..Now’s the time for your real test. It’s all well and good to fly about with no enemy in sight, but now you’ve got to prepare for combat!
Thats the opening of the Lesson 5. Yes, still in training of the legendary Falcon 3.0. And I can say without hesitation that Falcon series is a legend among combat flight sims.
But is the legend status good enough sign to play it anyway? After all those years?
Got your equipment ready? Helmet? Skull cap? G suit? Parachute? Ok, let’s go will see.
One on One, F-16 vs MiG-27, head on… easy, just lock and shoot…
This should be A2A, why the heck the Mk82? UNLOAD…
Ok, what all these screens are trying to tell me… 99 AIM9P, 99 FLARE, 99 CHAFF… did I say UNLOAD or IDKFA 
Here we go, enemy in sight… of my radar at least, closing faaast…
…what to do? shoot? nooo, lets put him to the test, does he bite? Lets dance…
…going vertical…
…Enough! FOX1!
Go… go… go… Wooow, Splash one bandit! He is going down in flames!
Cruising home on autopilot… catching breath.
Finally home base in sight… hmm got enough fuel?.. the bird is trying to catch the throttle, we are good… ah the IDKFA I forgot.
First landing attempt went wrong, too much alt… hell, every one is watching… second right hand circuit and we are lined up and in good shape.
This is sim, no mission end on the runway… taxing back…
…to my safe parking place.
On debriefing:
“You learned the basics of radar: How to read enemy altitude, heading, airspeed, bearing and distance, aspect angle, closure rate.”
Not sure, sir.
“You checked IFF,…”
Actually there wasn’t much time…
If you didn’t manage to grasp the radar concepts, go ahead and keep running the lesson until you’ve got the hang of it. It is pretty tricky, so don’t get disappointed if you don’t get it at first.
For sure this was fast paced action and fun, I didn’t have much time to check anything else then weapons selection, HUD and radar for contact with the enemy only. Lucky to have autopilot which guided me home. And the landing wasn’t the easiest part also. And in my opinion these all counts for a very good sim no matter how old it is.
Past time didn’t harm the Falcon 3.0 at all. I never played it when it was released. So my present experience does not collide with sweet memories. What was the case with F-16 Combat Pilot we played a lot on friends C64 back then.
But this recent retro gaming wave brought me to Falcon series. After F16CP I tried Falcon, Falcon AT but performance (even via tuned DOSBox) and game content of these two didn’t satisfied me.
Falcon 3.0 is different case. Runs perfect and it still has good training and campaign as I read in old reviews. Before sleep there is always bit of time to run the mission. Hopefully I wont lost interest before the end of the training. I was never a offline player for a long
