Meeting a Mossie

In 1942, an eighteen-year-old John Hatherley (my father) joined the RAF and spent the next three years racking up over 500 hours and flying anti-shipping sorties in World War 2.

He was a navigator rather than a pilot (and at the end of the war went on to become an instructor) and joined 143 squadron based out of Banff in Scotland. There, he flew in Bristol Beaufighters before, in October 1944, De Havilland Mosquitos replaced the Beaufighters. The Mossie was definitely his favourite.

He flew in the FB Mk. VI, the one with the rockets under the wing. (I remember building a 1/72 Airfix Mosquito Mk VI when I was a kid.)

(The video above is an RAF propaganda film explaining the kind of missions that Dad flew.)

So, of all the WW2 aircraft, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mossie. Not only was it arguably the most successful aircraft of the War (depending on how you measure success, of course), but it just looks right – clean and elegant. The fact that Dad flew in it is a bonus.

Seeing the Mosquito in flight

Although we went to numerous air shows when I was growing up, I don’t remember ever seeing the Mossie in flight. There was one still flying back then, RR299, but I don’t remember seeing it at an airshow.

I was lucky enough to see RR299. In the mid-90s, I was working on a site building the Flintshire Bridge over the River Dee near Queensferry, and I remember hearing the roar of Merlin engines and seeing a familiar silhouette banking above me.

That was only a day or two before its tragic crash at Barton Aerodrome.

And that was the last example of an airworthy Mossie anywhere in the world, until New Zealand’s Glyn Powell restored KA114 in 2012. There are now three (I think) airworthy Mossies in the world. There are none in the UK, though. At least, not yet.

Mosquito experience

Which brings me, eventually, to last week and the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre’s Mosquito Experience day that my brother Phil and I attended. The museum is now the home to Tony Agar’s restored Mosquito NFII HJ711, a night-fighter variant, that he has been working on since 1971 (so over 50 years!). And now the museum offers experience days to get up close and personal with the machine. (And if you really wanted, you could sit in the navigator’s seat while the aircraft was taxying.)

(Yes, I’ve spelt taxy correctly. That surprised me as well.)

We arrived at 9:30, just in time to see their part-restored Lancaster, Just-Jane, being wheeled out of the big hangar. Phil and I checked in and enjoyed our complimentary pot of tea (and a magnificent breakfast bap, which wasn’t free) before heading to the Sergeant’s Mess for a Mosquito talk.

There were 50 of us in total, almost everyone my age or a little older. And mostly men, with a couple of supportive partners.

The talk was very entertaining, covering the Mossie’s history and key operations (which I suspect pretty much everyone in the audience knew inside-out). The discussion about Mosquito movies was interesting, but there are so few of them. I made a note to watch The Bombardment (aka The Shadow in My Eye, on Netflix) and The Shepherd (on Disney+).

Then an ex-RAF pilot dressed up in the kit that a typical Mossie crew would wear. (He was actually dressed as a navigator - so what Dad wore.) That was fascinating – it’s so bulky. I hadn’t realised that the pilots would have to attach their parachutes to their harnesses before leaving the aircraft!

After that, it was time for the first taxy session, when we watched the Mossie fire up its throaty Merlin engines and trundle up and down the airfield. (It wasn’t as loud as I was expecting, but then it didn’t get anywhere near full power.)

Then lunch, a very nice ploughman's which Phil and I dutifully ate, despite not being even remotely hungry. We sat next to another Mossie fan – he was here because it was "the best," which we didn’t argue with.

After lunch, we got up close and personal with HJ711 and poked our heads in the cramped cockpit. This was done in small groups, and while we waited for the other teams, we looked at the rest of the museum, ate a complimentary cream tea (cream first – we are Devon born and bred!), and leafed through Dad’s logbook, which Phil had brought.

Then, HJ711 was wheeled into the main hangar and its owner, Tony Agar, gave a talk explaining his journey in restoring his Mossie over the last 50 years. HJ711 isn’t just one Mossie – he thinks it’s made up of 50 different Mosquitos.

