New Member - Hello.

[xTbonex]

Hi Folks,

Been Chatting with Crash about signing up with you guys. It appears you may be looking for a new meat shield and someone to drink all that surplus fuel you have, and possibly any beer you may have stashed.
I thought I would pop by and say hello.

A bit about me...

Back in the day, I used to fly with a group called ICAG, which then later became AWL where I was a council or founding member for several years during the IL2 FB and Pacific fighters era. I was mainly a fighter pilot but also occasionally took out the odd IL2 or Pe2 on bombing runs too. We flew exclusively RAF, USAAF and VEF, and,
We took part in pretty much most if the offerings back in the day, whether that be dogfight servers, scripted campaigns and also VOW and VEF, 2 online wars that were happening at the time. that and I used to help organise and run club evenings, train new pilots in the ways of the fighter pilot, and also arranging social gatherings IRL for the gang.

Then came the children.... so I hung up my goggles, and went on my merry way, exchanging the smell of cordite and 100 octane for shitty nappies, and johnsons bubble bath.

So now Im stood before you for my routine inspection, 44 years old, my eyesight failing, my zimmer frame to my right, still trapped in suburbia, having not won the lottery, not yet married Kate Beckinsale, nor inventing the longer lasting lightbulb, or figured out a way to get the Tories out of power. In my little house, in the UK, the children are growing, and life changes the way it often does, I find myself with a bit more free time, which has provided some new opportunities, I got myself a VR headset. I decided to go find those old goggles, and make my way to the nearest airfield. Which brings me to here and now, the lonely wanderer looking for a new place I can chuck my boots, kick back and have some fun and banter.

Im looking forward to meeting you all in the virtual, and possibly later on irl, to have some banter whilst possibly retaking the skies over europe. Or... I could end up using all of the squdrons silk for my parachutes, and being that meat shield.

Best regards, Tony.

 

 

 

[Crash]

Hi Tony, glad you made it here. Have a dig about in the Great Battles sub forum for some good info on what we get up to. You're welcome to join our P-38 campaign which we will be flying Tuesday evening.

[Friar]

Salute Sir and welcome to the "pound"

Our main ethos is to have fun. You are not expected to fly every time we have a server up, but do ask if you have signed up for an event and can not make a night you let someone know.

We do not require you to attend any training, or assessments, we have no organisational structure by way of ranks.

Our nights for IL2 GBS are Tuesday where we start (approx 19:30 uk time) with general dogfight map to run with the scenario or to practice etc then move to co-ops after about 45 minutes or so. Unless we are flying our current P38 campaign which alternates between Sundays and Tuesdays.

We also fly Sunday evenings with the same format as Tuesday.

There are also a few that fly on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday mornings (subject to availability and not all weeks) from about 10:am for a couple of hours.

A group fly DCS on Thursdays, you may also find one or two in either Clod or 46 on a Saturday evening.

We communicate via Teamspeak on which we ask for a respectful presence (well at least until you get to know us!). The topics of conversation may be weird and wonderful but we tend to stay clear of politics and controversial subjects, that is not why we fly. 

As well as the current long running P38 co-op campaign, I am putting together a Dogfight scenario for the 22nd November where we will split into separate Teamspeak channels and race to complete 3 objectives, oh and there will be driveable tanks as well!.

have a look here and post a message for which side you would like to fight for...

Welcome again and I look forward to having you on my Six soon.

Cheers

Friar

[FoolTrottel]

Hello ...

[Painless]

Welcome Tbone, any friend of Crash is......... bound to have a screw loose.

Sounds like you will fit right in 👍🏻🙈

[Crash]

Tbone, if you want or need over 2000 skins then get this  but you will have to use our TS server to be verified. (I think)

 

[FoolTrottel]

1 minute ago, Crash said:

Tbone, if you want or need over 2000 skins then get this  but you will have to use our TS server to be verified. (I think)

 

Yes, connect to our main TS, stay there for a minute, then 15 minutes later you can use it... watch it, some +30GB of skins will be downloaded! 

 

[Friar]

The guy has hardly joined and already we are taking over his hard drive.

