Red Baron Flight & Combat Training Manual.
 

Well I said that I'd post this up and I'm not the only Red Baron veteran in the top 5 in ranked team battle on the 360.... am I "Pilechef"??

Notice that the manual teached the reader basics of flying a real aircraft and air combat, not how to play the game.

Red Baron was the original flight combat simulator, back in 1990, and ran on minimal system of at least an AT 286 - 12.5 or NEAT (New Extended AT) 286 -20 or 386 SX 16..... on a 486 DX 66 it was brilliant.

All flight simulators derive from this original Dynamix game by Damon Slye.

Red Baron II was the same engine with vastly improved graphics for the Win 95 era and Red Baron III featured online 60 player dogfights, missions, etc.

In all versions the damage model was by far superior to the IL-2 titles currently available..... for instance an bullet damaged wing strut could fail many minutes after being hit. Players in burning aircraft were given the option of baling out though only German pilots had parachutes, Allied players just plummeted to their doom.

Also customising and personalising of player aircraft was allowed once serious "Ace" status was attained. My SPAD 7 and later SPAD 13 had a white fuselage, black wings and tail.

I've included the light simulator settings page just to show how much more detail it had over the current IL-2 titles..... fancy landing in gale force cross winds anyone?? Changing weather, day / nigh cycle, player navigation by compass, paper maps, storms, etc. were part of the fun (??) of flying outside of combat.

Ground target opportunities varied from moving trains, balloons, factories, rail yards, artillery batteries, etc.

Carrying bombs or "Maroon" rockets not only screwed up aircraft flight characterisics, speed, etc. but also made already dubious structural integrety of some aircraft, dropping each bomb seperately, from each wing rack, altered the balance of the aircraft..... unless one bacame hung up!!

On top of this the AI was deviously clever and in one instance my son blasted away at a Hun 2 seater, watched it apparently spin out control down into a cloud, dived through the cloud to watch the crash and it had disappeared..... on the post mission video playback the AI had pulled a ruse, corrected the spin, once in the cloud, and eluded him.

So read up and learn the black arts of air combat.

More pages....

And more pages....

And this is the last of it.....

The actual manual is more of book on WW1 air combat attacched to a computer game and over a hundred pages in size. The fflight instruction parts are just these pages.

The tactics and aerobatics show work not only in Red Baron, but in real life and any air combat simulation current or yet to be created.

It also explains, in priciples of flight, why some folks spin out in BOP simulator mode despite travelling at speed......they're "bellying out" their plane by pulling back on the stick too sharply and screwing with the wing's angle of attack. (Push the stick forward to correct).

good read - short n sweet -thx m8

for a more thorough look a combat flyind I'd recommend checking out In pursuit. This was posted in another thread that's now sitting on the 10th page of the forum...

downloadable link
http://web.comhem.se/~u85627360/inpursuit.pdf

very good stuff in there too
enjoy

Anything that improves my "edge".

There isn't a maneuver mentioned in that link I haven't pulled in BOP arcade mode (most are impossible in the other modes).

I liked the psychology part...... I always start a game with a high, wide, rolling sweeping banking arc, in the direction of the player who is coming in for a head on pass. I do this because I want him to be concerned that he is being set up as a sucker (he is) and chicken out and pull low, so that I can stall turn onto his ass. It hasn't failed so far in the past many dozen goes.

In Battle Stations Pacific (BSP), which has excelent flight models, a friend challenged my teenaged son to a one on one dogfight. My son picked the Brewster F-2A3 Buffalo, the friend went for Zeroes.

To quote the friend, on seeing my son's choice of fighter, remarked, "Why the hell do you want to fly that useless, overweight heap of s**t??"

My son shot him down 7 games to 0, thus proving that overconfidence, coupled with a false belief that the enemy hasn't a chance and not knowing the capabilities of an opposing aircraft is a fatal combination.

My son knew only too well that the Buffalo, despite being underpowered and over weight, is famous for having a higher role rate than and being able to turn inside the Japanese Zero and Oscar. BSP faithfully has the flight model correct for all the aircraft in the game.

I do prefer to fly the "underdogs" in dogfights, whether historically or because of bad flight models, and experiment to see where they could possibly have some advantage.

The Fw-190 A5 isn't that bad and I still manage to make a few kills and survive BOP team and dogfight games without being shot down in arcade since I figured how the German pilots made it turn inside the Allied fighters. Its just adopting tactics that suit a particular aircraft to advantage and steering clear of those that don't.

I've found that both the Fw-190 and the P-51 turn quite nicely in a slip turn, as opposed to a conventional aerolon turn.

have you tried out your tactics in realistic or sim mode?

dont kno if ur question is directed to me but here I go ;)

yes i have been able to pull evry manoeuver in sim mode. Dont kno if im doin them right but i guess they're close enough. Just remember that all of these arent bulletproof and timing is evrything. For example, the books teaches a series of evasive manouvers. My fav is the one where the enemy is on ur 6: start with a hard 90 deg turn, then pull up steeply, turn into wide barrel rolls, and then into rolling scisors if the guy isnt already in ur sights. So this, if done well will work evrytime. Thing is that if u start doin it a bit too soon, ur givin the enemy a fairly easy target, so again timing, seeing ur opponent, distance and speed judgment is what counts.

Cheers guys

PS: lol @ Sandy