts. Yeah, I know, that there's question to whether he actually served in the RFC/RAF during the great war. Even if he didn't, his writing is pretty good and his situations doesn't go too far into the unbelievable.

It's probably well into the future of OFF but what I'd imagine would be really fun would be to recreate Arch Whitehouse's 'The Casket Crew' 's last big mission, in an HP O/1500. That story was just riveting.

The folks at the Musee d' la Air's restoration facility Memorial Flight do good work too. Here's a shot of the Cosford restoration of a Vickers Wellington. I've always liked this RAF medium bomber, the concept of it's geodetic fuselage frame is novel.

Is this Spring of '17? IIRC the SE5's were the first type with the wingtips like the 'arry Tate and the direct drive Hisso 150. It's a decent enough of a kite but they are a bit climb limited, if RB3D's Western front patch FM was accurate. I made one for TW, I rather liked the way they flew, kinda like an early Spad VI with better maneuverability and more docile handling. I'd expect that they would be an pretty fair match for the Albatros DIII's.

Who knows how many notable pilots of WWI managed to beat odds in Murphy's court by doing this, probably more than wanted to admit at the time. In Mason's book 'The Escadrille Lafayette' he writes about the 1917 spring move from their airfield in Chacy to Ham, and how part of the squadron was voluntarily pressed into low level trench scouting. Seems like a likely really, really bad situation flying alone at 150 to 50 feet above the the German forward trenches, yet they all survived this, only to have their squad mates die stupidly by playing around with obsolescent French monoplanes.

Well ask yourself this what situation exactly did Richthofen get himself into over Villiers Bretoneaux and Corbie?

Wasn't Cecil Lewis famous for hanging upside down from a Martinsyde G100 when he tried to change his Lewis's ammo drum?

I still have my Full Canvas Jacket disc, the retail one Kess sold back in '04. Of the three mods available at that time, I liked the Western Front Patch the best, it was the least buggy and had a better campaign. But Western Front Patch 2 ended up with most of Kess's stunning skins and graphics, it was a shame that Kess didn't have more success with his patch, I liked the FM better, it was pretty difficult, and demanding. Never could figure out why my VooDoo 4500 card wouldn't run it in Glide, I had all of the newest drivers for it. If someone wants my FCJ disc I'm willing to do a trade..

For those of you who have SDOE's mod FS-WWI on their machine, open the .ini file in the SDOE subfolder and and change the AllVehicles=0 to AllVehicles=1 and when you enter the game start hitting the F5 key repeatedly... That's hardcore..

Is the smoke color of the Allied Amatol AA rounds going to be white? And also will there be the 20mm German Becker, the 11/2 pdr British autocannon and the 37 mm autocannon that made the "Flaming Onions".

The Wingnut 'arry Tate is a stunning bit of work, isn't it. It's been years since my last plastic scale model, When my wife and I were dating we'd sometimes buy a couple of Revell 1/48 kits and build them together. Since I fly RC models and I like scale balsa stick and heat shrink film WWI and Pre WWI models, I've done a few scratchbuilds and a couple of Peter Rake's balsa plan builds. Here's Peter's website..Peter Rake, Doyen of Scale Models His kits are laser cut by a company in New Mexico called Manzano Laser Works Manzano Laser Works. Check both of the link's sidebar menus for the extensive list of model plans and models they have. I think I have a couple images of one of my planes, an AVRO 511 Arrowscout built from Peters Plans.

No Olham, my laptop's DVD drive has major trouble reading OFF at all.. It reads CD's, and certain video DVD's, OK. On the other hand my old desktop's creaky old DVD/CD reader writer does fine, but I'm not installing OFF on a machine that's has trouble even running CFS3 at acceptable frame rates. This is why I'm going to buy a new system. Cameljockey offered me a OFF vers.2 disc set, I was willing to part with some money to expedite this, but he's not responded back to my PM.

True, and OFF makes this fact quite plain. But you think that Howard would be drilling this into these guys, ( some of who were pilots in WWI..) to keep to scanning the skies, at least for the camera. I mean look to shots of the pilots with the camera situated in front, aiming towards the pilot and the rear, it is plainly obvious that these guys aren't watching their six! In one shot there was some guy with 3 Fokkers oscillating in and out of view, each one in a perfect place to put in a killing burst. It's just a film, I should really just enjoy it, but...

Well I would if I had the full installation, as it is my laptop's DVD drive isn't playing well with the OFF disc, but my ancient desktop's DVDdrive does, so I'm running these kites as additions to CFS3. Is there a way to port some of the campaign scenery, terrain and other files from OFF into a CFS3 install and run it from CFS3? Just so I can run some of the OFF campaigns?

Well yes, and to draw an analogy and it's not intended as a criticism, Hellshade's videos will sometimes have largely outclassed aircraft against better ones, fighting it out on the deck. Like the Fokker DVII's against Nieuport 17's w/ Lewis. Pretty, makes for lots of Kabooms, but not historic or accurate, which is one of the aspects of this sim.

A remarkable lack of situational awareness in the film, not watching their own six or their wingmate's. And Richthofen, sitting serenely above it all, watching the action while his squadron gets pounded. It was a great film, but it missed the actual strategy and interplay of actual WWI combat. My only gripe about it.

The first frame in the left hand upper corner is a Phonix D series, not sure which one, and quite possibly, and because of the distance, a Macchi M3 flying boat. The second frame is a Nieuport 17 of the Escadrille Lafayette and a Aviatik CII, again hard to tell because of the distance. The third frame is a pair of Halberstadt CLII's The fourth frame is a bit of a strange one, not because of the Albatros CIII, but because the distant aircraft looks like a AEF SPAD, and these are two aircraft that wouldn't ecounter each other in either time frame they were used in. Or the distant aircraft might be an Eastern Front Imperial Russian Anatra two seater which would jibe better with the the time frame. That's a difficult one, as I wouldn't know which German Schlastas would be flying that particular serpent marking on the Eastern front. I don't know my Messerschmitt's all that well, except that it ain't an Emile and I know less about Soviet WWI Bombers, ditto for the US naval jet fighter.

Another anti-virus program to add to the list of "does not play well with complex flight sims". Your wife is a sharp cookie, I think some wine and chocolates wouldn't be out of line.

Good luck with this fixing this problem. Hardware issues are usually easier to deal with.

Around here, along with another plant, they're considered weed trees.

Bert Froebe excells in that role, his human beatbox routine while loading the gun is one of the best scenes of the film, along with his consulting the "German Book of Instructions"... Step one; "Get into the aeroplane", Step two; "Sit Down." We have some elderberries growing in our backyard, I'll take a photo of them later and post it when they start to bloom. We actually have a lot of native berries on our land, I guess I could do a "Lewie's wild foods" cooking thread here this summer.

Oh yeah! Well your mother smells of elderberries.. I, sir, demand satisfaction! Balloons and Blunderbusses! At dawn! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4fVp-hEPOk&feature=related

Yup, as barmy as it gets, I mean look at my Avatar, I'd bring a AVRO Tripe to a furball, just because...