It's been a while since my last "dweeb story", so here is a brand new story, number 5! I'll begin with my current score:
pate is flying for Green
{{Pate}}
In Squadron kjb1
Shadow Knights
Casting Darkness over the land
Overall Rating 3.5698
Last Kills jinx -rb- tash y-me mppc nedd guts roml mvp1 mvp1
Last Killers kewe mvp1 grun vipr smut mili ajax
GUNNERY ROCKETS BOMBS Aircraft Used 5
HIT 102 0 0 Enemy Destroyed 40
USED 278 0 0 Kills Assisted 13
RATIO 0.3669 0.0000 0.0000 Economic Ratio 8.0000
Sorties Flown 58 Winged Sorties Flown 1
Landed 50 Wingman Landed 0
Ditched 3 Wingman Ditched 0
Bailed 4 Wingman Bailed 0
Discos -2 Wingman Discos 0
Killed 3 Wingman Killed 0
Yesterday morning when I was at work, I logged into CK using a
telnet session (just to check what was going on in there, to
check scores of a couple of friends, and so on. What, you think
I am addicted, to log in even when at work? :-), and I noticed
the banner said something about 'wbu93t94.exe'.. Also noticed
that HiTech was online, telling about the .94... Wow! I logged
off, fired up FTP and downloaded the update package. The rest of
the workday was spent eagerly waiting to be able to get home and
try this new version.I got home, and flew the new version offline a bit. The first thing I noticed was that the P51D seemed to climb strangely fast.. Even sustained 4000 ft/min at times.. Another strange finding was that when I lowered gear when going level, the speed went slightly UP and not down! Well, it was time to play volleyball, so the online test would have to wait two hours still...
Finally, time to test .94! I logged on, and noticed that in addition to the original green fields, F5 was Green as well. I check all the green fields before taking off, to see where the other greens take off, and to find a field that has no visible enemies. F7 looks like the best field to take off. I set my fuel load down to 30% (from the 50% it was in .93) before taking off.
I take off, reach almost 200 IAS before the runway ends, pull back and start to climb. At first I have some difficulty trimming the P51D to steep enough climb to keep the IAS at around 150 MPH.. I follow another green, "orto", towards F4. I climb to 20K on the way there, every now and then rolling inverted to make sure no enemies are below me climbing to kill me. No contacts until I am safely at 20K and above F4.
At F4 I see four golds below me, with their distances between 5000 and 9000 yards. I fly above that closest enemy, roll over and dive straight down at him. At the 3000 yards distance there suddenly appears a plane type , it says "spit9". I am going at 550 MPH now, roll to match his direction when I see which way he is going, and then pull back hard. And WHAM, I have a completely black screen!
Argh, what happened? Did my FE crash? Instinctively I release the stick, and get the picture back. I pull easier, and the screen grays out.. Gee, the blackouts are back! Now that was a nasty surprise.. I completely forget about my prey, just try to pull easily to a level flight, and trim when I am level at 450 MPH speed. I begin a shallow zoom climb, looking back towards F4.
Hmm, I went so fast past the field that I have no visual contacts now. I fly back above the field, I am at around 10K alt now. Hey, there is a lonely gold dot, pretty far from the field.. I dive towards him, and at 3000 yards above him see that it is another P51D! Happy happy joy joy! I feel like a five-year-old that has just received a big bag full of candy.. This is gonna be fun! :-)
I fly above him, check which way he is going, and then using flaps plant myself on his six. I easily follow his turns, staying in lag pursuit with my superior E until I am close enough... Then I just pull to lead pursuit, press the trigger, and I see pings on his tail section, just where I was aiming. I fire a couple of half- a-second bursts, then correct my aiming, and fire some more. He stops turning and flies straight, so I give him a full second of MG fire. And he goes BOOM! :-)
System: tash Exploded
Kill of tash awarded to pate.
Well well.. That was the second P51D I had exploded within the
last two days (the previous one was "mppc"). I wonder if the
damage model of P51D or the lethality of .50 guns has been changed,
I have always thought it needs some serious firepower to explode
a P51D..Well, time to upgrade my fixated SA, so I look thru all views while hitting 'X' to keep my plane on it's current flightpath, away from the field. Damn, there is a high purple dot straight on my six, and closing... Still over 3000 yards back, though.
Soon he is close enough that I see it is yet another P51D.. So, I have to forget any ideas about outrunning him, he is still higher than me and already faster... I still keep the autopilot on, and check my instruments. I am level at 3000 feet altitude, flying at 100% throttle and 300 MPH IAS. Hmm.. I am in trouble, but not dead yet! I'll make that purple P51D work for the kill!
Looking back I see he is now 1800 yards behind.. I look forward again, count to three, roll inverted, and begin a fast Split-S, hitting flaps to slow down and avoid blacking out or augering. I am looking at him in my forward-up view, and see both him and his tracers flying past safely above me. Looking back I see he does a high yoyo instead of following my Split-S. Good for him, not so good for me..
