DD_Brando

Young man, I'd have you know that we have a perfectly excellent DSL connection to our earth-closet in the back garden. Many's the night I have spent out there, perched on our luxury, treble-hole, family model plank and musing on the wonders of the Internet. Recently I discovered how to ease up a bit on the spade-work. When the smell gets too bad, try Google Earth. B

It's all in the abbreviation, AGP. The driver enables the Accelerated Graphics Port to function correctly. A handy thing to have enabled I used to have mobos that used the VIA chipsets and had similar problems getting that particular one to 'stick'. I recall it was all about having the correct set of Hyperion (VIA) drivers for the specific motherboard. You should see a useful improvement in your graphics output. Well done Rog! B

I've come pretty close to figuring in this lineup a few times Back in '84 I picked up a brand new Russian side-car outfit for the princely sum of £2,000:00. All black & shiny, it was sitting outside my flat on this particular Sunday morning when I determined to head out for a day's hacking around the Devon lanes. The road outside was one-way, but just 20 yards back downhill it was two-way where another road diverged from it which happened to be the route I wanted to take. Well, it was a quiet Sunday morning with no traffic around and very quiet, and my new ride had the unique feature of a reverse gear that I had yet to try out. So I donned my leathers, picked up my lid and went out into the sunshine. After going through the strange ritual of the outward-swinging kick-start, and having the satisfaction of hearing the engine fire and settle down into that smooth, shuffling rhythm that only a Boxer engine can make, I reached down and shifted the chunky aluminium lever that engaged reverse. There was a mild clonk from the gearbox - so far, so good - and so I eased out the clutch lever and rolled on some throttle.... .....and all Hell broke loose! As fast as you could read that last line the outfit tore off backwards down the street.....and I got a first-hand lesson in the 'castor effect' and how it works! You all must know that oscillation that develops when you start rolling a P-39 up the runway? A little shimmy that has to be controlled by a gentle hand on the gas and the rudder to keep you rolling up the centre of the track? Well, try to imagine doing that tail-first and then factor in the additional problems of drive from only one wheel, plus the front wheel becoming the rear wheel which is also offset. So I'm not trying to steer an isosceles triangle but a right-angled triangle. Confused? Not half as much as I was, hurtling erratically backwards and trying desperately to deal with that terrifying phenomenon known in motorcycling terms as a "tank-slapper", as the steering (and the handlebars!) flipped from lock to lock. Even now I can't remember that I did much to bring the rig under control. It's really difficult to operate clutch, throttle or brake when they're mounted on a bar that is wildly oscillating, but somehow we ended up halted about fifty yards back down the road, perched on the pavement six inches away from the plate-glass window of a florists shop on one side, and about the same distance from a shiny new Range Rover on the other. I wasn't really surprised to hear that old Boxer was still purring away. My left hand was clinging to the bar and the clutch lever, and the ding in the fuel tank showed where the back of my thumb had been banged against it. Without letting go I leant down and eased the lever back into "forwards", silently vowing never to attempt any excursions in another direction again. I know that one actually has to remove oneself utterly from the gene pool to have a hope of winning the not-so-coveted DA. I failed there, but you might definitely have seen old George back there, giving me ten points for method! B

No-o. I believe that to be a Mk.II "Wherethe****amI?" hat. A distinct improvement over the Mk.I B

I use pedals. I did try using the left pedal as my mike key, but I found it tricky to use while I was kicking rudder left. I would often find that I'd opened the channel by accident, or vice versa. I guess the best answer would be if I could make press-to-talk into a toggle command rather than a hold-down. Maybe someone knows of a way to rig that? As for extra 'bits' - well I've already made quite a few. Before I had rudder pedals I used one of those hole-punchers (used for filing documents) as a foot switch. It was wired directly to the shift function in my FF Pro joystick and allowed me to double the number of commands available at the top of the stick. It was neat, but the advent of XP killed the Shift function on MS sticks and I moved on. Now I use an adapted stick made up from two CH fightersticks and using the left-handed conversion available from a CH fan who makes them. B

I'm only out because the cops haven't worked out how to handcuff a one-armed man!

As many of you already know, I only have one arm. I've adapted, as the Borg would say, - and built my own special stick and have a good cockpit set-up - but I've still never found the space on my HOTAS to map a Press-to-talk button. In fact, when I think about it, it's not really even a matter of having an available button. The trouble is that when I really need to call "check your six" or "break, break!" I'm usually engaged in rolling my throttle on, tweaking the trim, adjusting the view, and hopefully firing the guns to get the bandit off your tail! There's a limit to what one hand can manage. So I rely on the convenience of voice-activation with Teamspeak. I want to say that I've been doing this for years now, and I'm pretty sure that my settings are adjusted so that you won't hear any outside noise or heavy breathing. Please feel free to complain if you do and I will do some superfine tweaking. See you up there, B

220m/ cannon 200m/ mgs. I generally fly a/c with wing-mounted guns and I aim [sic] to get in as close as possible on any pass I make. If a plane starts making violent evasive manoeuvres before I'm in close enough I generally break, upwards if possible. As someone mentioned earlier, stick-rigging is crucial. A perfect merge is great, but if the nose isn't steady when you reach the firing point then the shots are wasted. Over the years I've realised what I think is the most important point of the gunnery issue - conservation of ammo. This, to me, is critical. In a fighter with maybe 16 to 20 seconds of firing capability, a 2 second burst is one-eighth of the supply used up. Most of the allied planes don't even have the luxury of an ammo-counter so it's necessary to keep a count as you go - and this has become the norm for me. I look to have at least a two-second duration of mg fire left when I return home, just in case I need to deter any enemy pursuit at the last moment. B

It was really great to honour BG's long-standing invitation to fly along with the DD's, which I finally got around to last night. Thank you to everyone for the very kind welcome I received. I hope I can wangle it to get to a few more Saturday night gigs. cheers and salutations, I really enjoyed myself B