Spin recovery (I found in my epic marathon RR with the Camel last night) is best done by simply pushing everything back to neutral the second it goes tits-up. On some stalls, recovery's actually been quicker by leaving the engine running too - dropping it to idle has only made matters worse as airspeed has fallen even further.


Blipping I do when diving on someone from above, the Camel can be overrevved easier than a Dolphin but harder than the SE5; a long dive (or several shorter ones) will knacker the engine quickly, but she'll pick up speed fairly quickly when you swoop in, anyway.


I can now pull relatively hard banked turns to the left and the right, both at 140mph or so. It's very fun indeed.




Nieuport 17 is to a twenty-year-old, badly beaten-up V8 Triumph Vitesse on its fifth owner as the Camel is to a TVR Tuscan. One is slow, cranky and dangerous to the owner whilst the other one is fast, cranky and dangerous to its owner *and* to the public

They're kinda polar opposites of the same spectrum. Mental flying coffins, only one is bigger and badder and generally a hell of a lot more fun.


TIR/RR footage to come this evening, I think

What I have witnessed, Camel is lot nicer to handle when you have 25% fuel than with full tanks. When you play online and put that 25% fuel in tanks I feel nothing can touch me (well perhaps only Dr.I with good pilot, but Dr.I harder to control with 25% fuel).

Thanks for the blip switch info. I wasn't sure if it was anything more than that. I just didn't want to NOT exploit a feature if it helped in turn and burn fighting. It's as simple as I thought..... to avoid over rev in dive and landing. Cool beans.

I get about that many with limited ammo and vulnerable.











































jk Masaq. Best I can do these days is about 5-6 until I toast my engine or get too close to Sauron.

From my limited understanding. In RL rotaries can't be run much below 1000rpm (by adjusting air and mixture), so blipping is the only way to slow them down. The ROF rotaries seem to be simplified, they throttle down quite a long way so the blip is nice to have but less necessary.

Which explains my long glide path when I land if I just throttle down without incorporating blip. If I don't use engine I sink fast on those final few feet and end up sproinging the LG or nosing over.

BLIP is the secret.

I've been using the blip (engine on/off before we got a decent blip command) in anticipation to a more refined rotary engine model (which will choke/flood the engine to a stop if they're "throttled" by fuel/air mis-mixture); it's actually quite good.

I'm continuously impressed by the engineers of the time. They really knew how to get the most out of what was available to them and push the envelope on the technology in a very short time.

Being rumored as an aggressive widow maker I am quite pleased with the Camel actually, it`s pretty much everything I read and heard it was.

Remember the Camel was not usual plug & play alà Spad, D7, SE5 etc, depending on the quality, it could be harder to fly than some DR.1`s.

Amongst other things you cant afford any careless moments, including yanking the stick.
If you are making a dive, think about what you wish to point your nose at, lower RPM for more stability, as you bring your nose to bear, nice and slow moves on the stick, Short incremental corrections along with a steady hand to keep your sights at the ground target, don`t try to multi target in one pass, do several passes and stay focused. The Camel is the kind of crate that trains it`s pilots, once youre more experienced you can multi target, but for now keep it simple.

The Camel requires incremental and steady control surface and throttle input. If you don`t have a good feeling about pulling of a fancy maneuver with the Camel, ignore it for now and just do it by the book instead, again, keep it simple.

In air combat the Camel is a bit of a double edged #%"%ard, mostly you will find yourself overshooting your opponent because he turned to the left. A Camel turns best to the right, AI seems to know that and purposely turns to the left in order to create an advantage to himself (Where he`d rather see you spinning so he can get on your 6.) Camel doing left-turn with inexperienced user behind the stick vs 130hp worth of heavy-#%¤ rotary at full throttle and all the torque that comes with it will probably do nothing but cost you important stability and airspeed since you have to correct with the rudder all the time. Simple physics, the more friction= more loss of airspeed and stability, and in some cases less throttle used=less friction. The less you use control surfaces along with throttle during left climbing turn = the less friction and added stability.

