Flew CLOD online last night...

[ElAurens]

Was on the ATAG server for over an hour.

Started in a Rotol Hurri from Lympne, and was immediately jumped by multiple 109s on take off. Jerry always seems to like to hit Lympne for some reason. Fortunately for me there were some Spits in the area and they took the brunt of the Bosch attack. One 109 was on my six but I managed, through some on the verge of stall turns, to loose him. So I flew West to get away from that mess and began climbing out. The rest of the sortie was without incident. I tried to see how much altitude I could get out of the old bus. It seems the in game contrail height (approx 22,000ft.) is the absolute ceiling. Bogus. No combination of mix, prop pitch, or throttle could get the aircraft above that altitude. The engine simply coughs and dies.

Still, at 19,000ft the new build of the game looks pretty good. So I patrolled about for a while then landed at Manston, as I wanted to try a Spit Mk. 1a.

I acclimated to the new office of the Spit 1a with the now working constant speed prop. What I forgot was that the mix control works differently in the Spit. After some false starts because of this I remembered and warmed the Merlin up (takes less time in the Spit which is historical) and got airborne. At first I thought that it didn't seem all that much more peppy than the Hurri, then I looked at the altimeter. OK, it climbs a whole lot faster. It's also more demanding to fly, as it is less stable in the roll axis, and requires a lot of down trim on the elevator for level flight. I took the sexy Supermarine up to 16k~17k ft. and headed back towards Lympne as Jerry seemed to be keying on that area last night. When I was almost over RAF Tangmere I spotted 5 bogeys crossing the shoreline below me at my 11:00. So, Jerry wanted to bomb my home field eh? I gently pushed over and dove on the unescorted Do 17s.
I was cursing beneath my breath for being in a Spit and not a Hurri at that point as the Hurri really is a better gun platform. I keyed on the last Dornier in the line and let loose with my .303s and got the message that I killed the top gunner. As I zoomed up for another pass, one of the dirty Huns plinked me in the cockpit. My vision now decidedly very red in colour, I decided that landing was probably a good idea.

I made it back to Lympne and got the aircraft on the ground in one piece.

All in all the game is improving. If there were more people on the server, and more I was flying with on comms... (hint to my squad mates), it would be doable now.

One thing that I believe they have spot on is the staccato nature of aerial combat at this time in history. One minute you are flying along in a peaceful sky, and then instantly you are plunged into a "life or death" struggle, then just as suddenly, it's over. So many real pilot accounts from WW2 describe aerial combat in just that way. It's uncanny really, and much different from IL2.