Finally, HJ711 was wheeled out for the second taxy session of the day. Phil and I watched it fire up and taxy away, and then we headed out and home.

Other links

Here’s another Mosquito restoration project, the People’s Mosquito.

And here’s news about a Mossie FB. VI  that may be taking to the skies in the UK in the next year or two.

And even more photos

Because the Mossie is just beautiful…

The Lords of Midnight

I have become slightly obsessed with The Lords of Midnight, an old computer game from 1984 that I remember playing on the ZX Spectrum. I found an excellent adaptation on the Google Play store, and I’ve been playing that on my tablet.

And it’s excellent. And hard.

By World of Spectrum, Fair use, Link

A little history

The Lords of Midnight was written by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum (and was soon converted for other computers). The game featured an innovative 3-D effect that made playing the game feel like you were exploring a world. Features would appear on the horizon and get larger as you approached. It was amazing. 

The game is clearly inspired by The Lord of the Rings. You start by controlling the Fellowship of the Ring, er, I mean four characters: Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond and Frodo. Sorry, I mean Luxor the Moonprince, Rorthron the Wise, Corleth the Fey, and Morkin, Luxor's son.

Against them is Doomdark the Witchking (ie Sauron), who has locked the land of Midnight in perpetual winter.

There are several paths to victory. Morkin can seek Doomdark’s ice crown (rather than the one ring) and destroy it (there are several ways this can be done). Or you can try for a military victory by recruiting the titular lords and winning on the field of battle, which is much harder and takes much longer.

The map (from here)

As for Doomdark, he wins if both Luxor and Morkin are dead, or if Morkin is dead and he conquers a particular citadel.

The game in 1984

I loved The Lords of Midnight, and remember playing it long into the night, in the corner of our lounge where our ZX Spectrum was plugged into our television. I think this must have been during the summer before I went to university, so I had time to spare.

I don’t remember the game being particularly difficult – I remember winning twice: the easy way and the hard way. But my main memory of the game was exploring the land, watching mountains and forests and keeps and armies appear before me.

The game in 2025

Mike Singleton passed away in 2012, but The Lords of Midnight lives on as Chris Wild continues to support the game and bring it to Android, Windows, iOS and OSX. His site, thelordsofmidnight.com, is full of useful information about the game. (And hints and tips, which I found useful as I’m too impatient to want to have to learn everything from scratch.)

The game plays well in 2025 – assuming that the 8-bit graphics do not put you off. For me, as long as the game is good, I don’t really care about the graphics. And is the game good? I think so.

On Android, the game seems a bit slicker than back in 1984. Certainly, it’s faster. But it also seemed harder.

State-of-the-art 1984 graphics

It took me a couple of games to win – I made a couple of mistakes in the first few games, as I was learning how to play again, running around the map, recruiting lords and trying to remember where things were.

I think I won my third game (the easiest way), but then spent several games (and more hours than Mrs H knows about) trying to win militarily. This seems to be much harder than I remember – but maybe I didn’t win militarily last time? Or perhaps I just got lucky?

Anyway, the military game consists of running around the map, recruiting lords (and getting them to recruit more) and their military forces. There are more than 30 characters, and they’re scattered all across the map.

Along the way, Doomdark’s ice fear grows – characters grow demoralised and tired and can’t always continue. But as you win more and more victories against Doomdark’s forces, your troops’ morale improves.

Things I liked

Reliving the 80s: It’s such a good game, and challenging. It’s not easy to win the military victory. And it feels epic, despite its 8-bit origins.

Winning: And finally, I beat Doomdark on the battlefield. It took a long while – victory came on day 73. This time, I retreated to the fortress in the south and waited for Doomdark to attack, and then headed north. I may try something else next time and see if I can do it sooner.

The automap: This is a huge improvement from the old days. Back in 1984, we had to take copious notes. Now, the game creates a map as you go along, so you can see where everything is. It’s a huge help – I wouldn’t want to play The Lords of Midnight without it.

