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...
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!)
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.
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.
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.
