@SUKHOI Thanks for the upvote! ^_^ This was designed for a group build - quasi-RP. (I say quasi, since attempts at diplomatic dialog in the RP posts were ignored and discussions about tactics and strategy were similarly ignored by the moderator for the alternate history setting.)
@TheOwlAce It's so nice that with our builds we don't have to deal with politicians trying to tell us "We don't need to spend more on a new design because we have that design," or "Our standard fighters can serve as strike-fighters, so we don't need attack aircraft," right? lol
@TheOwlAce Wow! How on Earth did you manage that? What I meant was that everytime I would take off with one of the fighters and switch to the appropriate camera view the carrier would eventually crash while I was out fooling around in the fighter. OR are these more intended to be mobile airstrips? That I could see happening - unless you're just so darned skilled that you can toggle between the controls and maintain both aircraft's flight without a hitch?! If so I bow before your' gamer-ness! lol
@TheOwlAce I've actually avoided all the mods thus far, believe it or not, even the one that allows you to create weird parts that are like angled and stuff. (Though it appears they added some unique function to the Sand Box that might have made that obsolete? Dunno! I haven't tried it yet!)
Its looking like my first project to post is going to be a complete reboot on my old basic trainer from our RP like ... two or three years ago. What a nightmare design was that. Were I a prospective pilot training for Se Suomi Imperiumi Illumvoimat I think I would have nibbled the barrel on my service weapon! It was so horribly unbalanced it was almost impossible to fly or land without wrecking it. She's been reborn with an open radial engine I borrowed from a parts post, though it makes pilot visibility a bit tricky and she's become a biplane. She's still "reasonably unbalanced" enough to be a primary trainer so that it isn't TOO easy to fly her. I still have to put the finishing touches on her canopy, get my color code for "Finnish Blue" added to the xml file and add her insignia. I believe this is my first successful biplane design, come to think of it! ^_^
@noob11 This is probably the best and most convincing tank chassis I've seen yet! Excellent build and puts any of my previous AFVs to shame! lol She's a little underpowered for muscling her way through uneven terrain and I might recommend a control group to turn off the gyroscope as I often found myself fighting with it while maneuvering. lol Would you mind terribly if I adopted this chassis for future projects?!
@TheOwlAce Ah so that's what happened with her! I was thinking that maybe a dorsal fillet at the base of the top portion of the vertical stab might stabilize her a little more but that may also throw off your' careful weight balance. I don't see any seagoing vessels yet in your' build list? I'm looking forward to seeing a working carrier fighter for something like that! Every time I used your' airborne carrier fighters by the time I'd toggle the camera back to the "ship" she'd crashed! lol Gotta love heavy fighters although you know my favoritism towards twin-tailed birds! ^_~
@TheOwlAce I haven't noticed much difference yet in my aircrafts' ability to take a hit but I've only been attacking ships thus far and no air-to-air combat since I've returned. As always I suck at horizontal bombing! We REALLY need a working bomb aimer. lol Yeah, the scale might be a little off but those '20s-'30s era biplanes were deceptively small generally speaking. Congratulations though on an EXCELLENT build! I came back to find my Austria-Hungarian gull-winged fighter sitting in the sandbox from the RP we discussed an age ago before my machine went down. I'll keep thinking about it. Meanwhile I will likely be doing a lot of rebuilds of old designs. I would love to learn how to "sheath" my wings but as I understand that requires the mod tools to create custom parts and that remains a bit beyond me. I think I'll stick with XML modding. That said! I have downloaded more fuel efficient jet thrusters with more realistic fuel consumption. I remember our early jet fighters - heck just flying from one island to the next over gave us MAYBE five minutes of loiter time and to get back to the airstrip on fumes! I'd like to find a more fuel efficient T2000 and T3000 as well though.
Is it my imagination or is this latest variant a little squirrelly after returning to level flight from aerobatic maneuvers? She still keeps the awesome speed of past variants though I don't remember her being this fast at low altitude! I'll have to go back and test that for myself though! lol
@TheOwlAce Nice to see you haven't lost your' touch! I went out and bombed the Beast with her! I love the spatted landing gear, it really gives you a 1930s feel. Same with the odd defensive position appearances - and the weird biplane layouts they toyed with in that period. XD
@TheGuyYouMightKnow Don't get me wrong, looks great as is and yes, its likely cleaner w/o the custom landing gear. Furthermore the smaller part count might even make it low enough to be friendly to mobile users. ^_~
@TheOwlAce THAT is a great new feature for this design. If I'm thinking of the right flying wing, I believe the old one was capable of doing the same by selectively turning off the outboard engine (in terms of the spin) and firing up the other while applying full rudder. You'd still lose about 5,000 ft of altitude IF you're sharp enough to get it on the first try though. For the most part you don't enter a flat spin in her anyway unless you forget what you're flying and try to fly her like a conventional aircraft by attempting to use more than one control surface at a go.
@Mostly Yeah, the Torpedo-slinging version of this was a lot of fun but you had to give yourself a good and long approach with regard to the speed, altitude and aim. She's so fast that you have to be careful not to become a crazy Kamikaze pilot without meaning to! :D
@Irobert55 Ahh I see, you just want her to have a brutal sounding name, no harm there. I'm having deja vu in regards to this conversation of "naming it whatever you want!" LOL
@TheGuyYouMightKnow I've always been a fan of twin-boom aircraft,so when I see this pop up in my jetstream with that detailed office, of course you're going to get my vote! She looks nice, I won't be able to look closer/fly her for a while but from what I see I like it! With all the detail though, why did you go with stock landing gear rather than building up detailed replica landing gear? No criticism intended, only curious!
