A blog about my rantings, including Games, Game Development, Gaming, Consoles, PC Gaming, Role Playing Games, People, Gaming tips & cheats, Game Programming and a plethora of other stuff.
It has been a year since I disabled my mobile's voice message service, the reasons I had to take this drastic action was my mother who would persist on calling me and leaving 5 messages each of 10 minutes length which I neither wanted nor listened to, but which she would spread out with little glimpses of important information within.... They were a little like having to listen to the entire X-Factor coverage last Saturday night just to hear Simon Cowell read out the lottery numbers which would win the following weekend.
Anyway, this does leave a bit of a gap when people call me and expect to just leave me a message, they either get me, or they don't and I've even been asked if my number is a mobile... "It is"... "But you haveno voice mail"... "I turned it off, so you either get me or you don't".
It makes for interesting changes to people communicating with me, notably currently selling a house agents call to arrange a viewing, they either speak to me or don't.
I just called one such lass back "I'll call and leave you a message"... Ah, no you won't ducky.
Doing without an answer phone however, you'd not think it affects you... To me it makes no difference, I was born before anyone had answer machines, companies were either open or closed, they had ladies in nice dresses with immaculate reciprocated pronunciation to take your call, or those ladies were at home.
But today's world with the internet, messaging, with answer phones, everyone is always on the go, they've given up on face-to-face communication, hence the success of Facebook and Twitter... But now people are doing away with the skill of actually talking, they are happy to just leave a message.
I don't want a message, I want to hear from you, if you can't tell me I don't know, if I don't know it don't happen... And this isn't self-inflation, I don't think the world revolves around me, but I do at least know when, how and what people are trying to do with my valuable time.
Rather than people popping in and out of my cast of life characters thinking they've let me know what's going on via voice mail.
The other night I finally broke my drought of aerial kills whilst flying out in my BF109E3, taking down two US F6F's and then a Russian Lagg-3... These were unfortunately in Realistic Mode...
I had spent quite a lot of time in Simulator battle, for little reward, I'd flown out in both my 109E3 and E1, had this on several aircraft, notably a P38 with it's obvious planform.
However, in Simulator I've been listening to other people for "improving" visibility of the distant dots... and I can only say its made things worse. I had dot popping and my spotting levels dropped dramatically. So I'll be returning to my standard settings tonight.
The switch to realistic mode however came from wanting to grind another plane entirely my BF110C, which I've had aced a very long time, I suddenly spotted I had a skin I could unlock. Unfortunately for Air Kills, and the 110 is not going to compete for air kills in Simulator... It's definitely going to struggle in Arcade.
Hence, realistic was the middle ground.
Flying out, I was immediately into one of my favourite missions "Malta", with 2 x 250 kilo bombs I expected to make a run on ground targets and then mop up... Needless to say, that's not how things panned out.
Opposing the scratching of Italian MC class fighters myself in the 110 and a single 109 were a ground of 4 spitfires, 2 hurricanes, a gladiator, a Beaufort and a player controlled fury... They clearly had more guns in the air, and more ammo for those guns.
I constituted, by far, the most armed plane, but was - even compared to the Beaufort - the least manoeuvrable, so I took a right hand bent to strafe the beach, drop my bombs and clear the landing for Zone A... Whilst I hoped the other fighters at least found the enemy for me to climb above and pounce on.
However, by the time I got to the beach the 109 was already there, shooting up the artillery, just so he got "First strike". To add insult to this injury he was then almost immediately shot up by the Beaufort who swooped in behind him and let his gunners set him smoking...
I really couldn't abide the 109 doing this, and told him so, but I pulled up and over the cliffs, used an energy climb (still carrying my bombs) to come out above level and slow behind the Beaufort, unleashing a stream of cannon fire at him I silenced his gunner, but only after taking coolant system damage to my right engine, and then a longer burst I killed the pilot and the British bomber plunged into the waves for my first kill.
Damaged and low, I dropped the bombs into the water and returned to base, complaining bitterly to the 109 who was also on approach.
Repaired and rearmed I was out again and ran my bombs over a light bunker, missing, but taking out the accompanying AA and artillery pieces.
At this point the HE111's on the team were on their return sweep, low and fast they tried to out run the enemy, however, one of the bombers was swooped on by a Hawker Typhoon, turning left and staying below this Typhoon however I avenged the bomber and tore the right wing off of the aircraft.
