S1E2: Some Multiplayer Fundamentals

Feedback on the podcast itself and a monologe on 1) Brevity for MP beginners; and 2) AA Data Link CONT problems for large MP packages. We have an interview with our first guest: Prime aka AviationPlus

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
You've tuned into the Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things about in
BMS. Welcome once again to theTactical Frequency. This is the second episode
of the first season, so thisis something of a something of a milestone

(00:29):
actually to get a second episode recorded. I have to first comment on the
feedback to the first episode. Imust say that it was incredibly positive.
I actually I was expecting good feedbackfrom the community, but I don't think
I was expecting as much of apositive reaction. There was no comment that

(00:57):
was actually negative. Respected some negativecomments perhaps on the style perhaps, and
some choices, perhaps on just theway that I was doing the show.
I don't think that the type offeedback I was expecting was just I mean,

(01:21):
I guess the way that I wouldjust phrase it is that I was
expecting a lot more criticisms, evenif they were positive, and there was
like, honestly one or two minorcriticisms, and they were actually in the
vein of positive feedback, constructive feedback, and so I'm very thankful for that.
It really seems like there are peoplein the Falcon BMS community that have

(01:42):
wanted a podcast that they've wanted somethinglike this something in this vein, and
so I hope that this is whatwe're delivering. I hope this is what
people want, and I would liketo encourage everyone again, please go to
the scord, Please join the discord. The invitation code will be read again

(02:04):
at the first break. And notjust that, but we've taken one of
the suggestions was to put the linkin the show description. So if you're
trying to join the Spreaker website tolisten to the podcast, the link is
right there in the description. Sowe did follow what people were suggesting on

(02:27):
that, which is really important.I think it was good that we did
that. We're also, by theway, on Spotify and iHeartRadio, so
that's good as well. If youwould like to, you know, listen
to the podcast on either of those, that's fine. We got you covered.
Somebody else suggested some other platform.We're looking at other possibilities, but

(02:50):
for now, these are the threethat we're on as of right now.
The theme for today's episode is goingto be some multiplayer fundamentals. Obviously we
can't cover all of them, butwe're going to cover We're going to cover
brevity. Let's say brevity is agood topic to cover and we'll also be
covering a little bit on the datalink in Falcon BMS. We also have

(03:14):
a prerecorded interview with Prime also knownas aviation Plus. He's one of the
big YouTube names in Falcon BMS andhe agreed to do an interview for this
episode, so that's going to becoming up later at a later segment.
I would like to mention again thatwe are still looking for feedback. I

(03:38):
really need your voice in the FalconBMS community to let me know when I'm
doing things right, when I couldimprove all of those types of things.
So please again join the discord,let us know what you think, and
really just join this part of theFalcon BMS community, this subsection for this

(04:01):
podcast, and let us know whatyou think, what you'd like to see.
I'm also thinking about starting a newcampaign for this. We're just in
preliminary ideas about interviewing different squadron leaders, different squadrons, different communities, subsections,
and it would be under like aheading of meet the community, so

(04:25):
something like that. So, ifyou've got a squadron, you've got a
group, would you like to shareinformation about your group? If you're a
pilot with no group, would youlike to hear a segment about this where
we do interviews, Please let meknow. Obviously I'm not endorsing one group
or another necessarily. This will justbe a chance for people in the community
to advertise their groups and for youthe listener to hear who's out here in

(04:46):
the Falcon BMS community. So thisis where we're at currently, and I
want to thank you guys all onceagain for the support that we've had.
We'll be right back to join thetactical frequency discord use invitation code uppercase,

(05:13):
romeo, lowercase, Charlie Niner,Sierra Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papa
Whiskey, Kilo. What are someof the prerequisites to learn Falcon BMS?
Here are just a sample. First, you need self motivation and time.
BMS is a study sim You needa personal commitment to learn, one that

(05:34):
doesn't rely on others. Second,you need to fly regularly. You won't
get better unless you're learning new thingsand solidifying what you've already learned. Third,
you need some hardware. A throttleand stick are greatly recommended, particularly
a pair with a lot of hatswitches. Can you fly with a keyboard

(05:54):
and a mouse? Yes? Painfully. It's Bailey not recommended. Fourth,
head tracking or VR get one orthe other. The gold standard for head
tracking is track IR, but othercheap alternatives will do just fine. Fifth,
you need to buy a copy ofFalcon four point zero. It goes
for about five U S dollars onSteam. Falcon BMS itself is free,

(06:17):
but its license as a mon forFalcon four point zero for legal reasons.
Falcon one, drag Net one,Trespass two. We'll guide you out on
the tactical frequency. Welcome back tothe tactical frequency. I'm your host,