@Irobert55 On the other hand we could go a lil more simple and go with the "Blue-Green Dragon," depending on what color the bombers appeared in the show, it's been a long time since I saw it, one word for which is "Soryu." Don't get me started on Japanese colors in regards to greenish-blue. It's as bad as people insisting on having a separate word for every bloody shade of color in English. You can't just call it "light purple" its "lavender," for example. An off-white can be called Ivory, Taupe, light tan, etc. etc. Hopefully Germans have retained some semblance of sanity with their words for colors! lol
@Irobert55 So basically "Mountain of Death, "Shi no Yama?" Shino as a single word in Japanese is a pottery glazing technique. lol "Shiro" is white. You could also interpret "Shi no Yama" as "Mountain of Four," which might make the crews a bit less than enthusiastic as 4 is considered an ill omen. The characters for Shi as in the number and Shi as in death are different but the Japanese do like to make plays on words. ;)
@TheOwlAce Oh, I stand corrected. It is the Blohm und Voss P.144 project, not the Bv-144. lol! I see now what you were aiming for.
Here's the three view for what you were aiming for;
http://www.luft46.com/bv/3bb144.gif
Here's what I THOUGHT you were aiming for, which had me scratching my head as it was the bird the RLM gave the designation "144" - which of course was separate from Blohm und Voss's own internal Projekt numbers;
https://img.rcgroups.com/http://www.airwar.ru/image/idop/cww2/bv144/bv144-1.gif?h=9n3t2Q6xS7TgYyhMn8R6dg
@TheOwlAce Oh I see, is that why you set it as free to use because you couldn't find the proper dimensions? I looked up the real Bv-144 w/o thinking to check your' recent builds; Quickly realized you weren't aiming to produce this aircraft. Have you ever seen the Bv-139? (Technically Ha-139 but manufactured by Blohm und Voss.) She's a sharp looking bird, in my opinion, bent wings, four engines and a floatplane - what's not to love?! lol They later created a quartet of Ha-142s based on the Ha-139. Photos of them are pretty rare though. Two of them were used as maritime patrol aircraft from 1940-42. The other two were used as buses for the occupation of Norway and Denmark.
I can agree with you there. I took up a challenge to make a P-70 version of someone's A-20 Havoc/Boston but I was going to trick it out 100%, right down to the panel lines. Thankfully I managed to find GREAT schematics on that one; Though I never did finish the project. It would have required so much XML modding because of the angle of attack on the wings being different, detailing the landing gear and so on. What are you trying to find? I have a LOT of military aviation history contacts with an eye for schematics, technical details and so on - maybe I can help? (I was a model builder long before SimplePlanes was even a dream and thus still maintain those contacts~)
@Irobert55 Shinigami is so overused though, how about Shiroyama (White mountain, they were triangular AND big,) Tsubasa (Wing), Tsubasa no Shi (Winged Death), Tsurugi (An archaic Japanese double edged straight bladed sword,) etc.? Granted "Ts-" in Romaji doesn't come across quite as an ordinary "S" sound but since you don't know it's name it sort of gains that double meaning. It's an unknown and therefore doesn't quite conform with the standard and yet it does at the same time. ^_~
@MisterMasada How I missed your' response so long ago, I have no idea, but yes I remember that much about the story line. (No, I've not reviewed it, that ending sucked too hardcore!) I would very much like to read the novels now though, given what you stated about them. Typically I like to watch the movie first and then read the novel anyway. The movie gives you some visuals to utilize while the book fleshes out the parts that were missing in the movie. Although I'll never view/read another work of JK Rowling, I made that error once upon a time, read the book and then viewed the film. It felt like someone had put the book on fast forward and skipped over all the best parts just to show the action scenes! lol
@Irobert55 My post got cut off. :( Anyway, through a succession of events, strange alliances and agreements Finland persevered. It eventually came to be known as "Se Viikinki Imperiumi," unofficially. To succeed the throne one had to lead a successful campaign of military conquest, which is what inspired the national insignia, the Scarlet Crown - as it is a crown that can only be grasped by one with blood on their hands. By the time frame of The Owl Ace's timeline, some twenty years prior, "Finland" had successfully conquered Sweden and Norway. (The enemy aircraft in his designs I generally suggested were of Swedish or Norwegian design and were to be used in the first stages of the conflict against his Weltreich to lower their guard as they were largely inferior to his designs.
The designs that followed were meant to be Finland's actual military strength. Before I finished rolling out all of my designs, not then being aware of the three a day limit, he had unilaterally declared victory.
I had hoped it would be a play-by-play kind of game. You move, I move, etc. After I expressed this we planned to start a new game, possibly with my adoption of a different nation. I was considering taking up the role of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and we would design one for one, one enemy followed with one of our own. Then do a play-by-play after we were ready to start.
@Irobert55 I had worked out the history and traced the independence back to one event from before Finland became a part of Russia. Its in posts from a couple of years ago and the rest is stuck on my inaccessible laptop in a series of simple planes documents.
From what I remember there was a plan recorded in history sometime soon after the American revolution, if I remember right that actually served as the inspiration in part, to rebel against Sweden among Finnish ethnic military officers and nobles. They had set out their plans, had a significant number of Finns ready and willing to rebel and thus they were basically ready to start to move. (Finland for many years had been a buffer zone that served as a battleground for Sweden and Russia in repeated conflicts and they were tired of their fields being trampled, their communities being razed and their people being slaughtered/forced into a war not of their own making.
However someone became aware of the ploy and fearing the subsequent repercussions or was simply a loyalist to the Swedish crown he rode to inform Swedish authorities. A simple change in history changed that part in that he was thrown from his horse and perished while on his way to alert the Swedes. If he had succeeded, as he did in our timeline, the new and young King of Sweden would have brutally cut down the head individuals of this attempt at independence. In this alternate timeline he failed to inform the authorities and they made their move swiftly. Reports from that time period were that Swedish fortifications and garrisons in Finland at the time were severely understaffed. Furthermore many Finns had joined the Swedish military merely to protect their own homes and families from the repeated wars. You combine understaffed garrisons/fortifications, an entrenched enemy bitter from the repeated wars between two other peoples on their land that typically saw their people and communities victimized or serving as a commodity within that permeates these, a budding concept of independence and it develops into a powerful storm.
Once they moved to take control of the fortresses, garrisons and noble's houses - who were of Swedish bloodlines - it would have been comparatively swift. Assuming that they didn't march all their cannon and arms in and out of the garrisons and fortresses with each troop redistribution this would have put the majority of the Eastern portion of the Swedish Kingdom's weaponry in the hands of the Finns.