Using my speed to swing up and yo-yo over I came into a head-on with a Hurricane, who burned, then I switched to my rear gunner to start spraying a Spitfire, who soon spewed black smoke and turned off me, but I had taken heavy damage to my right wing now and the aircraft had a constant list to the right.
Pulling up I took a snatch shot at extreme range towards what was the player controlled Fury coming in on me, tearing off his lower left wing I carried on my turn in a lazy left and then levelled off as another spitfire peeled onto my tail and started to put shots into my left wing.
Both wings beat up I had this spitfire smoking both black and white, but I was doomed, I tried to hit the spit with some fire from my forward machine guns as he over shot below me, but in the now terminal dive I don't know if I got a hit, however both he and I slammed and skidded across the field margins of Malta ending me the game with 5 ground kills, 5 air kills and a big smile on my face for the first time in ages.
"We have all the major problems of a theme park and zoo all rolled into one"
Yes, its a quote, and an apt one today, as Elite Dangerous (BETA) 3.0 has hit the downloads, and even with it being a BETA Frontier Developments have two great big things in their favour when it comes to provisioning their servers for the data load they're going to take....
They know exactly how many people have bought into the game... And they can control how they turn the servers on or off.
Now, I accept they're not expecting everyone to play at once, but with a major update which they've been touting for days, if not weeks, and everyone being so intense about playing the game they've bought into then they SHOULD have expected a massive data load demand today. Extra now and then level off when the demand plateaus, that's standard fair. And sadly something one would hope was catered for, but which has not been. Then the control they have, it seems so many games design their connection mechanics around a point of access and server, so either some log-in and then direct to the data stream or a direct connection to the server, the former allows more spreading of the load, but only if the log-in server can keep up with demand, the latter opens a huge can of worms but should with scaling work more consistently more quickly. So why does this bother me?... I've not even bought the game?... Well, it bothers me because too many people, too many players, who have paid up more than the release date cash to play are accepting this is okay, this is a beta, they cry, this is just a test, yes it is, and it's a failure, just like the test at beta 2.0 release was, there has been no difference or improvement if servers went down then and go down now, the server is the beating heart of most all the Elite Dangerous features which push it beyond my beloved Frontier Elite II... But if it is not stable, if it has no short term flex how can it flex in the long term?... Longevity, I return to it again! I learned last night that yes you can play single player, but you still need to validate against the server, and the server was down... So I'm potentially buying an Elite game which has a finite life span! They turn off the servers, I can't play! I still have my complete box including 3.5" diskettes for Frontier, I can still pull an Atari ST out its box and I can still play it... If I get the Elite Dangerous : Mercenary release... I want to keep it in its box and keep it as long and I want it to be as good a game (which I don't argue it is, a far better game already) but I don't want to beholden to a server which can be shut off. As I've previously mentioned David Braben has had his ups and downs with the Elite franchise, its ended up in and out of court, we've waited so very long for a new Elite game, and it looks brilliant, hats off to them, but for my money I want it to last, 5, 10... 15... 20... how about 35 years... Will the company still be in being? Will the servers still run? We've all seen what happens to Space MMO's when they turn the server off... So, longevity for Elite Dangerous... Or, Frontier Developments, let us run truely stand alone, to play single player on our own machines alone. Yes validate stuff earned in certain single player mode before it can be moved into multi-player, I understand that, but I want to feel alone, and in awe of the sheer scale of this game, not beholden to a server with more cuckoo spit & duct tape holding it going.
I'm going to put this out there, because it bugged me to all hell, I'm currently enquiring with several companies whom all shared similar names to find out who operated the vehicle in question, because, I was a victim of road rage. Not once, but twice, to this moronic driver who in a company vehicle a) could not read the road markings and b) was utterly in the wrong, and then blocked the road to have a good shout at me.
So, what happened, well coming through Long Eaton and the main Nottingham road spans two traffic islands, both have two lanes approaching and then two lanes leaving, both lanes go straight on AND turn...
But on the second island so many people simply do not read the road markings they assume the right hand lane is straight on, and the left land just goes left.
THEY ARE WRONG, and even assuming this is incorrect as by default on islands the left lane is left & straight on whilst the right lane used to be right or straight on and you indicate appropriately...
