33LIMA

Good to hear, Ojcar. I think the Nine's bad reputation will have been 90% due to the engine not the airframe. When it was working, the Siddley Puma, even tho down-rated to 230hp, produced a very reasonable HP and power-to-weight ratio for a 1917-18 2-seater. And there's no reason I think to believe that accounts like the ones above, or the ones below from Wikpedia, are any more or less subject to exaggeration, or are examples of extreme pilot skill imbalances, than any others. So I think the DH9, when the motor was running ok, was at least as much a match for a scout as most other 2-seaters could be - for example in 'Winged Warfare' Billy Bishop reports a 1917 fight between his flight of SIX Nieuports and a single German 2-seater, which turned into their attack and then fought them for an estimated 3 minutes, hitting and nearly killing Bishop and another pilot, before breaking off and getting away. So a well-flown 2-seater could get the best of even well-flown scouts. The Nine was obviously no exception. 'The DH.9's performance in action over the Western Front was a disaster, with heavy losses incurred, both due to its low performance, and engine failures (despite the prior de-rating of its engine). For example, between May and November 1918, two squadrons on the Western Front (Nos. 99 and 104) lost 54 shot down, and another 94 written off in accidents.[4] Despite this, on 23 August 1918, a DH9 flown by Lieutenant Arthur Rowe Spurling of 49 Squadron, with his observer, Sergeant Frank Bell, single-handedly attacked thirty Fokker D.VII fighters, downing five of them.[citation needed] Captain John Stevenson Stubbs managed 11 aerial victories in a DH9, including the highly unusual feat of balloon busting with one.' 'On 23 August 1918, Spurling was flying on a bombing mission when he became separated from his formation. Thinking he was over the British lines, he prepared to land on a German airfield near Lens which he mistook for his own, but was attacked by a German Fokker D.VII fighter. He then saw a formation of thirty more of the Fokkers. Despite the disadvantage of his flying a bomber, and being vastly outnumbered, Spurling launched a single-handed attack (not forgetting his Observer, Sergeant Frank Bell, real name George Stanley Bell), shooting down three of the German aircraft, while Sgt. Bell accounted for two more. Sharing Bell's kills, these five victories immediately made Spurling an ace. It was for this action that Spurling was awarded the DFC and Sgt Bell was awarded the DFM. Two days later Spurling shot down another D.VII over Mont Notre Dame.'

In Squadron/Signal #164 'DH9 in Action', Peter Cooksley reports, after describing some of the operational disasters, that 'Even with the engine problems, the DH9 could give a good account of itself in air-to-air combat. On one occasion, the observer of a No. 49 Squadron DH9 shot down [presumably=claimed] four enemy fighters that were attacking the unit. One pilot reported that, after dropping its bomb load, a DH9 could turn with a Fokker DVII [never mind a Rumpler CI!!] and could be tightly looped.'

If the Cessnas I've flown (just a few lessons) were anything like these DH9s I would not be typing this! Admittedly they were three-wheelers but they didn't need much rudder, the only problem I had was remembering that the yoke was not like a car steering wheel and you had to use the brakes on the pedals to turn or line up for takeoff, instead! I just managed to get off in a DH9 with no bombload and found the sudden lurch to one side was still there, just not quite so bad. Once in the air the Nine is a real barge, even empty, some AI-flown Rumpler CI's were all over me (my gunner was no use, never fired a shot in return, so I have reverted him to stock Lewis Mk2 and told him to do better next time). It was all I could do to keep her from stalling in even fairly gentle turns. The DH9 was supposed to be quite manoeuvrable with bombs gone, able to dogfight with scouts, but I don't think I will be trying that myself!

Oh, that's gorgeous, Quack, would not be out-of-place in an exhibition of WW1 air war art. A really dramatic study, well up to RoF standards.

Will give the rudder a try. The effect seems very sudden, like one of her wheels suddenly went fully braked or locked solid so it must take a very quick reaction with the rudder! Ah yes the '_Gunner' version of the Lewis, that is the 'toned-down' one that comes with Peter01's FMs, it it not? I don't like it as the observers seem to be unable to bring their guns to bear, to the point they are pretty useless. I like flying 2-seaters sometimes so I change them back and I don't mind the better gunners when attacking, tho it can be hard on flight-mates who tend to attack uncautiously...but TWO effective Lewis guns?!! I don't think I will be applying for a home defence staffel or kest, any time soon!