@Irobert55 Look, while I can agree on some points about his naming sense, its really irrelevant, he likes the Reichsluftfahrtministerium system. He basically used many of the same relevant figures in the German aircraft industry, with some twists and exceptions. What's the harm?
You say it doesn't resemble anything designed in Germany? True, in our timeline the German aircraft industry by the time this was designed in the alternate timeline had virtually been completely dismantled following Germany's defeat in the Second World War. However you could compare it to some of the De Havilland designs that were designed in the waning days of that war and even after. You could also compare it to the Focke-Wulf "Flitzer" project.
Whenever you are dealing with alternate timelines you have to imagine that every small change has a butterfly effect following it. Every major event, such as the failure of the Weimar Republic to ever appear, the Kaiser remaining in power, the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution and so on would have profound impacts upon the timeline. How can any of us accurately predict what would have happened in the place of the history that we know with each minor detail - let alone major events? Perhaps Alexander Lippisch in this alternate timeline did not survive the Great War and therefore could not have gone on to design aircraft that later inspired the Horton Brothers and spur their imagination to follow flying wing designs? That's just one of countless possibilities.
Look at my my designs for Finland, their aircraft industry was laughable BUT in the alternate timeline settings I've participated in they managed to build it up. Many of those are my earliest designs on SimplePlanes and they have NO basis in factual information, it's all made up.
Ultimately though, mein freund, I suggest you worry more about building planes, flying them and having fun instead of providing non-constructive criticism to other builders about fiddly details regarding names, designations, designs, etc. I believe the Developers and Administrators would prefer that too.
@TheOwlAce 2009 you say? I decided to check on this machine and its the same year, maybe I'm underestimating her? She's a Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC running on Windows 7 (though I'm curious about trying Ubuntu as an alternative startup option.) Stat wise she has an AMD 1.6 GHz Processor, 6 GB RAM and just shy of 600 GB of storage - 570 useful storage after system partitions. IF that could handle SimplePlanes the only other complication is that she has a bum cooling fan that grinds and grumbles the whole time she runs. I have her posterior side propped up on a tape measure, with a tiny desk fan blowing air into the cooling vent and under her. I additionally have a large box fan sitting next to her on low - just to be sure she doesn't suffer from the overheating shutdowns she experienced several times in my kids hands during her days as "The Loaner." Two of her four USB ports are shot. The battery won't hold a charge and I think weight to weight she has more electrical tape on the power cord than actual wire!
@TheOwlAce Love the new profile photo you chose by the way! Sorry our next match never got off of the ground - pun unintended but I'll take credit just the same. If you'll read below my laptop that has SimplePlanes on it is presently out of commission and I'm not sure that this aged beast, the "Loaner" laptop that gets passed around whenever someone's machine is presently inoperable, could handle it. I'm hoping to get Old Silver fixed either this month or next and HOPING they don't have to wipe the drive entirely to get her back up and operational.
@Irobert55 Thank you for the attempt at educating we mere mortal, uneducated and unwashed masses of Americans in the ever SO obscure topic of the Horton Brothers' projects. (With information just as easily found on the pages of Wiki, no less and without looking into their planned paper projects at all.) As such, with all due respect sod off! If he called it the Scheisse-Flugel SF.XXIII it wouldn't change the fact that he did a bang up job on building a sweet looking late-40s/early-50s feel jet fighter that handles well, is a real killer and has a fair range for a jet fighter of her size.
@TheOwlAce Sounds like a lot of fun! Sorry that I disappeared just when we were about to start in on our new wargame but my PC suffered a "Breakpoint Error" due to a file sharing issue between an image I had saved and was still currently being accessed by Mozilla Firefox. Seems it was a problem with Firefox for a bit but the newest version doesn't have that problem. Unfortunately my decent Laptop is out of operation for the time being due to that error as I can't even get Windows to load up let alone access my SimplePlanes account. I'm on "The Loaner," laptop, an eight year old machine that likely would burst into flames if I tried to get Steam and SimplePlanes on it. lol We have a repair place here in town and I'm hoping they can go in there and just fix the error without wiping the drive. It's a matter of finance and not knowing what will happen once I turn it in for repairs.
@FilenotFound I found mine through trial, error and sheer dumb luck on Windows 10 then made a shortcut to the folder that contains them. You can edit them in plain old Notepad.
@Irobert55 I am aware, but his builds are of an alternate timeline and who is to say it wouldn't be as such? I didn't create his world of creations I just took part in it for a bit. I was preparing to do so yet again when my computer suffered a Break Point error due to a file sharing issue between a photo I had saved on my hard drive and was still being accessed by Firefox. They've since patched that error with a new version of Firefox but too late for my PC. I can't even get Windows to load up on it.
@TheOwlAce I DL'd a nice looking Mustang with customized wheels and checked the settings; They'd turned off the suspension! I tried it on my own; Lo and behold it worked! lol Changing the design around a bit, backdating it to what is it, 1935 we're starting in? Two blade props or are we already in three blade prop territory?
@TheOwlAce Wow, Austria-Hungary was pretty well industrialized prior to WW1 and their economic growth was the highest in Europe, GDP wise. Austria-Hungary it is, under King Otto von Habsburg. This will be fun I think, I'll explore their technologies and how Czech, Yugoslavian, Austrian and Hungarian industry developed out of the dissolution of the Empire. This will give me an idea of what the appearances of aircraft and military vehicles might be like in the '30s. I'll have to look at the tech they used and developed during the war as well.
I took a break from the small patrol boat I was working on and started tinkering with that Finnish Gull winged fighter, planning to detail it to my current standards. I'm having trouble with the bloody thing landing on fixed landing gear though using the new single tires. It's like it lands and catapults onto its back. o.o;
@Irobert55 I'm well aware of that historical fact, but thank you for pointing it out. His aircraft labeled as Fw are Fokker-Wulf rather than Focke-Wulf too, perhaps not surprisingly since Henrich Focke was pressured by shareholders out of the company in the mid-30s and later founded Focke-Achgelis. Perhaps the Horton brothers were placed in charge of Gotha in the timeline this aircraft was produced for? It would be just the same as how Willy Messershmitt took the lead for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke? Hence the Ho- leading the name; Just as the Messerschmitt 109 is abbreviated as Bf-? ^_~
@TheOwlAce This is not going to be like a prequel to our first C&C game though, it's going to be based loosely on the setting in the game vids you shared right?
