Chuffy's Flying Circus

Greetings Chuffolites.
I trust that all are well in these virulent times. Thought I would check in briefly to let all know that despite my great age, I am still working out here in the sand pit, and have just been offered a new 4 year contract in the very dry confines of Riyadh. Thankfully, Dubai is but a short flight away.
I doubt that many will see this post, as the last update here appears to have been in 2021. Best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
Stay Moist,
Binks

Hmmm, this Alamein mission is jinxed.
Yesterday evening, I finished it, and added one last flight, net result was that it refused to close. I had that rotten message, do you want to save this as a new file, which in bug terms means that I had too many aircraft in the same unit. Only way to get out of this is to not save.  I lost the previous 3 hours work on ground objects etc.
Tonight, I retraced steps, added in the flights, being careful to change the units, save and close at every step, after another hour or so, saved and closed, opened up, and the last flight had disappeared, together with every last ground object, tank, artillery piece and runway etc, hundreds of them!
Anyone know if this is recoverable? There is a little box that appears that says loading mission, but nothing is happening, only the aircraft waypoints are still visible. 

Helo chaps,

having a few problems on the Win 7 boot that I hope someone may be able to help with.
I can nly boot up via safe mode, using the tab key at the moment. When n normal boot mode, the screen freezes on the windows icon. I've tried everything I know, from system restore to driver deletions, but right now I'm stumped.
It all began with occasional freezes when starting programmes up, and deteriorated rapidly to not booting at all.
I have to power down and reboot in safe to get anywhere. Last resort will be a backup from safe mode, and a reinstall of win 7.
Any other options or ideas out there?
Hoping it's not another kit of parts.

What ho chaps.

Bought myself an X52 joystick yesterday, and having no joy trying to map some of the controls into IL2.
Works fine with all the normal functions, but when I try to map the rotaries, sliders, hat switches etc into a profile, IL2 doesn't seem to recognise them, and I'm still stuck with the old keyboard inputs. Do I have to do something different to get the sim to recognise the joystick?

Wouldn't you just know it. The very day my internet is connected, there's a faulty connection discovered on my power cable to the computer, it wiggled, it flashed, and my hard drive is fried! No other damage fortunately, but now I have to fit a new hard drive, download the Win 7 system, (discs are in the UK),  have data recovered from the old hard drive and set the whole thing up again.
Could be another two weeks before I'm back online again......

Having a spot of bother with the runways setup. I'm using, in general, runways 4 & 5, which will be invisible in game. Having set them up on a nice flat piece of terrain, I insert a spawn point, then zoom in on it, and move it around all over the runway area. If the wheels disappear below the level of the red runway, I know the terrain isn't as flat as I thought, and I can move things around.

I've just carried out the above, and all is fine. Set the field friction to 2.0, and can taxi, and take off no problem. Landings however, are an entirely different kettle of poissons. Most times, I end up bouncing, with an immediate snapping of the undercarriage. Have tried several times, and only managed a clean landing once. Either I'm rubbish at landing, (probable) or I've missed something. I'm using a Gladiator as a trial machine, and also a Pz11c. Any suggestions?

Been having a bit of a do with my joystick recently chaps. In UP 3.0, I have to trim down quite a lot to keep level flight. Net result is that I cannot pull a full elevator climb or turn, without trimming back up again, as the range of movement on the joystick doesn't allow it. In DF mode, this is a real pain, as the trim doesn't react quickly enough. Alternative is to fly with the stick pushed permanently forward, to stay level, equally as much of a pain. Does anyone have any tips on how to counter this? The joystick is a Saitek Cyborg Evo force..

Pip pip.

Hi chaps. Following last night's conversation, I have just had another look, and still cannot find the convergence option.
I went into quick mission, selected an aircraft, and hit the spanner button underneath to get the drop down menu. The only options I have in this menu are for "Ammo" and "Skin". Nothing on convergence. Am I looking in the wrong place?

What Ho chaps.

Having a few issues with my JSGME thingy. I cannot get stock 4.10.1 to go to widescreen at all, and cannot get anything to load up in perfect settings.
I've been into the conf file, and set my screen res, and then made it read only, to stop any changes, but this appears to have no effect at all for the stock game version. Other versions I can get into widescreen by setting the JSGME Ecran wide thingy.

Conf settings as follows;

width=1366
height=768
ColourBits=32
DepthBits=24
StencilBits=8
ChangeScreenRes=1
FullScreen=1
DrawIfNotFocused=0
EnableResize=1
EnableClose=0
SaveAspect=0
Use3Renders=0

No idea why the perfect settings won't work. Conf as follows;

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1

HardwareShaders=0

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=3
Water=2
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

Any clues gents?

I say chaps, sitting here in the sandpit, and thought I'd try out the old flying whatnot again. So, having craftily brought a copy along of UP3 with DBW on my external hard drive, I plugged into the new super whizz laptop thingy and hit the shortcut go button. Alas, the game options screen appears, but when I hit the start Il2 button, after a brief flash, the whole game thingy goes to sleep. Anyone a clue as to what might be missing?

Toodles.

What ho chaps, having a few issues here with the new UP 3.0.
Downloaded, (eventually) and installed into my game folder that already had SAS 3.04b installed, which had been working fine working fine.Then installed the SAS FBDSM.