(06:44):
Bible Clinger, and we're going tobegin our first main segment here for beginners,
let's say in multiplayer. So onething I want to say first before
we get too far into the maintopic, I'd like to talk a little
bit about tac View. Tac Viewis a third party program for Falcon BMS

(07:05):
that allows you to watch your flightsfrom a bird's eye perspective, and you
can have BMS record these flights.By the way, right when you open
up BMS, you get into thelauncher right away, there's an acme button
you can click that and that recordsyour flights all the time. Alternatively,
you can turn on and off therecording from inside the jet, which is

(07:29):
actually kind of cool that you actuallyhave that feature. But I I mean,
I would recommend just turning on yourrecording all the time. There have
been a lot of times where youforget to turn it on, and it's
just tragic when you don't record somethingreally cool happening. And tac View is
a third party program, as Imentioned, so there is a paid version.

(07:53):
You don't have to get that.You can just very easily use the
free version. It'll be just finefor what you need. And the reason
why you want to get this isfor debriefings and prime and I talk about
this later on in the upcoming interview, but the importance of it is something

(08:13):
that you just have to live through. You just have to actually fly in
bms, particularly multiplayer, and thenwatch the flight back and you'll be amazed.
But I just wanted to get thatacross so it was very clear what
tack View is and what we werediscussing. The main thing that I'd like
to talk about now actually is brevity. Brevity is definitely a fundamental of Falcon

(08:37):
beyondness multiplayer, and it's an oddsubject because you can't really practice it in
single player. You know, youcan practice talking to the AI, you
can say whatever you'd like, butat the end of the day, there's
no real way to get feedback asto whether you're doing it right or not.
I mean, I suppose you couldget a voice attack profile and talk

(08:58):
into that, and you know you'dget some feedback if the program recognizes it
or not. But there's no realreplacement for talking to a human, and
there's no real replacement for having listenedto the calls from the humans and figure
out what you're supposed to do,what you can say. So obviously I
can't teach everything. This isn't evenmy goal here. I cannot go over

(09:18):
everything. With regard to brevity.We have to keep this simple, and
it's got to be in an audioformat that's easily digestible. But let's cover
a couple of real, basic,basic ideas. The first thing you should
understand is that if your lead givesyou a directive, just answer with your

(09:41):
slot number. So if your lead, your lead is number one, let's
say you're sloting it is his wingman, your number two. If he tells
you to do something and you wantto acknowledge it. You literally just say
two. You don't have to sayroger that, don't say copy, you
know, don't say anything that's extra, no extra phrases like it. You

(10:03):
don't need to. Just saying yourslot number is good enough. So when
the flight lead gives a directive,flight do whatever you're going to hear on
the radio. Two, three,four. That's everybody in order acknowledging,
and yes it should be in order. Don't cut people off if you're four,
don't start talking right away. Butthat's the bare basic. That's honestly

(10:26):
a good portion of the majority ofyour communication as a wingman. It's literally
acknowledging. Now if you can't acknowledge, and that's not just acknowledging, by
the way it's acknowledging, but it'salso compliance. You're explaining your intention to
comply with the directive. So ifhe tells you to do something, you're
saying, yes, I understand,I'm acknowledging and I'm going to do it.

(10:48):
Okay, perfect, But what ifyou can't comply? What if he
tells you to do something, youknow, turn this way, fly this
way, whatever, and you're beingshot at. That would be a little
disconcerting, and saying two would givethe wrong impression, so that honestly,

(11:09):
the easiest way to do this isto say two unable. The word unable
is sufficient for this. You justexplain that you're not able to do with
what you're being told to do.Now, ideally you clarify, you say
why two unable, defensive essay twoor whatever. But the intent is that

(11:30):
you're communicating, and you're communicating veryeffectively. You're not on the radio long.
You're just giving the bare basic.Now we can get into a lot
more complicated things. For example,the acknowledgement is just with your slot number,
the slot number two. If you'respeaking for the flight. If you're
the flight lead, let's say,and you want to acknowledge something from another

(11:52):
flight, you can just say yourflight's call sign. So let's say you're
in Falcon one. The lead canliterally just speak for the flight and say
Falcon one, and that works asan acknowledgement to whoever to GCI to another
flight. So if they're telling youFalcon one, whatever, there's something up
ahead, enemy fighters are coming inand you just want to acknowledge it,
you can literally just say Falcon oneand that works. And then if you

