Lewie

nope, guess again...

I'm in the market, I'm researching a couple of webistes that sell you the case, M'board, HDD, PSU, and GPU/Ram. I'm looking at an AMD, 3GHz Athlon II dual core with ASUS MB and a GeForce GT220 1 Gig GPU. Roughly $400+. Are there better deals out there? This is for running OFF BHaH 3 and a lot of my older sims I want to keep to Windows XP and such but the hitch is that 32 bit OS's can only handle 3 gigs memory. Would it matter with the GPU?

If we still had the local PC gamer computer store that closed a year back, I'd be buying from him, as he often times had decent newer used systems that he checked out and resold. I just don't trust Ebay or Craigslist used 'deals' all that much, especially if there's a warranty ( or lack of one..) I've bought Ebay computer parts before, it's often times a good way to get inexpensive upgrades, but I'm a bit jaundiced about used whole systems without some documentation and history. I've seen some nasty dust bunnies in some friends older machines. Plus there's the whole upgrade route, ( lack of ability ..) of a used machine. The system I'm looking at has some nice features that allow for future upgrades and overclocking, and I've heard ASUS are one of the better motherboards.

OK I just flew the Nupe 11 in QC against the Roland CII. I have to comment that it wasn't a picnic, and the second spawned Roland creamed my left wing after the first one spiraled in, crashing me. But I think there is this tactic, I was able to deflection shot kill the first Roland. If you keep low and to the outside while swinging in a sideslip, slightly closer to fire. Although it was almost analogous to firehosing it. I went through my first drum of ammo and part of the second, for this kill. One thing you have to watch when you do this is bleeding 'E' while in a sideslip while firing, I came awfully close to stalling twice.

I guess I should clarify the system I'm looking at right now. And thanks for the time you both spent discussing this. It's a basic box, with an ASUS M4A88TD-M motherboard with an AMD Athlon II 250 dual core CPU, an AMD frontside that has some sort of souped up onboard video that's capable of working in tandem with a PCIe XX16 video card, 2 Gigs of RAM (I can get 4 gigs easily enough), 600 watt power supply with a PCIe 6 connector extension cord , a ThermalTake copper CP cooler fan, and a dual head Geforce 220 PCIe 16XX video card. I've got all the rest of the gear, the old monitor is only capable of 1200X1600 from what I can find about it. Yeah I know it's a bit limited, but compared to my present desktop it's a speed monster. I don't normally do lot's of other sim's and most of my sims and 3D development software are from circa year 2000, that run good on an ancient sub GHz Athlon with a VooDoodfx 4500. It's the best deal I've seen so far, but I suspect there's others out there that are better for about the same amount of change. It's a close call for the finances, but it looking good this year for IRS refunds, so this is my best chance to upgrade.

Olham, 'm not trying to be argumentative , but without knowing which Sopwith Camel types these were, and what they were doing at the time, this discussion is slightly academic and pendantic. I agree that Udet was a good fighter pilot, but look at the planes he was flying at the time of his most numerous kills, and the types he was shooting down in big numbers. I mean early in his career with the Fokker EIII he's flying, he get's two kills, one of them over a Breguet Michelin, which was a miserable, lousy kite with bad handling qualities and even poorer visibility for the pilot. Those two early kills were easy meat. It would have been more impressive if he'd taken on and bested a Nupe 11 or a DH2. I think that as a fighter pilot you get to live long and prosper by knowing your enemy's weaknesses and using them to your own aircraft's and your own personal skill's advantages It also a lot about when to not engage an enemy. Boeleke's Dicta.. I'm not suggesting that his later kills were easy, but in these situations, as they unfold, you have to take the best chance for victory that you can get. Even the best sim is a poor substitute for what was really historic and really real. If you can prove historically and factually that most of the Camels he had bested were on a near equal strategic level when engaged and were later types I'll concede.