Finding all the lords: I used this page to create a rough map so I knew where to find them. Even then, it’s not easy. (Korinel the Fey is particularly hard to recruit, as they are under attack early in the game. I spent one game fruitlessly searching for them, not realising they had already been killed.)

Grouping: The game is much easier when you can group the lords and move them by controlling their leader. It’s only a shame I didn’t discover it earlier!

The Lord of Midwinter: After Mike Singleton died in 2012, Chris Wild added The Lord of Midwinter to the game as an Easter egg. I saw him a few times.

Things that could be better

User interface: While the user interface is undoubtedly better than we had back in 1984, it could do with a couple of improvements. For example, I would like to have the map button (which I used all the time) on more screens. Maybe all of them.

Battle reports: It would be nice to read a single battle report, instead of going through each character to see how they fared. (I quickly stopped.)

Lords without armies: I carelessly lost a few lords to wolves and skulkrin because I had forgotten they weren’t travelling with an army. (Or maybe they had lost their army in battle.) Lords with armies cannot be killed by the random monsters roaming the land, but lone lords can. And so I lost a few lords while clearing the map of critters, which was annoying. An indicator to show that they weren’t travelling with an army would have been very useful! (This was before I discovered the group feature.)

Gender: The character gender split is very 1980s—all male. (Although I think an update may change that at some point.)

But Chris Wild is a one-man band and supporting The Lord of Midnight for the love of it, these are very minor niggles and I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Midwinter.

What’s next?

And now I’ve done it? Do I try a couple of the harder options (such as switching off the ability for troops to cross mountains)? 

I don’t know, but first I’m going to tackle Doomdark’s Revenge, the sequel. I remember this being much harder…

Aurora Horizon on Discord: after action report

Last week, Aurora Horizon had its world premiere, held on Discord with thirteen players worldwide. (Well, mostly UK-based, but with one player in the US and another based in, well, I don’t know.)

(Aurora Horizon is part 6 of a long-running first-contact series of freeforms that I’ve been writing. You can read more about the design process here.)

Playing on Discord

TL;DR – it was a success!

As ever, though, I had a few things to think about and reflect on.

Before the game

YAMM: I decided to try a new programme, YAMM (Yet Another Mail Merge), to send out character sheets and background info. That turned something I find to be a bit of a drudge into a learning exercise, making it much more interesting for me.

YAMM is a Chrome extension that lets you use mailmerge in Gmail. This is how I used it:

First, I created shareable folders in Google Drive for each character. Into those I put their character sheets and other information.

Second, I set up a Google sheet with columns for email address, first name, character, and a link to the 

Third, I drafted an email in the correct format, with curly brackets denoting the fields from the Google sheet. (I’m skipping the bit where I got the format wrong and had to send it twice…)

Fourth, I used YAMM to turn all that into personalised emails. (This is easy – just pick YAMM from a menu in Google Sheets.)

The free version of YAMM lets you send 20 emails per day, which was more than enough for me.

YAMM also saved me from remembering to bcc my emails, which I occasionally forget to do.

Recruiting players: I have a list of about twenty players who have played the earlier games on Discord, so I try and fill my game from them before looking further afield. What I should have done was use a Doodle poll to choose the date, but instead I picked a couple of dates far enough ahead that I thought wouldn’t cause problems. I then swapped to a Doodle poll when the dates I had chosen were causing problems…

When I had thirteen players, I stopped the poll, announced the date and asked everyone to fill in the casting form. And interestingly, people who I didn’t think could make the date (based on the poll) completed the form, and I ended up with a short waiting list.

I had a player drop (the game wasn’t for her), but I filled it quickly.

And unfortunately, I had a player who wanted to play but had forgotten to complete the casting questionnaire, which felt awful when she got in touch/

Player queries: A couple of days before the game, I could tell the players were reading their character sheets as I started getting queries. (Which was helpful for me, as I’d put the game to one side for a few weeks and was already getting rusty.)

I’m always happy to field queries, although some suggestions I pushed back on where I felt they were deviating from what I was after.

