DD_Arthur

So it came to pass; after ten days of weather induced boredom my wife finally lost her rag and threw us bodily out of the house. By the simple inducement of waving folding money in his face I pursuaded my eldest son to drive his littlest brother and I to RNAS Yeovilton. http://www.fleetairarm.com/ It's only an hours drive from our home or if you're a twenty one year old student it's only a half hour drive. Here he is making a relaxed but unsuccessful attempt on the British landspeed record down the length of the A303! Whilst my youngest waved happily through the rear window at our fellow road users receding in our wake I adopted the strategy of my late father whilst being chauffered by my mother; close one's eyes and keep pressing a large, imaginary brake pedal! 'Fraid I didn't risk my shiny new camera outside as it was still drizzling on arrival so we swept into the carpark, past the huge anchors besides the gates from long since scrapped aircraft carriers and ran up the steps to the entrance hall where we flashed a student card and my RM Association membership and were relieved of a (slightly) discounted entrance fee. Actually it's not a bad deal. By agreeing to convert our tickets into a charitable donation on which the museum can claim VAT back they offer you free admission for another twelve months from date of ticket. Straight into hall four, the "Leading Edge" exhibition. Sure enough, fifty years ago the British aviation industry was still at the leading edge. In front a gorgeous Hawker Hunter trainer whilst the little pointy blue thing behind is the BAC221 which was built to investigate high speed delta wing technology and actually held the world airspeed record for a short time in the mid-fifties. Behind that is the original Hawker P1127, the Harrier prototype. On the right and dominating hall four with it's all white colour scheme (just like certain kinds of Elephant) is Concorde 002, the second prototype to fly and a fine example of the 'plane which went a long way to destroying the British aircraft industry. Back in the mid-sixties, whilst the American taxpayer was fronting up for a war in S.E. Asia, building a great society and putting a man on the moon, over here Britain and France decided to shovel great wads of cash into an effort to put a man in a light weight business suit into a comfy chair next to Joan Collins whilst sipping a champagne cocktail at twice the speed of sound. Concorde 002 never carried fare paying passengers, it's narrow fuselage being crammed full of sophisticated measuring instruments so the boffins could work out where Elton John and Rod Stewart would sit when the bloody thing was eventually allowed to land at JFK. Concorde's cockpit shows it's late 'fifties heritage with a bewildering array of instruments and a certain similarity in layout and size to the flight deck of a Vulcan bomber. Tucked away behind Concord is the nose of a 1954 Vampire T22 trainer. No sign of the magnificent Westland Wyvern, a post war carrier Jabo with a contra-rotating prop which used to reside in this hall. It's place taken by an old Whirlwind chopper and a very shiny Sea Harrier as part of the museum's Falklands war exhibit. Nose cone of a Delta Dagger (Israeli made Mirage) apparently shot down by this very Harrier. There seems to have been some shuffling about of the Falklands exhibit since I was last here and most annoyingly the little Wasp helicopter - the very chopper that C/Sgt. Menghini of our aircorp flew through the night the mist and a snow storm to land on the side of Two Sisters mountain by the light of a green pencil torch during a battle - has gone. Par for the course I suppose as Sgt. Menghini's reward for his skill, determination and bravery in making four trips that night and saving the lives of over a dozen wounded Marines and Argentinian soldiers was zilch, zero, nuthin'. However, in the 'Family Learning Area' you can play the 'Falklands Conflict game'! Missed that one. Space is at a premium at Yeovilton so as a general rule of thumb, if it had wings that can be folded, then they're folded. Which is a pity. After visiting the IWM at Duxford and seeing what they've managed to cram into a similar amount of limited space I think the curator at Yeovilton would be well served by a visit to Cambridgshire. Some rather lovely scale models of aircraft carriers made by ship yard apprentices are also on display Also you can try your hand at the Vickers K-Gun game and try and bring down a BF110! Upstairs in this hall is a gallery of Fleet Air Arm related art. Skuas attacking the Konigsberg? a German pocket battleship in harbour in nineteen-forty. The actually sunk it with no losses either! Attacking the Bismark in Swordfish. Is it true that none of our Swordfish were lost during this attack as the Bismark's mechanical gun laying computers were not designed for aircraft that flew at less than 100mph and so all they're shot fell short? Dragging F4U's out of the monsoon mud out east. "Good show Ranjit! Now when you and Jumbo have finished here we've got some Spitfires we'd like you to bury too." "At once, Sahib!" I think I must have used my pictures per post quota so standby for part two!

I, er...........oops

Here you go, AP; http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=278&t=34103 SweetFX is a utility for enhancing all games using DirectX. A guy from the RoF forum wrote FlightFX as a more conveniant way of applying SweetFX to games. You can use FlightFX on anything using using DirectX and you can do it with sliders instead of altering lines in the config. I use it for RoF and CoD.

Colin, when you've had it up and running for for a while you'll notice the glaring lack of anti-aliasing. I use SweetFX to partially overcome this. The 'Bat uses something else. Up to you what you do of course but I'd recommend giving one or other a try. Not a complete fix but it does help.

Er....read the instructions carefully and note the thingy about copying the...er...something.

I see. Thanks Asus. So thats how Sweper gets more detail out of his pictures of the Corsair. I'll have to start using raw. I'm more interested in landscapes than anything else so the tonal values and range of contrast are vast.