Be warned, once we get under your skin, you will never leave. Lots of us have clocked up best part of 10 years with the group!

[xTbonex]

LOL, my hard drive space is at a premium, hands off!!! or I will have to start deleting naked pictures of my friends mums in the bath.

I used to design my own skins, Im pretty handy with photoshop, and definitelty plan on adding some of my own custom designs. well I should hope so as it is my day job, well in part. Im a graphic designer. I just need the templates and then happy days.
Does anyone in the group fly the WW1 gear? I just picked that up today, and all I can say is Im having a blast with it. quite literally. its so much fun. with WW2, I like the mid war period the best, 1942-43.

So far I have Bodenplatte, Kuban, Moscow, flying circus (as of today) and a handful of additional kites. I did buy the P38 today., so I will get practicing on that for sure. They had a sale on so I took full advantage.

looking forward to getting in on the action. as far as my flying goes, im not a bad pilot, but my shooting skills are very rusty, at least thats what i thought until I got on a WW1 mission and got 4 kills, mind you those things only do about 80 MPH lol. But in a mid war fighter its a different story. Im still sort of getting used to the mechanics of the game, as its been so many years. but at least the guy in the airfield control tower is safe for now.

And well Ive never played on VR till now, so still getting used to the situational awareness bit.

 

[Friar]

A few of us also fly in VR so if you have any questions I am sure we will be able to help.

[xTbonex]

I may well pick your brains, for sure, I have it running quite smoothly but Im sure theres more tinkering I can do to push the bar a bit higher. im getting Avg, 80-90fps, but it does drop to about 70 when it gets busy.
But more than that, I will need some help with key mapping, Im not sure how close to full real you guys play, but I may need the lowdown on essentail functions to map out.

So far Im managing ok, but I think I need to map prop pitch, as thats not done yet. not sure how much trimming you guys do in flight but I dont tend to bother so much with that, even on full real.
I had a guy in my last squad who would always leave us for dead, because he spent so much time optimising his plane, we could only look on with jealousy. lol

 

[FoolTrottel]

Wot?

No Stalingrad? It's on sale as well!   Now what if  there's a Coop up with only the 109-F2? You gonna stand there and just watch?

Stalingrad will not take up any of your disk space, promise!

[FoolTrottel]

3 minutes ago, xTbonex said:

(...) the lowdown on essentail functions to map out.

If Ctrl-E is already mapped, no worries, you are set!

[xTbonex]

Stalingrad is part of the original game, so yes I have that,.
and I started on the 109 F2, and crashed a fair few of them in the process of re-education.

call it scientific research, (not bad flying)

[xTbonex]

2 minutes ago, FoolTrottel said:

If Ctrl-E is already mapped, no worries, you are set!

🤣😂🤣😂 exactly, nothing like the feel of parachute silk on a freshly kicked ass.

 

[Painless]

CAUTION ! “Picking brains” has to be done with great care in the DDz !
In the past, even the smallest “pick”has left some members unable to assemble a sandwich for weeks at a time !

[Crash]

2 hours ago, xTbonex said:

I may well pick your brains, for sure, I have it running quite smoothly but Im sure theres more tinkering I can do to push the bar a bit higher. im getting Avg, 80-90fps, but it does drop to about 70 when it gets busy.
But more than that, I will need some help with key mapping, Im not sure how close to full real you guys play, but I may need the lowdown on essentail functions to map out.

So far Im managing ok, but I think I need to map prop pitch, as thats not done yet. not sure how much trimming you guys do in flight but I dont tend to bother so much with that, even on full real.
I had a guy in my last squad who would always leave us for dead, because he spent so much time optimising his plane, we could only look on with jealousy. lol

 

This thread has some good info

I also use VoiceAttack for logging onto the servers

This thread for mod info

 

[DD_Fenrir]

Welcome Tbone!

If you fancy joining us in the P-38 campaign please have a read: 

If it seems like a lot to take in, don't worry. Our excellent squadron commanders will know what to do and where to go so basically just follow them! 

