Folks,

I was watching C-Span book reviews last night and caught an author of a new book on combat aviation giving a talk at a book signing. He was an interesting speaker and it turns out an equally good writer. "If the trees are getting big, pull back till you see blue" Good early advice from the pilot father of Lt. Col. Dan Hampton who is the author of: "Viper Pilot - A Memoir of Air Combat".

151 combat missions, 21 hard kills on surface-to-air missile sites, four distinguished flying crosses with Valor, and a Purple Heart.

The book has just been published. Look here and you can browse the book online:

http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780062130358

I'm looking for it at our public library sometime soon.

Gents,

Just heard that the oldest surviving Battle of Britain pilot, Flt/Lt William Walker, has died at the age of 99. Farewell and thanks.

Chaps,

JRT,

My list of books-to-read is now so long I have virtually given up on reading them all. Even so, I have included your recommendation of Viper Pilot!

I recently downloaded Shockwave's BoB2 Terrain Editing Page by PV 2006. This must be our very own PV1? Very extensive and informative with pics to accompany the instructional. Also, the Gimp 2 tool is now on my HD and ready for some preliminary dabbling in due course. I have no pretensions to producing anything worthwhile but it will certainly be an interesting thing to play with - as Olga said to C51 the other night.

It was quite mild again today but on my way to Manchester I could see that the Northern Rail management had heeded recent frost warnings and had gritted several station platforms.

Dux, not sure where you found that link, but the terrain tutorial is
best fetched from the thread immediately below us, and the current version
was updated a mere 9 days ago, so it is shockingly up to date. It is
hugely improved from '06, and written with the intent that even a youngster
with no experience with a dos command prompt should be able to navigate
through it. Although the most recent update is actually fairly minor, in
that I have left all the example images and procedures as based on WinXP,
as I don't think the newer versions have invalidated them to speak of.

By the way, here's my current gimp stack:

PV1,

Wow! That stack reveals that it isn't something one can romp through at all but that bit about a 'youngster with no experience' gives me some confidence!

The Google link for the 2006 instructions came up as: A2A Battle of Britain Terra X

www.shockwave productions.com/bob/forum/terrain/bob2_terrain_edit.html

Thanks for the improved 2:10 terrain tutorial update link which now supercedes my previous download. It appears as read only, with frame and image descriptions but no example pics therein.

Folks,

Dux:

The last of the few? Sad indeed. Salute!

PV1, that sir is impressive and for a novice mind boggling. To me it looks incredibly tedious and demanding yet somehow also intriguing. I have not read up on the process. Simplified, is it more or less a matter of getting photographs (satellite and/or period) and painstakingly fitting them at a prescribed resolution onto a master BoB map? Seems impossible yet you have done it.

I am interested in skinning. So far I have only managed to alter the skin of a MiG-15 bis. There are several versions already in the KAW campaign of SFP1. Some have red tails or noses signifying the pilots are probably from 'out of town' and not straight off the turnip truck from the outskirts of Pyongyang. Some have more red than others. What I found on Google showed a lot of red. There are skins for N. Korean 151.IAD, 303.IAD, and 324.IAD. Soviet and N. Korean silver skins are included. There is also a N. Korean Tri-Blue skin. For my first attempt mainly to see what I could do, I simply added a red tail with less red then the others and I was delighted when it showed up. Simple to do really and nothing like what you have pictured here. Seeing that kinda took the gas right out of my balloon. Fantastic work.

Chaps,

JRT,

Nice skin job! Here's a natty Mig in SovAF 1955 guise for you to have go at. The upper wings and tailplanes look all red, too.

The end result would be a historically correct service aircraft but too late for the Korean War, obviously.

Folks,

Dux:

A beautiful bird. I know you've done some skinning. Is that one of your's? I have gone back and added more red to my MiG. Red on the top of the tail planes and a part of the aft fuselage and nose. It is more accurate to the time.