With the Central Powers winning the war, according to history, Germany did back Finland's bid for independence from Russia. HAD Germany won the war, as they did in this setting, Finland would have become known as Suomen Kuningaskunta - The Kingdom of Finland, ruled by King Frederick I of Finland, the brother in law to Kaiser Wilhelm II.
This actually would have created deep ties between Germany, Denmark and Finland. According to history he passes away in 1940 with Prince Philipp named as his successor to the throne of Finland; Who himself had married Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy in 1925. This forms yet another new tie-in; Italy. (History states he will not pass until 1980.)
Essentially with this research established, Finland would be an ally if not a client state to the Deutsche Reich. If you wanted an ally for this C&C game it would work otherwise it'd probably be better for me to choose a different nation. If you did opt to have me again produce materials for Finland we should each produce enemy craft from powers we anticipate to be enemies. What are your' thoughts?
@TheOwlAce That'll be interesting to see! I might have to try that in the future as well with a large transport or transport sea plane. I'm going to go back and work on that patrol boat I was trying to turn into an airship. ^_^
@Cylinderpringles Well, you're familiar with nudging at the very least I could tell. I didn't figure that out until months into my initial designing frenzy. I found my XML files by pure happenstance - Win10 makes them hard to find - and I like using it for cosmetic stuff mostly though a lot of my earlier designs had pre-made modded engines. I modded a VTOL engine I intended to use as the propulsion for a small patrol vessel, as it wound up being a speed boat without it, but I think I'm scrapping that for waterline prop engines OR the new heavily modded underwater rotator assembly props called WI-2 I think.
@TheOwlAce Yeah, I think I'm going to keep my ships out of the air and on the water instead - and keep my planes in the air! ;-)
I went ahead and watched up through episode 10 of the video series you sent to me then the last episode. Talk about a convoluted and complicated C&C game! Kind of put me in the mind of playing RISK against a very dumb computer. (Although how Seattle/Cali screwed him over got a chuckle out of me!)
You haven't offered an answer as to who you would like me to produce designs for? I kind of have certain design elements in mind for different national origins.
I've also been considering another idea with this C&C game, that we also each opt to create aircraft for third party nations; Pretty much every other one. So you'd build one for Germania, then maybe one for the Commune of France, I'd build one for whomever you think would be best, then I'd build one for someone else. Thoughts?
@Razor3278 Actually she loved to corkscrew - it was keeping her on a good solid climbing turn that was the trick! lol I look back at almost all of my old designs though and think; Oh what rubbish! I have a couple of fighters you can't even take off with at full power or they'll nose over. lol
@Razor3278 She's a fun little thing to play with just don't try to dogfight with her as she likes to roll out of vertical axis loops. I think it might be attribute to her relatively short wingspan in relation to her length - not sure on that though. Love the design though. Far prettier than the ground attack planes I made last year! lol
@TheOwlAce This works pretty well!! She's a bit of a challenge on landing, but I need to adjust my controller settings to continue to use the KB throttle controls since it either wants to throttle all the way up or all the way down, I think that'll make it easier. I'll have to try some of your' flying boats I used to have a challenge controlling back when I solely used KB controls.
One thing I've found since I started using the joystick is that I can REALLY tell when an aircraft is off balance as where with KB controls I could maneuver pretty smoothly despite that issue. I DID try this bird when you first released it but hadn't hooked up my joystick yet. I rather quickly careened into the sea. Not so this time, just came in a little hot on the landing due to cutting too much power/trim on the props. Great work!! You should do an experiment though. Some helicopter designs use contra-rotating rotors to alleviate the need for a tail rotor - perhaps you could try that as an experimental version of this? You have one prop facing up on one side and one prop facing down, buried into a nacelle - just to see if the game physics will register that a tail rotor isn't necessary? The V-22 Osprey doesn't have a tail rotor after all~
@TheOwlAce That's some interesting stuff, I only watched through to the maps showing the extent of german influence. Just as I predicted Communism and Socialism still would not disappear with the failure of the Russian Revolution and would likely show itself elsewhere. Seems like the Vicchy powers took hold in France without WW2 even being necessary - but not as a client state to Germany. I was surprised to see that Finland still managed to obtain independence in 1917 despite the Russian Revolution's failure. I expect that in this setting Finland would be more likely to align with Germany to stave off being re-taken by Russia. However, by the shape of Finland, I can tell that the Russians did fight them as Finland was not able to hold onto Karelia, which is ethnically and historically a part of the territory that Sweden and Russia used to fight over.
Do you think that France or Britain are the most likely adversaries to the "Central Powers," in future conflicts? Are you still planning a start date in the 20s? Which nation would you prefer I build for if we're going to do this? Oh yes, and are we sticking with airships or are we going navy this time around? IF we are going airships, are modded engines still outlawed? I'm having trouble getting my prototype airship to come up off of the water.
@Cylinderpringles He was an absolute prolific builder, filled out his full number he could list in a day. He left and came back under another name later but for the life of me I can't remember what it was then. Soon after I took a long hiatus following an unfavorable ending to a C&C Alternate WW2 game so I have no idea if he's even around now. In my aircraft inventory I still have some of his birds though, hence my question. ^_^ Ah so you are a returning player then? That explains your' mad skills! lol
@SUKHOI Thanks for the upvote! ^_^ This was designed for a group build - quasi-RP. (I say quasi, since attempts at diplomatic dialog in the RP posts were ignored and discussions about tactics and strategy were similarly ignored by the moderator for the alternate history setting.)
