by Willem-Jan Renger

Saturday

Special note should be given to Arrowski and Dawnrazor, who showed outstanding cooperation. With the two IL76 on final on Saki we had one active Igla left somewhere near the field. In a final attempt Danwrazor provoked an Igla launch, closely observing the launch site. Due to the smoke trail Arrowski could locate the launching soldier and in a desperate attempt he took out the threat (while being hit) which secured the landing of the commando's. He brought his damaged plane back in one piece.

Arrowski after victory on Igla

In the debrief it appeared that staying alive and out of harms way was almost impossible. Bravo and Charlie Fighter Group each used all 12 planes, missing one objective. It was a challenging mission and despite "mission failure" the overall level of squadron achievement seems to improve with every meet.

Mindscape also provided some very nice prizes so we needed a competition to deal with them. Once again Marek "Headcase" Paul came up with a devious and simple excercise. "We know you are all hot-shot dogfighters, but the attrition rate due to landing accidents is more than the current Russian economy can afford," he put forward bluntly.

So the objective was to land the plane at Simferopol heads down, in midnight conditions on a downwind leg with a HUD and MFD failure in a minor crosswind situation. Heads up under 50 meters... Ride the needles... Use the instruments....

The ensuing preparation was enlightening! Pilots with hundreds of hours in Flanker 1.5 anxiously going over the manual! The recorded track would be judged by Headcase. One attempt allowed.

Watching the tracks having fun...

Well, we got it all. Despite the remarkable fact that everyone managed to bring Sue back, this was a sweaty event! We saw night time aerobatics, and one pilot got noted for the most extended downwind approach ever, to a point where Marek was convinced he was on final at Kerch!! A good laugh and some beers later we closed the 'official' program for free game time. The competition would be finalised next morning to weed out the field.

While Deltaforce and Midtown Madness kept some players happy, and others were having stick time on Flanker 2 Beta 5, a small group learned proper BVR intercepts in Falcon 4 due to the excellent lessons of Panthir from Greece, who is a real life Mirage instructor pilot for conversion to the Mirage and F16. 100% kill in rear aspect.

In spite of the 1.07 patch, we did some testing and did not achieve satisfactory results for the use of Falcon for LAN play. Flanker 2 in its current stage of development is far more satisfactory than Falcon in its latest incarnation.

Click to continue

BigBear Meat

With Baco and Phantomdave we spent (most of) the night building a Farnborough Airshow scenario in Flanker 2 with F16, F14, F15, Buffs, in synchronized fly-by's. Though time consuming, we had excellent stuff to play with as human pilots joined the fray.

On Deck. Click HERE for night action

Sunday

The saddest day of the event... people have to leave to catch flights to Greece, Hong Kong, and other far away places. Therefore we started in time with another devious navigation excercise by Marek. Fly a course through "gates" made up by EWR antenna's to a designated spot; kill as many as possible armoured vehicles with unguided rockets in one pass, head back to base as fast as possible, and stay below 200 meters!

This was really challenging and few people accomplished all objectives. Differentiated points allocated catered for the prizes. There were a lot of happy faces and pilots went home with more than when they arrived.

The entire BigBear Meet Wing 1999

With people leaving one by one the meet came to an ending in the afternoon. Another highlight had been added to the ever increasing event list of the RNLVAF.

We would like to thank all people coming from all over the world for their contribution to this excellent event. Special thanks go to Jeroen "Lawndart" Wedda and John "Baco" Menkema for all their efforts and countless telephone calls in preparation for this meet.

I would like to thank Marek "Headcase" Paul for his contributions as a flight instructor and his support as overall coordinator. And last but not least, thanks to Mindscape for their support, and for bringing us the best flight simulations to date.

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