by Willem-Jan Renger

Thursday

On my arrival Thursday at our trusty base of operation in the Big Bear Youth Hostel in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, I found - to my surprise - the entire squadron operational. The network was up and running (solid as a rock), people were flying and in awe of Flanker 2, the meet was in full progress.

I settled down and made acquaintance with the new faces, but the atmosphere promised a highly successful meet. There was more free flying on this day than on the previous edition of the BigBear Meet but the presence of Beta 5 of Flanker 2 made clear why!

Friday

Friday morning started with a briefing by Marek "Headcase" Paul. Thanks to the generous support by Mindscape we could now use a seperate briefing room which made an important contribution to the success of the meet.

The RNLVAF briefing room

Marek explained that we would start testing Flanker 2 on the network and give it a bash ("there is no such thing as a free lunch.") We had organised the squadrons in three separate table setups. Without going into detail, online flying will be a treat in this new bird. Except for two old chunks of computer equipment people joined and flew warp free, resulting in the most beautiful formation flying I have witnessed so far.

Phantomdave flying Flanker 2.0 beta 5.

After lunch we flew another classic in Flanker 1.5: the Race around the Crimea. Take-off at Sevastopol, touch down at every airport in the Crimea and land back at Sevastopol. Manage your fuel and make for the shortest time. Fastest time around 37 minutes, up to 48 minutes; a task even professional pilots have difficulty achieving (our XO Lawndart missed one runway touchdown - measured in mere meters - , although we should mention he approached all runways at a 90 degrees angle being 6 seconds ahead of the fastest time. He was disqualified... Mister Headcase is ruthless...)

After the official program people brought out the gunz! Deltaforce being the favourite, we defended hills and stormed the castle ("don't shoot each other on the ramp!!" being a particular desperate call by Pupski who saw one squadron member being unchallenged in the fortress while all competitors massacred each other outside. What do we need to say more about the tactical insides of our Unit 13 squadron (VBG).

At 01:30 we were asked to leave headquarters and go to the barracks, so next morning we were rather "fresh". Time for some real tactical engagements...

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Saturday

After the full graphic glory and flight model of Flanker 2.0 it needed some adjustment to return to trusty old 1.5 to fly some COOP missions. This saturday morning started with a Unit 13 tradition; Papadoc ones again reared his ugly head with his terrorist group to challenge safety on the Crimea and we had to stop him.

In a rather hilarious briefing the pilots were asked to challenge him again in his hideout and destroy his warehouses (where he kept his drugs, his copies of Windooz 2000 and other items which we wouldn't like to see appear on the market) and of course his pink Flanker parked in the perimeter of his hideout. The CAP flight of two A50's (!) - Papadoc being low on fighter resources- didn't pose much of a challenge, but the Shilka's did! It took 24 planes pro table of 8 pilots to get rid of the defences and achieve victory.

Wolfie going after Papadoc...

Although not too serious an exercise we now had regained the muscle flex in 1.5 and could move on to a new challenge.

In this mission we introduced a new type of victory condition; three objectives could be achieved, each worth 500 victory points with a final result of 1000 points needed for victory. Defending our AWACS, protecting the homebase Sevastopol against enemy inbound strikes and assuring a safe landing on enemy base Saki by two of our IL76 mimicking a commando attack on the base, which was defended by Buk, 2 Shilka's and (2) Igla soldiers. Sounds simple, huh?

But... every lost plane would incur 200 points lost. So staying alive would be of vital importance.. and it showed. We allocated 12 planes for every squadron of 8 pilots.

The battle that followed was very tense and compelling. Actions of utmost bravery were being witnessed in our own fighter group. Our fighter group Alpha appeared to have been the least unsuccessful, meeting all objectives, despite the loss of 4 aircraft (and an additional fifth loss due to a stuck throttle on 80%, despite hair-raising attempts by Apollo11 to land the plane!)

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