Yes he did, what's not said in the chart is what type of Camels. Were these the Camels pressed into ground attack roles as the allied offensive ground war intensified? and has been repeatedly mentioned that most kills have an element of suprize as the factor and a single seater doing ground attack on the wrong side of the lines is most vulnerable. I mean the Germans did the right thing, they built aircraft expressly made for ground attack and they were almost always two seaters. The British threw a lot of older Clerget powered Camels and other "have been" fighters, into the ground offensive. Does OFF have a British Campaign for Spring of 1918 flying Camels in ground offensive roles? It would illustrate my point well to fly such a campaign and see how long you last in it.

The continued German Spring offensive "Micheal" I believe and the renewed offensive efforts of the Entente ground forces probably reflected in the extra aircraft the British American and French put into the air as ground support and top cover once the US had started to show up? I notice that there were still squadrons using the SPAD VII late into 1918, and notice the two Nieuport 28 kills, the newly formed AEF were part of his tally. I'm wondering if one of those kills were the early versions of the 28 which had only a single gun. The Nieuport 28 was a pretty effective turn fighter, probably not as all around good as the Fokker DVII, but they were not easy targets.

Well I have yet to have flown the Fee from the gunners seat, but while flying a Halberstadt DII against two Fees in QC the first thing they do is a defensive spit and dive. If I was in the gunners seat I wouldn't be trying to shoot over the top wing while the pilot was hauling that barge around at speed. No you find me trying to hang on as best I could. Have you read 'Horses Don't Fly' by Frederick Libby? He was an American who joined up with the RFC in 1916, ( he was in Canada working at the time..) and flew Fees until 1917. Fred does a good job of describing the day to day operations of a Fee squadron in Flanders. He was personally responisble for the use of rear gunstocks being installed on the Lewis to help give the gunner better control of the Lewis while in a pitching and slewing front cockpit. He also describes in great detail his first kill of a Fokker Eindekker. The Eindekkers were not easy targets. but they had no advantage in maneuverability over the Fee.

The Roland just seemed to be an anomaly. When I was taxiing it it seemed to have quite a bit of fixed pitch in the prop as no amount of engine idle speed reduction would keep it from coming to a complete stop without killing the engine. And what was most unusual was the quite pronounced swing of the plane in yaw when I rotated in pitch for takeoff. Intrigued by this, I climbed up to 3000 feet and proceeded to yank and twist the stick around just to see if it was actually happening, and not me catching the wheels in the 'rough' alongside the runways. Yeah this bird has the Camel's somewhat missing yaw-pitch gyro procession coupling. It also seems to have bit much prop pitch which explains the constant need to keep the stick leaned into the engine torque. The Camel is quite tame, I mean really well behaved considering it was a killer of novices. I loaded it into the sim and tried it repeatedly. Loops and Flat turns didn't nudge the tracking of the complementary axis' all that much. A lot is made of it's nasty shortcoupled-ness when combined with the gyroscopic forces of the engine. Enough that you should really need to have left rudder on any turn requiring some up elevator. I guess I'm not seeing it because it turns to the left and right just fine. These observations should be prefaced with the fact that I'm flying these planes in CFS3 and there might be an addition flight modeling tweaking that happens under OFF, I have the flight model setting at 'hard'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnQrE_eWpco The above isn't a film theme per se but it's a nice song by Ally Kerr.

What bothered me was when she sang it at the Oscars. It could have been much better. She sounded like she had been singing it in repeated encores for a bunch of spoiled Hollywood bigshots for three nights prior. She has beautiful pipes, but it seemed to me like someone worked to near death a willing hoarse.

The Bleriot XI-2 seater from SimOH's downloads is a hoot as the single Lewis on a pintle mount is pretty effective. It has to be because the Bleriot isn't a very fast or maneuverable kite. I also like the OFF Fee, but the darn AI flies the thing like a Brisfit, I don't see how the gunner could keep himself in the cockpit with all the gyrating that crate does when flying defensively.

