Thursday

Setup-day. It is standard... People arriving, putting out all their gear, cables and than trying to get the networkup and running. It's a mess; cables everywhere, boxes everywhere, but merry sounds from people rejoining or people discovering the faces connected to the callsigns they know.

Friday

I myself arrived friday morning so I don't know much about Thursday itself. Lots of new faces, some Gods had arrived. Meeting Stinger, Adamski, Heascase and many many "famous names". This promised to be good! The preflight utility by Michael Barnes which I had arranged just prior to the meet had been tested with excellent results. Some flying had been done, so the atmosphere was there when I arrived. Given some faces Quake had had its first evening and night victims. And the bar had had a wonderfull time ;-)

Friday morning more people came in and we got on full strength. The problem is, when people are drippling in the network will get unstable. The network appeared to be not efficiently wired, so we had to rewire the network with 16port hubs to get it right. Than we started to do some serious flying....

Taxiing appaired to be a whole new experience for most of us in Flanker... That is to say, on this scale. Being an AWACS controller myself, I noticed a lot of confusion at take-off. It appeared to be that blue and red flight (= 8 pilots) were -due to a plnningserror - trying to take off from the same airbase. The radio CB comms again proved their value! But the side of these 8 aircraft sorting it our was a Discovery Wings episode in itself.

"JayCee ready to take off..."

Organizing 28 pilots flying a mission is not an easy job... Especially since we discovered that with our technical outfit 14 players on the LAN is the maximum using TCP-IP (which seems slightly more stable than IPX).

The base of operation in its full glory

The comms / radio proved once again their invaluable contribution to atmosphere and sense of immersion. Unofrtunately, we had to split up the group in smaller ones, (3 groups of 8 people) because of network losses several times. And you don't want to end each mission in the heat of battle. But after this decision we had some great missions cooked up by our master mission designer Chera Napalmski Becker.

In the evening I designed a funny mission in true Unit 13 tradition. We used to pick Papadoc as main character for these missions, but switched to Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg who bought a datcha on the Crimea. Objective: destroy the convoy of lorries carrying copies of Windows 2000 and destroy the replica of a battleship in the backyard of the datcha from Spielberg. (Latest news is that Flanker 2.0 will no longer support "silly objects in silly places" which will unfortunately end this great tradition :-(

Formation take-off in Michael Barnes Style...

But making fun of Bill Gates is not without risk. We got punished, severely punished. Call it stupidity, too much good faith, whatever you like. But fate knocked at the door.

Monster on high virus alert!

Monster fortunately detected it; CIH Virus alert!!! And we all on a LAN exchanging mission files etc. But such an event is like getting a heart attack at a meeting of doctors. Killerbee extended his callsign by becoming Viruskiller Bee and saved all our butts. But it took several hours to clean all machines, and we learned an important lesson... Why do you only learn these once it goes wrong and not before...

Friday evening late ended up in a raging Quake battle and the sun came up when the last stiff pilot removed himself from the room, with sore muscles from the tiring gaming for hours...!

Saturday

This was the day.... Adam Banks and Marek Paul (if you don't know them, leave this page immediately!) had arrived on friday afternoon bringing interesting boxes and packages. A presentation on the state of development of Flanker 2.0 was to be expected. A Dutch magazine had been invited, representatives from TLC/Mindscape Germany and TLC Holland had arrived. This was an important day for the RNLVAF.

At about eleven we couldn't wait any longer. Marek turned a monitor towards the group and began his expose. It was brilliant. From utter silence so soft whining but in FULL attention. Lots of questions, lots of answers, and a brilliant Marek turning up the suspense by the minute. Are we getting a dynamic campaign? What radar modes do we get? What about scaling? (if you are a regular on the flanker mailing list you know what happened after that question was being answered...)

Marek Headcase, Paul and twenty+ little boys drooling, changing pants and moaning.

We got it, we got it all and more.... after lunch we returned and Marek finished his presentation and pulled the big surprise; We got extensive sticktime with the New Lady. Carrier landings, O my, what else do you want. Sheer beauty. Of course, still a lot of work to be done. Objects seem too "crisp" against the background, plane and cockpit are "paint-fresh" from the factory. But give these guys time and credit, they only know one way to do it: they do it right or they don't do it.

In the afternoon we got back to good old faithful version 1.5 and flew several COOP missions. I had to bail out in the evening due to other obligations. Therefore I missed an important competition.

