SATAL 2018: TAW vs 104th

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/232318162

Today the first match of SATAL 2018 started, it’s the Squadron Air To Air League.

It was TAW’s finest against the 104th and boy oh boy, WHAT A MATCH!!!
We had many viewers from TAW and worldwide, watching the ‘game’ as if we were watching some major real life sports event.
It was a great experience for both the match players and the viewers.

The results are as follows:
MATCH 1: TAW won
MATCH 2: 104th won
MATCH 3: TAW won
Which results in an AMAZING victory by TAW!!! Whoohaaaaa!

Congratulations to RedcoreSix, Alephro, Sineg, Petkov, Zhen, Squirrels for achieving this victory, by training hard for this event.

Many thanks to 104th pilots for this awesome match, great flying and we look forward to meet you guys in the virtual skies again!

Special thanks to 51st crew for organizing this great new idea, of a continues league for A2A in DCS!

SATAC 2017 – TAW vs NOB

SATAC 2017:

The TAW against NOB match was today at 1400z and I am pleased to announce TAW won this match with 2-0.
In NOB’s defense, they only had 4 pilots out of 6 present.

Thanks for the nice fight NOB, hope to fight you again in the future, but then a fair 6vs6 match.

Thanks to these TAW members for winning this match and defending the honor of TAW:

Seminole M2K
Darksyderob F15C
RedcoreSix F15C
Alephro F15C
Overdude F15C
Dutch Baron SU27

The next match is today, Saturday 14/10/2017 @ 1600z.
Good luck team!!!!

The Byholma mislanding

In the world of sims, it is sometimes a good thing to remember that there is real history behind our games and modules. In addition, sometimes that history can be quite hilarious!

Viggens

There are several “tall stories” regarding various mishaps and incidents with military aviation, even out of peaceful Sweden. This is the account of such an incident which actually made the news.

(As with all stories of this nature, due to the passage of time and the “game of telephone”-style recounting of the event, several details may have been omitted, glossed over, enhanced or outright fabricated over the years. Grains of salt are called for on all parts.)

On Wednesday, November 16th, 1994, the two-ship JA-37 Viggen fighter element consisting of element lead Petter 29 and his wingman Petter 19, out of the F16 air base in Uppsala, were to land at the Byholma air base (ESFY) as part of an exercise.

The element lead landed according to plan, but as the wingman was coming in, something happened, as related in this (abbreviated) transcript of the radio communication:

FF (Petter 19) declares inbound.
MIF (Byholma ATC) relates wind heading, declares runway clear.
FF: ”I’m coming in for landing.”
FF: ”What crossing was this?”
FF: ”Do I go straight ahead from here?”
MIF declares he has no visual contact with Petter 19.
FF: ”Could it be that I landed in the wrong place?”
MIF reiterates he has no visual contact with Petter 19.
MIF: ”Petter 19, Are you on the ground or in the air?”
FF: “Stand by.”
Silence.
FF: ”I’m coming in.”
(Petter 19 sets down on the main runway and, after a bit of confused taxiing, parks on the apron.)

Now, what really did happen as the MIF was “standing by”? We turn to a description of the events as recalled by Mrs. Anette Rydén, wife of the local dentist.

For a bit of context, the Byholma base was a part of Sweden’s elaborate system of road bases, built during the cold war to provide backup runway capabilities in the event of attacks on the main airfields. A road base was typically made up of one primary, purpose-built runway surrounded by a set of smaller backup runways. These backups were essentially widened, straightened stretches of the surrounding main country roads, made big enough for one or two fighter aircraft to land and take off. Due to the spread out nature of this system of backup runways, these were normally used as ordinary roads by the public, and only closed off temporarily by the Air Force for exercises.

Viggen road base takeoff

On this day there were no roadblocks in the Byholma area, so Mrs. Rydén was out driving in her VW Beetle and had just stopped at an intersection between a smaller road and one of these widened stretches, about to turn onto the main road, when she spotted a “big military aircraft” rolling towards her along that very road.

