-Hawkeye-

You and your squadron are to be congratulated yourselves, Lucas! IMHO, in every tournament 1PL enters, if you're not already the underdogs, you volunteer to fight on that side; and once you do, your squad has a huge effect on how things end up, because you and your guys are a force to be reckoned with. For the times that I've been lucky enough to be on the same side as 1PL, I've been extremely impressed by your group. I always know that if I come up against 2 or more of you, I am in extreme danger. The times that I do manage to shoot one of you down, I know it's because you're alone and at a disadvantage. It's an honor to fight against your squadron and the whole blue team. Keep up the great work! S!!!

Wow you're going to replace your Crosswinds! I haven't gone that far and don't see any reason to right now. I'll bet there's somebody in this unit who would be interested in buying them, if you plan to sell them. But I wouldn't be surprised if you handed them down to Carl. Thanks for the files, I'll get them when I'm off my phone and on my PC. S!

Same as Raz said. Have to mow today though. UPDATE: I'll be there at the normal FiF start time on TS.

Saw your posts on your forum and this looks really cool, although I haven't a clue what the map looks like. Personally I like the U-2VS and would love to get in with any of those planes, either side. Bet we could come up with a lot better group on a non-4th of July or any increased notice day. It's great to see some planned activity in FC!

Well flown by the blue team, they certainly proved that they can kick butt when they're ready to. Thanks for the fun competition! Here's to more of that in the future.

You all really deserve these.... every one of you! S!

Wow, fully outstanding! 1,000 thanks!!

Believe me, I try Thanks once again for the recognition!

Congrats, all you jet jockeys! Well done!

He really has turned into an expert scout pilot who is fully capable of downing any enemy at any time. He'll be back at the top in no time. S!

In the above recording you got to hear it first with the canopy open and then when they shut it, took off and did maneuvers. Although somewhat more attenuated with the canopy closed, it still was a tremendous difference from the sim, IMHO.

Really came to life on my Klipsh speakers/subwoofer. I could FEEL it. This is what the sims need; realistic sound. I'm especially disgusted with the machine gun sounds in BoX / FC. "shh-shh-shh". Really? They gotta be able to come up with something better than that. A plane like the P-47, it oughta SHAKE the plane. Open cockpit plane, machine guns are LOUD when you're right next to them (watch any live-fire video). Sure they can't get a real recording for everything, but there's a lot out there. People joke about planes like the "tractor" D.VII in RoF....have you ever heard an engine with straight pipes or bad gaskets at low RPM? Just like that. N28? Lawn mower, maybe, but that's exactly how the real ones sound. Why the others are so much different I can't understand.

Great work keeping our team alive, all. S!

Deleted, update was apparently not a new one. Last one must not have completed properly is all I can guess.

Travel on I-75 in Kentucky and Tennessee and you'll quickly see that straight road one in five miles is not even close to being true, although there are many good stretches in all of the states. Just not nearly that many and in some states a lot less than others.

One other thought about the S.E.5a trim.... perhaps it was meant more to counteract the weight of full bombs, max fuel, etc. In other words, the plane at it's maximum possible gross take off weight. Considering that stabilizer trim is mostly a feature of 2-seaters, that could be a reason. However the Sopwith Triplane is a strange exception which did not carry bombs, to my knowledge.

Can't see why any manufacturer would want more up bias on a plane that already climbs by itself at more than 75% throttle. I don't quite want to defend how they model these planes or how their FMs work, but one thing we have to remember is that the control columns in the real planes were not spring centered devices that pushed themselves toward the exact physical center of their travel in any direction. Who's to say where the stick was positioned for straight-and-level flight in any of these planes, or what forces were pushing back against them in that condition? That said, the position of the elevator necessary to achieve straight-and-level flight does appear to be excessively down on almost every RoF plane and is known to be incorrect at least for the Dr.I and probably others compared to the real planes. IMHO this is a clue to some basic common flaw in the flight engines of both RoF and BoX. To me it seems like the wings of all planes have too much lift at a zero angle of incidence as opposed to achieving higher percentages of their lift through more positive angles. This necessitates counteracting it with excessive amounts of down elevator in these sims. Over all the planes meet all of their performance specs, but how they behave in level flight or in more neutral angles of incidence seems off. Another clue to this is that planes with lesser wing loading (greater wing areas) such as Dr.I seem more affected by this, while those with greater wing loading (such as SPAD) seem less affected. Those people with less spring tension and/or greater leverage against their springs (i.e. longer columns) on their joysticks seem less bothered by this for obvious reasons. If the absence of any ability to move response curves up or down remains permanent (let alone having custom curves for individual planes), having a stick with minimal spring centering force may be the only viable solution.

Speeds may be "spot on" for what they specify, but those speeds are the pre-updated RoF speeds, so we're back to the slow Alb. RFC people should be happy now. If they flippin' make the R.E.8 so fast we can't even catch one in level flight I'm going to be pissed. With regard to the S.E.5a, I don't think they flew around at full throttle all of the time like we do. You have to wonder if there's some manual somewhere that instructed them what a good cruise RPM was. I don't think those engines would have lasted very long at full throttle all of the time, but hey, they only have to last us one sortie.

