Here we are! The twelfth mission - sort of the graduation exercise! Our mission for today is a low-level sortie where I’m supposed to stick with my flight lead as we hit our flightplan waypoints on time.
My final cold start of the BFT campaign…! Making sure I hit every switch or I’ll get marked down on the evaluation…
After takeoff, I follow instructions that led me to the rendezvous with my instructor…
Along the way, I get briefed on the mission and pick up some tips…
We loiter for a bit before we hit the PUSH time, then nose over and head for the first waypoint on the low-level route…
Having flown the practice mission, I know there is a distance that is ideal. If you drift too far, you get admonished for being too far out of position, and too close and you get yelled at too…
The first part of the low-level goes into the sun. The timing isn’t as important as staying in formation since the lead is flying the waypoints to arrive on time, but the AI isn’t the smoothest pilot in the world, so you have to keep on your toes watching for heading, altitude, and speed changes…
After hitting all the waypoints, we exit the MTR and I’m cut loose to fly to Kobuleti for the final landing of the campaign…
Kobuleti is a new field for this campaign since all of the other missions have been flown from Batumi. I check the frequencies and make sure I don’t screw up the last few minutes of the sortie…
Upon landing, we are given instructions to taxi to a specific revetment to shutdown. The shutdown procedure must be accomplished fully in two minutes or less or else you earn a Qualified Minus rating…
I whirl through the shutdown procedure…and have a spare twenty seconds to double check everything. I have to say, this final mission was the best I’ve flown (with regards to my performance) in the entire campaign - I was not out of position a single time, I hit every waypoint, I performed the start and shutdown procedure without any errors, and all of the other measured items were rated as Qualified. I don’t think I flew another mission in the whole campaign where I was perfect on every tasking…! It sounds silly, but I was darned proud of myself…!
I have officially earned the A-10C Basic Qualification Graduate badge…!
I hope you enjoyed the campaign. It is an impressive bit of work that went into building this campaign, creating all the triggers, monitoring parameters, voice-overs, and briefings. It is a real value at $10 (in my opinion) and a positive steal at the $4.99 sale price that I picked it up at. As most of you know, I’m a big fan of content like this - stuff that keeps the sim interesting with goal oriented stuff. Sure, it is probably really “BASIC” for many of you, but for someone like me that has been away from the A-10C for a couple years now, it was a fun and challenging campaign. The great news is - there is more to come!
Chris “BeachAV8R” Frishmuth