(12:16):
want to acknowledge something individually, likeif you're talking to GCI or somebody,
and then it's more important to you. For you individually, you have to
give your full call sign, likeFalcon one one or Falcon one two.
The order of the call signs,by the way, I think some people
get that a little bit confused,But the order is that you put who
you're addressing first and then your callsign comes second. So if you're trying

(12:41):
to speak to another flight, let'ssay it's bulldog your falcon, you'd say
Bulldog six Falcon one, and thenyou go on with the rest of the
message. So that's about it interms of like the basics of call signs,
directives, and if you're a wingman, most of the time you don't
even need to worry about this.You're already just focused on just what your

(13:05):
flight lead is telling you. Sowhat are some of the other things that
you could say, Well, oneof the best things I already covered defensive,
that's a good one to know.Tumbleweed is another. Tumbleweed means you
don't know where you're, where you'regoing, what's happening, You're lost,
you're mentally confused in that moment.It's very good to let the lead know
when that happens. Some of theother things you might need to know referencing

(13:31):
things that you can see. Soif you're talking about an enemy, it's
tally and the opposite would be nojoy. So if he's telling you,
hey, there's a meg over therein your two o'clock and you see him,
tally. If you don't see him, no joy. Now that's different
for when you're talking about a friendlyvisual is when you say you see something.

(13:54):
Blind is when you don't see something, And that blind call, by
the way, can be used tosimply explain you don't even know where your
lead is. Two is blind isa pretty obvious call. I think they
even made a song about that.And then there are some other things that
you probably want to know, likebreak, hook, go, wedge,
push, you know, different thingslike different things that you might hear from

(14:20):
the lead, formations or directives anddifferent things like that. Those are better
if you look through the manual forsome of these to see the exact definitions.
Obviously, like break and hook arereferencing turns of sorts, So things
like that. The main thing I'lltalk about now though, is fox calls.

(14:41):
If you fire an air to airmissile, you're gonna probably have to
give a FOX call, and youshould give that on the tactical frequency and
the number that you give after that, because you've probably heard this already in
movies, Fox three, fox two. The number indicates the type of missile.
To keep it very simple, Foxthree means you're firing inn AM one

(15:03):
twenty am ram. Fox two meansyou're firing an AM nine sidewinder. Now,
really the numbers indicate the classifications ofmissiles, so like an AM fifty
four would still be a FOX three, but the idea is still there.
For most of the time in theS sixteen, you're firing am rams and
ame nins, and that's about assimple as it as it can get.

(15:28):
So you'd say FOX three if youcan give the location of the target using
bulls eye. So you've got topractice doing this. Look at your FCR
if you need to, or whateverreference you know. If you know the
bulls eye the group, you canlook at where they're at. Alternatively,
if you're really advanced, you cangive the name of the group of GC
already classified it, but don't worryabout that. Even just the location is

(15:52):
good enough bulls eye two sixty three, that's great. Give the altitude if
you can twenty thousand, twenty thousand. This is not as important, but
it's still nice. The next thingyou could give is the type of aircraft,
and if you get bonus points,if you can use the NATO code
name like flanker. But it's notnecessary. The important thing is that you're

(16:17):
clear, and if you only getFox three out in that call, that's
fine. It's not ideal, butit's fine. So if you're about to
do a transmission on the radio,stop and think first about what you're going
to say, and then queue themic and say it. Don't get stuck
with the mic on. We'll beright back. We're just getting started.

(16:48):
We'll be back soon after this message. In BMS, we have a strange
requirement colloquially called the click dance.It's a way to make sure BMS loads
everything correctly, including your briefing,COMMS plan and if plan. You do
this in the two D map beforeyou've committed to your flight. Here are
the steps. Step one, clickon your flight in the listings. Step

(17:14):
two click on your blue seat.Step three open your data cartridge. Step
four, click on the comms taband click on comm's plan. Step five,
Click on the if tab and clickon if plan. Step six,
click on save to save the datacartridge. With all of this clicking,
you can probably see how it gotits name. The click dance is required

(17:37):
in every multiplayer flight, and youreally should be doing it in single player
as well. In fact, youmay end up performing the click dance multiple
times before you commit to your flight. If someone new never has the right
frequencies, chances are he doesn't dothe click dance. Falcon one relay Plasma

(17:59):
two stick around on the tactical frequency. Yes, welcome back once again to
the tactical frequency. We were justdiscussing brevity in multiplayer and we just covered
some bare basics. We didn't reallyget into a lot of details, but

(18:22):
it's enough, I think, forpilots to really understand. Just honestly acknowledging
by saying your slot number is huge. I'm dead serious. That's actually really
important, and it really helps tojust be familiar with these types of things.
It makes communicating much easier if youalready know what you're going to say,
If you already know what to sayand by the way, don't sweat