In 1951 all MiG-15 units painted their MiG-15 with red high visibility markings to avoid misidentifications with F-86 Sabre. The markings of each of the units were different. They all had in common the red nose, but the size of the red area was different according to unit. Also the paintings on the tail were different. Some units had red tails others did not. The numbers were 4 digits at first, later 3 digits. The color of the numbers was generally black, but also blue and red numbers were seen over Korea.

The Units:
The 151. IAD fought only 4 weeks in February, lost 6 MiG's and shot down 36 US planes.

The 324.IAD was commanded by Col. Iwan Koshedub. Fought from March 1951 to January 1952. It lost 24 MiG's and shot down 215 enemy planes. Top ace was Jewgeni Pepeljajew with 19 Kills (16 confirmed by US sources).

303.IAD fought from April 1951 to February 1952. It was commanded by Col. Lobow. Top ace was Nikolai Sutjagin with 21 kills (14 confirmed by US sources). The 303.IAD shot down 302 enemy planes and lost 49 MiG-15.

As we can deduce from some of the pilot's names, some of these red nosed and tailed MiGs were flown by well trained and experienced pilots from a somewhat different postal code than N Korea. Some of these units served only briefly but the red tailed crowd downed a lot of Sabres.

Ah, yes, if you try to open it within the zip, that will happen.
The zip has to be unpacked into a folder and then it should unfold
in all its glory.

Well, that is the idea, yes, and yes it can be an entertaining challenge.
The process is belaboured in excruciating detail in the tutorial, but
basically, one must find maps and/or aerial photos for the region under
attack, and then fit them on a stack over the Rowan land-use code map,
which has a fixed size of about 5.63m per pixel (it was supposed to be
5.12m ie. 512cm (2^9), but someone at Rowan muddled metres and yards at
an early point in the development, and a correction factor of x1.1 had
to be inserted; no, I don't know if they were related to someone who did
work for NASA...)

Anyway, the maps and photos can be any size, so the fitting involves a
lot of image manipulation. It is simplest with maps, where the projection
is already correct, then you just have to locate the most widely spaced
pair of landmarks available on both your map and the Rowan map, then use
gimp to measure the distance on each, in pixels, and use the ratio to
multiply the map's scale in the gimp Change Scale command, then slide
the resulting layer around til you've got a fit. It is much more of a
challenge when you've got a recon photo taken at an angle. Now you have
to locate four points, scale the photo using two of the points, at
approximately the same distance from the camera, to a map which has the
same four points, then use gimp's Alter Perspective tool to move the
other two points in the photo to match those on the map, so now you
have flattened the photo to a proper map projection. Now you can go about
the process of resizing and fitting the photo to the Rowan map as above.
I had to do that with the photos of Dunkerque I got from TARA (The
Aerial Reconnaissance Archive).

The original Rowan map was a bit sloppy, so to get the best fit for an
edit, it is usually necessary to start with a huge swathe of terrain
for the map-matching process, like using all of Kent to align the maps
to do a small edit at Dover.


Looks good to me. Do you have control over anything beyond the paint, ie. reflectivity etc with
that sim? BoB2 has .fx files which are associated with 3D objects via the filename, and instruct
DirectX how to treat the illumination of the surfaces when the 3D is rendered. These files are
plain text, so you can get in them and thrash about, changing numbers to see what they do. I
had a brief go at it recently, and posted my results at A2A in hope of inspiring someone more
dogged and enthusiastic to dive in deeper, but so far I haven't seen any response.

I have only tried two skins, both for BoB2 ground objects, and they were not much to see, only
worthwhile as they were an improvement on the Rowan originals. They have both now been superseded
by vastly better skins on newly rebuilt objects by Ben, who as I'm sure you're aware has fantastic
skills at 3D object building. He seems to make his skins from a synthesis of photographic and
handmade texturing, which is really the way to go, if you can find the images. The challenge of
stretching photo images to fit the texture map for a 3D object, and then fill in the missing bits
by hand, is surely much more of a skill than the stuff I do with the maps.

Folks,

Dux:

I use WinRar for such purposes but there are several good zip/Rar programs about. No doubt you already have one. I have noticed that I can easily open zip files in my file manager (Power Desk) but Rar and other compressed files require me to load them into WinRar and then uncompress them into a folder of my choice where I can work my evil way with them. Good luck with your new enterprise.

