Last night I flew ATQ-05 - Illumination Flare Employment. For this mission we head to the target range with a load of flares, and our job is to drop a pair on each of three designated target areas.
I really dig the new 2.5.X NVGs…but I’m still hunting around the cockpit, so I turned off deferred shading to allow me the more “classic” DCS NVG look…
As I go through the full startup procedure, some other flights are heading out to do their training…
After about seven or eight minutes (shooting for our top of the hour takeoff time), we are ready to go…
Yeah…there are some banding issues at night…but it doesn’t much matter to me…
I had to brighten some of these images with some post-processing or they’d all be just pitch black nothingness…
Setting up the DSMS for the illumination “bomb” delivery…
Using the TGP to find the pre-briefed target locations…
There they go…!
We proceed to the other two target areas for similar runs…one against fixed vehicles and the other against moving targets…
After the third run we are cleared off the range…
Back on the ramp. I’ve noticed that these missions are far less picky than the Basic Qualifications Missions…if you forget a radio or switch, you aren’t penalized as harshly…which is a good thing for me!