Anyway, here we have two lanes, to two lanes to two lanes, it is very simple, after the second island in the chain traffic then merges... Lets look at what the highway code has to say about merging and Lane discipline...
If you need to change lane, first use your mirrors and if necessary take a quick sideways glance to make sure you will not force another road user to change course or speed. When it is safe to do so, signal to indicate your intentions to other road users and when clear, move over.
Okay, so if YOU need to change lane... all this applies, did this guy who pissed me off need do this?... No, he was behind me... he was merging into my lane, I was on the left he was on the right, his lane ended and traffic was merging in turn.
Why merging in turn?.... Well the highway code says it...
You should follow the signs and road markings and get into the lane as directed. In congested road conditions do not change lanes unnecessarily. Merging in turn is recommended but only if safe and appropriate when vehicles are travelling at a very low speed, e.g. when approaching road works or a road traffic incident. It is not recommended at high speed.
So it is recommended but only if safe and appropriate... Well it was safe, traffic was slow, a head of us everyone was merging into the left and all was flowing well....
However, then this moron comes down the right hand lane, and he wants to be in front of me, or perhaps he thinks we drive on the right in the UK and that everyone was merging with the right?... or just perhaps he was such a cock-bite that he believed the world revolves around him and his kid in the passenger seat and the traffic should flow around him?
Either way, he's neither indicating, nor merging, he's just beeping, flashing his lights and screaming at me. I can see this in my right mirror, becuase unlike him I'm using my mirror.
Everyone was looking at this fool, and he beeps and he's causing the hazard but there's nowhere for this idiot to go, a head are pedestrians and cars in a chevron turning area going right down the next road.
So he's come down the right, pushed a head of everyone and then wants to just push in, and its suddenly me at fault, he's no indicating, he's not glanced left at the vehicle which was behind me... And he's ranting, so he gets my middle finger.
Yes, I'm sorry to say, I rose to the bait and he got my finger, but I'm so sick of cock-bites doing this...
And what wound me up more... This is a company liveried vehicle he's in, he's in a company vehicle, he's currently at that moment an ambassador for his company....
I've made this point to other companies before, if my staff were in vehicles with my company logo plastered all over them then I want a level of decorum from them, even if joe public was in his way he should bite his fucking tongue because he's not in his own vehicle he's in his bosses, he's representing the livelihood of not just himself but his co-workers and the whole supply chain around that company.
And to be frank, if this moron can't drive, I don't want him or his company doing business with me or any company I work for, and once I've made certain the identity of the company in question I will be blacklisting them based on this moron's instability and lack of humanity.
Not only for his clear anger issues and lack of skill behind the wheel, but because he was driving around in this company vehicle and ranting like this with a child in the passenger seat.
I don't know, it maybe perfectly acceptible to drive aroundin a company vehicle with your child, it maybe find for him to drive this vehicle on a Saturday on what looked like a personal errand, it maybe his company, who knows... But personally, I'm done.
I have the registration plate and I'll be updating this post as soon as I have any official reply from the three possible companies (as they all have similar names and livery colours).
But in the mean time, lets take a look at the road....
This is the approach into Long Eaton, from Nottingham, onto the first traffic island, as you can see two lanes, both straight on or turning left & right accordingly...
This is the gap between the islands, again two lanes and we can clearly see both are straight on lanes or turning alternatively...
We can see the lane delimitation even on the island, there are two lanes onto and off of this island.
And then the merging in turn happens here...
Looking from overhead, here is where this moron decided to start ranting and raving.
And once the traffic moved on, he then thought it approproate to stop once again at the turning to Bennett Street, where I was going, he pulled up along side me and continued to scream...
This is the reason he's going to be listed on here for all eternity and the world let know, because it's not acceptable, not in your own car certainly, but definiately not in a company car where you're representing the prestige of your employer... That company now has zero prestige, and I'm going to inform my family, friends and employer (who between them own five different businesses and my employer turns over several hundred billion euro's a year - and would possibly be interested in the type of business this moron works for) not to consider this company.
Black-listed, black-balled, moron'ed into obscurity because he was not an ambassador for his brand, he was wrong and instead of thinking "Hey, why is everyone looking at me?" no he thought it appropriate to scream not once, but twice at me, in front of his own child too.... zero work ethic, zero self awareness, just a zero in life!
