#falcon bms

[usafphantom2]

Can you guess the fighter just by looking at this cockpit photo? Too easy, right? 😄 👍 YES

@RealAirPower1 via X

[osean-kitty]

1998 F-16 flight sim goes brrrrr

Also the mod for it doesn't look half bad either

[why485]

Falcon 4.34 is finally on the horizon.

The greatest flight sim of all time is about to get even better.

[why485]

Falcon BMS 4.34 has been released!

First though, I need to re-install my old Falcon disk to get the needed registry entries. Steam and other digital stores have sort of eradicated the old install process. It's WAY more convenient now, but game installers used to add a lot of flavor, especially when they got wild with it like the Battlezone installer.

[why485]

For anyone curious, here is the full set of graphs for thrust and fuel flow varying by throttle setting, mach, and altitude.

[why485]

Highlights from tonight’s Falconing

Scrambled against incoming aircraft and ended up in a huge furball near my airfield. WIngman and I shot down 4 planes. It was a mix of MiG-23s, MiG-21, and Su-7s. I’ve never seen so many planes in a dogfight in Falcon before. At any moment at least 4 planes were easily visible twisting and turning out the window. There was no time for radar.

On another patrol mission we came upon a flight of 6 undefended IL-28 bombers. I told my wingman to hold fire and snuck up on them with the radar off. I shot down the trailing one with guns and from there on it was weapons free.

Planned and “executed” a disastrous strike against an enemy tank platoon on the front line. I didn’t order anywhere near enough escorts, and SAM operators in BMS are much smarter than their DCS counterparts. While the attack flight did let off an impressive volley of Mavericks, only half of the attackers and half the escorts made it back. I wasn’t one of them.

There’s just way too many enemy planes flying in that area to try attack missions of any kind. I’ve been noticing that the AI tasking has been exclusively air to air patrols on the front line and it makes sense considering how many planes they keep throwing at it. Even with all those assets committed, many red jets make it through and get deep into friendly territory. On the way back from the above IL-28 shootdown mission, a MiG-23 shot down one of our tankers.

I’m assuming they’ll have to run out of planes eventually, and at least for now the US and Korean jets are better equipped and usually win air engagement. It gets a lot messier though against ground targets as SA-2s are everywhere.

The base is also running worryingly low on certain stores, external fuel tanks in particular. The F-16 has very short legs, so it’s going to suck and cause havoc on mission planning without that extra gas.

This game is so damn good. Every time I come back to it I’m always blown away. I genuinely doubt there will ever be another flight sim like this. It’s just too much for anybody to make these days.

[why485]

Falcon is so damn good. This is still with the Korea 1989 theater.

The first 3 screenshots are from a practice mission using Mavericks and dumb bombs. In that particular set I was using Mk82s and Mavericks, but other versions of the mission used various cluster bombs. There’s not much in the way of smart munitions for air to ground, so you’ve got to rely on your ground radar and potentially use your Mavericks as a makeshift targeting pod if you need to.

CBU-87s seemed to be the most effective, while Mk-20 Rockeyes were surprisingly ineffective. Mavericks have always been kind of awkward operate, but there’s less time to get them targeted to the correct tank, especially if you’re using older Mavericks like the AGM-65B.

After that, the rest is from an air to air sweep mission from the campaign. There’s just so many enemy planes up in the air, that it’s near impossible to do any real strike missions yet. It wasn’t even 5 minutes after taking off that I encountered a flight of 4 Su-25s only 20 miles away from my air base. They’re tough to take down. I splash one with a Sparrow, but my Sidewinder only damaged another. Meanwhile, my wingman expended all of his missiles taking down the other two Su-25s and then finishing off the Su-25 I had damaged.

By the time we got the mission area, I still had one Sparrow and 3 Sidewinder’s left, but my wingman was Winchester. The smart thing would have been to turn back and call it a day, but there was a 2 ship of MiG-21s that I was confident I could take down. 

I fired my first Sparrow on the lead MiG-21, which then took evasive maneuvers, greatly extending the time I needed to support my Sparrow. His wingman meanwhile gunned it for my wingman. I was sweating watching that second MiG-21 get closer and closer while hoping that waiting for my Sparrow wouldn’t be in vain. By the time my missile hit its is mark, the other MiG-21 was within 5 miles of us. My wingman went defensive, I immediately switched to dogfight mode, and turned after the MiG-21. Unfortunately I was too late and by the time I was able to get tone and launch on the MiG-21, he had already scored a hit.

Bad decision to press on with the mission aside, this is a really good example of why active radar missiles changed everything. If I didn’t have to support my Sparrow, I could have turned my attention to the second MiG-21 and splashed him with no issue, saving my wingman.

My wingman limped back to an alternate base, but he wasn’t able to make it. He ejected safely behind friendly lines and was recovered while I returned to base.

[why485]

To my surprise there was an On Call CAS (Close Air Support) mission. For these, you show up to the target area, check in with FAC (Forward Air Controller, usually an A-10) and then wait for assigned targets.

Approaching the area I saw explosions and then later on some A-10s flying away from the target area. After checking in, we never received any targets from the FAC. While loitering in the area, 2 MiG-21s came by. One was shot down by a nearby BARCAP with Sparrows. The other was moving to engage the BARCAP and flew right past me. Remembering the many times in the past when a seemingly unaware hostile fighter gets nearby and shoots me down, I took the opportunity and shoot it down with a pair of Sidewinders. (First one missed.)

With station time over, it was time for the relatively long flight back. My airbase is on the west coast, but this mission was on the eastern coast of the peninsula where friendly forces seem to be having more luck. I was pinged by far fewer SAMs than I’ve become used to, and for once the ratio of blue to red air was in our favor.

In the end I never got to fire any of my Mavericks and returned to base with almost everything I took off with. After the chaos of so many of the previous missions, it was kind of nice having a mission where nothing really happened.