@TheOwlAce It's so nice that with our builds we don't have to deal with politicians trying to tell us "We don't need to spend more on a new design because we have that design," or "Our standard fighters can serve as strike-fighters, so we don't need attack aircraft," right? lol
@TheOwlAce Wow! How on Earth did you manage that? What I meant was that everytime I would take off with one of the fighters and switch to the appropriate camera view the carrier would eventually crash while I was out fooling around in the fighter. OR are these more intended to be mobile airstrips? That I could see happening - unless you're just so darned skilled that you can toggle between the controls and maintain both aircraft's flight without a hitch?! If so I bow before your' gamer-ness! lol
@TheOwlAce I've actually avoided all the mods thus far, believe it or not, even the one that allows you to create weird parts that are like angled and stuff. (Though it appears they added some unique function to the Sand Box that might have made that obsolete? Dunno! I haven't tried it yet!)
Its looking like my first project to post is going to be a complete reboot on my old basic trainer from our RP like ... two or three years ago. What a nightmare design was that. Were I a prospective pilot training for Se Suomi Imperiumi Illumvoimat I think I would have nibbled the barrel on my service weapon! It was so horribly unbalanced it was almost impossible to fly or land without wrecking it. She's been reborn with an open radial engine I borrowed from a parts post, though it makes pilot visibility a bit tricky and she's become a biplane. She's still "reasonably unbalanced" enough to be a primary trainer so that it isn't TOO easy to fly her. I still have to put the finishing touches on her canopy, get my color code for "Finnish Blue" added to the xml file and add her insignia. I believe this is my first successful biplane design, come to think of it! ^_^
@noob11 This is probably the best and most convincing tank chassis I've seen yet! Excellent build and puts any of my previous AFVs to shame! lol She's a little underpowered for muscling her way through uneven terrain and I might recommend a control group to turn off the gyroscope as I often found myself fighting with it while maneuvering. lol Would you mind terribly if I adopted this chassis for future projects?!
@TheOwlAce Ah so that's what happened with her! I was thinking that maybe a dorsal fillet at the base of the top portion of the vertical stab might stabilize her a little more but that may also throw off your' careful weight balance. I don't see any seagoing vessels yet in your' build list? I'm looking forward to seeing a working carrier fighter for something like that! Every time I used your' airborne carrier fighters by the time I'd toggle the camera back to the "ship" she'd crashed! lol Gotta love heavy fighters although you know my favoritism towards twin-tailed birds! ^_~
@TheOwlAce I haven't noticed much difference yet in my aircrafts' ability to take a hit but I've only been attacking ships thus far and no air-to-air combat since I've returned. As always I suck at horizontal bombing! We REALLY need a working bomb aimer. lol Yeah, the scale might be a little off but those '20s-'30s era biplanes were deceptively small generally speaking. Congratulations though on an EXCELLENT build! I came back to find my Austria-Hungarian gull-winged fighter sitting in the sandbox from the RP we discussed an age ago before my machine went down. I'll keep thinking about it. Meanwhile I will likely be doing a lot of rebuilds of old designs. I would love to learn how to "sheath" my wings but as I understand that requires the mod tools to create custom parts and that remains a bit beyond me. I think I'll stick with XML modding. That said! I have downloaded more fuel efficient jet thrusters with more realistic fuel consumption. I remember our early jet fighters - heck just flying from one island to the next over gave us MAYBE five minutes of loiter time and to get back to the airstrip on fumes! I'd like to find a more fuel efficient T2000 and T3000 as well though.
Is it my imagination or is this latest variant a little squirrelly after returning to level flight from aerobatic maneuvers? She still keeps the awesome speed of past variants though I don't remember her being this fast at low altitude! I'll have to go back and test that for myself though! lol
@TheOwlAce Nice to see you haven't lost your' touch! I went out and bombed the Beast with her! I love the spatted landing gear, it really gives you a 1930s feel. Same with the odd defensive position appearances - and the weird biplane layouts they toyed with in that period. XD
@TheOwlAce Argh! Wish I could try it!! >.<
@TheGuyYouMightKnow Don't get me wrong, looks great as is and yes, its likely cleaner w/o the custom landing gear. Furthermore the smaller part count might even make it low enough to be friendly to mobile users. ^_~
@TheOwlAce THAT is a great new feature for this design. If I'm thinking of the right flying wing, I believe the old one was capable of doing the same by selectively turning off the outboard engine (in terms of the spin) and firing up the other while applying full rudder. You'd still lose about 5,000 ft of altitude IF you're sharp enough to get it on the first try though. For the most part you don't enter a flat spin in her anyway unless you forget what you're flying and try to fly her like a conventional aircraft by attempting to use more than one control surface at a go.
@Mostly Yeah, the Torpedo-slinging version of this was a lot of fun but you had to give yourself a good and long approach with regard to the speed, altitude and aim. She's so fast that you have to be careful not to become a crazy Kamikaze pilot without meaning to! :D
@Irobert55 Ahh I see, you just want her to have a brutal sounding name, no harm there. I'm having deja vu in regards to this conversation of "naming it whatever you want!" LOL
@TheGuyYouMightKnow I've always been a fan of twin-boom aircraft,so when I see this pop up in my jetstream with that detailed office, of course you're going to get my vote! She looks nice, I won't be able to look closer/fly her for a while but from what I see I like it! With all the detail though, why did you go with stock landing gear rather than building up detailed replica landing gear? No criticism intended, only curious!
@Irobert55 On the other hand we could go a lil more simple and go with the "Blue-Green Dragon," depending on what color the bombers appeared in the show, it's been a long time since I saw it, one word for which is "Soryu." Don't get me started on Japanese colors in regards to greenish-blue. It's as bad as people insisting on having a separate word for every bloody shade of color in English. You can't just call it "light purple" its "lavender," for example. An off-white can be called Ivory, Taupe, light tan, etc. etc. Hopefully Germans have retained some semblance of sanity with their words for colors! lol
@Irobert55 So basically "Mountain of Death, "Shi no Yama?" Shino as a single word in Japanese is a pottery glazing technique. lol "Shiro" is white. You could also interpret "Shi no Yama" as "Mountain of Four," which might make the crews a bit less than enthusiastic as 4 is considered an ill omen. The characters for Shi as in the number and Shi as in death are different but the Japanese do like to make plays on words. ;)
... I've no idea what I did to get my post to do that, I forgot how to format posts long ago and still don't remember how this happened. lmao
@TheOwlAce Oh, I stand corrected. It is the Blohm und Voss P.144 project, not the Bv-144. lol! I see now what you were aiming for.