I have to just release this, because if I don't vent, I'm going to blow... The payment and billing systems at British Gas must be so archaic it's untrue, they seem to have different systems doing separate different parts of the same job, and these separate different systems don't share information, so they're out of sync or slow or just so fucking annoying.
I've commented to them directly about this several times and they've simply ignored me, but now I figure its beyond a joke.
Last night, I had a reminder to submit my meter readings, so I popped onto their website to put them in, as I logged in I noted last months bill was still not paid, so I checked and made payment in full. Submitted the new readings and had an instant bill...
Here's my first beef, if my bill was a reading last time and a reading this time then the values are consecutive and they calculate a bill instantly, and I paid it instantly....
However, the previous bill went unpaid for a month because the bill prior to that was estimated, and they waaaaaaay over estimated, so the readings went in and they were lower than even the estimates that had been put in.
The system immediately has a brain fart and doesn't give a bill, so after waiting all weekend for it I clearly gave up and didn't pay all month, because their system is just so shit, I figure a human had to intervene somewhere and reconcile their stupid estimate bullshit and issue the bill, and I can say this happens because more than once I've had to call them and correct a bill, to have to manually intervene and call an Indian call centre just to get a bill is wholly unacceptable in my book, it's the online equivalent of standing up and waving for the waiter in a restaurant and him giving you the finger.
So what did the website do last night?... Well, luckily this time it generated a new bill, and so I paid the first, submitted and paid the second... right done?... All cool...
NO!!!!!!
Because fucking hours later another system at British Gas decides to e-mail me and tell me I need to submit my readings....
Time runs upwards here, earlier messages are lower...
I'm tempted to go give them a reading which is like 1kw/h different and watch their system's brain drop out... Or even, I might start submitting individual readings each time the gas and electricity meter changes value... You know proper spam that sucker, I've read their billing small print there's nothing which says how few readings one has to make, just that one has to submit a reading or allow access to the meters by reading taking staff at intervals...
So, I use say 301Kw/h of electricity per month, lets submit 301 readings, their system asked me to submit a reading 5 hours after I'd done just that for the month!
I've said many things about Elite Dangerous on these pages, and I keep going on about it, so I have to admit I'm interested. I'm not happy about being interested, but one just has to watch the game being played or even see screen shots and you're instantly engaged.
As an old Elite hand and a Frontier Fervent Fanatic I have a series of expectations about the game, and in comparison to Eve-Online I had to admit the idea of paying once and not being a subscriber appeals.
One of the main problems I had with a subscription is that as a married man, working and trying to live life, the amount of game time I get is quite limited. In a week I might only get to play an hour or two, so paying to subscribe to a game for the other 166 hours that week annoys me, it is just such a waste.
I however do understand why companies need to fund their service, they need to pay the developers yes, but they also need to pay to keep the lights on, and server bandwidth is not free. It is cheap, but it's not free, energy is very costly also.
So, they're running their game server and you're paying.
However, this isn't the funding model Frontier Developments have seemingly declared for their title, they've stated that you will pay once for the title and play there after.
The multi-player information then does state that the connectivity will be a mix of peer-to-peer and server infrastructure, this makes sense as all the dynamic market elements and what players know as "Open Play" must have some short of server back-bone, despite what some players would lead you to believe.
My question to Frontier Developments, and I have posted this off to them, has been "How in the long run do they plan on funding the server", essentially I ask because the kick-starter funding literally funds the development to a point, and the amount funded is not huge.
One pays for the game also at purchase, either now for £50 in BETA or later for £39.99 (estimated), but that's it?
I can not really understand how a server is going to be funded without some sort of revenue, players will stop joining, sales will plateaux and fall.... So, might more micro-transactions appear?... Just as there are currently skins for sale?... Might a subscription be introduced for "Open Play"... Perhaps the game falls down to Single Player only, or Group play only?...
Personally I miss my adventures hosting the Frontier Club, where peeps sent in their disks with saved games, I copied them back to everyone else's disks and mailed them back... Good fun.
What is Binary Coded Decimal?... Well, when I did my A-Level the book I read described it as encoding the numeric values 0 through 9 into 4 binary bits, and then shuffling them into bytes, so you can represent the values precisely, without worry of the bit representation (big or little endian) of the system in use, and using less memory...
