As I put together the rarebirds and X-planes it occurred to me that though the focus of EAW is online play and by default, single mission play, there are probably a number of non-participatory players ( Lurkers, but I hate that name ) who are still interested in campaign play.

With that in mind I wanted to remind them that they can use the new plane selection option to build their own planesets rather than stick to the ones that the original producers built.

There is just one guideline to keep in mind. Use planes with the same mission profile. Fighters for fighters, attack for attack and level bombers for level bombers.

A perfect example is that of the Avenger. At the time of the original SPAW project there wasn't a decent Avenger model so as with most other projects I've put together, I added a "what-if" plane. A proposed radial engine P-38 torpedo bomber.

However, Mr. Jelly's brother flew an Avenger so he substituted the lo-res model for online play. Later on I built a hi-res model which is the standard now.

The point is that the substitution didn't affect game play because the plane was similar enough that the mission profiles, weapons loadouts and other variables could be handled by the game.

So if you want to fly the BOB but with some different planes make a list of the original planes and make your substitute aircraft close to the original plane. Then edit the slots on the plane selection screen accordingly. You do need to keep the slots in mind because all of the scenarios were produced before the new system was invented.

For instance, replace the Hurricane 1 with the Miles-20. Their flight profile is close enough that the game won't know the difference. Don't put a Hudson in place of the Hurricane. I mean, you can, the game won't crash but you might get some unusual missions.

You can get very creative with planesets in this way. In fact, you could make your own versions of SPAW45 or The General's War. In those scenarios I kept the mission profiles and squadrons the same as the original SPAW and the ETO but upgraded the planes and weapons to reflect a slightly different time from for WWII.

You could easily go the other route and use the biplanes that are in the DAW scenario for an earlier version of BOB. Just make sure to replace fighters with fighters and so forth.