Ummm....huh? I liked it the way it was They wanted to make it more like RoF?

Haha, everything old is new again. An all-time classic

The culmination of some excellent work. Congratulations!!

I hear what you're saying and I would absolutely like to love the D.Va more than the D.III in RoF, even though that's historically inaccurate. But here's an excerpt from a typical D.Va server stats sortie log. As you can see, the damage was only .005; I mean, he had his overhead Lewis elevated and was firing desperation shots while maneuvering hard below because he knew he was about to die. Furthermore, I was only at about 1 or 2 hundred meters coming down to him at ground level, so no great dive distance. That damage was the ONLY damage in the entire log up to that point: (Pilot name redacted) [SPAD 7.C1 180hp] has damaged (0.005) JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] 30.05.2019 22:15:35 EDIT: at this point I am coming down and rolling onto his six JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] has damaged (0.015) 30.05.2019 22:15:35 JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] has damaged (0.005) 30.05.2019 22:15:35 JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] has damaged (0.972) 30.05.2019 22:15:35 JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] was disabled 30.05.2019 22:15:37 JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] has wounded (1.0) 30.05.2019 22:15:37 JG1Luftritter_J4 [Albatros D.Va] has died Anyway I can never love a plane like that when it's happened to me so many times, sometimes ending decent V-lives. The truth is the enemy rarely shoots me down, it's almost always something like this or AAA, and that's frustrating. However, it obviously SAID that that person shot me down. Embarrassing. As for the handling or maneuvering difference between the D.III and D.Va, take my word for it, given the proper response curve settings it is, for all intents and purposes, zero. There is just one thing, a minor tendency for the D.III to balk in a nose-up left turn situation; but once you get a good feel for it, along with the response curve settings, you can almost use it as an advantage by rising above the enemy in that left turn....there's a point of balance that it will ride on and almost hover without dropping. Not like an N17 or anything, but better than a D.Va in that one respect. It's just a tool in it's arsenal. All of the other performance parameters of speed and climb are almost identical. I think mainly what you perceive by flying without curves is that the D.Va does require less less pitch correction (less pitch "trim") to make it fly straight and level hands-off and so just acts more tractable than the D.III when you don't use any corrections....and that one difference does affect every aspect of maneuverability quite heavily when left uncorrected. In any case this isn't supposed to change your mind because obviously you have no problems making it work outstanding for you. The fact is it's probably the pitch curve itself that causes my problem. Although any variation of an S-curve does actually soften elevator response near the center or neutral point, it does catch up and actually accelerates it near the extremes of max up and max down. I've never had any other plane respond to that the way that the D.Va does, it must be just weak enough at the hairy edge to break it in the wrong circumstances; so it has to be my own fault. Still, I love the way it flies with curves, so I guess it will just remain a love/hate relationship. None of this will be a problem or factor in FC and so far I'm doing great even flying a plane like the Dr.I in that sim. In the mean time, I'll stick with my D.III in RoF, given the opportunity, and hope others will understand why. S!

You did, I heard the impacts on at least 2 separate occasions. Now if that had been me my wings would have come right off in the D.Va. For example just last Thurs I was flying a D.Va on Wargrounds and took one hit from a SPAD of .005 or .007, something like that. I was circling over his head at ground level and dropped in for the kill.... wings came right off. And he gets a kill credit for that. It even happened to me when I was flying with you and others in FiF, that time you fought all of those N28's. One hit, turn, wings fall off. That only seems to happen in MMP; I never lose my wings ever practicing in SP. If given any choice at all I'll fly a D.III over a D.Va every time. Same basic performance, damage model way better.

Would like to see you get away with that with a Darling, Mein, Wrongway, Cuban, Talbot or HL in even one of the gun positions

Sorry, but no. First you have to hold it and that interferes with handling; and most buttons can jump back and forth if you're not holding even pressure on it all of the time, as in times of increased stress. Second even that small amount of time will preclude snap shots taken during hard maneuvering. Also, that sudden move from one point of view to another requires you to have time to readjust your flight path. Your accurate shot opportunity will often be lost in that interval. When you are ALWAYS in exactly alignment with your sight, it changes things a ton because it becomes a simpler task aligning vectors with no uncertainty about making corrections when your bullets aren't going exactly where you thought. It is funny, both HL and I had both come to the same conclusion long ago, and completely without knowledge of each other. Only later did we discover our common methods, and as far as I'm concerned, that only convinced me all the more. The person that initially inspired me to take this route was Peter Zvan. I've never known or talked to him, but I was the recipient of his incredible shooting on plenty of occasions. He was always a favorite to win fighter competitions, and it was well known that he flew with fixed views only. I have no idea how he maintained such good SA doing that. My compromise was a combination of TIR with a fixed home view. A throwback to the days of 2 dof in early IL2, but a little better. You can actually use 3 of the 6 axis without ever becoming misaligned with your gun sight.