I climb a bit doing a sort of high yoyo myself, then as he closes again I continue with a low yoyo, and again he misses me. Then suddenly there is a gold P38 after him (damn, where did my SA go? I didn't see that gold P38 coming! Luckily he targets the purple P51D instead of my green P51D). The purple P51D disengages me and tries to shake that P38 on his tail.
I continue in a flat turn, and suddenly the gold P38 is right in front of me, heading to my 8 o'clock direction. I fire a quick snapshot into him and dive under, to not collide with him. I immediately feel guilty for two reasons; first, I shot at the gold who saved me from that purple, and secondly, for being "yet another green headon dweeb". I did not imagine causing any damage to him, though, which is why the following messages caught me by surprise:
System: ???? Crashed (or Exploded, cannot remember)
Kill of ???? awarded to -rb-.
Kill of -rb- awarded to pate.
System: -rb- Bailed Safely
And when I look around, am I all alone, no other planes in sight.
Strange.. Perhaps I removed his wing or something... Too bad I
was too embarrassed to ask -rb- what part did I hit. Well, time
to go into a shallow climb, and to check the map... Now, where
am I? Hmm.. Between F4 and F6, going straight towards the gold F6.
I am in 100% throttle, and the fuel cauge is almost on the red
line..At first I almost panic that I cannot get home with that amount of fuel, until I remember the map is so much smaller now, and that I had only taken 30% when I took off.. I go to 75% throttle, and turn towards the green F5, hoping not to encounter any enemies while slowly climbing to 10K altitude.
I get back to F5 without incidents, and land my two kills. Checking score I see that the gunnery ratio has been included! Great! But my ratio is only 0.30, it seems it needs some work...
The next flight I take off from F5, wheer a lot of greens are taking off, on their way to bomb F6. I hear on the radio that there is only one gold defending F6, so I decide to head back to F4.
Thjis time i am at about 15K altitude above F4, when I see two golds above it, one at around 4000 yards below. I dive towards the dot, and soon see it is a Spitfire IX. Instead of B&Zing (and risking colliding with it), I decide to check how my P51D does in turnfight against a Spitfire. I dive on his six, trying to give the impression I am doing a BnZ attack.
When I am some 1200 yards behind him and closing fast, he rolls inverted and does a Split-S. I do the completely unexpected (some would say plain stupid:-) move, hit flaps and follow his Split-S! I am soon low on his six, climbing after him and closing fast as I still have E to burn. He decides to turn right, and I follow him, toggling between 1 and 2 notches of flaps, keeping the stall horn howling slightly but not excessively. I am in a steady lag pursuit, but gaining angles steadily.
Suddenly I hear a ping, and check six, but I only see a fellow green some 7000 yards away. I think that perhaps I got hit by the Army Pukes, as we are pretty close the field now.. But when I switch back to forward view I see another gold Spitfire going past me slightly above me. Oh well, I might be dead soon, but I most certainly am going to kill this other Spit on my sights!
And the next thing I know, the Spit that still keeps turning right is on my sights just where I want him, and I let my machine guns do their singing.. I see at least a dozen pings hitting the tail of the Spit, and he stops turning and goes straight towards their field. At the same time I see a message saying that my fellow green I saw a while ago was killed by "pntr".
I disengage from the Spit I shot when I realize I am almost on top of the field at 1000 feet altitude. Almost immediately after disengaging I see messages:
System: jinx Crashed
Kill of jinx awarded to pate.
So, those dozen pings did indeed do some damage to the Spit.. Now
I am going towards the ocean, and see the other gold spit above me
on my six, at 2800 yards, and closing slowly but steadily. I am
going about 300 MPH and am at 1000 feet altitude.. No alt to do
any fancy Split-S manoeuvres, so this is a good chance to see if
the current P51D can still outrun a Spitfire..I see he is gaining but losing alt et the same time. Now he is about 2000 yards back and at the same alt. I decide to convert what is left from my 1000 feet altitude to speed, and push to a shallow dive, leveling at 400 feet altitude and 350 MPH speed. The Spit is now 1800 yards back, and still diving.. He is now considerably LOWER than me! I wonder what is he doing, when I see an explosion where the Spit used to be, with a message:
System: pntr Crashed
Hmm.. Too bad... I am glad to I got away, but sad that I could
not find out whether the Spit in a shallow dive can catch a P51D
going level... I decide to ask "pntr" whether his FE showed my
plane to be lower than it was, or if he just forgot to check his
alt..He responds that he was in a shallow dive at 350 MPH, and was typing when he suddenly realized he was too low, and then splashed into the ocean.
Again I get back to F5 without incidents. The audio CD I had put on my CD-ROM player is playing the last piece, and it was getting late, so I just checked my score again (and noticed my gunnery did improve slightly!), and logged off.
All in all, I think the new .94 version of WarBirds is the best I have played yet! Lack of the KP8 cheat and the outside views make it a nice challenge to play! You have outdone yourselves again, HiTech, Pyro, and the rest of you at ICI!
That's it this time time, folks! Let's go back to my WB page...