Is it just me or are others finding that the DH9 and 9a are prone to fairly wild swings during the takeoff run - with a bomb-load anyway? i'm still practicing but have to let the otehrs take off first because no matter what i do at some point she just goes off at a wild angle and even if I get her off she still wants to yaw wildly for a bit before settling down. If this is 'pilot-induced oscillation' it's the first time I've seen it. Only other issue I have found is that the FPS dropped badly, when looking back at my flight in the external view. Setting shadows to FALSE in the .ini files killed the shadows of course but the FPS are now fine, so I would recommend that for anyone else experiencing a similar issue, same trick helps with the A Team DH4, too. I have not tried attacking the the new DH's yet, those twin Lewis mounts look a bit scary.

Yes another great new bird for FE from Stephen! This and the 'Nine' can be a right pain to take off, my usual 'Full speed ahead and damn the Dry Martinis!' technique seems often to result in a ground loop and a fireball, but practice makes perfect, no doubt. She's not quite as pretty as the one below but I'm hoping Stephen won't be able to resist the temptation of this classic warbird for much longer...

Hi Buddy! I'm fairly sure that apart from the stuff recommended for Ojcar's Armchair Aces campaigns, like the medals mod, planes and groundobjects such as ground MGs, the mods I'm using currently, all from CombatAce I'm pretty sure, are: - Polak's Skymod, which produces the dramatic horizon clouds; - a cloud mod, not sure which one but probably an SF2 one as 1st gen clouds don't seem to work due to the different particle system used by 2nd generation Third Wire sims; - Shrikehawk's worn airfield textures; - a hand-edited Flightengine.ini, with MeshDetailSize=22 as this figure means city buildings are drawn right out to the horizon; - an engine exhaust effect mod which cuts the over-done (to my eye) stock smoke trails and helps FPS a bit too - can't find it now, must be here somewhere! - a hand-edited MissionControl.ini, edited as below to 'comment out' the two lines in the [Map] section which create the little plane icons, which takes the AWACS-effect out of the in-flight map (combined with Gameplay Options set on 'Hard', this edit keeps map and screen clear of all the unrealistic visual aids but I can still bring up the on-screen info box with my plane's speed/alt/heading by hitting Alt+D if I want to have a peek): //FriendlyIcon=MapFriendlyIcon.tga //EnemyIcon=MapEnemyIcon.tga - Edward's Flanders Terrain, needed for the excellent Bloody April campaign (I have tried most of the other terrain mods but am generally fairly happy with the stock terrain, rough areas and all, not least because the area of the Lines is better blended in, not quite as good as OFF but still reasonably convincing. Other mods I've tried but haven't so far re-installed after my last system re-install: - Vanderstock's 'Updated Trench Textures'; - Laton's Smoke Effects V.2.