Here's the three view for what you were aiming for;
http://www.luft46.com/bv/3bb144.gif
Here's what I THOUGHT you were aiming for, which had me scratching my head as it was the bird the RLM gave the designation "144" - which of course was separate from Blohm und Voss's own internal Projekt numbers;
https://img.rcgroups.com/http://www.airwar.ru/image/idop/cww2/bv144/bv144-1.gif?h=9n3t2Q6xS7TgYyhMn8R6dg
@TheOwlAce Oh I see, is that why you set it as free to use because you couldn't find the proper dimensions? I looked up the real Bv-144 w/o thinking to check your' recent builds; Quickly realized you weren't aiming to produce this aircraft. Have you ever seen the Bv-139? (Technically Ha-139 but manufactured by Blohm und Voss.) She's a sharp looking bird, in my opinion, bent wings, four engines and a floatplane - what's not to love?! lol They later created a quartet of Ha-142s based on the Ha-139. Photos of them are pretty rare though. Two of them were used as maritime patrol aircraft from 1940-42. The other two were used as buses for the occupation of Norway and Denmark.
I can agree with you there. I took up a challenge to make a P-70 version of someone's A-20 Havoc/Boston but I was going to trick it out 100%, right down to the panel lines. Thankfully I managed to find GREAT schematics on that one; Though I never did finish the project. It would have required so much XML modding because of the angle of attack on the wings being different, detailing the landing gear and so on. What are you trying to find? I have a LOT of military aviation history contacts with an eye for schematics, technical details and so on - maybe I can help? (I was a model builder long before SimplePlanes was even a dream and thus still maintain those contacts~)
@Irobert55 Shinigami is so overused though, how about Shiroyama (White mountain, they were triangular AND big,) Tsubasa (Wing), Tsubasa no Shi (Winged Death), Tsurugi (An archaic Japanese double edged straight bladed sword,) etc.? Granted "Ts-" in Romaji doesn't come across quite as an ordinary "S" sound but since you don't know it's name it sort of gains that double meaning. It's an unknown and therefore doesn't quite conform with the standard and yet it does at the same time. ^_~
@MisterMasada How I missed your' response so long ago, I have no idea, but yes I remember that much about the story line. (No, I've not reviewed it, that ending sucked too hardcore!) I would very much like to read the novels now though, given what you stated about them. Typically I like to watch the movie first and then read the novel anyway. The movie gives you some visuals to utilize while the book fleshes out the parts that were missing in the movie. Although I'll never view/read another work of JK Rowling, I made that error once upon a time, read the book and then viewed the film. It felt like someone had put the book on fast forward and skipped over all the best parts just to show the action scenes! lol
@Irobert55 My post got cut off. :( Anyway, through a succession of events, strange alliances and agreements Finland persevered. It eventually came to be known as "Se Viikinki Imperiumi," unofficially. To succeed the throne one had to lead a successful campaign of military conquest, which is what inspired the national insignia, the Scarlet Crown - as it is a crown that can only be grasped by one with blood on their hands. By the time frame of The Owl Ace's timeline, some twenty years prior, "Finland" had successfully conquered Sweden and Norway. (The enemy aircraft in his designs I generally suggested were of Swedish or Norwegian design and were to be used in the first stages of the conflict against his Weltreich to lower their guard as they were largely inferior to his designs.
The designs that followed were meant to be Finland's actual military strength. Before I finished rolling out all of my designs, not then being aware of the three a day limit, he had unilaterally declared victory.
I had hoped it would be a play-by-play kind of game. You move, I move, etc. After I expressed this we planned to start a new game, possibly with my adoption of a different nation. I was considering taking up the role of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and we would design one for one, one enemy followed with one of our own. Then do a play-by-play after we were ready to start.
@Irobert55 I had worked out the history and traced the independence back to one event from before Finland became a part of Russia. Its in posts from a couple of years ago and the rest is stuck on my inaccessible laptop in a series of simple planes documents.
From what I remember there was a plan recorded in history sometime soon after the American revolution, if I remember right that actually served as the inspiration in part, to rebel against Sweden among Finnish ethnic military officers and nobles. They had set out their plans, had a significant number of Finns ready and willing to rebel and thus they were basically ready to start to move. (Finland for many years had been a buffer zone that served as a battleground for Sweden and Russia in repeated conflicts and they were tired of their fields being trampled, their communities being razed and their people being slaughtered/forced into a war not of their own making.
However someone became aware of the ploy and fearing the subsequent repercussions or was simply a loyalist to the Swedish crown he rode to inform Swedish authorities. A simple change in history changed that part in that he was thrown from his horse and perished while on his way to alert the Swedes. If he had succeeded, as he did in our timeline, the new and young King of Sweden would have brutally cut down the head individuals of this attempt at independence. In this alternate timeline he failed to inform the authorities and they made their move swiftly. Reports from that time period were that Swedish fortifications and garrisons in Finland at the time were severely understaffed. Furthermore many Finns had joined the Swedish military merely to protect their own homes and families from the repeated wars. You combine understaffed garrisons/fortifications, an entrenched enemy bitter from the repeated wars between two other peoples on their land that typically saw their people and communities victimized or serving as a commodity within that permeates these, a budding concept of independence and it develops into a powerful storm.
Once they moved to take control of the fortresses, garrisons and noble's houses - who were of Swedish bloodlines - it would have been comparatively swift. Assuming that they didn't march all their cannon and arms in and out of the garrisons and fortresses with each troop redistribution this would have put the majority of the Eastern portion of the Swedish Kingdom's weaponry in the hands of the Finns.