(18:44):
it if you don't remember what tosay, if you don't remember what the
brevity is, just use plain Englishor whatever language that is that you are
speaking with those pilots that you're flyingwith. Just use plain language. Okay,
with that out of the way,let's talk about the data link.
This is going to be slightly moreadvanced. So it's not a big deal

(19:06):
if you don't pe at it,but if you're a flight lead or if
you design missions, this is somethingyou probably want to pay attention to.
And the reason is is that I'mgoing to talk a little bit about why
the data link is sometimes not workingthe way people expect, and one of
the major reasons for this is thatthe data link was changed. I think

(19:27):
I addressed this just briefly in thelast episode. I think I mentioned this
as a reason why even some veteranpilots that come back to be a mess
are a little bit confused. Butthe data link got changed. It used
to be way more permissive, whereyou could see a whole bunch of people
in the flight and you just hadto do some weird things to get your
table working, and all of asudden you could see everybody in a giant

(19:49):
package and they could see you andeverything was good. And this isn't how
it works anymore, so let's coverreal beer basics. In the data link,
every jet needs an ID. Soan ID is a two digit number,
and it's gonna be something like oneone, one two, one three,
one four, And generally the wayBMS automatically fills these out is that

(20:11):
the first flight in the package getsan ID of one one through one four.
The second digit represents the slot number. So one one is the lead
of the first flight, one twois the wingman in the first flight,
and so on. So the lefttable in or left column of the table
is going to be your flight.The right table is an open space for

(20:37):
you to put other flights. Whenyou initiate a data link round, you
use com switch left, also knownas if out, So you're initiating a
round on the data link, andthis is what happens. Your jet runs
through the table. It broadcasts oneither UHF or VHF, whichever one you
have set up for air air datalink. And yes we're specifically discussing air

(21:04):
air by the way, if Ihaven't made that clear, this is all
for air air is all for findingyour flight members, your package members,
all of that. So it's goingto use the air air radio that you
have selected in the data link setting. Now, the first entry in the
table is you. Let's say you'reFalcon one one. You're the flight lead.
So when you initiate this, you'resending your information. You're sending your

(21:26):
IDMID, you're sending your location,your altitude, and if you have a
target locked up, that's getting sentout to everybody. It's not being sent
to a specific person. It's beingsent out broadcasted onto the network. Now,
after you send that out, yourjet is now asking each person in

(21:48):
the table for their information. Sonow you're going so if you're Falcon one
one, you're now requirying Falcon onetwo. This is all automatic, This
is all part of the system.Every jet on that frequency with the data
link is hearing the initial transmission andnow it's going to hear these replies coming

(22:11):
in and so your wingmen is goingto reply with the same information. And
so that's when you start seeing yourwingman on the data link, provided it
didn't break anything, and then yourjet's going to query the next person one

(22:33):
three and then one four, andso on, and so everyone's going to
be doing this replying. But theimportant thing to understand is that your table
filters replies. It's not just whoyou're sending to, it's who you want
your jet to let replies come backto. So when you have your flight

(22:56):
in the table, you're saying,I'm going to when I initiate around,
I'm going to query all of thesepeople. I want them to reply back
to me. But it's also sayingif they initiate a query or if they
reply to a query, I wantto see their replies. This is important
to understanding how this works. Becausenow let's say we have a second flight.

(23:18):
So now we have two flights.So you put to one to two
to three and two four in theright hand table, you put the entire
second flight. If they do thesame thing, then everybody will see each
other. You'll be able to sendreplies to them, they'll be able to
send replies to you. You cansend queries to them, they can send
queries to you. All is good. Now, the problem really comes in

(23:44):
where people don't synchronize their tables,and this is where the unexpected starts happening.
But it's not usually as identifiable untilyou have more than eight people.
If you're flying with more than eightpeople, this is where the problems come
all over the place, and thereason being is that if you send out

(24:12):
a query, you're gonna hit oneone, one, two, one,
three, one four, so that'sall your flight. But if you have
more than eight people, you don'tknow how who to put in the right
hand table. So you're like,well, I'll just put the flight leads.
I'll put two one, three,one, four, one and five
one. All right, so youput the flight leads. But when you
query these people, you're only sendingrequest to two one, three, one,

(24:33):
four, one and five one tosend back after of course your own
flight. So you're gonna you're gonnabe fine. You're gonna see all the
replies. If they remember to putyou in their data links, then you're
going to see the replies. Everythingwill be fine. The real problemise if
you go in continuous. This iswhy people say don't use continuous, because
if you're in continuous, it's justas if you're spamming the comp switch left