Saturday evening competition

Objective: fly around the Crimea and do touch and go landings on all airports in the shortest time.

Well, this was a very difficult task. Professional pilots forgot their landing gear or crashed at take-off, it was disaster :-) If you ever hear your captain speaking and he announces himself as Bas Jansen, you must know this is the Crazy Captain Chaos and he is not to be trusted (forgot his gear in this race!). Four pilots survived, and Quax had the fastest time (and cleanest style) and won a fantastic jacket (not the model!).

Later that evening, well, let's just say I returned at night at 03:00 and found plenty of opportunity to fight Adam Banks (in his reincarnation of The Bitch) and get frustrated by the evil but deadly laughter of my Unit 13 comrade Medved. You got it, a wee bit of Quake to top off an excellent day (and night). Officer on deck at 08:30! Grrrrrr.

Sunday

There were still some prices left and Marek was completely in the mood... he wanted to see blood on the wall, Quake in the air. And he wanted a mission without landing involved, given the success of the previous evening :-) "Three years on the market and Flankerholics of world fame still can not bring the bird back," he fumed. Well, he briefed us to the following.

Mr. Headcase smells blood...

First of all, we had to fight our way to another base in teams of four, passing another base on the way. Independent CAP fighters defended those bases. Guns only. Teamplay. Radio's. And a stunning absence of Situational Awareness!! People passed each other, waving (WO I gallantry?) and continuing on their mission of killing others. And this despite well prepared tactics and stunning scenario's.

Incredible but useless tactics...

When team members survived at last they had to finish each other off. Well, captain Chaos had his revenge from the debacle of the night before, and ... Quax! His new won jacket gave him wings. So it was him up against Captain Chaos.

B1b from Flanker 2

In the H2H that followed all eyes were on two screens. Let's face it, it was not the best H2H ever, but fun it was. You see, everybody secretly thought it would be a wrap-up for Chaos and so did he. So after he delivered a nice load of lead in his opponent Quax (and we all imagined the christmas tree cockpit) he asked in the utter silence of the tension-filled room: "Want to do some formation flying Quax?"

We all shuddered with laughter, and the warning of "Stinger!" was lost in the crowd. Watch out, Chaos, he still has both his engines! What happened? Of course, Quax WON! He never gave up, fighting bitter and concentrated and not carried away by glory alone. Second prize for his table, a beautiful Academy model to match his jacket.

Image: Glorious Quax after his match against Chaos.

Then we fought a team effort to win The RNLVAF Award; a stunning hand-crafted wooden display model of our Beloved Sue.

Image of Sue here

It was a capture-the-flag scenario; land one plane at an enemy airbase in a 4 to 4 engagement. Again in teams of 8 pilots. Stinger's team ended up as the best team and will soon be portrayed on this site in full glory!!

That meant the end of the meet more or less. Some people had to start packing, having to travel long and far. It was over. It is sad to see everybody pack and leave, said Stinger with a tiny lumb in this throat. We all felt like that. It had been a fun, warm gathering of pilots, litterally from all over the world, sharing this silly hobby and devotion to Flanker. And really getting along so fine.

We had some light debrief beers in the Big Bear Bar, secretly thinking about a next Big Bear Meet. Making plans. What to improve, how to get it better. And we were just plain happy.

Reactions from our guests...

Hi Ejecto,

first of all, I must thank you for all that fun we had on BigBear meeting. It was really memorable day and your missions and briefings were main part of it....

Cheers, Phantom

Hi all you wonderfull people! :-)

I'm just getting used to being back on Mountain time again after about 16 hours of airports and airliners to get home. Wow...what can I say.....The meet was all I expected and much more, you Dutchies really did and outstanding job of hosting this unprecedented Flanker event but it was sure sad too see all the machines getting packed up and the crowd getting thinner on Sunday. Here are some of my thoughts on the experience...

First of all It was great to have such a warm welcome at Schiphol from Willem(Palerider), Bas(Chaos), Freddy(Pupski), and Sergio(Flix). Thanks to you Freddy and Marlyn for the ride and putting Flix and I up for the night and of course to John(Baco) for the ride to Apeldoorn! On to the meet.....

WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!!! What an amazing time...meeting everyone I have only either talked to via the O Club and seen on the RNLVF webpages. It was a great pleasure too meet you all finally!

Chera "Naplamski" Bekker made some fantastic LAN missions for us to fly...Thanks Chera! Michael Barnes, "Preflight" util was a huge success, and with the setting up Baco did to get us all parked and awaiting taxi instructions when we entered was too much....I was giggling like a little kid.