@TheOwlAce Your' laptop sounds a lot like the "Loaner" here, but a bit more powerful. Likely the difference between laptops and notepads of the time.
@Irobert55 Look, while I can agree on some points about his naming sense, its really irrelevant, he likes the Reichsluftfahrtministerium system. He basically used many of the same relevant figures in the German aircraft industry, with some twists and exceptions. What's the harm?
You say it doesn't resemble anything designed in Germany? True, in our timeline the German aircraft industry by the time this was designed in the alternate timeline had virtually been completely dismantled following Germany's defeat in the Second World War. However you could compare it to some of the De Havilland designs that were designed in the waning days of that war and even after. You could also compare it to the Focke-Wulf "Flitzer" project.
Whenever you are dealing with alternate timelines you have to imagine that every small change has a butterfly effect following it. Every major event, such as the failure of the Weimar Republic to ever appear, the Kaiser remaining in power, the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution and so on would have profound impacts upon the timeline. How can any of us accurately predict what would have happened in the place of the history that we know with each minor detail - let alone major events? Perhaps Alexander Lippisch in this alternate timeline did not survive the Great War and therefore could not have gone on to design aircraft that later inspired the Horton Brothers and spur their imagination to follow flying wing designs? That's just one of countless possibilities.
Look at my my designs for Finland, their aircraft industry was laughable BUT in the alternate timeline settings I've participated in they managed to build it up. Many of those are my earliest designs on SimplePlanes and they have NO basis in factual information, it's all made up.
Ultimately though, mein freund, I suggest you worry more about building planes, flying them and having fun instead of providing non-constructive criticism to other builders about fiddly details regarding names, designations, designs, etc. I believe the Developers and Administrators would prefer that too.
@TheOwlAce 2009 you say? I decided to check on this machine and its the same year, maybe I'm underestimating her? She's a Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC running on Windows 7 (though I'm curious about trying Ubuntu as an alternative startup option.) Stat wise she has an AMD 1.6 GHz Processor, 6 GB RAM and just shy of 600 GB of storage - 570 useful storage after system partitions. IF that could handle SimplePlanes the only other complication is that she has a bum cooling fan that grinds and grumbles the whole time she runs. I have her posterior side propped up on a tape measure, with a tiny desk fan blowing air into the cooling vent and under her. I additionally have a large box fan sitting next to her on low - just to be sure she doesn't suffer from the overheating shutdowns she experienced several times in my kids hands during her days as "The Loaner." Two of her four USB ports are shot. The battery won't hold a charge and I think weight to weight she has more electrical tape on the power cord than actual wire!
@TheOwlAce Love the new profile photo you chose by the way! Sorry our next match never got off of the ground - pun unintended but I'll take credit just the same. If you'll read below my laptop that has SimplePlanes on it is presently out of commission and I'm not sure that this aged beast, the "Loaner" laptop that gets passed around whenever someone's machine is presently inoperable, could handle it. I'm hoping to get Old Silver fixed either this month or next and HOPING they don't have to wipe the drive entirely to get her back up and operational.
@Irobert55 Thank you for the attempt at educating we mere mortal, uneducated and unwashed masses of Americans in the ever SO obscure topic of the Horton Brothers' projects. (With information just as easily found on the pages of Wiki, no less and without looking into their planned paper projects at all.) As such, with all due respect sod off! If he called it the Scheisse-Flugel SF.XXIII it wouldn't change the fact that he did a bang up job on building a sweet looking late-40s/early-50s feel jet fighter that handles well, is a real killer and has a fair range for a jet fighter of her size.
@TheOwlAce Sounds like a lot of fun! Sorry that I disappeared just when we were about to start in on our new wargame but my PC suffered a "Breakpoint Error" due to a file sharing issue between an image I had saved and was still currently being accessed by Mozilla Firefox. Seems it was a problem with Firefox for a bit but the newest version doesn't have that problem. Unfortunately my decent Laptop is out of operation for the time being due to that error as I can't even get Windows to load up let alone access my SimplePlanes account. I'm on "The Loaner," laptop, an eight year old machine that likely would burst into flames if I tried to get Steam and SimplePlanes on it. lol We have a repair place here in town and I'm hoping they can go in there and just fix the error without wiping the drive. It's a matter of finance and not knowing what will happen once I turn it in for repairs.
@FilenotFound I found mine through trial, error and sheer dumb luck on Windows 10 then made a shortcut to the folder that contains them. You can edit them in plain old Notepad.
@Irobert55 I am aware, but his builds are of an alternate timeline and who is to say it wouldn't be as such? I didn't create his world of creations I just took part in it for a bit. I was preparing to do so yet again when my computer suffered a Break Point error due to a file sharing issue between a photo I had saved on my hard drive and was still being accessed by Firefox. They've since patched that error with a new version of Firefox but too late for my PC. I can't even get Windows to load up on it.
@TheOwlAce I DL'd a nice looking Mustang with customized wheels and checked the settings; They'd turned off the suspension! I tried it on my own; Lo and behold it worked! lol Changing the design around a bit, backdating it to what is it, 1935 we're starting in? Two blade props or are we already in three blade prop territory?
@TheOwlAce Wow, Austria-Hungary was pretty well industrialized prior to WW1 and their economic growth was the highest in Europe, GDP wise. Austria-Hungary it is, under King Otto von Habsburg. This will be fun I think, I'll explore their technologies and how Czech, Yugoslavian, Austrian and Hungarian industry developed out of the dissolution of the Empire. This will give me an idea of what the appearances of aircraft and military vehicles might be like in the '30s. I'll have to look at the tech they used and developed during the war as well.
I took a break from the small patrol boat I was working on and started tinkering with that Finnish Gull winged fighter, planning to detail it to my current standards. I'm having trouble with the bloody thing landing on fixed landing gear though using the new single tires. It's like it lands and catapults onto its back. o.o;
@Irobert55 I'm well aware of that historical fact, but thank you for pointing it out. His aircraft labeled as Fw are Fokker-Wulf rather than Focke-Wulf too, perhaps not surprisingly since Henrich Focke was pressured by shareholders out of the company in the mid-30s and later founded Focke-Achgelis. Perhaps the Horton brothers were placed in charge of Gotha in the timeline this aircraft was produced for? It would be just the same as how Willy Messershmitt took the lead for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke? Hence the Ho- leading the name; Just as the Messerschmitt 109 is abbreviated as Bf-? ^_~
@TheOwlAce This is not going to be like a prequel to our first C&C game though, it's going to be based loosely on the setting in the game vids you shared right?
