33LIMA

Got it, looking forward to re-living your second screenie; always liked the Nieu 28 since the 1/72 Revell kit came out in the 60s and now I can fly it in campaign, great stufff!!!

Nice - thank you! I'm off to grab it now!

Thanks Ojcar...off to grab them now! Edit....ooops! Not visible yet, they must be pending Admin clearance...patience, patience!

Thanks Baxter! I'm near-certain the main sky mod I use is this one, by Panama Red, which seems to work by producing the incredibly atmospheric distant/horizon cloud effects: http://combatace.com/files/file/9664-realistic-sky-mod-first-eagles/ I also use a cloud mod - which I think is NOT the one that came with the above mod, as I vaguely recall having probs with its Environmentsystem.ini - to 'beef up'/texture the stock volumetric 'cotton wool' clouds. But I DO use the horizon cloud textures from Panama Red's mod. I have no idea if his realistic sky mod (the horizon cloud part) changes automatically - or at all - with season/time or if (as I suspect) you need to choose files manually to choice - I vaguely recall viewing all the horizon cloud images in the mod, and choosing the most dramatic - but I do know that whether I chose the file myself or FE chose it for me, I think the effect as I see it is a must-have for FEG/FE2.

Worth it when you get there; tho at the moment I'm back with the stock terrain whose appearance I find looks most like the natural hues I see out my window (unlike the rather garish shades on first release of FE), has a convincing lower contrast between the Lines and the other countryside, and has least visible tile repetition, tho I like stock, Jan T and Flanders too; it's nice to be spoiled for choice

What Migbuster said. The critical point may be that in FE2/SF2 sims, the install folder is 'Terrains' ie plural, while in FE/SF it's 'Terrain' ie singular, a detail that's easy to miss. One of those areas where install instructions based on a 1st gen sim can be wrong for a 2nd gen, even if you remember to use the Saved Games 'mods' folder.

Looking forward to your Tripes, Quack! The A Team Tripehound is a great machine tho I'd prefer a slightly browner scheme (which I think you favour) as - in line with Arthur Gould Lee's 'our planes are choclate brown' description - I belong to the 'PC10 is brown not green!' school.

Hi Ojcar! Thanks for the feedback. I might have fixed it, but perhaps it is co-incidence...I deleted my existing British pilots and started a brand new Armchair Aces 1917 campaign with a brand new pilot, created just for that, in 8 Naval, and this time I got into the planning map! It did not do me much good tho, as my rudder was shot off during a series of battles during my patrol, first with DFWs, then with some V-strutters, then with Rumplers, then some more Albatroses, helped by some DH2s...there is plenty of variety and action in your campaigns! As a final gesteure on my way back over the lines I managed to chase a Hun off the tail of a friend and got away by diving, but on landing at the nearest airfield, my plane rolled over at the last minute abd blew up! Even if it's not fixed, I can live with this; tho I like to use the planning map to drag my 'initial point' a bit further from my patrol objective, so that if I use 'Alt+N' I have plenty of time to check out the area before I get too close! Looking forward to Armchair Aces 1918!!!

Great stuff Stephen, off to grab 'em now. Hope you can also manage another new plane or three in the days ahead, FE is still in need of a proper 1916-17 BE2, a 1917-18 German general purpose 2-seater, and a better Albatros DII, all major types.

Grand job - grabbing 'em now!!!

Off to grab it now, HPW, great work! I've been away from simming for some weeks for various reasons (not least some irritations in my last few OFF campaigns eg no Huns) and this will get me back in harness, especially if it improves the quirky Pfalz!!

Wow! Very nice work Stephen, and a pleasant surprise to find waiting for me on return from holidays!

Woooo, nice, grabbing it now!

Friedrichshafen DI, 1916, serial # D2405, 160hp Merc DIII, 2x'Spandaus'.