When I joined I went to an external view and watched the other 3 members of my flight join in right beside me on the grass and then I saw another flight of 4 join in across the taxiway at the same time. When I called for taxi clearance I was told to hold as the other flight was beginning to taxi out ahead so I joined in behind them in the line to take off with my 3 wingmen following.....this was tooo COOL!!!! Thanks Baco for all the logistics in getting the flight starting points planned!

Now...the CBs and AWACS controllers.....Unf**king believable!!!!!! The CB coms were the best....we had a channel for the AWACS controller and another for our specific flight and could even set another for just the 2 ship wing! This worked flawlessly and increased the immersion so much! These guys even had the push to talk buttons mounted on their HOTAS...I was in awe!

In between the planned mega misssions we managed some 4v4/2v2 BVR/WVR stuff for fun, but I spent a lot of time wandering around and visiting with everyone....then there was Pupski, Medved, and Flix and a few others who loaded up Action Quake everychance they could. :-) I'll never forget your laughing Sacha!!!! :-)

The late night part of the meet always degenerated to Action Quake and we were busting our guts laughing and killing untill after 5am! Needless to say...I didn't get much sleep while with these guys. :-)

In closing......My last night in Apeldoorn was spent in the way I could only have imagined it....drinking beer all night with Marek, Adam, Taschi, Wicked, Dave, Jens, and Pupski.....mmmm....that yummy Dutch beer. :-)

I do have one regret.......The fact Willem (Palerider) was ill on the weekend and had the big exam to write he wasn't able to fly or stay long...CONGRAT'S on the great exam score Willem!!! Next time we meet will be better...in fact you'll be picking me up in you fancy new sports car!!!! :-)

Cheers, guys and untill we meet again....the precendent has been set now for the NEXT International Flanker meet!!!

Mark "Stinger" Shepheard Honorary member of the RNLVAF

Hi Wicked

and thanks to you for organizing this event. I had a blast during those four days. Special thanks to you for picking me up and Baco for letting me use his system. And to the rest of you guys for being such a nice bunch. Hope to see you all for the next meet.

JayCee

Yeah....

Allthough i had a !#$^!*&!$@&# early retirement it was really great to meet all the ones i hadn't met...and to meet those who i'd allready met :) Hope we can do this giant thing again sometime...then i hope to bring my PC and kick your butts off course ;)

Cheers and thanx, Willem 'PaleRider'

Gentleman,

It has been a very enjoyable meet for me. I'd like to thank you all for joining in the good atmosphere and making it a very good event. I am looking forward to our next normal meet in Februari (around the 26th if my memory is correct).

Chera (Napalmksi)

I won't give a detailed debrief of the antics at the Big Bear meet - I'm sure others will do that. I'd just like to say that I've had my faith in human nature and Flanker confirmed.

This was Sunday night madness at the O'Club extended to four consecutive days. The Flanker "mob" are truly unique. With only an ancient Russian flight sim in common, thirty or so odd individuals got together, got themselves organised and then proceeded to beat the sh*t out of each other . Well .. yes, [cough] we have to admit a bit of late night Quaking as well.

Many memorable moments. The lasting impression, though, is a warm kind of "glow" that I'd feel embarrassed in explaining to others - but I think most Flankerites would understand . Thanks to all concerned for all the generosity of spirit and effort - when I arrived, all was set up - all I had to do was sit down, grab a joystick and FLY!

To the uninitiated, I have to explain that this meant about 20 complete systems networked up, with almost one CB radio per PC, a giant map of Crimea and a scoreboard. No mean feat, this. Most missions had an AWACS per side, and were planned by non-flying Flankerites who insisted on throwing in missile-laden AI planes in gunso contests. Well, this was WAR !

Of course, it was an emotional event - seeing so many names from the ladder in one place - the personalities behind the mugshots and reports. It really does make the effort seem worthwhile. It was worth it just to hear Chaos's last words "Do you want to fly formation??" seconds before his seemingly cold turkey opponent (Quax) turned on him and gunned him down . I suspect Bas could have shot him earlier but declined the easy shot because that's what the meet was all about. Poetic justice, and a beautiful moment.

Thanks again to all the people that made it so particularly "Flanker" - they are simply the *best*.

Regards,

Adamski. Administrator - Su27 Flanker Challenge Ladder [url]http://www.fl-air.co.uk[/url]