Humor Random Comments Thread

[Thunder Chicken]

Yes, that IS a DC3 with a turboprop stuffed into its nose. AKA a Conroy Tri-Turbo-Three. Is that brilliance or sacrilege? I'm not quite sure... :lol:

A lot of old DC-3 airframes have been strengthened and upgraded with turboprops (no nose engine) and avionics. These aren't (all) preserved warbirds; a lot of DC-3s are doing the same work they were originally built to do back in the 1940s, and these upgrades make them easier to maintain and operate. Just business.

---------- Post added at 01:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:24 AM ----------

And when the last C-130 hits the boneyard, that crew will fly home in a DC-3 (C-47 in USAF parlance), which by that time will be about 150 years old or more. :lol:

My father flew a B-24M over to Italy at the end of WWII, had 10 hrs on it when his crew picked it up at Mitchell Field NY. V-E day happened and he was flown home on a C-47.

For a while he was busy ferrying B-24s to the boneyard in AZ, all with less than 150 hours on them. He recalled that when he taxied in the ground marshallers would have him pull up behind another parked B-24 and wouldn't stop waving him forward until the nose of his plane crunched into the tail of the parked plane. Full contact taxiing.

He was flown home on a C-47.

 

[Ravenous]

For a while he was busy ferrying B-24s to the boneyard in AZ, all with less than 150 hours on them. He recalled that when he taxied in the ground marshallers would have him pull up behind another parked B-24 and wouldn't stop waving him forward until the nose of his plane crunched into the tail of the parked plane. Full contact taxiing.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read that bit! :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Good news for all UAV pilots in Germany: The weight limit for professional UAVs was doubled, you can now get a general flight permission with a UAV that weights 10 kg (Which means DSLR cameras are now possible as payload). Night flights are also now clarified in the regulations, you can get a permission for such a flight if your UAV has suitable illumination to see its orientation.

 

[Artlav]

I feel like someone is forgetting about An-2, the good old crop duster.

 

[Andy44]

I feel like someone is forgetting about An-2, the good old crop duster.

I recently read HP Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", and in the story he describes an expedition to Antarctica in the 1930s bringing several large, robust airplanes with them for the trip. He doesn't say what kind of airplanes they are exactly and leaves that up to the reader's imagination, so I was imagining something quite like the An-2 or similar.

 

[Loru]

Ah yeah. Had a pleasure flying it back in 2000. You can hear and feel how plane works, although that was bit scary.

SP-FLZ

 

[Fabri91]

It, too, has been turbinized:

 

[C3PO]

It, too, has been turbinized:

I bet that version doesn't have a hand crank starter. :lol:

 

[APDAF]

That is an AN-3 IIRC they where built like that from the factory

 

[Fabri91]

The progress of the last three days:

The space crazies are starting to get me.

 

[Urwumpe]

The progress of the last three days:

The space crazies are starting to get me.

Is the game still "almost MMO" or does it now have a good single player mode?

 

[Fabri91]

Still sort-of MMO, but it can be played in solo mode without direct interaction with other players. Still, outside of the human-settled bubble around Sol it's "single player" if you want it or not.

Participation in events such as the Community Goal to resupply this stranded station 22kly away from the bubble have an influence on the bigger background events, even if you play in solo mode.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

The progress of the last three days:

The space crazies are starting to get me.

Pardon the ignorance, but... what game is this?

 

[steph]

initially thought it was No Man's Sky but maybe not

 

[mojoey]

It's Elite: Dangerous

 

[jedidia]

The progress of the last three days:

The space crazies are starting to get me.

Going to the pub at Jaques, are we?

Is the game still "almost MMO" or does it now have a good single player mode?

The problem is, it has neither really. I don't regret buying the game, I got almost a hundred hours of fun out of it, but for now that's that. It doesn't really manage the long-term motivation yet imho, the gameplay elements are too disconnected.

 

[Urwumpe]

The problem is, it has neither really. I don't regret buying the game, I got almost a hundred hours of fun out of it, but for now that's that. It doesn't really manage the long-term motivation yet imho, the gameplay elements are too disconnected.

Well, it was the same with the battlecruiser series. You can see where it wants to go, but halfway, you are bored to death.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read that bit! :lol:

Bomber technology had passed the B-24 by pretty quickly by the end of the war. It was not a particularly great plane to fly; it just worked. It was a workhorse during the war simply because it was effective and could be manufactured in high volumes. At the end of the war the Ford plant in Willow Run MI was cranking out a B-24 bomber every 8-hour work shift, with three shifts per day.

We had to crank out B-24s this fast because in 1942-3 we were losing B-24s this fast. In the Ploesti raid in 1943 we sent out 178 bombers, losing 53, usually a nine or ten man crew each. And we were flying raids like this every few days.

At the end of the war the B-29 was the cutting edge technology, and there was no need for B-24s and B-17s so they were very ruthlessly scrapped. At the end of the war the final production runs were completed and those B-24s' first and only flights were directly to the boneyard.

 

[Fabri91]

I agree: got the game at a Steam sale in November, played it a lot for a week, and then let it stay for a number of months. It is however steadily updated, and this mishap with Jaques prompted me to take the game up again, with the Horizons expansion having come down in price a bit too.

That being said, you have to enjoy "space trucking" a bit, around that part there really is no way around.

 

[Urwumpe]

I agree: got the game at a Steam sale in November, played it a lot for a week, and then let it stay for a number of months. It is however steadily updated, and this mishap with Jaques prompted me to take the game up again, with the Horizons expansion having come down in price a bit too.

That being said, you have to enjoy "space trucking" a bit, around that part there really is no way around.

Well, I follow the game on Facebook somehow (don't ask me how this happened. I suspect it is related to organic chemistry) and from time to time look at it, but I am still pretty skeptical, mostly about the Internet connectivity of it. Also I am not sure if my notebook can run it or if I should better wait until I can buy better hardware.

DCS 2.0 used to run OK on my notebook for example before switching to Windows 10, now I have many games that work but can't be played because of the buggy gamepad driver in it.