455 Squadron

So the new TeamSpeak 3 server is good, ya?

Check out the blingy little TeamSpeak server monitor just over to the left… neat huh! It automatically refreshes once a minute so you can see if anyone is online to talk to whilst browsing the forums. Enjoy!

After several years of faithful service, I have finally got around to upgrading the server. We’ve been using the new server for a while now for TeamSpeak, but I’ve finally pulled my finger out and moved the web and database servers over on to it. I’m definitely noticing it is much faster for local access – hopefully it will be a bit faster for remote access too (to be honest I’m not sure if it will or not – depends how much of a bottleneck my ADSL uplink speed is I guess).

Anywho – please drop me a line if you notice anything not quite right. It doesn’t seem to matter how much you try and think of everything when doing this kind of thing…

~S!
Rip.

IL2 simply refuses to die. Even though the original team has stopped development and the latest version is a beta patch, an industrious community has figured out how to reverse engineer the game and develop their own modifications and enhancements.

Thanks to Zig the zealot, we have now commenced a brand new, hand-crafted Malta campaign based around the Malta map included as part of the “AAA Unified Installer”. Do yourself a favour, hop on to the forums, download and get into it! Absolutely brilliant…

A major new version of the forum software (phpBB) has been released, so I have updated this site to use it to give it a try. It offers a heap of new features that I haven’t had time to explore myself yet.

There are a couple of teething issues I have noticed already – the forum summary on the home page doesn’t work properly, and extended characters in existing posts are not showing up correctly (and if you try to enter them in a new post it doesn’t work). Please let me know what you think or if you find any problems.

Update: Recent post summary on the home page is now working properly – and you can also now enter extended characters in posts correctly too. But it looks like any extended characters that have been imported over from the previous version of the forums are not correct. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue as we haven’t used them much.

Image: Red Bull Air Race, Perth November 2007

With time and a chance for some training in a quiet area they might be ready in time for the expected enemy offensive at Kursk. If they did not shape up, perhaps it would be time to finally close the book on 100 GvIAP.

What has happened to 100 GvIAP? Where has the Commissariat found such obscene quantities of ink? And why did The Ferret have so many onions shoved down the front of his trousers when he flew out on that secret mission? All these questions – and more – answered in the next exciting instalment of … The Krasnyi Rodentski!

Image: Zampolit Rattus prepares for another strike near Stalingrad in his Pe-2

A very enjoyable evening at the Mahsuri Satay Restaurant last Saturday night was had by a subset of the squadron. Zones brought along such an expensive bottle of wine that it even had a cork in it, Minkie brought the wine with the best label (Arrogant Frog), and Rip brought a bottle opener and an Entertainment Book voucher. Ratty brought nothing – but we forgave him as he had laid in copious stores back at Chez Ratty, allowing us all to retire later in the evening to an abode of decadent opulence. My joined us at the restaurant a little later in the evening to ensure we all made it back to Chez Ratty OK.

The food was really good and refreshingly priced. There need to be more restaurants that only serve blackened meat and peanuts.

Sadly, attendance was not higher as Yuri was interstate (and anyway Tan doesn’t play well with peanuts), Nic was ill, Claire was interstate, and Gryph had apparently put his brain in the wash and forget to put it on a gentle cycle.

It was universally agreed by all in attendance that “we must do this again, soon”. Minkie had the best plan – aim to do it every month, so we should actually get to do it at least once every two months. Zig is making noises about being in WA for the Red Bull Air Race in November, so that seems the ideal time. Watch the forums for further news!

I’ve put a panel on the home page showing recent activity in the forums. Hover your mouse over one of the post subjects for a second or two and it will tell you how old the post is and who wrote it. Click on the post subject and it will take you directly to that post in the forums. Neat huh!

The forums are where it all happens anyway and I was finding it took too many mouse clicks to find out if there had been any new posts since I last visited. Comments or suggestions welcome!

Image: A C-17 Globemaster III creates a “vortex angel” after dropping smoke flares during a training exercise

It’s been a little while since the links on the links page were checked, so I have done it now. A few dead links have been deleted/updated where appropriate, and I have also added a direct link to iiNet‘s mirror of the Gamershell archive (which is only of use to you if you are part of the iiBorg collective).

Image: Minkie demonstrates there is always room to park on an aircraft carrier. Sometimes you just have to be a little creative.

The latest patch (4.08m) is now available. Download links available from the IL-2 home page, or grab it direct from this server if you prefer http://455.servegame.com/download/il2_1946_408m.exe (note that it is just under 150 Mbytes).

Thanks Gryphon for the heads-up!

Update: As pointed out by Grev, if you are with iiNet as your ISP, you can download it direct from their servers at the full speed of your connection with no hit to your quota! http://iigh.iinet.net.au/patch/il2_1946_408m.zip

Image: Kero Kero’s new skin as captured last Thursday night