Meeting the Viggen

Mrs. Rydén, whose interest in military aviation was pretty non-existent and who could really not tell any aircraft models​ apart to save her life, initially thought that the plane, complete with its pilot “in helmet and hoses and stuff”, might be a Russian invader. As it came closer, however, she spotted the Swedish “Three Crowns” symbol on the side of the fuselage and relaxed somewhat.

At a crossroads

At that same time, another local arrived in his car. He ran up to Mrs. Rydén and instructed her to back up and make room for the aircraft. They both backed up, and the plane backed up in front of them off the main road. After letting two lorries pass in front of him, the pilot then taxied back out on the road in the opposite direction, applied Stage 3 and disappeared up in the air.

Viggen takeoff

However, the proverbial cat was out of the bag. The local newspaper Smålandsposten published the story the following day along with an interview with Mrs. Rydén, where she reflected that “Now we might have to get radars in our cars” and that “They’re going to have to get license plates if they are to continue like this.” 

Sources:
Smålandsposten, 1994-11-17, p. 20: Mötte Viggen på landsvägen” (tr: Met the Viggen on the country road)
Svenskt Flyghistoriskt forum, thread “Landningsmissar!” (tr: Landing mistakes), by forum user “Emil Lindberg”, with further details by forum user “henke2”.

The Kaukasus Offensive is back!!!

After some server issues, our team of dedicated members have revived the Kaukasus Offensive a.k.a. The KO!

The ‘Interactive Live Map’ is up and running, just click in the ‘KO Banner’ on the top of the main page, or click HERE.

Many WHOOHAAAA’s go out to DeadBeef for creating this great dynamic mission AND to the team of members making this happen behind the scenes!

EU Formation Flight 20 August 2017

We had a very cool and fun massive formation flight with a whole bunch of EU members and also a few NA members!

This is a video of one of our Weekly Sunday Events, this time we did a large formation flight (due to holiday season we had way less pilots online than usual). We took off from Anapa and flew to Sochi, at Sochi a few of our Helicopter pilots did a great little Heli Air Show! After that, without any warning, our airbase at Sochi was suddenly under attack by enemy forces….

We will be doing this again in approximately 1 month from now, combined EU/NA. Hopefully all EU and NA members will be back home form holiday, so will have around 90 planes flying around….
I really hope the server will hold up and not crash 😉

TAU made a great compilation video of the event, enjoy!

Combined EU/NA mandatory of July 30th 2017

So we had a GREAT event yesterday, where both the EUROPEAN and NORTH AMERICAN division played together in one massive online event.

I’d like to thank the EU/NA team who created and arranged this mission!

We had human ATC, GCI, Army Commanders and Operations Commander, who worked together to provide orders and tasking to all flights like strikers, chopper and fighters, to add to the immersion of virtual aerial combat.

I hope we can do this more often, but the time zone difference between Europe and America makes it a little difficult to align these events.

Again, thanks to all who joined and special thanks to the team who arranged this event.

NEVADA and NORMANDY

Both EU and NA now own all maps that DCS offers today, so obviously the CAUCASUS map, but also NEVADA and NORMANDY.
Because not all members own all terrain modules, we can’t hold our weekly mandatory events on any other map than the CAUCASUS.

To make sure we can still play on the separate maps together, we are doing weekly optional events on every Friday and Saturday:

FRIDAY NORMANDY FIGHT NIGHT

SATURDAY NEVADA FIGHT NIGHT

We switch this around every other week, so members who can not be there on a Friday/Saturday, still might have the possibility to fly the other day of the weekend.

See you guys there!

EU Fighter Platoon Leader

In the EU Division the following member has been promoted to be the new EU Fighter Platoon Leader, to take over some tasks from Dutch Baron:

Alephro

He has proved himself many times as a contributing, active, knowledgeable and friendly community member.
Congratulations on making this promotion, I am looking forward to work with you and I’m sure you will do a great job!