So, my sixth Saitek joystick in 31 months failed on me. I've gone through four AV8R's and two ST-290 Pros. I got one of the AV8R's repaired by Saitek and another replaced by Best Buy. I was smart enough to pay $10 for the extended warranty on that one. Mostly the triggers fail on me. I have a death grip on my trigger finger and it ends up breaking the plastic stop inside the handle. I've taken them apart and tried to fix that but they just never seem to work right afterwards so I gave up and just replace them now.
The problem is I really like the Saitek sticks. I like using a twisty and am left handed so those right handed sticks don't really work for me. So anyway, I just got another AV8R and another ST-290 Pro to use as a back-up when the AV8R dies in about five months (50 bucks for both... not too bad).
But anyway, that's not the real reason for my post.
My last AV8R was pretty sloppy around center for quite a while. It made it impossible for me to line up shots in WWI, part of the reason I stopped flying there, and seriously hurt my gunnery in the LWMA's. I couldn't make any fine adjustments without over-jumping where I wanted to be. So, today I hooked up the new stick and decided to go to WWI as a test as this had been where the sloppiness had been most noticable.
I upped in a Camel despite all the BBs stories of Dr1 dominance. The numbers were about even between the Bish and the Rooks with about 10 people in thte arena. I flew out and engaged a D7 and a Dr1. Another Bish came in to help and after several pings on both opponents but no kills or assists I was picked by a fifth party. The joystick was working great. This was the best I'd ever been able to align a shot in the WWI arena. The torque was still causing me some issues but at least I could fine tune my shot angles. I re-upped my trusty Camel and flew back out to engage first a D7, then a Camel. Two kills and I got to land them! Somewhere along the way a Dr1 and another Bish flew into the picture but they were of secondary consideration and seemed intent on one another. My test over and satisfied with the performance of my new stick I logged to take care of RL.
All in all my WWI experience was a good one. No ganging. Some good one-on-one and two-on-twos. No overwhelming numbers of DR1's and, in fact, a good balance of the plane set.
Later in the evening I logged back on. Since WWI had been fun I decided to work my way through the arenas. I hadn't been to EW or MW since the arenas split so I decided to start with EW. I logged in and although there were about a dozen people in the arena there was no one flying on the Bish side of the map. In fact, only two rooks and two Knits were flying and everyone else was in the tower. I could see a couple of adjacent darbars all the way across the map but, not wanting to fly that far I logged back out.
Next I went to MW. Overall numbers were a little higher although not that much higher. Again, there seemed to be no one flying against the Bish except what appeared to be a single-con darbar evidently flying against some Bish trying to take a GV base. I upped a 109F-4 and took off in that direction planning to overfly the GV base and see if I could rouse some action at the airfield beyond. To my surprise as I was flying over the GV base it was abuzz with friendly and enemy planes below dar. I dove in, throttle off, cross controlling to hold my speed down and engaged a Spit VIII. He quickly got the better of me and I found myself in the tower. I upped again but this time in my trusty Spit V. I wasn't going to let the same thing happen again. This time, as I got to the base, we had taken it and there was no one in sight. Then, a set of low Lancs. Licking my chops I dove for the kill. One. I climbed over and reversed as he began to turn. Enough hits and two. I followed the last Lanc through the field ack and aquired his tail as he flew down the canyon. He fired and I rolled away. I kept just at the edge of his range as he emptied his guns then, out of cannons, sprayed .303's into his plane. Not enough. Now I was out of ammo too. We danced. I tried to get him to auger into a canyon wall to no avail. He tried to drag me into enemy flaks but I didn't oblige. Finally I decided to RTB. He dicided to take one more pass over the field and... kill #3.
Now it was off to LW. WWI and MW had been fun. One more check of EW but now there were only three in the arena. OK, LW it is. I logged into Orange first. There was a CV battle going on on one one side of the map and massive friendly/enemy darbars on the other side but not much else. Where the darbars were though was near the enemy strats and I could get there quickly in a GV. I grabbed a M4-75 with rockets and a full complimemt of HE rounds and was on my way. I'd never tried driving into the new strats before. I took fire as I approached figuring it must be ack then saw the towers and the ack firing at me. As I passed behind buildings the fire would cease and as I drove between them I'd take a shot at the ack in the tower from my main gun. Moving and shooting wasn't working very well so I decided to sneak to the edge of a building and try to kill the ack. The ack first shot my entire calliope off with a single hit. I mean the entire thing was just gone. Then it tracked me. Finally I got it and two more then got bombed by someone. Oh well. Next time I'll have a better idea of what type of strategy to use when driving into the new strats.
On to LWB to see what's going on there. It looked like a big furball in the N on the Baltic map and a few scattered darbars in the S. I upped in a K-4 to go hunting for a one-on-one in the S. This got me to thinking about the new strats and how I didn't like them. Not because I had just gotten killed trying to get to one but because when they were spread across the map they drew enemies and spread the fighting out. It happened I was flying in an area that used to draw enemies but now, with no strats, there would be no reason for them to be there. And I was right as the first dar bar in the sector I was in moved a sector easst, then a sector north away from me. Too far to chase so I headed for the darbar to the south. That one flew into a pack of three Bish and died just as I got there and then all the darbars in that part of the map were gone. I pressed on to the enemy airfield. I dove down to deck level and circled outside the field guns range. No one. Eventually I augered out of boredom and logged off.
All in all I had more fun today/tonight in WWI/MW than I did in either LWA although my mission in Orange would have been more fun had I known what I was doing. As an aside the total number of players online tonight (all arenas) never broke 300 that I saw. That's pretty pathetic for a Saturday night IMO.
What I will say is that I'm going to start jumping from arena to arena. I think there might be fun to be had in each and if anyone's ever going to populate any of the non LWA's then someone has to be first. It would be nice if others would do thet same.