Until I get a new system I'm rather stuck in QC mode, as I'm having to fly transplants in CFS3, It satisfies my flight itch, and the aircraft of OFF have FM's that are pretty good. Oddly the Roland CII has a lot of gyro procession like it was a rotary, and yet I find the Sop Camel to be almost tame like it was an inline engine, I'm tempted to look into the aircraft config file to see if there's an adjustment I can do. This is odd as I'm used to the TargetWare Richthofen's Skies Camels and their highly twitchy flight natures. Was there a patch to correct some FM bugs when BHaH came out? BTW Olham the Fee was a scout when it was used against the Eindekker. This was also the time of the Martinsyde G100 Elephant which was big enough to be a two seater in it's own right, but was flown as an offensive scout.

It would be nice if the AI 'pilots' of opposing squads went through the same problems that the player pilots encounters. In QC dogfighting I've just experienced flying through a big cloud in a Nupe 17. And I have to say it wasn't the near instant loss of 4000 feet that bothered me, it was the G-force blackout and the structural damage to the poor kite. And I was just chasing a Halberstadt into it, who ended up staying at the altitude I was suddenly ejected from, and yet he managed to handily get on my six and shoot me up as I was making a forced landing on my airfield. Dead is Dead, even for the AI pilots.. Dammit!

Well thinking about it a little deeper, I would say they carry pistols for reasons other than the other truck drivers. Why would they shoot each other it just leaves one or more of the trucks driverless and stuck on the road, blocking traffic. Just because this isn't in the US does it mean that it's complete lawlessness. BTW I know a couple of guys who have traveled that road on motorcycles and it has some gorgeous scenery. And they felt pretty safe despite the danger, comparatively.

Since this is my first ever screenshot with an OFF aircraft, ( it's being flown in CFS3..) I hope that you'll all be kind about it's rather meager resolution. I'm pretty impressed with my machine's ability to run the planes I've transplanted. I'm getting a respectable 22 to 18 FPS, but then again this is in CFS3. But it's over well populated part of France, lots of terrain objects and trees. I'll call this "A Dazzling day over Flez".

Next time make sure that Inspector 8 at the Albatros Werks isn't off his game..

No problem, it's a small bad typing habit, like using "e' in hangar. Great pictures, the front shot shows the gentle washout in both the top and bottom wings nicely.

I'm going to add this to uncleal's advice, that not all laptop's are the same. There are definitely some that can be upgraded in the video card department, but you better have all the documentation on the machine to make sure. Most of the newer netbooks are not going to play Over Flanders Fields. Something like the Acer Apsire One with the 1.66 Ghz intel Atom processor and shared video RAM wont do, it's barely enough to play SDOE's mod FS-WWI. Which by the way might be a good alternative until you can upgrade. Some of the older high end machines, like HP's Presario with the nVidia cards might do in a pinch, but there are some pretty expensive recent laptops that will play OFF-BHaH easily. Dual core processors and 1+ Gig VRAM discrete video are not the exclusive realm of desktops. But the price is much higher.

OK this isn't an Albatross, but it is the 1910 father of all ultralight aircraft. The 1910 Hans Grade Eindekker

Yes The Rumpler Monoplane Taubes were used for the "4 o'clock bombings" of Paris in fall of 1914. Apparently some people would come out and bet on whether anything of worth would be hit. I think the MASH episode called "5 oclock Charlie" borrowed from this true story.

No I've known about that image site for a few years, it's a great resource. Found a good image on Rosebud's of the Doppletaube .. I'm definately going to make this for the SDOE pre-WWI mod I'm working on..

Surely Wayfarer there are some shops nearby that do document sealing using this stuff? 27" roll of Doculam

LOL,.. Whoops, sorry Olham, my teasing you about your well deserved love of the Albatross D series should have been prefaced with a "please don't take Lewie too seriously" smiley, so I'll give myself a And for an image of the albatross CX..