How can it take less memory?... If I store perhaps, 123 that's going to take 3 bytes! I could put that into 1 byte... Yes you could because a single byte will hold 0 to 255.
But, what if you represent an integer? 4 bytes, the most significant word (two bytes) maybe little or big-endian, with BCD you can program your machine to move the values back correctly.
Lets take a look at some code:
This is only the first part however, we're encoding 1 digit as 8 bits....
We can define this encoding and then load our bytes back in whatever computer architecture we want. This is very useful to remember when we talk between different endianess machine, such as old macs, Amiga's, Atari ST's... Even Spacecraft!
But storing 0 through 9 into 8 bits is a little wasteful, how many bits can represent 0 through 9 easily?... How about a nibble, or 4 bits?...
To do this we nave to flipflop through each digit character in our loop, and we shift the current binary left 4 bits then mask append the new value as we go round the loop...
This saves us space and gives us the output:
Technically the final blue nibble should have been shifted 4 bits left, but I'll leave you to fix that up.
I hope this quick tutorial has you thinking about encoding and how it works to help make data more easily cross platform.
And if you don't know what "Endianess" is, go search for it, but think about communications, about older systems, about different processor types... and then their applications in different systems, historical systems support, emulators and games.
Hey folks, huge news for my humble blog, page views have doubled in three months... Yes, from an all time high of 62,000 views since July we've had double that number of viewers over again, and our total count is now 124,000 views...
You know if every view gave me £1 I could pay off my mortgage!
Anyway, what have I been up to?... Well, I've been trying to extol the virtues of redirecting TCP/IP connections from one server accepting and validating them to a secondary server to process the data remote clients are trying to dump... And I've been wholly unsuccessful because the other technologist who's working on this project doesn't want to really do as I'm asking... Which is very frustrating.
I'm also trying to avoid buying/playing Elite Dangerous, I'm interested, but I stand by my pledge not to play it... For now...
WarThunder, been playing lots of Simulated Battles and I even got one of my replays used by the magnificent Jingles.
You can find my full coverage of it here:
My old Seitek X45 joystick is showing its age, so once the new house move is done and a few debts paid I maybe going into the market for a new joystick.
Coding projects, I have a tutorial I want to put up about BCD or Binary Coded Decimal, unfortunately some developers believe just using the value int x = 0; means X is in BCD... its not folks its just binary... I'll explain in the tutorial I think...
If they apologise I'll have a fit... I will seriously throw my rattle out my pram... Fuck Argentina, they conducted an illegal war against a British protected territory, whom has repeatedly stated its people wish to remain British... I am so suck of Argentina and this topic...
Just go on YouTube find a documentary about the Falklands war and read the Argentine comments...
One guy was trying to claim the Brooklyn class CRUISER the General Belgrano was a transport ship... Are you fucking retarded?... It was a CRUISER when it was laid down in the '30's and it was still a cruiser when we sunk the bastard!
It just seems whenever there's something to distract the Argentine people about they wheel out the Falklands... And the people follow like kittens being shown a ball of yarn.... Wake up people your politicians are hiding shit from you.
Like the Military Junta of 82 was hiding it was disappearing thousands of people... Remember them, not some trifling war they used to try and swing your opinion, and grow up you lost, grow a set of balls over it!
Last night I went for a few flights in various BF109's in WarThunder... It was an utter and total disaster, I didn't make a single air kill, and twice ended up getting bounced whilst in the middle of my dive on a target and having to try and flee. And only once did my attempt to flee and calling for help get a return from my team mates... So my thanks to those chaps that time, you kicked arse...
However, after a couple of hours I had my BF109E-3, BF109F-1 & 2, BF109F-4 and BF109F-4/trop all in repairs... My frustration was palpable.
I reviewed my replays, I thought about what I was doing wrong, and I thought about my opponents... Some of them were just excellent pilots and out flew me, I accept that, however, I looking at the roster of opponents who had shot me down... La-5... La-5.... Hmmm... La-5..... I-185... There were a lot of higher battle rating (BR) opponents than my measily E-3 or F-2 (the two planes I flew repeatedly)...