Having started to fly RFC more regularly, and being only really interested in campaigns, I'm finding that RFC ones seem to consist almost exclusively of long cross-country flights with enemy aircraft rarely, more often never, seen. A few others have posted similar problems (eg the 'Boring April' thread on the Help forum). So it's not just me, and not just my install. I generally don't use the TAC/'radar' or labels and when I do use the latter for nav or a quick 'scan' I have the range set to 1 mile. I like flying 'all aids off' since learning how much more immersive this feels to me, flying First Eagles. In OFF I have to turn the 'radar' on to use padlock and I miss the lack of stall warning as the CFS3/OFF stallsound is inaudible; but I generally manage OK, steering clear of using the on-screen aids, at least when flying German. The OFF FlakMod helps me locate targets better by producing tighter & faster-appearing flak burst patterns, but no more lethal. However, 'Archie' is rarely much help when flying RFC, especially over the enemy side of the lines, and the lack of 'trade' in RFC campaigns is making these increasingly tedious. Not good. First problem is that - as far as I can see - planes in OFF are only rendered at all at about a mile and a half. This varies a bit, depending whether you are in cockpit view or the hateful CFS3 'fisheye lens' wide-angle external view, but it's still quite a short range - double that, say 2-3 miles, would be better. So they are therefore invisible until you are quite close. I should not have to use zoom - it's cetainly inconvenient and it's not realistic either; the idea of WW1 pilots scanning the air with binos I find ridiculous. As I've said before, IMHO it is critical that this is improved in OFF2, so as to make planes, even if as specks, visible at longer range. Anyway... ...even allowing for that, there seem to be few Hun planes around. If I 'warp' in an RFC campaign, sometimes I get straight back to base; sometimes I come out of warp automatically at some point, which I realise signifies there are enemies around, but I can't see them. I have tried turning the 'radar' on and even they they rarely appear, even if I set the radar's range to maximum (8 miles). Friendly flights are somewhat more common - tho as usual they hard to spot without the 'radar' and/or labels turned on, but at least they DO appear, fairly often. German flights are a different matter. They seem to be rarer than hen's teeth. I fly with various mods but don't believe ANY of them could be causing this; for example I know the AI empty weight mod can cause the odd lower-powered plane in a flight, at some airfields only, to crash into obstructions after takeoff but it can't be causing all the Huns to crash! It's like their own airfield defence MGs are shooting them all down or the pilots are just sleeping in! Or that something has damaged the process which sets the German flights flying, or has got them stuck on a 'low' intensity setting. I have tried changing the air activity density setting in Workshop and also tried different sqaudrons, different time periods and different versions of Bletchley's campaign mod. Nothing much seems to help. The only things I have noticed that might indicate the source of this issue are: 1. when installing OFF, towards the end I got an error (Vista 64) re file c:\Windows\System32\stdole.tlb - unable to register type library - error accessing the OLE registry'. When starting OFF, I also get an error 'DXFile 1.2 - RT error 429 - ActiveX component cannot create object'. I tried to fix this by a full uninstall and re-istall, with no effect - I still get both messages. From what I can find out, this is likely something to do with the user interface and/or playing videos. These play ok for me and anyway I tend to RULE OUT this issue as a reason for my empty skies, unless someone cal tell me otherwise.. 2. German planes show up much more often when I'm flying 2-seater missions, especially bombing ones. Issue 2 seems be be a better clue. I've noticed that in my RFC scout campaigns, even with Bletchley's mod, I seem to get a LOT of missions which involve flying behind my own lines, or just up to the Lines. In fact I can't recall the last time I got an RFC scout mission that took me into Hunland, apart from an escort mission. With 2-seaters, ALL the missions I get seem to be at least up to the Lines, with most being over the German side eg bombing raids. So I'm thinking that the problem may not be that the Huns are not flying - that they are, but (entirely realistically) preponderantly over their own side of the lines. The underlying problem, then, would be that RFC campaigns are generating too many pointless missions, to areas on your own side where (quite rightly) few enemies ever appear. I had already started ingoring 'behind own lines' RFC scout mission flightplans, and instead flying these as line patrols, just on the friendly side of the lines. Doing this, I still rarely see anything, just the occasional Hun 2-seater or small flight thereof. Probably quite realistic! So, in future I am going to ignore ALL flightplans for RFC and RAF campaign missions that do NOT take me at least to the enemy side of the trench lines. Instead, I will fly these either: (i) as a Line Patrol, just over into the ENEMY side of the Lines, to deter or catch 2-seaters on recces or art obs; or most often, (ii) as an Offensive Patrol, going a few miles into 'Hunland'; or (iii) as a Distant Offensive Patrol, going a longer way over. Ground attack or escort missions only, will I fly as per the allocated flight plan. Others who have been experiencing a dearth of Huns in RFC campaigns might want to try this too. I have no idea yet if it will make any difference, at all. If it turns out that there are few Huns in Hunland too, I am at a loss as to where the problem lies! It's a pity, because OFF has some beautiful RFC birds to fly and fight in, with great skins and nice bump-mapped ribs, inclung the Tripehound:

This is getting scary! First Armchair Aces 1917 mission with Jasta 5 in April was fairly quiet, to start with anyway. A short chase after a couple of BEs who looked to be sneaking in to bomb our airfield ended with both being knocked down by the Albatrosses already chasing them. A short hop over the lines was quite a peaceful little jaunt, until looking behind and counting my flightmates, more out of incipient boredom than anything, revealed there were 4 of them not the 3 I'd taken off with. Hmmm, that's not quite right, is it? A hasty closer look revealed that the tail-end charlie was an RFC SPAD 7! A pell-mell combat ensued; I shot down two SPADs but lost one of mine. But the second mission - that was as hectic a mission as I've ever flown in First Eagles, barring none! Just after takeoff, the 3 of us got jumped by a pair of Triplanes and I was lucky to knock down both, mainly by the slightly underhand but rather effective tactic of sneaking up on them while they were trying to nail my comrades. Forming up again and heading for our patrol sector over the lines none the worse for wear, I could see that there were several air battles in progress, most picked out by flakbursts, and joining the nearest, I managed to get behind a DH2 and fairly shot his engine to hell and back at point blank range, to no great effect it has to be said. After I broke away, a DIII from a different staffel promptly showed me how to do it right by shooting off the De Havilland's lower right wing. Not to be outdone by this, I turned my attention to another pair of pushers who were dogfighting an Albatros nearby. FE2s they turned out to be, big, slow-moving packing cases with a suprising ability to pull some tight low-speed turns to get out of your way just when you were lining up a shot. After a bit of weaving about, I managed to get a long burst into one from behind without getting a stoppage and he fairly fell to pieces in my fire, no doubt about that one. By this time, I had lost sight of my flight-mates and headed towards two other planes coming my way, who turned out to be not my friends, but two more Triplanes, seemingly intent on avenging the squadron mates I had despatched earlier. A glance behind revealed one of my comrades had come from nowhere and was now right behind me, so we pitched into them, head on. I've got two guns and you have one, I told myself, and held my course with the finger on the trigger and the leading Triplane's engine coming right for me, getting quickly bigger. He's not going to break, is he...no he didn't and nor did I...untill the very last minute when I lost my nerve and pushed the stick forward...about the same time the Triplane did the same thing. Goodnight Vienna, as the saying goes. This is going to be interesting!

Wow - a Ninak already!! Another beauty - off to grab it now!!!

Great stuff, grabbed it now, off to check I have all that is needed. I have been looking forward to this one especially, as 1917 is the period I like best! Brilliant - thanks a million!!!

Well done and best wishes for the future!

I have always used the 'Normal' setting for 'Enemy Skill Level'. With this, I tend to find the bad guys are mostly hard enough opponents and the realistic variation you encounter is highly realistic. But I get somewhat more kills than is realistic, even allowing for the fact I'm the equivalent of a very experienced pilot and the average WW1 flyer was much less experienced and often inadequately trained. I think this is mainly because, when I do manage to get behind them, they often find it hard to escape, unless they have a faster plane. I don't think this is necessarily unrealistic - for instance, I have just finished reading Billy Bishop's 'Winged Warfare' and it is very obvious how an experienced flyer could often find himself dominating enemies composed mostly of 'average' pilots at best. And I certainly don't want to get shot down much more often than I already am, at 'Hard' the bad guys are certainly no slouches. But I would like a subtle re-balancing - an enemy who flies slightly better, more often, but doesn't necessarily shoot any better, perhaps. Certainly not a setting which puts the average enemy skill level above the average of my own squadron. I tried out the 'Hard' setting for 'Enemy Skill Level' and found it definitely made the enemies fly mostly like very capable pilots and was certainly a whole lot scarier; but I have not stayed with it because I understand it doesn't affect my squadron mates. I believe from reading other SF forums that the 'Hard' setting gives the enemy units more aces, presumably by leveling up their unit's average skill levels; but because this isn't applied to your own side, while it may give the player a greater challenge, it results in heavier losses amongst your own squadron. I like looking out for my flight-mates, to the extent I select the same ones each flight in campaign and try to bring them throught it aliove with some kills of their own. This modest but effective element of flight management is one of the little-mentioned strong points of FE, that helps make it the best sim for recreating the experience of being a flight leader in WW1, as well as being the best at dogfighting. I'd rather not have slightly better enemies, if the cost of that is greater losses from my flight, which i understand is what happens. Ideally I suppose what I'd like is for my own side's AI to be sharpened up at the 'Hard' setting as well as the enemies, tho I don't know it that's even possible - perhaps by editing Campaign files. If it could be done, even if it would only work for the 'Hard' setting (because otherwise your own side would be the supermen), that might be better. I say 'might' because things are actually fairly good as they are now - last night a 40 Squadron Bloody April campaign - I just love those little silver Nieuport 17s! - came to an end when my flight of 4 ran into about 6-8 V-strutters and tho I got 3 of them they first shot down my 3 flight mates and then got me too! So, what Enemy Skill Levels do others fly at, in FE campaigns? And how do you find it?

