Aaron's Warbirds Gallery

January to March 1998. Even more catching up.

Raxx's Story....

I didn't think it would be possible for work to get even more busy, but it did.
Here are a few pictures of the January to March 1998 Highlights.

Looking out my window
I saw a little Red Hurricane
in a whole heap of trouble.

Laika's Gun camera caught the two pictures above and right. Please note that as I am landing I forgot to put down the landing gear. The resultant crash was quite spectacular
Laika grabbed the shot on the right while we chased down a Red P51 near Field 18, (Pacific Atoll map)
Flying with a wingman greatly increases your chances of survival in the Main Arena. Laika likes flying BF109s and my favorite plane is the Bf109-K4 variant. The K4 has a 30mm cannon mounted in the nose but only has a very limited ammo supply. The warbirds "bursts" are a calculated amount of damage inflicted by your guns. The K4 has only 49 "bursts" which is the lowest in the game. But when you only need one or two well placed shots to destroy another fighter you don't need a lot of ammo.
you may Notice that Laika is out of Cannon ammo and VERY low on machine gun ammo, (13mm)

Glars took this picture showing a landing style which I thought was lost. The "OmigodIclippedthegrass" landing used to be a feature of my buff handling skills from over a year ago. This landing was memorable in that I clipped the grass, got the plane sideways, bent the undercart, started to roll and snapped off both wings, destroyed all the control surfaces and burst into flames, then started spinning around like a breakdancer, (and the windshield was cracked as well). Despite all this I managed to walk away from the wreckage. Will someone let Bice know that runway 31 needs to be swept?

Sunday 22 March 1998. The raid on F19.

The picture on the left is the Squadron on the way to bomb the Red Port and Field 19, (Pacific Atoll map), from Field 1

From the picture above you can see that we took Field 19 after Nutter and KZCole flattened the Red port. Field 17 fell soon after but the interesting part of the night was the merging of the Red and Purple Fleets. Glars took the pictures below. The small red dots are the 40mm AAA cannon fire from the ships firing at the planes taking off from the Red or Purple CV.

One of the odd things that happened this night was the mysterious wakes at the red port. All the buildings at the port had been destroyed but there were wakes of the Red fleet showing in the water. I knew the red fleet was under attack and didn't know why they weren't reappearing at the port. My answer was to arrive shortly. This picture shows the Carrier appearing as one of the buildings rebuilt, (out of frame). Perhaps this is a bug or a new strategic element to the game. If you destroy all the buildings at a port then ships can't reappear there when they are sunk.

Sunday 29 March 1998. The Trans Tasman Challenge

This year there has been also a seperation of the RNZAF and the RAAF due to problems with training times and jokes referring to the "wombat-shaggers" over the pond. In order to prevent court cases for defamation this rivalry was tested on the 29th of March with an intersquad duel in the Special Events arena.

Frame one was a US iron vs Imperial Japanese Navy. P38F's and P40's vs Ki43's and A6M3's.

This is a shot of the RNZAF about to launch for Frame one of the duel
Apparently there was a little confusion in the Australian camp and somehow they managed to choose a few P38L and P38J fighters, (can anyone say "Underarm Incident"?).
On top of this an idiot called paiger joined in the RAAF side, (even though he isn't a part of the RAAF or RNZAF), flying a Bf110G with an automatic tail gunner. This prat not only shot me down with the automatic gunner but also rammed one of the other pilots. Paiger broke the main rule of the Special Events arena by not asking permission to join in. He then chose an innapropriate plane and ruined what was an otherwise interesting scenario.
The RAAF pilots won frame one with the US planes showing a dominance over the Japanese. All the Japanese planes were downed or returned to base with damage. About half the US planes were destroyed or damaged.

After discovering the Aussies had used the J and L variants in Frame 1, it was agreed that we could use a few P38L's in the second frame.
This shot shows the RNZAF about to take off and beat on the Aussies. Shortly after this shot was taken the ISP for half the pilots, (IHUG), disconnected and we were left with 5 pilots against the Aussies. A quick truce was called so that we could re-organise while some of the IHUG connected pilots logged back in. 10 minutes later we were back in the air chewing through the Aussies like a shark through tuna. Peril, (the RAAF CO), pulled a swifty by delaying the launch of 3 fighter for 5 minutes hoping to catch the RNZAF low and slow. It almost worked! but in the end there were 5 RNZAF pilots still flying and none of the RAAF.

With the glitches aside, flying in the Special Events arena was a great buzz. The icons normally shown over enemy planes don't appear untill they are within d3, (300 yards), of you. Because ranges are not shown, you have to guess for the defelection on your guns, if the target is over 300 yards away. Given the limited amount of ammunition a Zeke has it is best to hold fire untill the cons are with D1 or D2 so you can nearly guarantee hits with short bursts.

With luck we will be able to fly Round two next month. At present the score remains 1-1.

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