Now I'm no fool, my aircraft handling though not perfect is okay and in Simulated Battle you expect an amount of luck, but my luck was running so bad. I switched to Realistic Battle, maybe I could identify what I was doing wrong by seeing the target tags coming towards me...
I could not see any tags... I don't know if this is a feature now, or something about skills, or just a bug... But I had to close to within 1km of a target dot before I got to see its label text... and when friendlies were tangling with enemy planes I saw the blue of the friendly from miles, but never saw the enemy... Tracers and flame and death, I saw plenty of, but actual aircraft/player legend text, not a jot of it...
So at one point I'm in the F-4, and I'm 800 meters above a pair of La-5's... I know I'm going to die, so I invert, pull through a half loop, and when out of the loop I'm the right way up going to opposite direction at about 550km/h... And I accelerate away, I'm going maybe 580km/h, and I reckon I'm around 10km away from where I saw the targets, I'm low on ammo anyway, and 7 minutes of fuel, so I report heading to base.
I check my shoulder, just as a stream of red tracer goes past... both La-5's are right there... they've climbed 750ish meters and caught up over 10km from behind a plane going away from them at over 550km/h... I dive away from them and am going 715km/h, opening the distance between us... But their fire is hell accurate, I can see the separation on the mini-map its over 800 meters between us, but they're still shooting...
These are La-5's... with twin 20mm cannon, their cannon should be dry>?!>?! What the hell... I lead them off and over the airfield, they break off only when the AA has holed one... but as I break into a rising climb turning my now 600km/h speed into about 900 meters of altitude and levelling off to assess my situation, the other LA-5 does what can only be described as a UFO move, it rolls and almost flat spins around and comes back at me, acceleration was incredible, the aircraft was level with me, having used his speed to climb... and he's flying straight and level.... over 8km... be cross the airfield and forced me into a split-S to avoid his head on in what felt like 10 seconds... I literally had no come-back.
When we read historical accounts of the performance of the La-5 it does not stand up to the scrutiny of its performance in game, I get that Gaijin have their own ideals of history, they say as much in one of their news posts:
"the British have their own history and their own view on the Second World War and we, the descendants of our Soviet heroes had our own war and own memories of it" - WarThunder Blog.
You don't have memories young sir, you are not over 80 years old and were of an age to have served, your parents at a push, or your grandparents certainly may have, but you do not have memories. What you have are recollections, those rosey tinted, glossy postcard photograph ideas of what it was like. And I can only really stress that in my opinion the balance of plane performance, especially Russian plane performance, is rather more rosey than it should be according to the history at hand.
"the La-5FN excelled at altitudes below 3,000 m (9,843 ft) but suffered from short range and flight time of only 40 minutes at cruise engine power. All of the engine controls (throttle, mixture, propeller pitch, radiator and cowl flaps, and supercharger gearbox) had separate levers which served to distract the pilot during combat to make constant adjustments or risk suboptimal performance. For example, rapid acceleration required moving no less than six levers. In contrast, contemporary German aircraft, especially the BMW 801 radial-engined variants of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 front line fighter, had largely automatic engine controls with the pilot operating a single lever and electromechanical devices, like the Kommandogerät pioneering engine computer on the radial-engined Fw 190s, making the appropriate adjustments. Due to airflow limitations, the engine boost system (Forsazh) could not be used above 2,000 m (6,562 ft). Stability in all axes was generally good. The authority of the ailerons was deemed exceptional but the rudder was insufficiently powerful at lower speeds. At speeds in excess of 600 km/h (370 mph), the forces on control surfaces became excessive. Horizontal turn time at 1,000 m (3,281 ft) and maximum engine power was 25 seconds." -
"In comparison with the Bf 109 the La-5FN possessed a slightly higher roll rate, however the Bf-109 was slightly faster and had the advantages of a smaller turn radius and higher rate of climb." - Hans-Werner Lerche (ISBN 0531037118)
Even ignoring the performance issues, why was my BF109F4 being pitted against La-5's?... The F series of 109 was ubiquitous yes, but in 1942 when the F4 was really at its height the La-5 was still under development:
"from the first tests, which began toward the end of March 1942, it became clear that the new variant was a marked improvement over the basic model" - about the LA-5 from www.century-of-flight.net.