PV1:

Thank you. So far it is a minor accomplishment that may suggest the possibility of future improvement. I have some control over reflectivity and shadow within the file structure:

[Shadow]
CastShadow=TRUE
ShadowLOD=MiG-15bis.shd
ShadowType=1
ShadowCastDist=10000
MaxVisibleDistance=400

[TextureSet001]
Directory=SovietSilver1
Name=Soviet Silver
Nation=Soviet
Specular=1.000000
Glossiness=0.500000
Reflection=1.000000
Squadron=

The basic aircraft model must be created in 3d Studio Max which I do not yet have. I do not know if I could use the open source program "Blender" for that purpose. There are so many skinners and modders still working on the SF2 version that it would hardly be worth the effort in most instances to create a new plane. A quick search of CombatAce or the A-Team site will turn up any plane in any flavor you want. There are still hundreds of models and skins available for the original SFP1 game as well but development has stopped on that. I do not have the later SF2 version of the game and most of the work on the original SFP1 (Strike Fighters Project One) has, as I pointed out, reasonably been halted when Third Wire introduced the new version some time back.

Programs such as 3d Studio are large and take time to learn. I do not have the HDD space for another big program. Of course I could remove all my games in order to create models to fly in my games but somehow that seems counter productive. Somewhat like a dairy farmer buying a milking machine and using his only cow as the down payment.

BoB is still my "main squeeze" of course but I have never seriously considered skinning for that. Why? With Stickman and others there is no need for a mere novice. So high is my opinion of the BDG and BoB that it would not occur to me to make changes in the game myself. BoB is special. Plus, and despite being told it shouldn't run at all on my old computer, it runs well and I am satisfied with my version as it is other than the oddly skinned Me 110s that are strangely all white.

It appears that skinning for IL-2 '46 is easier than for SFP1. For one thing the basic template for all the planes is already provided in the basic install. I watched a tutorial on the subject recently skinning the P-38 L. Another advantage is that there is a built-in aircraft/skin viewer in the game so you don't have to wait to see your work flying in the game to make changes and tweaks. You can alt-tab from PhotoShop into IL2 while the work is in progress to view your new skin on the plane in 3d.

JRT, PV1,

Unzipped terrain tutorial to folder and all pics present and correct. Thanks.

That wasn't my MiG, unfortunately, but a beautiful job as you say.

Ivan Kozhedub (different spelling) was a WWII ace of 62 victories and would have made Sabre claims in Korea although unofficially.

Chaps,

JRT,

We are hearing about Hurricane Sandy at the moment which may pick up as it threatens the East Coast and NC. I expect you will be battening down the hatches right now. We wish you luck and hope it begins to weaken soon.

Folks,

Dux:

Thanks for your concern for our welfare old chum.

Yes, as the RADAR shows Sandy's tendrils are already reaching out to us though her eye is still hundreds of miles away. This is clearly a huge storm system that promises to become a super storm when it combines with an Arctic low and slams into the North East. Even when it does that Monday into Tuesday it is so large we may well be hit by it again. There could be massive power outages all along the eastern seaboard even up into C51 country and the Canadian Maritimes. This storm has been a killer in the Caribbean so we must keep an eye on it. Compared to the NE we should be alright with minimum damage except on the Outerbanks and the coast and sounds due to storm surge and heavy rain and wind.

This is an unusual late season storm for many reasons that may rival what was called "The Perfect Storm" of years ago. Remember that Clooney film? That storm was not so big and did not come inland. Most late seasons storms head your way. Lasting for days, Sandy in one form or another threatens the US with heavy rain, strong winds and long term power outages over a large and highly populated area. NY city is threatened with storm surge. If seawater gets into the subway system of NY City that will be a disaster that will cripple the transportation system and may take a long time to repair.