Why is shooting in raw as opposed to jpg a downside Jabo?

Most expensive picture ever taken? http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-gigapixel-panorama-curiosity-solar-days-136-149#534.75,56.96,110.0

Irfanview=nice Now then, where were we? Ah yes, orbiting Manston with Toad. We're looking for this vic of Fenrir, Fruitbat and Rox. We find 'em soon enough in the climb and then we're DangerDogz section heading southwest. For a while we even manage a finger-four formation in our battle climb In coming Ju-88 raid heading for Croydon I believe. We get stuck into 'em. Toad gives the navigator the last rites! Meanwhile, somewhere far below, FT is confronted with that dilemma facing all Blenheim pilots. Sandwiches! Will it be Spam or fishpaste? Friar; it'll be in the post on Saturday morning. It's too good now to wait until Duxford and Kev has ordered us all to fly it as much as possible. Apparently it's good for learning formation flying and S.A. for our SEOW campaign. I will obey the 'Bat.

Oooohhh........Rog!! Remind me to buy you a pint at Duxford.

I must say this Team Fusion patch has certainly breathed new life into CoD for me. Starting to look very much like the sim Oleg must have planned it to be. It's got "atmosphere". The sense of flight, the great sound scheme, the truly beautiful cockpits, the ability to fly a Spitfire on it's instruments without any on-screen aids. I love being able to slide the hood back and look out behind and see the rest of the flight around my 'plane. It all adds up. I recorded the flight we took on Sunday night on the ATAG server. I think there were six of us - though FT, being a masochist took the Blenheim - where we formed up and encountered the incoming JU-88 raid. I spent about two hours last night taking screen shots of it with my freebie copy of Fraps to post here only to find the new, improved version of Photobucket (crap) dosen't like my bitmaps! By the time I'd found a slow way to convert 'em to Jpegs it was about 2 a.m. so here's just one of Toad and I orbiting Manston waiting to form up with you, Fenrir and Kev. I'll sort the rest out soon but Rise of Flight is having a big update today too. My cup, it overfloweth!!

Really? Oh dear. I'd suggest a quick break for the intake of a moderate amount of alcohol and some very loud dance music in the company of a willing young lady. You are quite right about the things you mention Rox and Fruitbat's advice is completely sound. Lots and lots of bugs remain from when the developers abandoned this game. Nevertheless, a small group of unpaid enthusiasts seem to be making astounding progress fixing or improving many of the problems this game was left with and after flying their patch with some of the guys here I think they deserve all our support and encouragment.

Locals? Dunno. This is dog on a rope country!

A phone? Never! How dare you impinge on the second amendment to our (non-existent) British constitution; the right to bear nice tactile Japanese electronic goods with lots of shiny buttons For Fruitbat; Damien Hurst's attempt at getting more tourists to visit Ilfracombe. She's a big lass! Up 'er klunge shot for Painless!

Wow!!! http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3937

Oh...it's a...it's a....er...genuine Canon furry dildo? Actually, been using the HD video indoors this week. Bloody hell! Very impressive, I was going to take my mini dvd camcorder to Duxford but I don't think theres any point. Not too sure if I need anything else yet but if I do I'll be getting it from this mob; http://stores.ebay.co.uk/DCtrade-SHOP @Streak. I used to use a cable release with my old Pentax K1000. This is my first DSLR and I love it but I wouldn't like to drop it! Unlike my old 35mm film cameras it does not feel substantial or sturdy!!

Well that was bloody good fun!

Think I've got it all working o.k. now. Only took a complete re-install of Steam and the game itself....sigh. Tomorrow I will really stick my neck out and put SweetFX back on it. Oh yeah, uninstalled that Microsoft update of late February too!

I am going to get the remote control release. Used in conjunction with the mirror lock-up feature should ensure zero vibration. @Jabo; I did think of using the self timer but when I was down at the bottom of the garden frollicking in the dark with my missile launcher sized telescope and expensive new camera by the dim light of a red pencil torch I couldn't remember how to set it and I couldn't remember where the instruction manual was. I didn't want to lose my night vision by going back up to the house to find it and I only had another ten minutes or so before the moon passed over the roof line and out of sight. Or I'm an idiot. Found the instruction manual this evening in the glove box of my car. Doh!

Today it did not rain. Praise be. Even better, later on the clouds vanished completely and the moon came out to play. Taken with my 200mm Dobsonian telescope with the camera mounted via a t-ring to bring it to prime focus. This picture tells me I really do need glasses as I couldn't get it to sharp focus on the 3" screen and I must get a remote shutter release to combat the shakes!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21810581

I've used MS security essentials since it went free and it's been fine. Not intrusive at all. Better than AVG.

Thats looking west from a little place called Mullion Cove down on the Lizard Peninsular. I had to go down to Truro yesterday (Friday) morning to listen to a very senior driver of the education gravy train talk nonsense for two hours. Luckily I'm able to claim sixty-three pence per mile for these sort of jaunts at er..........your expense Jabo . As it finished earlier than expected and t'was sunny I went on a little diversion with my new toy. Same spot, looking east into the sun. Got up early for the light this morning but it was foggy, curses! Whilst George Washington was giving the Red Coats the runaround, over 'ere they were erecting this fine regency pile that would eventually become the Hotel Riviera on Sidmouth seafront. However, the real gem lies in the narrow back streets behind. Cor! It's a thousand years old.

Another 'must have' item