Same crew as yesterday, @BeachAV8R, @MiG21bisFishbedL and myself, went to work.
My Bradely idea sorta work at Kilo, and had killed an SA-8 so better than nothing.
The hills were still tight, so taking a M2000 at the speed of heat trying to manual bomb was not my smartest idea.
The SA-13 and dual Shilka’s proved the point. Beach and I worked it over in a Hawg and an Apache, while Mig21 worked on the SAM threat down at Tbilisi in a F-16.
Beach getting the heck out of dodge with some self protection flares.
I still had some Hellfires left, and headed down to Lima while Beach turned his Hawg around to grad a CH-47. I had screwed up and used a loadout with a Robbie tank, so I only had 300 rounds of 30mm, not 1200. Oh well.
I got down to Lima, killed all the air defenses I saw, and lamented the lack of 30mm. Beach had by this point gotten a CH-47 to capture kilo, but a computer crash stopped that plan. He still managed to restart and get back in before I could turn around and land at Kilo (falling through the FARP pad for some reason). Lima had much more wide open territory, and some space to run to get to it.
I had elected to carry a CBU on the center station versus the usual drop tank. As I am mentioning that fact, I’m sure we all have an idea where this is going. With the hills blocking off the SAM’s along with Mig21’s destruction of search and tracking radars, I was able to work over Lima without an interference from the Tbilisi complex. I had a pretty good run, leaving just a few units for Beach to clean up when I went Winchester.
The problem arose when I headed back to Kutaisi well below my bingo threshold. Okay no problem, get some tankers up. But how to talk to them?! I knew I had seen tanker frequencies on a kneeboard card, but not the one in the M2000… Yes I if had know where to look in the radio menu I could have gotten that info, but alas it was not to be. I ended up making straight in for Kutaisi and screwed that up, tried to make the pattern and ran out of gas on base and put it down in the field.
After that I ran some logistics cargo hither and yon. Kutaisi was knocked neutral by a red SU-34 strike, and the zone cargo was being problematic about being recognized, so took 2 quick hops in a C-130. Mig21 had swapped over the a Fulcrum, and was teaching red Su-25’s to stay away.
Red started to repair the damage Mig21 had inflicted, so I grabbed a Hornet with HARM’s to try and put a hinderance to that. I managed to tag several radars, and 2 SHORADs. In the midst of dodging a SA-3 shot I missed a Fulcrum sneaking up on me, and down I went. Mig21 headed up in his Fulcrum to avenge me, and I saw a pair of Fulcrums coming in from the North that needed intercepting. M2000 time again.
I ended up in a pursuit, so the first shot was a S530 shot from just inside the “no escape” zone. That apparently was advertising copy only, as he managed to shake both S530’s I shot at him, along with a Magic 2, while returning a heater shot I was able to flare. Finally tagged him with my last Magic. His partner was going to need to be a gun affair, so let’s do it. With some practice the gun symbology in the M2000 is growing on me.
It was a pretty good rolling fight. I’m not entirely sure why, but at some point the fulcrum pilot punched out and the bird slammed into a mountain. I’m pretty sure he could have pulled out of the turn and missed the mountain, but I’m still claiming it as a kill.
By this point I was just over (30 kg’s over to be exact) bingo, and had the tanker head my way. My RWR started making an awful racket, that I finally realized was the SA-5 site… I gotta remember those things have a 150+nm range. Seemed like a good time to knock it off for the night.
Current state of the war:
If we can get a crew together for a push on Tbilisi we should be in good shape. All the different bases reenforce each other, so doing it with just a few of us, will be tricky.
