8 Likes
“Any landing that you can walk away from…” 
4 Likes
Playtesting some expansions to my Afghanistan sandbox. This time LARPing as the Poles in Ghazni. Dispersing crowds, knocking out technicals, and more dispersing of crowds.
10 Likes
Another photodump from testing the sandbox.
Troop transport from Jalalabad to OP Clydesdale, 5,000ft on the side of a mountain, 1-hour round trip. You gotta take fresh troops in, and bring the exhausted troops out. Screaming down the opposite side of the cliff in VR was a trip.
Sunset CAS in Korengal, around COPs Michigan and Jojo. On-demand tanker speed change worked well.
13 Likes
A few from a user made campaign; still having fun with the F-14
Really need to sit down and finally figure out how to use (or tell jester to use) counter measures one of these days though
the victor
watching the rest of the battle
9 Likes
Bug testing the Ghazni Mi-8 tasking. Navigation isn’t as difficult as I thought, but not overshooting my LZ on approach is 
This was a tight squeeze with all the buildings and trees.
Four tasks in and I managed to tip myself over because I left the parking brake on. Guess we’re walking back to Ghazni.
10 Likes
…too precise for sand people…
2 Likes
Khost has got to be one of the most disorienting places to do CAS in. You think you have your bearings when you spot a river, but then it turns out to be a tributary or a river in the next valley over. I was also pleasantly surprised at how good of a CAS platform the Mudhen is in its current state. LANTIRN resolution/zoom isn’t that great, but UTM waypoint creation and weapons flows work well enough to kill things reliably.
Departing Bagram for Khost.
Fertilizing a garden.
Talked onto a building in a field somewhere. Being able to set map objects as targets makes things interesting.
Must have been IEDs in that one…massive boom.
I have no idea what a tactical overhead is supposed to look like so I just double the standard 1500AGL pattern and do a spicy base turn to stay above ground fire, if there is any.
10 Likes
If you’re talking about the ‘overhead’ pattern[1], FWIW, I recall in my USAF days (ATC) the altitude varied somewhat at each base [I was at]. This was the 80’s, all fighter bases.
Now why is murky to me but IIRC it was based on the Wing (wing command) rules. Or their ‘mood’ even. A few factors in play. IAS was 300 - 400+ knots. Again varied. Type of aircraft an obvious one too. They would request higher/faster, or both, at times. I’ve even seen a Bonanza request and perform an overhead-[ish] pattern (this was the 80’s after all).
Having a ‘standard’ is cool (safer) and more consistent but the exact numbers may not be that important, depending on how you play.
Simulated Flameout Procedures are fun too!
[1] was allegedly designed for tactical reasons. Made sense. But I’d say some of it was because: it’s just plain fun! During my first ‘fam’ ride (had several) in a T-38 I recall the break turn was about 3-4+ G (seemingly depending on the pilot and requirements)…at that point I was already a little ‘green around the gills’ and recall thinking, “oh jeez, not more pain!”. Was just not expected as I was worn out by then 
Found this that shows basics of both the above:
https://laartcc.org/stm/special-military-procedures
The “Break at nnnn…” was so you could space/time things; approach end, midfield, departure end, or you (local controller - ATC) would call the break; ‘eyeball it’.
3 Likes
That’s the standard one, yeah. The tactical overhead is what they use in-country to stay high and above any potential ground fire around the base. Mover did one in the Viper a few weeks ago on YouTube but in VR you can’t really see the Viper’s HUD well but it looked like 3,000-ish feet AGL with a steep base turn. Apparently it’s also done line abreast instead of echelon, but I have no idea how that works. Line abreast needs enough spacing between jets to work but that spacing would screw up everyone’s abeam distance.
While there’s plenty of docs describing the stanard overhead, there’s none describing the tactical one for obvious reasons. Pretty sure it has another name than “tactical overhead” as well but I can’t remember what it was.
2 Likes
Combat landing?
1 Like
That might be it. I could have sworn there was a three-word version too, at least for fighters. Something used in lieu of “approach” maybe. When I hear “combat landing” most of it seems to talk about C-130s and C-17s doing their crazy approaches.
2 Likes
Some screens from Saturday’s Rumble in da Jungle. Kudos to @EightBall and @TeTeT for their contributions to the Vietnam experience.
12 Likes
Awesome shots. I took some battle damage in my Phantom. The pilot’s call sign is hilarious. He couldn’t fix the wobble of death on approach though…
3 Likes
Cool. I’m not familiar with that one.
That’s how the overhead (the one I reference) was defined to me way back when; come in fast and high[er], pull G, land. To avoid those long slow straight-in approaches - less time to get shot at. I’d imagine when real bullets are flying they might amp up things (speed).
2 Likes