Hey guys,

I spent a good part of the day yesterday in the virtual skies over Russia. Four different missions (two in the Me-110 and two in the Bf-109 F). A train busting mission and an airfield attack in the Messer, and an intercept and escort in the Biff.

I’ll break the mission shots down into several posts.

Mission 1. Train attack in the Me-110.

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Selecting the “Battle Of Moscow” in the campaign selection screen.

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You can see that I’m about 1/3 of the way through the “Taifun” chapter (total of about 10-12 missions).

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Back in the air in the -110 all bombed up with lots of little 250 kg packages of love. I’m glad that I reduced the fuel load, for we used ALL of the dirt runway to get her airborne. Not sure if it’s a bug in the beta, but it seems that wasn’t going into “BOOST” (1 minute limit) during the T/O roll. Might have to do more investigating here…

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Climbing out through the overcast, I gave my gunner orders to “FIRE AT WILL”. He seems to be good at doing what I tell him to (not like your wingmen….lol). One note on the "Map" at the lower right. You can hit the "M" key and a bigger version will apear, but it's not zoomable, and it's not that much help. However, you can bring up a FULL PAGE version of the map that is zoomable, and it shows all the junk you need to see (airfields, MLRs, enemy and allied positions, etc). It's great for navigating, and depending on your settings, you can see good and bad guy airplanes....I love using the big map.

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IMHO, a truly beautiful cockpit. Of course, it’s NOT mouse clickable, but where that drives some folks crazy, I think it’s a great balance between the classic “Study” and “Survey” sims. Sometimes, idiots like me like to simply jump in the machine, hit “E”, set the flaps, run the throttle (s) forward and go kill something. LOL…

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Sitting in the gunners position (CTRL + C).

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You can fire from this view, it’s a bit like shooting from the hip in a FPS. BTW, when you do the reload thing (R key), the little double drum of ammo goes away, and a new one magically appears and is snapped into place. Pretty cool really…

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Snuggled up to the “iron sights” view.

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“Feldwebel BBall ready for combat sir!!!!”

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As we were cruising along, habit had me checking the fuel pretty closely…and I was not pleased to see that the “LITER” gauge was almost empty! Within a few seconds, the tank selector knob below the gauge magically moved to a different tank, the needle moved far right, and I was back in my happy place!

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Approaching the trains A.O., and the sky seemed to fill up with bad guys! Against orders, my wingie went off to engage them! This afforded me the opportunity to try and sneak in and blast that bastard train!

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Found him! It was really hard to get to him in those trees, and couple that with the fact that I suck as a bomber pilot, and I didn’t get all of him (got his cars, but the locomotive was still chugging along).

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Came around and tried to shoot him through the trees…got some good hits on him. I had to stay low so the big furball above wouldn’t notice me.

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Hard to believe, but they eventually found me! I was running away bravely, and they poked some rather ugly holes in my kite. I seem to be smoking (and leaking) from all sorts of damage.

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We ended up down in a field (in mostly one piece). I can only hope that we are on the German side of the lines.

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Here’s where you have to dig deep and decide what you want in this sim. First of all, is it a FLIGHT SIM…or is it a FLIGHT GAME? If you’re one of those pilot types that feel that the “”Mission Failed” thing means you have to turn in your “Man Card”, and take up knitting, then this thing will probably have you talking in tongues. I would guess that fully 50% of my missions end like this. You’ll see that I did indeed kill stuff, got a paltry bit of EXP, but no medals, no skin or weapon “unlocks”… My personality type is that I adopt a bit of a “real life” attitude, and think that if I’m vertical and processing oxygen (alive), then I “won”. The gunners in this sim are NOT true “snipers” (like some sims), but they are good and you’ll get damage regularly.

     

More in a bit….