A concerned C51 wrote and cautioned us to keep our heads down tonight and tomorrow. When I have done that in the past my rear usually becomes elevated and often results in a huge pain in my ass. I think I'll just lay low until next Wednesday when the whole thing should be C51's problem. At that time we, and a lot of other folks, will be cleaning up the debris.

Gents,

JRT,

This will be tracked by our media and I will be on the case with grim but hopeful anticipation of a fading scenario. This year, the UK has had the most diverse weather in our history of meteorology according to one source. All it needs now is to cap it off with a 1947 style blizzard!

German POW's clearing the road near Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, 1947.

Much excitement last night, as we underwent the largest
earthquake Canada has seen in 60 years, a shallow depth,
centred on the east coast of Haida Gwaii (the erstwhile
Queen Charlotte Islands) and only 40km south of the village
of Sandspit, which, as you might suspect, is built on a
sandspit on the shoreline. The quake was M7.7-R, which is
pretty substantial, but as it turned out, there was no
damage so far reported beyond a few broken plates, and the
resultant tsunami managed about 1 1/2 ft, enough to cause
a lot of swirling currents, but nothing more serious reported,
as it travelled across the pacific as far as Hawaii.

As I say, much media yammering, but no talk that I heard of the
most impressive feature, that Sandspit wasn't vibrated into the
ocean. There are three reasons for the lack of damage. First,
the fault is a lateral one in that area, so the movement is
horizontal rather than vertical. This is because the major
subduction process has already consumed the Pacific mid-ocean
ridge at that latitude, so there is no east-moving sea floor
to subduct there. Some subduction must be happening there, but
it is at a greatly reduced rate relative to that on the coast starting
about 100 mile to the south, where the remains of the East Pacific
plate (aka Juan de Fuca plate) persist, forming a little triangle
out about 300 mile from the centre of Vancouver Island, and south
to northern California, which is still pushing east and diving under
the coast.. Around the Charlottes, the movement is dominated by
the much faster rate of movement of the western Pacific plate north
relative to the continent.

So, as I say, a horizontal movement, things thus pushed about
sideways rather than heaved up and down, can make for less mayhem,
particularly when, as seems to be the case here, the slippage
is relatively smooth and well ordered. The second reason is the
low population density in the region. Sandspit has a population of
about 500, and the Charlottes altogether have only around 4000
people, no doubt due in part to the fact that the climate is
considerably colder and wetter than here (which is saying something...)
so there is not a lot of structure to sustain damage. The quake was
felt beyond the islands, but not at a level great enough to produce
damage, as the nearest settlements on the mainland are close to
150km away. Finally, the houses on the coast are typically one
to two story woodframe buildings, which are quite resistant to
earthquake damage, particularly following the BC building code.
They will flex a lot, but not fail, especially at the small size
of single family homes. Had the same quake shaken the Vancouver
area, it would have been a major catastrophe with considerable loss
of life.

Oh, one more thing I should add, the previous large quake, in 1949,
which was an 8.1, and still holds the record for largest recorded
quake in Canada, was on the same fault, in the same region, about
90km NW of this one, on the west side of the islands.

Folks,

PV1:

We're pleased you suffered no injury or damage. I read about the quake. Yup that was a teeth rattler for sure. If you will recall last year we had a small quake on the east coast and that got our attention when the house started shaking and the windows rattling. My wife and I were outside at the time. I think the epicenter was a good ways north of us. Lucky for you the plates were slipping as they were.

Plate Tectonics (from the Late Latin tectonicus) is an interesting subject that you obviously know quite a bit about. Plate tectonic theory had its beginnings in the early 20th Century when Wegener proposed his theory of "continental drift". Not until the 60's when seismic monitors were spread about to monitor atomic blasts did this theory become more than a "theory". I think that is right. Someone correct me if I am wrong. I remember way back in the fifties (no, not the 1850s Dux)I was looking at an atlas in geography class and pointed out to my teacher how the continents if pushed together seemed to fit like a huge puzzle.

She hadn't heard of "Continental Drift " apparently and she seemed underwhelmed by that revelation. It seemed to irk her in some way so I shut up. No doubt most people looking at an atlas or other representation of the Earth at one time or another have noticed this fact too but it took time for the theory of plate tectonics to be completely revealed. Of course if they had dug up and asked a Pangeaian citizen he or she would have known all about it.