Love the Jasta 5 Albatros - beautiful finish! 1. You probably have the original First Eagles without the Dr1, as Whiteknight says. The Expansion Pack which added the Dr1 is no longer available; you need to either (i) buy First Eagles Gold or First Eagles 2 from the Third Wire shop or (ii) register at the A Team Skunnkworks (you have to request access by email, to get the downloads) and download the DR1 which is available there, with many other planes: http://cplengineeringllc.com/SFP1/ 2. To remove the information boxes, (i) make sure you have combat set to 'Hard' in the game options screen and (ii) hit Alt+D twice - the first time, it adds an FPS display, the second time, it clears the screen of all text displays. You can also hand-edit one of the game files to remove the little aircraft icons from the in-flight map. 3. Sorry, don't know. 4. FE does not repordice the effect of rough ground on your wheels, there is no wheel rumble. No wind effects either I think. But the head-movement effects and the visible and audible shudder/buffet near the stall is very effective, compared to other sims. 5. There is no option to adjust gun range but the 'Hard' gunnery setting is most realistic.

Kicked off my first Camel campaign yesterday and chose 70 Sqdn as they got their machines in July 1917, nice and early. I'm fairly sure I chose 'Fighter' as my pilot type (in fact I think the 'Squad' drop-down list you get when creating a pilot is based on this first choice, and don't think I could have picked 70 Sqdn if I had NOT first chosen 'fighter', rather than 'bomber'). I soon got tired of being allocated recce or art obs missions, even getting an escort of real recce/art obs aircraft like FE2s, on occasion. So I installed Bletchley's late 1917 mod, to get more realistic missions. Next mission, got a railyard attack which is not even in the mod's list of British fighter missions. Confirmed the mod was installed ok, which it was. After a bit of poking about, I found out that the problem seems to be that in my pilot dossier for the 70 Sqdn campaign, the unit is described as 'Bomber' not 'Fighter'! I hand-edited this to 'Fighter' with Wordpad and saved the dossier (I have done this before, to ressurect dead pilots so I know that pilot dossiers can be edited in this fashion). I also checked that 70 Sqdn is listed in the squadron list file as fighter, not bomber, and it's fine, and it isn't double-listed in the bomber squadron list, either. But when I relaunched the 70 Sqdn campaign, at the briefing screen, I noticed that the squadron's 'principle (OFF spelling!) role' was still wrongly described as 'bombing and reconnaisance' (probably was, all along, but I hadn't noticed). And on inspecting the hand-edited pilot dossier, 'Fighter' has been somehow reset in the file, to 'Bomber'! It's still july 1917 and much too soon for my Camels to transition to mainly ground attack, even then we should still be primarily fighters, certainly not considered bombers. Can't understand how a fighter squadron, listed as such in the games squadron list, has ended up as a bomber one. Can't remember when this happened but believe it was from the outset. Also can't understand why it's being reset to 'bomber', after I changed it. Has anyone else noticed fighter squadrons being reset as bombers, or knows how to fix it? I think my next step is probably to bin the pilot and that campaign and start afresh (the campaign has also been a bit strange in that I've flown three or four missions and seen only friendly planes, despite being set on medium, not light, air activity) on the basis something has got corrupted somewhere.Would be better if there was a way to fix it, especially if this strikes again.

Yes many thanks again Stephen, off to grab 'em now!!!

Peter01's FM pack includes a Liberty-engined DH4.

I rarely bother accessing the loadout screen as I mostly fly scouts and when given mud-moving missions or flying 2-seaters I'm happy to accept the default loadout provided. However it would be nice to be able to select loadouts on occasion, or markings as well...but I can't. I've discovered that if I try to access the loadout screen, FE2 locks up hard, only way out is Ctrl+Alt+Del then close via Task Manager. This seems connected to mods; I had a clean 2nd FE2 install (copied the .exe then renamed, then ran so it created a second mods folder) and it didn't have this problem till I started installing extra planes. It might be just one plane that's causing the problem as it hit my second install after I installed a handful of planes. I didn't experiment to try to isolate an 'offender', as I don't really miss the Loadout feature much, but if there's an easy fix, that doesn't involve sacrificing any planes, I'd be glad to hear of it!