(24:56):
over and over and over again.And this is what will happen. Let's
pretend the flight leads all got theirdata right, so all of your flight
leads have all the other flight leadsin on the right hand column. You're
going to send data out to one. Two, You're gonna send a query

(25:18):
to one. Three, You're gonnasend a query to one. Four.
You're gonna send a query to twoone, then to three one, then
to four, one to five one, and then if you're on continuous,
it restarts all over again. Andso that means you're seeing your flight and
all the other flight leads. Theother flight leads are only seeing you and
the other flight leads they're not seeingyour flight because they didn't put your flight

(25:41):
in their table. They have theirown flight in their table. But you're
never querying their flight. And becauseyou're on continuous, nobody else can jump
in and make another query. Andthis is where the problem comes in,
because you have now monopolized all ofthe transmission time. You've over the data
link. Only the people you're talkingto are able to reply. Nobody else

(26:04):
can send a reply. And whatthat means is that now two one and
three, one and four, oneand five, when all the other flight
leads in that package can no longerquery their wingmen, their wingmen can no
longer query their leads. Nobody cansend out other queries on the data link.
And I know this is really technical, so please if you're not familiar

(26:29):
with what I'm talking about, Imean it would help if you if you've
at least phone multiplayer, you've seenthese missions, you've been to these briefings.
This is a very common problem.So if you're just a wingman,
don't worry about it. Just figureout what you should put in your table.
But if you're a flight lead,you have to start or at least
let's say the mission planner or themission commander, You've got to start taking

(26:51):
this into account. Don't be tooblase about the problems that this will cause.
You're going to have a lot ofnew players. I've actually heard different
veteran players who are like, youknow, that data link is just not
working. I see you sometimes andthen I don't, And they're not even
aware that the only way to getyou to be continuously shown is to run

(27:14):
in continuous mode because of how it'schanged, and then continuous mode. We
can't run continuous mode now because ofthese problems. And we have ten eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteenpeople in a flight twenty people thirty
people. You can't run continuous becauseyou jam the data link. You basically
d loss everyone out, anyone who'snot in the tables. And so the

(27:37):
best way of running this what canwe do? Well, you have to
switch to demand mode DMD, andyou have to choose who you're going to
have. You could do flight leadsonly in the second table and you could
have everyone run that, but ithas to be in demand. It cannot
be in continuous. And so thisis just the intro of one problem with

(28:03):
the data link. We'll be rightback. Don't go anywhere. We'll continue
after this break. When a humanis GCI and you ask them to declare

(28:26):
your target, you can get anumber of different replies like friendly, hostile,
bandit, and bogie, But whatdo they mean? Friendly and hostile
are probably the most obvious. Youshould spare the former and shoot the ladder.
The other replies require some explanation.Bogie means unknown, the aircraft might
be hostile, but GCI is unableto idea it for you. Bandit means

(28:49):
that the aircraft is an enemy,but you're not necessarily authorized to shoot it.
Think about a situation where you're flyingfor Israel and in this campaign all
of your neighbors are unfriendly. Nevertheless, you're only at war with Syria.
How does GCI declare a Jordanian aircraftin this scenario. GCI couldn't answer friendly
and they shouldn't authorize you to fireby saying hostile. This is where the

(29:11):
call bandit would make the most sense. As a bonus, keep a listen
for outlaw. Outlaw means that theaircraft is coming from a known hostile location,
like an enemy airbase. It doesn'tmake the target automatically hostile though.
Drag that one, lowdown, onecool podcast right here on the Tactical Frequency.

(29:41):
Once again, Welcome back to theTactical Frequency. I'm kind of excited
about this one. This is ourprerecorded interview I'm going to be playing in
just a minute with Prime. Iinvited him to speak about some of the
fundamentals of BMS multiplay Layer full disclosure. I fly with him at the sixth

(30:03):
and again, even though we mentionit in the interview, I will say
he is the content creator known onYouTube as aviation Plus. So if you
haven't already, please check out hischannel and let's go straight to the interview.
I'm here now with Prime, alsoknown as Aviation Plus. He is

(30:26):
a BMS pilot. He helps trainpeople, and he has his own YouTube
channel under the Aviation Plus name Prime. I'm actually quite happy or here.
I've been trying to figure out wherewe could get you on this show as
quick as possible. Thank you forcoming. Yeah, I've always wanted to
be here. I like the actualidea of having a podcast and all everybody's