Here in lies the secret: While he climb turns left and bleeds speed in order to make your speedy camel to overshoot, just center your plane, full speed, pull your nose up nice and easy, and start climbing, thats right, overshoot him on purpose, he will probably turn his nose to the right and bring his guns to bear, in doing so he is creating more friction and very quick loss of airspeed. In doing so he is creating an advantage to you, there is an easy way to exploit it:

Train a bit to reduce the chance of stalling once you see him appearing to pull a lead on you, this is a mental mistake, in most cases he`s not pulling that crucial lead (And if he does, you are not climbing correctly.) And when you do the correct climb and he still does get the lead on you, keep climbing just as you were, he will only get in a couple of hits and probably not hit anything critical, or he`ll hit nothing but air, he now stalls, you now have the height advantage. If he keeps turning, its the same thing, this time you must turn as well so he wont be able to pull a lead on you because of less angle, the closer you are to him (Seen from birds perspective.) whilst above him, he wont have a chance in hell to pull a lead on you and will only end up stalling. He wont ever be able to make a shot at you again. Just keep climbing and wait for him to expose his 6 when he climb turns (Do some reverse turns to confuse him.), dive in behind on his 6 o`clock and make your shot, repeat the process until he is reduced to mincemeat

This is a technique I made up after some hours trying to deduce the AI`s capabilities over the latest updates. I`m sure theres more techniques better and fancier, maybe even simpler than mine but I only go with what gives me sure-fire victory in a, what to me is a uncomplicated and easy way: KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. As for online I wouldnt really know, I havent had a single MP kill :P

I agree.

The Camel has always been a disappointment in WW1 sim games to me, despite some valiant efforts by FM'ers like Greybeard etc in RB.

Although I like the plane, never flew it much in any games ... just too easy, too good.

RoF seems to get that reknowned difficulty and it's idiosyncrasies, together with its capability, pretty close.

A great FM.

"Now if this is the way the Camel reacts in real life then I say leave it this way, but if this is not the way the Camel really is then the scaling needs to be backed off."

The extreme sensitivity modeled seems accurate: I like the way the Camel is modeled.

From actual WW1-built Camels:

"A slight touch forward on the stick did tend to hurl the pilot bodily of the seat..."
Captain Ronald Sykes.

"The Type's tail-heavy trim made it responsive to the lightest backward pressure on the control column." Arthur Gould Lee, No Parachute

"The Camel, being totally unstable in all directions and very sensitive fore and aft..." Major W, G. Moore.

"The elevators are sensitive." Tallman, Flying the Old Planes.

"At 130 or 140 mph, the nose begins to hunt up and down and the elevator becomes extremely sensitive."

Tallman, Flying the Old Planes.

A WW1 report states: "She's so sensitive you can't relax for a second and you have the constant pressure on the joystick which in two hours flying makes your right arm ache." Arthur Gould Lee, No Parachute

"I found her very sensitive fore and aft, and if her nose was put down at all she immediately gathered at terrific speed. I'm sure that once I must have gone as fast as 140 miles an hour." Leslie Sellar. From a letter...Riding a camel Huntingdon Gleaner, Huntingdon, Quebec published Thursday, November 21, 1918



I love the Camel's stick handling and have no problems with it.
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The rudder in the real plane was additionally so sensitive that one pilot had to rest his feet against something solid so that the engine vibratrion on his feet did not move the airplane!

"Consequently, when flying for any distance, I often put the heels of my shoes on the floor tie wire because the vibration of the Le Rhone through the rudder bar exaggerates the rudder movements."

In real life, this was one unstable, sensitive machine...probably what made it such a killer. Kudos to ROF for modeling it.

My first flight with the Camel a few days ago was a disaster...I was very surprised at how tricky it was to fly (along with the DR.1), and especially to make correct turns.

But i trained and trained and yesterday evening, in Russian Roulette, I beat my mediocre record which was 6 kills, and downed 11 planes, yoohoo!

Unfortunately a Spad XIII made a little too many holes in my wings, which forced me to land successfully...I survived, but was captured

Since 1.008, my interest in RoF is really great, although I never completely stopped playing it.
I'm even thinking of buying a new system to run it... Because, yes, i am enjoying this sim even though my CPU can't run correctly a campaign mission...