I think I will stick to 'Normal' enemy skill level. I'm mostly flying Ojcar's Armchair Aces at the moment and never mind my flight-mates, I the player am finding it hard enough to survive from one month to the next. Last night, a promising 1916 career in 20 Squadron flying the FE2b came to an unhappy end. After me and my gunner had bagged the odd Fokker in our first couple of missions, we got bagged ourselves by a hot-shot flying a twin-gunned EIV who was all over us like a rash.

Oh my goodness - a Nine, and so soon! Plenty of time to be in Ojcar's Armchair Aces 1918 as well as Quack's Independent Force campiagn. Brilliant - thank you Stephen!!!

Re the SE5-SE5a thing, apparently the 150hp engine is likely not the distinguishing feature of an SE5, it's the more sharply-raked wingtips, in the slightly longer-span wings (with the less raked, more rectangular tips denoting SE5a, not a 200hp engine). This is per 'Aeroplanes of the Royal Aircraft Factory' by PR Hare (Crowood, 1999), where, describing the early evolution of the SE, it's noted 'The Factory's drawings of the aircraft...with the shorter span wings [but still with the 150hp engine] bear the title S.E.5a, clearly suggesting that it was this feature, rather than engine power, which distinguished the two variants. However, the RFC's rigging notes, when eventually issued, were entitled 'SE5 - 150 hp Hispano-Suiza: SE5a - 200hp Hispano-Suiza' and since it was these documents rather than the production drawings which received the wider circulation, the latter, incorrect distinction has become widely accepted...despite the new drawings being issued as quickly as possible, it was too late to incorporate the amendment into the initial batch of twenty-five aircraft built by the Royal aircraft Factory and these were completed with the longer-span wings of the prototype, making them the only true SE5s.'

I'm sure you will do well against the V-strutters in your Pup; I only missed this shot because I was too slow on the trigger:

Wooo, pretty! They look elegant rather than lethal but First Eagle's Pups are great little albatros-killers, one of my favourite add-on planes. Nice study.

No worries, thank YOU for the excellent skin packs, Quack. I'm firmly on the 'PC10 was BROWN, not green!!!' side of the debate (tho slighty-greenish-brown, as well as the chocolate confirmed by AG Lee, is fine by me too) and the subtly weathered look of your Biff's cowls is good too, never mind the extra squadron markings!

Good to hear Ojcar, would be good to have the better cockpit PoV, especially. Marc, I dunno about the Flaming Onions and pom-pom but I noticed that Ojcar's Armchair Aces, if installed with the recommended mods, has the AA MGs working (they saved my bacon in a Rumpler CI campaign when two of got mobbed near a friandly airfield by some rather unfriendly RFC Martinsydes and Fees, by orbiting over the ground guns till they brought down most of my attackers. Cost me a lot of holes and a dead observer!). It may be possible to get all working by editing the targets.ini or wherever they are set, but just how dangerous do you want ground fire to be???!! The Archie I can live with but not the MGs now they're there too, unless I stay well over a thousand feet!

Hi Spriggs! Do you find your squadmates suffer heavy casualties flying with 'Hard' enemy in campaign? Or maybe you don't care

Hi Marc - Quack74 has just posted a set of Brisfits (needing only the .LOD file from the original model); 3 out of 4 have no centre section Lewis and he has removed the mount as well as the weapon. I had to copy an existing engine sound as I don't have the Proploop3.wav these use; but otherwise they work fine for me and the dark chocolate brown scheme looks better than the original washed-out green, to my eyes; http://combatace.com...48-and-62-sqns/

Very interesting DeIGS, would your ground effect be a 'noise' one like these? - http://combatace.com/files/file/12378-ground-effects-collection/ Would you mind sharing your edit - my 8800GT may not be able to cope but I'd like to give it a try! TIA!

Another nice pic, DeIGS, and another question - that looks like Jan Tuma's terrain but may I ask, where does the highly-textured airfield surface come from? Is it from one of the FE airfield mods? It looks very effective, and it would be good to have a hi-res ground texture where you see it closest, ie on the airfield.