(30:51):
listening to podcasts now and BMS issomething that's hold a deep place in my
heart. And I like airplanes,hence the name Aviation Plus US. And
I'm just happy to be here.Now. We're talking on this episode about
some of the multiplayer fundamentals of BMS. And now obviously we're prerecording this interview,

(31:11):
but people who are listening will haveheard us cover topics like brevity and
proper use of the data link.Is there anything about those that you'd like
to comment on those particular topics.It's really fundamental that people should know.
So there's a couple of things onYouTube or not on YouTube, on the
Internet of some Google and on YouTube, you can just search brevity the United

(31:37):
States Air Force and it'll come upon Google. It's a public document,
there's nothing protected about it, butyou can just search it and has all
the brevity in there, a presscontrol f and it's not really organized,
but it has things that you mighthave heard during a YouTube video that you
watched or someone. Use it whileyou're doing a debrief, but definitely use

(31:57):
those documents. Have all the actualreal brevity terms that you could use in
there. It's it's it's important tobe able to use brevity because there's us
only a certain amount of time onthe radio that you could use and using
the less amount of the If youcould use less amount of time on the
radio, that'll be best because sometimesyou can get really really chaotic up there.

(32:20):
But when in doubt, you canjust use regular English. And I
believe that is the ATP document.It's an outdated one, but I believe
it comes with the ms UM.But I think if if they search for
that, they'll find the more upto day one. Yes, it's uh
yeah brevity AFTTP three DASH two dotfive and it search that and it'll be

(32:45):
there. I think it's March twentytwenty three right now, but it's on
the internet. Just search that,all right, let's talk about something that
obviously everybody, it's probably you know, had been recommended. Let's say,
and that's multiplayer in BMS. Howimportant is multiplayer to the growth of a

(33:06):
BMS pilot. Multiplayer is where itall ends up. So you could you
could start in single player, youcould start on a keyboard, you can
start anywhere as you can before multiplayer, but after a while you will transition
into multiplayer. So it's important enoughto get into multiplayer as quickly as you
can because if you're in multif you'rein single player all the time, you

(33:28):
don't really talk to people. There'sno flight leads, you're not really taking
commands from actual human you don't havethat that mike fright that people get when
they press the button to talk tosomeone, So you don't get that in
single player. So if you playsingle player for six months, a year
or whatever, you develop a negativetraining for the radio. So it's always

(33:49):
good to get into multiplayer as soonas you can. All right, what
is then the optimal way for someoneto learn Falcon BMS's fundamentals, Let's say
maybe even prior to getting into multiplayer. What's the fundamental way to learn the
fundamentals. So there's not really afundamental way, but you just the only
thing you can do without getting inthe multiplayers to watch videos of other people.

(34:13):
There's hundreds of thousands of hours ofpeople playing, and you just kind
of have to put yourself in therecorder, in the pilot's shoes or in
a seat, and you just kindof listen to what they're saying. You
kind of develop different things and brevity, You kind of get expectations of what
the lead wants you to do,and you just kind of develop that from

(34:35):
a video. It's hard. It'shard to do it, but when you're
when you're learning something, you mightnot know that you're learning it, but
you are actually absorbing the information unconsciously, even if you're watching a video.
All right, then, would yousay that, let's say someone flies DCS
or some other non BMSIM, wouldyou say that the training that they receive
from that SIM translates well to FalconBMS in terms of fundamentals. So fundamentals,

(35:01):
it can airplanes fly, airplanes land, airplanes crash, so all that's
all the same. But when itcomes to b MS, there's just like
the obvious differences that the UIs alittle different, little different, the user
interface is different. Of course,the missiles act different. The F sixteen
might act different when it comes tobleed rates and take off distances, and

(35:27):
some of the weapons may have adifferent way to employ them. So sometimes
it's kind of different. But whenit comes to saying formation, maybe getting
used to the not used to thethrottle, because the throttle is different in
both stems, so you may beable to develop that um, that sense
of being able to react earlier thanit needs to happen. So you're in

(35:49):
formation and you kind of see yourselfkind of sliding forward, you need to
bring back the throttle and make surethat you get behind your lead again.
You don't want to always be makingcorrections back and forth and huge corrections.
So formation could be something that thattranslates well. But other than that,
it's it's just depends on what you'relearning. Let's say someone's been flying multiplayer

(36:13):
in BMS for about a month ortwo, so he has some of the
basics, but what's a fundamental thathe probably needs to work on. So
let's a month or two, couldbe could be two flights, it could
be three flights, Like it justdepends on how many flights was actually taken.
So let's just say they flew twentysomething flights in a month. So
at that point they should be ableto understand and know what to expect from

