A new Belfort Virtual Aerodrome Mission; Starting from the historical location of the WWI imperial German navy's Zeppelin base in Gent-Merelbeke I would like to invite all pilots to a multiplayer event that will be dramatic and entertaining.
Your mission, depending on which side you chose to serve with: Guide a flight of Zeppelins on a night-time bombing raid on London's Thames dockyards..
Or: Starting at the British home defense aerodrome at Stow Maries, fly home defense patrol with one of two RFC Zeppelin night fighters.
The Avro 504K HD fighter
The Royal Air Factory's BE12a
Your respective goals are;
As the Zeppelin pilots: to make your way from Merelbeke, across the Channel to London at night with only a compass and what little ground features you can make out from the gondola, while climbing to a height sufficiently difficult for the RFC HD crews to follow. The main goal here is to not get lost like many Zeppelin crews did while attempting to complete their mission to England. And return safely to Merelbeke after completing your mission.
The RFC-HD Pilots: You will be on night-time standby as the prior week had sporadic Zeppelin raids and the HD Defense command is not wanting to let another flight of Zeppelins make landfall. There will be listening posts at Ramsgate and Eastchurch as the only forewarning detectors for the raid, so your skill to climb to altitude and find the raiders before they can drop the ordinance is paramount.
I would like to use real weather fetch if all are OK with this as a lot of these flights were made in not the best of weather conditions, if the local weather at the time turns out to be really bad I'll come up with a preset METARs for both locations.
Confirmation of your completion of the mission will be in the form of screen captures of your either, Arriving over London in the Zeppelin, or a screenshot of your hd fighter shooting at the Zeppelin. Be aware that the Zeppelins have working gun turrets. As a slight help with the AVRO there also is a mouse look elevation function for the twin Lewis guns.
I will have all 3 of these planes/airships available in my Mediafire links a week prior to the event. Pretty certain the L-11 Zeppelin will require that the Nordstern Zeppelin be installed also. The HD planes should be good as stand alones.
There are some scenery additions I would like you to try out and will post up as links that you may want to install to improve the immersion. They are not required, but it will add to the challenge.
I'll also have a HD AA truck if anyone wants to shoot at Zeppelins from ground level. You have the alternate choices of starting your Zeppelin flight at Kortrijk-Wevelgem EBKT and launching your HD flight from Southend EGMC just a few miles from Stow Maries.