A voracious reader, later on I was to get into even more trouble calling other teacher's attention to facts they had somehow overlooked. Once after a heated argument with a teacher I had the unmitigated gall to bring in Vol. One of Weill's "Outline of History" to prove my point. For this freely given enlightenment I was kept after school for showing disrespect for my teacher. Of course if this punishment was to increase my respect that failed miserably. In high school in the early 60's I found to my delight that most of my teachers welcomed new ideas and discussion. I learned more in the 60's.

I am happy to report that our little part of the North American Continent has not been set adrift by the awesome power of hurricane Sandy. At least not yet. We inland folks had a comparatively good day yesterday while Sandy had her wicked way with the Outerbanks. Now she is moving past us toward her rendesvous with NJ and parts north. Even when the eye slams in tonight or tomorrow she is so huge that Sandy will still be bringing upwards of 50 MPH gusts our way. The rain has tapered off right now and the wind is light but it ain't over yet.

I have managed yesterday with nothing else to do to further mod my Korean War campaign so that I can now fly for both sides. I had to change files and install cockpits for the non-flyable MiG 15s. After that was working I did the same for Wings Over Vietnam. Now I can fly the MiG 17s and the MiG 21. SFP1 does not compare favorably with BoB in many ways but it is fun and superior in one respect. It is almost infinitely customizable.

Dux:

I failed to remark after reading your mention of a heavy snow in 1947 that we also had a big snow that year. It was my first snow in fact as I was but 3 years of age. There are photos of me standing waist deep in the white stuff. The older kids used me as a snowball target until mother looked out an upstairs window and hastily intervened.

Gents,

JRT, PV1,

We are seeing and hearing plenty about 'Sandy' right now. By using my cardboard Eagle comic Dan Dare calculator I can reliably estimate that it will be about 11PM GMT when it hits the East Coast with a vengeance. Strangely, we have received no intelligence about the 'quake. It certainly isn't something we would associate with the former Dominion of Canada. I remember that Canada used to be a big pink bit in our school atlas and there were a lot of other big pink bits like India, Australia and many sub-bits like British Honduras, New Zealand and pink patches on the African continent and in the Pacific and around Malaya. Nowadays we can safely lay claim to the Isle of Wight. Cornwall has had a separatist mentality for generations and we can forget the Scillies. They belong to Charlie. Wales and Scotland are heading for devolution and the Union Jack will die. Even the Loyal Ulstermen prefer to include a red hand, superimposed but soon to form a 'V' sign, I fear.

I tell ya...the Empire has gone to the dogs.

However, there are some things that we will always hang on to and may God help any who would seek to possess our dearest cultural icons.

Folks,

Dux:

'The Terrible Shrinking Empire'.... Appropriate for Halloween as that sounds like one of those horror film titles from the 50s.

Looks like we started something, eh? Don't get yer nickers in too much of a twist over it. Stiff upper lip you know. Just say 'Good riddance to bad rubbish.' and get on with it. You will always have Doctor Who and Danger Mouse as well. Dan Dare is new to me. He looks rather heroic featured on that stamp. Other than Blackhawk which we recently discussed, my comic heroes were Superman, Batman and the Flash. OK, OK Donald Duck too.

It is 11 PM EST. I guess that is something like 04:00 GMT. The wind has picked up and the rain has returned tonight. It is getting steadily colder by the hour. We expect up to 50 MPH winds tonight and tomorrow morning with a driving rain while we are...driving. According to C51 they are expecting up to 100 MPH gusts in the Toronto area tomorrow.

'Big' impresses many Americans. What really impresses me about Sandy is that while it is thrashing us with wind and rain at one end it is pounding Toronto with twice the velocity at the other. This is a superstorm indeed. One we may be talking about for years to come. But for a fortuitous blocking cold front it would have landed in our lap first.

Good luck to C51 and all those dealing with Sandy north of us tonight.