(36:39):
the flight leads when they give themthe commands. They should be able to
get the basic brevity of like defensiveand cold and hot and like just the
basic things how to employ weapons,and they shouldn't really have that fright of
being on the radio as much asthey did when they first started. But

(37:00):
that I always say is if you'reif you're uncomfortable in the seat playing Falcon
BMS or DCS or whatever video gamethat you're playing, if you're uncomfortable in
that situation, you're actually learning somethingunconsciously. So don't well, actually kind
of like go out and it's justa video game. No one's endanger,
no one's going to die, like, it doesn't matter. So if you

(37:22):
if you feel like you're going tobe uncomfortable doing something, why why not
do it? That's how you learnreally really quick. So mostly people when
they come to me when they wantto learn, they ask me, what
do I need to learn? Likethat's that's a hard question to ask because
you don't know what you don't know. So the best thing to do is
they get in the multiplayer with otherpeople who are better than you, and

(37:44):
they let you know what you don'tknow very very quickly. If you've been
flying bms for years, as Iknow, you have, what's the let's
say, the first fundamental skill thatstarts to decay if you're not active about
it. So I would say,so I haven't flown in about well,
I flew a couple yesterday, butthere was a break of about a month

(38:07):
or two. So I would saythat the thing that kind of decays is
your decision making. So when you'rewhen you're in the game and you have
different experiences, you kind of knowwhat to make a decision. So when
you haven't flown in a while,your your decision making skills kind of go
towards other things instead of actually flyingan airplane, So you need to The

(38:28):
only bad decision is to make nodecision at all. So that's the thing
that I would say has that decaysreally quickly, and some people not might
not even know that it's a thing. That's definitely a thing decision making,
because you have to make split decisionsplit second decisions in Falcon BMS and dcs
and basically any video game that is. But remember, make a decision and

(38:52):
no one's no one's in danger.Definitely, Um, we got about twenty
seconds left. How important would yousay in terms of fundamentals are the briefings
and debriefings for pilots to attend.The debriefings are very important, and the
both the debriefings and the briefings areimportant because at the end you might not
know what you did wrong, Soother people telling you that what you did

(39:15):
wrong is the best way to learn, because you don't know what you did
wrong. But if other people tellyou, then that's the best way to
know that what you need to workon for next time. We'll be right
back with the rest of the interviewwith Prime right here on the tactical frequency.
Don't go anywhere. We'll be rightback after this break. Stay with

(39:52):
us. What's the proper way toID and air target You actually have multiple
methods VD, the targeting pod,if NCTR and a WAX. Let's talk
about them briefly, VD or visualID. It's just the basic pilot eyeball.
If you're in a campaign where aircrafttypes belong to one side only.

(40:13):
This is enough to ida target thetargeting pod. It can display a white
hot or black hot in for animage of your target. For even better
magnification, you can switch to TVmode. IF is a way of iding
a probable friendly by means of interrogation. Despite the acronym, it does not
actually identify foes. You should notautomatically shoot an aircraft that doesn't respond to

(40:35):
IF queries NCTR. This is aspecial method of identifying the type of aircraft
that you have locked up. It'snot very reliable, but when it works,
you'll be given the aircraft classification.A WAX the big radar in the
sky. You can ask a waxto declare your target. If a WAX
replies that it's hostile, then you'reauthorized to shoot it. Falcon one drag

(41:00):
Net one negative. We need youhere on the tactical frequency. Welcome back
once again. We are listening toa pre recorded interview with Prime aka Aviation

(41:23):
Plus. So, without further ado, let's resume that interview. Prime.
Let's do something a little bit differenthere. Let's do a discussion instead of
a question and answer thing on thedebriefings in BMS. So I'm obviously not
talking about the in game debriefing,but debriefing through the third party program tack

(41:45):
View. Go ahead and just giveme your thoughts on that, like,
let's just start it off. So, yeah, debriefing is probably the most
important part of flying. If youwant to get better, you need to
at least have a verbal debriefing.There's been a couple of things where you
have like a three four minute debriefingwhere the lead kind of tells you what

(42:07):
the what was done good, whatwas done bad, and what can be
done to make sure that the badstuff doesn't happen again. So in the
debriefing, usually the lead would havewe're supposed to hit this target. Did
we hit the target? Yes?Cool, And then they go into detail
of how they hit the target andwhat was done correctly and incorrectly. But

(42:32):
if the whole mission was failed,so the target was not hit, maybe
we got jumped by fighters, maybethere was a malfunction of one of your
weapons, maybe you didn't turn onyour arm switch like it could be a
slew of things that could have happened. And then when you notice what went
wrong, you kind of peel backthe onion of of the person they who

