Mission started at Vaziani AB with me being a wingman to Nu-NRG. I still remembered my first flight over the combat zone with really bad weather so instead of smart bombs, I've selected 4 CBU-87s, for area denial work, with IR Mavs for deleting any potential SAM threats.
After departure, we followed our flight plan inbound AD01 killbox, which is located by the seashore, west of Senaki AB. The good thing about the current map is that the river is the front border, so anything north of river is hostile and vice versa. It was a moon lit night and until fenced in, I didn't use the NVGs. Approaching the killbox, we fenced in, lights went out and I moved into fighterwing to keep an eye on my lead while he was searching for targets. Soon he discovered two SA-9s, one of which he SPI shared to me, and we prepared an attack run. Venom 51 rifle, and his maverick was heading for his target... however I couldn't get a lock on my target and had to abort. During the brake to the safety, lead moved to support me and I went in for my second run on target. This time I got a lock, called the rifle, pressed the pickle button but nothing happened. In that moment a number of things went through my mind, what could be wrong and then it dawned on me - stupid, your forgot to activate the Maverick profile. So another run aborted and I finally managed to get a good launch in my third one. Rookie mistake for sure.
After that, I moved into fighter wing again while Nu was searching and finally found another pair of targets - two SA-19s, nasty Tunguskas, waiting for us.... We climbed above Angels 10, while he broadcasted one of the targets to me, and we set up a simultaneous attack, firing mavericks in a period of few seconds and a bit latter, nothing but bend steel and fire remained of the SAMs. With greatest threat removed, it was time to do some damage. Lead spotted two Shilka's in the town below and pressed in with a gun attack. In a couple of passes, he managed to destroy two of them, but during his last egress, I noticed tracers going up against him from an unknown threat. Of course, we knew what was in store for that Shilka and soon it met the fate of the others. With main threat removed, it was time to do some serious damage. Lead spotted a road block and broadcasted it to me and cleared me for attack with a pair of CBUs. I set my attack but made another rookie mistake and made a bad tip-in unable to put the CCIP reticle on the target so I broke off the dive immediately and set another attack. This time I took a bit more offset and put a pipper in 5mil mode directly over targets in 40deg nose down and pickled. It was quite a maginificant sight to see bomblet explosions on ground covering the target area though the frame rate dropped to like 1 frame per 2 seconds and I was affraid I might crash until the FPS improved. Time check showed we had to return back to Batumi (real life can really suck during such times) and we left a burning pile of steel and concrete behind us and landed some 15 minutes later after an overhead break.
TACVIEW later showed that we were lucky, cause there was another SA-9 in the area which we did not spot. Also if we would have just 10 or 15 mins more of available time, we would wreck havoc with our CBUs over the parked vehicles (mostly BMPs).
It might seem like an easy mission to some, but for my 3rd combat flight it was just enough action, enough rookie mistakes which I recognized in timely manner and didn't expose myself and my flight to danger.
This was defintely an experience that I was waiting for during my time in waiting line and later during the IQT and MQT trainings. And it paid off with dividends. Remeber - patience is a virtue and if you wait patiently in line for your turn for training, you will eventually enjoy flying with 476thvFG as much as I am now.
Cheers and I hope I didn't bother someone to death with the aboveShame I didn't do any screenshots but the truth is, I had so many other things on my mind at that time
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