Next mission is this coming Tuesday (October 27th) and I can have a slot available for you should you wish.

If you would like to find some time to do some familiarisation with the P-38 beforehand then gimme a shout and I'll get on comms with you and happily talk you through any questions you may have.

[xTbonex]

13 hours ago, Painless said:

CAUTION ! “Picking brains” has to be done with great care in the DDz !
In the past, even the smallest “pick”has left some members unable to assemble a sandwich for weeks at a time !

HAHAHA, thats hilarious.

reminds me of the good old days of blind navigating, when I pilot gets lost, 'can you see any landmarks?' reply: 'I can see some trees oh... and a river'.

thats great, you are in C7. carries on with mission... lol

[xTbonex]

11 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

Welcome Tbone!

If you fancy joining us in the P-38 campaign please have a read: 

If it seems like a lot to take in, don't worry. Our excellent squadron commanders will know what to do and where to go so basically just follow them! 

Next mission is this coming Tuesday (October 27th) and I can have a slot available for you should you wish.

If you would like to find some time to do some familiarisation with the P-38 beforehand then gimme a shout and I'll get on comms with you and happily talk you through any questions you may have.

Yes I will definitely want some training time on the P38. its a lot bigger than what Im used to flying. that said, on the one flight I had in one on my private DF server (training area) I accidentally clipped a He111 and buckled a prop, but still managed to fly home on one prop, so I was quite impressed by that.
is the campaign more focused on interdiction, rather than fighter combat? as I will need some boming run practice.

Rockets and MGs I can handle, Im good at strafing.

[xTbonex]

Theres some great info here chaps, thanks for the links, and advice, its all very helpful.
I have the day today to focus on playing IL2. at least until the kids come home. but I will likely come back on after they are all tucked away in bed.

Ms Tony is away this weekend, so there should be lots of opportunity to train and fly.

[Reggie]

Welcome to the Doghouse old chap - great bunch of chaps and lots of fun as you can already see 👍

[Friar]

The P38 campaign is an auto generated scenario using Pat Wilsons' Mission Generator.

Once the campaign has been started we do not know what we will be getting until the mission is generated.

Recently we have had both fighter patrol and ground attack.

The system can then track the results and advance the front lines etc.

You will also have a persona to protect. The idea is to keep you pilot alive rather than go gun-ho into a furball like we do in usual co-ops. It may sound funny but it does make you fly differently. You are more careful in where and what you do. Keeping with a wingman becomes even more important as if you shoot an enemy plane down, unless someone else can verify it visually, you do not get the kill.

If your persona is killed, don't worry you arrive back at the squadron with a new name but having lost all your previous kills etc.

We have a some pilots that have flown all the missions with the same ID (we are up about 14 now I think.

 

[xTbonex]

6 minutes ago, Friar said:

The P38 campaign is an auto generated scenario using Pat Wilsons' Mission Generator.

Once the campaign has been started we do not know what we will be getting until the mission is generated.

Recently we have had both fighter patrol and ground attack.

The system can then track the results and advance the front lines etc.

You will also have a persona to protect. The idea is to keep you pilot alive rather than go gun-ho into a furball like we do in usual co-ops. It may sound funny but it does make you fly differently. You are more careful in where and what you do. Keeping with a wingman becomes even more important as if you shoot an enemy plane down, unless someone else can verify it visually, you do not get the kill.

If your persona is killed, don't worry you arrive back at the squadron with a new name but having lost all your previous kills etc.

We have a some pilots that have flown all the missions with the same ID (we are up about 14 now I think.

 

I know exactly what you mean, I tend to fly like that anyway, with a bit of caution I mean, unless its a dogfight server.
Kills are nice, but flying a P38 im guessing its 1944-45, so would be pitted against FW190's and late marque Bf109's I dont fancy my chances much going lone wolf against those. the FW190 in the hands of a good pilot can dominate any engagement, and being a large target in the P38 its not really a match for the cannons those planes pack.

[delta7]

Hi and welcome, I'm sure you will settle in quickly and don't be afraid to ask if any questions,  we are pretty laid back untill the action starts but always willing to help each other