Falcon 4 BMS - Package 6828: Escort - Debrief

This entry is the debrief of the mission I briefed about a few hours ago. Again pardon the mess of jagged lines in the screenshots ... I had some issues with my graphics card.

I never ramp-started (i.e. starting from cold, for you non-flight simmers) the Falcon, but I am getting more acquainted with stuff I didn't care about before like communications. I'm still green at it, but one of the things I am proud of is taking out the chit-chat of the control tower from the headphones as soon as I am on my own navigation. I am here still in the ground checking communications and getting back into Osan's control tower frequency (308.8 MHz). 

After take off and before resuming our own navigation I quickly check the position of my wingman (tiny speckle above the horizon). I'm still tuned to Osan's control tower radio traffic, just in case my wingman has to abort due to a failure. I want to be sure he makes it safely to ground in that case.

On route to waypoint 2 (tiny white circle in right MFD shows the flight route and steerpoints). All systems checked, now is time to start looking at the skies around the package. In the right MFD, you will notice a yellow icon. That's an aircraft I locked into because its heading was suspicious. AWACS (radio traffic captioned in green) confirmed it was from a friendly flight. I should have known that ... Note the RWR (circular display on the top left) showing pings from F-16s at 2 o'clock. Remember this is dynamic campaign with literally hundreds of aircraft doing their own thing in a non-scripted/edited manner. This adds a depth to Falcon 4 that has been never surpassed by other simulations.

Now entering North Korea ... Always a thrill!

Rendezvous with Gypsy7 was uneventful and went as planned. My wingman and me arrived to the rendezvous point early in order to be ahead of Gypsy7 in a detached escort. My escort flight arrived to the target area 3 minutes before Gypsy7. We started patrolling the area immediately. Only contact was with a hostile aircraft some 20 nm north of the target area. After  I downed it with a long range missile. 

We kept flying in our patrol station with no incident until, out of the blue, an enemy radar fires up some 15 nm northwest of the target area and SA-2s (tiny white speckle on the opposite side of the river in the far background) start streaming our way. These SAM launchers were not mentioned in the briefing! 

The SA-2 threat pretty much glued my wingman and me to the ground. By this time, we already heard the Gypsy7 pilots releasing their payload ... But never heard them punching out of the target area.

This low-level flying wouldn't have been possible without the total absence of ground units or AAA near the target area. In total disorientation, I overflew the target area (big no-no) and got a sight of the damage that Gypsy7 has already inflicted on the enemy runway.

I checked with AWACs (Chalice1) about the position of Gypsy7 and they were on their way out of the target area. Gypsy was still too close (some 7 nm south). I decided to cover their backs and wait until they were 20 nm from the target area. We needed to take a very good look around, so despite the SA-2s we climbed to 7,000 ft and swept the skies one last time. The skies were empty near the target area. A few minutes later, AWACs was warning Gypsy7 about some hostiles in their area. We could track these hostiles, but were moving away from Gypsy7. 

Cowbowy8 punching out from the target area. That's North Korea's coastline.

We had now departed from the package, Gypsy7 is on its way to its homeplate at Kunsan airbase. This is me checking how much fuel I will have left after arriving to our airbase (steerpoint 7). 4,600 pounds! I need to balance better my fuel needs during pre-flight ... I am going into battle too heavy.

Inbound for landing. Note how I set my comms back to Osan airbase tower (308.8 MHz).

Landing at Osan. Total time of flight was 52 minutes.

The debrief screen revealed that I downed just an Antonov An-24! This is what happens with BVR engagements with targets too far into enemy territory (no good AWACs identification). But, hey! Better safe than sorry.

In my next mission, I will be commanding a flight on a pre-planned CAS mission. The North Koreans are crossing the buffer zone by now.

Cheers,