The game involves a mission to investigate an alien spacecraft on Callisto, but when the game starts, the players’ ship (the Aurora Horizon) has suffered some damage. This forces them to curtail their stay drastically, and they must prioritise what they want to achieve. So the game has difficult decisions, and I felt that some of the initial queries were attempts to try to circumvent those decisions.

If this were a tabletop game, I might have said yes (because I generally like to reward player initiative), but in this case, I said no because I knew it would affect at least some of the other players.

Errors and glitches

And as always, the players picked up a few errors and glitches. There are always errors, no matter how hard I try. I’ve learned not to take it personally, but accept that players will always spot something my tired eyes have missed.

If the error was spotted soon enough, I would change the shared documents. But as the game got closer, I just updated the master documents and made a note to adjust things during the game if needed.

On the day

Aurora Horizon was due to start at 7:30 pm, but I was online from 7 pm (and had told everyone that). Several people joined just after 7, and we chatted and caught up. At about 7:25 pm, I chased the last two, and we started at 7:30 pm.

I carried out a short briefing, and then we started play.

Starting positions: In hindsight, I should have given everyone a starting position where they spend a few minutes roleplaying in small groups. That seems to be particularly important when playing on Discord.

Instead, everyone moved to the galley and started talking.

(I’ve now changed that and created four starting positions, each with three characters. The last character, the computer, can start wherever they want.)

But I must remember this for the next game: Start the game with everyone in small groups.

The game unfolds

The first hour for me was relatively relaxing. I just listened to everyone roleplaying and answering the occasional query.

Then we had the first EVA period.

This was always going to be a challenge, as I had to give each away team their own briefing (which I posted to them via the Discord chat). This took a bit longer than I expected (and I made mistakes as the Discord interface was clunkier than I thought). And then, once I had given everyone their documents, I had to answer queries.

This would have been easy if we had been playing a tabletop rpg (as I had considered earlier), and easier if we were face-to-face (as the briefings would all be printed out and ready to go), but Discord just slowed everything down.

In a sense, I was trying to run four different tabletop rpgs at once. I do like a challenge, and I don’t think it was awful, but I don’t think I’ll be repeating the experience in a hurry!

(It’ll be easier in person, I tell myself!)

I’d scheduled the EVA period to take 15 minutes. That was always optimistic, but I don’t know if that was the challenges of Discord, or lots of discussion, but the first EVA period took over an hour, and we ended up not having time for a proper second EVA period.

We overran a little, and from the discussion afterwards, players were saying they could have continued roleplaying for another hour. But it was a school night, and I was conscious that some people needed to be up early the next morning.

As usual, not everything came out, and as usual, the game went in directions I hadn’t anticipated, but overall I was happy with how it went.

Highlights

A few highlights:

• Rich as CORA 9000, who used the HAL image as his Discord avatar and spoke in a robotic manner throughout the game.
• Tom playing Dr Halvorsen, who creeped out all the other players by playing the ship’s medic completely straight-faced and yet somehow managing to be sinister. 
• Alex’s sacrifice! Well, two sacrifices. I don’t want to say more, but I’m really pleased with the direction Alex took Lt Osborne.
• Elyssia, Daniel and Tony renaming their Discord names so that they would always be grouped on the Discord screens.
• Nathan as Commander Archer trying to keep a grip on everything.
• Chatting afterwards. I didn’t need to rush away, and chatted with some of the players after the game for about half an hour. I think there was a little frothing going on, which is one sign that they enjoyed themselves.

(I probably have more highlights, but those are the ones that come to be right now.)

Overall

So overall, the game was a success. I have a fair bit of feedback to incorporate before running it at Consequences, but I’m on with that.

As always with post-game amendments, I have to decide whether to address the bits of plot that didn’t emerge. Did that happen because we ran out of time, or were my clues too subtle? Or was it just how the game ran that time? It’s hard to say, so I’m not planning on making too many changes.

As for Episode #7, I have some vague ideas. But I’m not thinking about that too hard just yet.