The timeline does not work out, the La-5 should not have been present to shoot me down perhaps?... But its UFO like performance is clearly not warranted from the history.
I know already what Gaijin's response would be, if they dained to give one, and that would be that this is a BETA, and that things can change, but I believe for too long and too many comparisons; which I have been through; the Russians get the better of it over the Americans, the Americans get the better of over the Japanese and the Germans generally struggle to compete save when we get to the very highest tiers.
The BF109F series under-perform, the accepted best aerobatically able 109's and they're pitted against floating Russian crates which historically were not overly available*, the BF109G series are often forced to fight off of their comfort zone, i.e. the BF109G-6 designed to intercept bombers is pushed into dogfights with other fighters, where its climb/weight disadvantage soon tell...
To then rub salt into already open wounds I flew out in a Russian plane, in simulated mode, for the first time ever, took the Yak-7 which was completely stock out for a fly out... Immediately entered a low-level dogfight and in both the horizontal and vertical could out turn and out perform German BF109F1's and an FW190A-1... And got two kills!.... I gave up playing for the night right there, disgusted how easy the kills were, when ammunition, aiming and the general low-tech of the Yak-7, a trainer pushed back into front-line service, bested some of the finest fighter aircraft the Luftwaffe fielded.
* Losses of La-5's in 1942 dropped dramatically, this wasn't because the La-5's were doing well, but that so few La-5 were produced that there were none-left for the jagdflieger to shoot down, only in 1943 as production ramped back up did losses increase in relation ship to the number of available aircraft. This is the kind of history ignored by Gaijin and their apparent blanket rosey tinted view of history.
Good news, good news... Most all the decorating is done!
Yes, in the last three weeks, we've gutted the bathroom, laid new floors, painted lots and lots of gloss onto surfaces, repainted the kitchen, sanded and re-varnished hard wood floors and generally made the house a better place to be.
The reason being, we're moving back to the old house at Brinsley, we're not sure on the old rental market or valuations so that's all going on, but our old tenant is leaving so we're having a new hearing system put in up there and going into that.
The major difference will of course be the lack of storage, the Brinsley house has not got a Utility room, nor a cloak room, nor a loft space, nor an 18 foot out building... So where will we be putting our crap?.... Who knows.
The Virgin Connection is being switched over on the 16th November, so that gives you a heads up when I'll do full dark before hand.
The one worry we have at present is, I headed up to the Brinsley house to give the tenant her finalising letter and get a schedule for her moving, so I could get the plumbers in on the case with the heating, and instead of the tenant another girl hung herself out the window... "What you want?"...
"I want to come in"
"No F**king likely perv"
"No, you miss understand, I'm the landlord, the owner, I have an appointment to measure up for my new heating system, where's XXX"....
"Oh I live here now"....
Oh no you don't lassie, and so she's been oiked out, turned out the tenant could not fully afford it after her last relationship broke down and she got this girl in from her work to share the bills... This girl is the dirtiest schmuck I've ever seen... Uses feminine hygiene products thrown in corners of her bedroom, the carpet stank, she had dirty clothes and rubbish everywhere....
And when I mentioned this needed cleaning up she said "You starting?"... To whit I could only look at the used tampon and say "No, but it looks like you have".
Dirty, disgusting pig...
The ex-tenant has to therefore pay to clean that carpet professionally, and clean the whole house...
The other thing I noted was that nearly every light bulb in the place was popped... These were new light fittings put in before they took possession, they're less than 11 months old, how did they pop them?.. And how, if "they've been gone ages" did they see, because the landing and stairs run down the middle of the house and are very dark....
Anyway, the lots of decorating will continue I think Friday is a key day, with the estate agents coming.. Then Sunday we have the bathroom ceiling being plastered, so when he's done I'll paint the bathroom wall and lay a new bit of lino... and finally when that ceiling is dry I can paint it.... I don't envisage many WarThunder or Code hours to myself in that time.
However, what I do have in the works is my own personal, and hopefully comprehensive, series (4 parts) covering my fascination with the BF109 fighter, I'm posting this 4 part history from my own sources soon, and also developing a series of "In Game" videos for the type.
I already have one large (45 minute) video ready for upload, but that was from pre-v1.43, so I'm trying to get sometime flying the type post patch. And when I say "Flying", we're talking exclusively Simulator Battle level detail.