With the Central Powers winning the war, according to history, Germany did back Finland's bid for independence from Russia. HAD Germany won the war, as they did in this setting, Finland would have become known as Suomen Kuningaskunta - The Kingdom of Finland, ruled by King Frederick I of Finland, the brother in law to Kaiser Wilhelm II.
This actually would have created deep ties between Germany, Denmark and Finland. According to history he passes away in 1940 with Prince Philipp named as his successor to the throne of Finland; Who himself had married Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy in 1925. This forms yet another new tie-in; Italy. (History states he will not pass until 1980.)
Essentially with this research established, Finland would be an ally if not a client state to the Deutsche Reich. If you wanted an ally for this C&C game it would work otherwise it'd probably be better for me to choose a different nation. If you did opt to have me again produce materials for Finland we should each produce enemy craft from powers we anticipate to be enemies. What are your' thoughts?
@TheOwlAce That'll be interesting to see! I might have to try that in the future as well with a large transport or transport sea plane. I'm going to go back and work on that patrol boat I was trying to turn into an airship. ^_^
@TheOwlAce Sounds good, I look forward to seeing it!
@Cylinderpringles Well, you're familiar with nudging at the very least I could tell. I didn't figure that out until months into my initial designing frenzy. I found my XML files by pure happenstance - Win10 makes them hard to find - and I like using it for cosmetic stuff mostly though a lot of my earlier designs had pre-made modded engines. I modded a VTOL engine I intended to use as the propulsion for a small patrol vessel, as it wound up being a speed boat without it, but I think I'm scrapping that for waterline prop engines OR the new heavily modded underwater rotator assembly props called WI-2 I think.
@TheOwlAce Yeah, I think I'm going to keep my ships out of the air and on the water instead - and keep my planes in the air! ;-)
I went ahead and watched up through episode 10 of the video series you sent to me then the last episode. Talk about a convoluted and complicated C&C game! Kind of put me in the mind of playing RISK against a very dumb computer. (Although how Seattle/Cali screwed him over got a chuckle out of me!)
You haven't offered an answer as to who you would like me to produce designs for? I kind of have certain design elements in mind for different national origins.
I've also been considering another idea with this C&C game, that we also each opt to create aircraft for third party nations; Pretty much every other one. So you'd build one for Germania, then maybe one for the Commune of France, I'd build one for whomever you think would be best, then I'd build one for someone else. Thoughts?
@Razor3278 Actually she loved to corkscrew - it was keeping her on a good solid climbing turn that was the trick! lol I look back at almost all of my old designs though and think; Oh what rubbish! I have a couple of fighters you can't even take off with at full power or they'll nose over. lol
@Razor3278 She's a fun little thing to play with just don't try to dogfight with her as she likes to roll out of vertical axis loops. I think it might be attribute to her relatively short wingspan in relation to her length - not sure on that though. Love the design though. Far prettier than the ground attack planes I made last year! lol
@TheOwlAce Now that we have the half-spheres, with a little XML modding we get tail bumpers! :-D lol
@TheOwlAce This works pretty well!! She's a bit of a challenge on landing, but I need to adjust my controller settings to continue to use the KB throttle controls since it either wants to throttle all the way up or all the way down, I think that'll make it easier. I'll have to try some of your' flying boats I used to have a challenge controlling back when I solely used KB controls.
One thing I've found since I started using the joystick is that I can REALLY tell when an aircraft is off balance as where with KB controls I could maneuver pretty smoothly despite that issue. I DID try this bird when you first released it but hadn't hooked up my joystick yet. I rather quickly careened into the sea. Not so this time, just came in a little hot on the landing due to cutting too much power/trim on the props. Great work!! You should do an experiment though. Some helicopter designs use contra-rotating rotors to alleviate the need for a tail rotor - perhaps you could try that as an experimental version of this? You have one prop facing up on one side and one prop facing down, buried into a nacelle - just to see if the game physics will register that a tail rotor isn't necessary? The V-22 Osprey doesn't have a tail rotor after all~
@TheOwlAce Yeah, but the question is how did he manage to get those parts into a solid fuselage block ... nudging, I guess?
@TheOwlAce That's what I did both on KB controls back in the day and now with the controller. lol
@SledDriver Ooooh okay, thanks!
@TheOwlAce That's some interesting stuff, I only watched through to the maps showing the extent of german influence. Just as I predicted Communism and Socialism still would not disappear with the failure of the Russian Revolution and would likely show itself elsewhere. Seems like the Vicchy powers took hold in France without WW2 even being necessary - but not as a client state to Germany. I was surprised to see that Finland still managed to obtain independence in 1917 despite the Russian Revolution's failure. I expect that in this setting Finland would be more likely to align with Germany to stave off being re-taken by Russia. However, by the shape of Finland, I can tell that the Russians did fight them as Finland was not able to hold onto Karelia, which is ethnically and historically a part of the territory that Sweden and Russia used to fight over.
Do you think that France or Britain are the most likely adversaries to the "Central Powers," in future conflicts? Are you still planning a start date in the 20s? Which nation would you prefer I build for if we're going to do this? Oh yes, and are we sticking with airships or are we going navy this time around? IF we are going airships, are modded engines still outlawed? I'm having trouble getting my prototype airship to come up off of the water.
@Cylinderpringles He was an absolute prolific builder, filled out his full number he could list in a day. He left and came back under another name later but for the life of me I can't remember what it was then. Soon after I took a long hiatus following an unfavorable ending to a C&C Alternate WW2 game so I have no idea if he's even around now. In my aircraft inventory I still have some of his birds though, hence my question. ^_^ Ah so you are a returning player then? That explains your' mad skills! lol