Once all finished, the .exe selector on the desktop screen would only launch 4.101 stock, and SAS Modact 3.
The other two options also tried to launch 4.101, and froze up at 95%. (Had the JSGME selector set with UP 3.0 enabled)

Checked the JSGME folder, and found that the exe file inside, was set to 4.101, so reset it to UP 3.0, and hey presto, Desktop selector now launches UP 3.0, and SAS modact 3.0, but the other two also try to launch UP 3.0. JSGME selector also set to UP 3.0 enable.
Disabled all options in the JSGME selector, and nothing works. Went back to the exe file in the JSGME folder, and reset it to 4.101 stock, but it still launches UP 3.0. So, in short, I can launch UP 3.0 and SAS Modact 3 from the selector, when the UP 3.0 is enabled in the JSGME, but cannot launch Stock 4.101, or Classic Mods, either with, or without the UP 3.0 selected in the JSGME.

Bet you're not half as confused as I am!

Have checked the downloads with Hash calc, and all fine. Have also posted a similar message on the Ultrapack troubleshooting board, but no response as yet. Any ideas anyone? It's very close, so I don't want to have to do a complete reinstall.

I had heard in the distant past that someone was working on a mod for this aircraft, and today I found the following link from a post on the SAS site.

http://www.oceanicwing.com/il2_projects.html

Appears they have had a lot of trouble with equipment being lost in the recent NZ earthquakes, but they are stoically back on track, and we may have this mod, plus a Boomerang later this year.
Looks like it might be fun.

Pip pip.

Goodness me chaps.
Sometime ago our compadre Woof loosed the devil via a link to jAZZRADIO.COM.   
Beyond expectations, Mrs Binks has become a complete afficianado, and is now in an almost constant state of dance excitement, and is contemplating the repercussions of a lightening visit to Miami Beach for Bosa Nova and Tango  lessons.
Does anyone know of a suitable, trustworthy, and energetic teacher in that region?

Spotted this lovely series, A Time to Remember,  on BBC i player this week. Episode one, features the early pioneers of flight, with archive footage of Teddy Roosevelt jumping into Wright brothers flyer for a quick spin as a passenger, at an airshow. Also some wild antics from musicians, hanging from various bits of a biplane in flight.
Some distinct parallels with a Chuffy night out I think, hence the post!

Following the recent upgrade to 64 parts, I gleefully turned on the mighty Babbinger in order to fly with the Chuffolites yesterday evening.  Nothing, just a black screen.
Apparently Mrs Binks was downloading a couple of recipes (Disaster cake?), then shut down. Unfortunately, she chose an option to Force shutdown, because she is an impatient soul, which appears to have resulted in aforementioned black screen. After several restore attempts, I am now having to reload the whole system again.

Maybe next Thursday.......

Thought I would finally make the switch from Windows 7 ultimate 32 bit to the 64 bit version this week. Backed up all my files onto a new hard drive, and popped in the disc. After several hours of frustration, and internet help forums, it would appear that upgrading is nigh on impossible without starting afresh. Not only that, but Windows 7 appears to have an inbuilt protection to prevent it from being deleted.
Undeterred, I have downloaded Darik's Boot and Nuke utility, put it onto a disc, and set it running. Appears to be working away at deleting everything on the hard drive, including Windows, but so far it has been running for 27 hours, and still has 9 to go.
Beginning to wish I had never started.........

Hello Chaps.

The RAF/USAAF stencils, and the Chuffy badge, appear to have been lost in the Dropbox shed. Could one of you commercial artist types put some new ones back please.

Just recently, I have been having a lot of problems with internet crashes, and the message, "connection was reset during download". The only way to re-access is to completely shut down and re-boot.  I have also been having problems with X Fire, and coms connection continually dropping out.

I did a google trawl this morning, and have found that many others are having the "reset" problem, the common factor for all being Avast anti virus software.
Apparently, some recent updates have corrupted and blocked the ability of internet search engines to access new Http sites, hence the problems.
Only answer it appears is to completely uninstall Avast, and download something different. I'm hoping this will explain some of the X Fire problems too.

Find out on our next shindig I guess.

Cheers.

I say chaps,

having a spot of bother with Flash player, which keeps crashing, both in Explorer and Firefox. Tried absolutely everything, deleting, re-installing, changing the time lag settings, etc etc, but the bally thing just keeps on crashing. This means I cannot watch things on you tube, nor can I download anything from the BBC, including their radio programmes, as they all use Adobe Flash. Anyone any ideas? I've googled it, and it appears there are lots of folks with the same type of problem, and various "fixes", none of which seem to work.

Any "Flash" assistance gratefully received.

Cheers,

Binks

Hello chaps,

have encountered a bit of a problem here. I have three shortcuts on my desktop, to the various incarnations of the game. 4.09 Vanilla, Mods Mix, and 2.01 mods. The first two work fine, but as of yesterday evening's log off, both the short cut, and  the exe file in my 2.01 mods folder have stopped working. I think this is associated with the JSGME thingy, because if I set this to stock 4.09, it loads up fine. Switching to Warbirds of Prey seems to be causing a fail in the exe. I've renewed my download of JSGME, run everything as administrator, tried to swap in copies of .exe from the other folders, but so far, to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas that I could try to get this to work again?

Thanks,

Binks.