(42:52):
made the mistake, or the personleading the flight or whatever, and you
kind of say you asked them,what was your thought process like during this
look were you like, like ifyou were to miss the arm switch like
when you were when we were fencingin, did you hit the arm switch
or did you hit the wrong buttonor maybe your arms switch is not even
mapped. So we just kind ofpeel back the onion of of of what

(43:15):
happened during that time. It couldbe training, it could have just been
a mistake at oopsie, or itcould be a hardware problem like it could
be a whole bunch of things thatthat could be wrong. But basically you
need to know what happened, wasit correct or was it incorrect, and
why did it happen and try tonot make it happen again. One big

(43:35):
thing for me and Debreece just personally, I'm always amazed by how much I
thought I knew while I was flying, and then when I actually see the
replay, if you will, ofthe flight, I'm always amazed at how
much was not exactly what I thought. You know, there are fighters out
where I didn't even know that therewere enemy fighters, you know, fifty

(43:57):
miles out on one side, Awaxdidn't call them, and and I didn't
know what was going on. Andso the debriefing for me is a real
eye opener to really test to seehow good my awareness was at at the
time in flight when I was doingcertain things. And I'm sure you've experienced
the same thing. It's really kindof surprising. Sometimes you're on point,
you kind of knew what was goingon. Other times I just find like

(44:19):
I was just lost compared to whatreality shows in the replay. Absolutely like
every time, like everyone develops thatmental picture that you build off of words
giving thrown to you at seven differentdirections and expectations. Sometimes you're in debrief,
you're like you're in a BBR scenariobeyond visual range and you're trying to
shoot at one twenty and you sortso you assign targets to your wingman.

(44:44):
You're like, all right, two, you take the left one, I'll
take the right one, and everythingseems fine. But when you go into
debrief, you notice that their numbertwo was on the on the right,
ten miles behind you, and you'retrying to sort, like, I did
not know that my LEA two wasten miles behind me. If I knew
that, then my whole tactic couldhave been completely different. But there are

(45:06):
times where you expect something to happen, or expect something to be happening,
but it is not happening the wayyou expect it in your brain. I
think that's a lot of pilots experiencethat. Actually. In fact, I
think new pilots when they see theirtack view for the first time, I
think it's it's really shocking and it'skind of brutal. They'll find they flew
in the wrong direction or their formationflying was so bad. You can see

(45:29):
them yo yoing back and forth betweenthem and their lead. And but I
guess one thing will point out,which I think is obvious to us,
but we should point out always thedebriefings, the criticisms. You know,
obviously it's it's meant in a positivesense, right, absolutely, yep.
And you know, and I noticeeverybody in the BMS community seems to have
that understanding when they get in andwe show what's going on. I mean

(45:51):
almost everybody. I think I've maybeone person who didn't really like, you
know, criticisms, but honestly,most of everyone gets it. And I
think it's that that sudden jarring realizationI had no idea what was going on.
It hits Oh yeah, yep,it does. It's that. It's
that uh, it's that slap inthe face. Basically like, okay,
let's gett into a game and youyou don't know what you're doing. Well,

(46:13):
you might know what you're doing,but you don't know what's going what's
happening at a big picture, umyou get you have too many tabs open,
you have literally sixty nine thousand tabsopen. You don't know what's going
on, and you're just lost mentally, emotionally, and just you're just lost.
So you're just basically following someone atthis at this point, and anyone
anytime someone says something to you,it just kind of goes in one ear

(46:34):
and out the other because you're sotask saturated. All these sensors you don't
you know what they mean, butyou can't use them in a very stressful
environment in multiplayer, you know.I would also add to that that if
you're flying live for you know,before the debris, if you've suddenly realized
you're becoming tasks saturated, and especiallyas a wingman, it's probably really good

(46:55):
at that point to let your leadknow that, you know, with that
simple brevity word tumble right, yep, tumbleweed. That's a's a big word,
says a lot in one word,right, And I noticed that like
that, that really sets the tone. The lead understands now, Okay,
my wingman is not out there doingsomething. He's out there confused. Yep,

(47:15):
you know, And it really makesa huge difference. I think some
of the most impressive flights I've seenare where people have seen all of this
chaos in the flight, they getcompletely out of their plan and then they
somehow managed to in thirty seconds theyget back on plan, back on track.
Yeah, it's it takes time,and it takes lots of experience to

(47:37):
be able to get back on track. A video that I came out going
to come out with later on.I was with the the UAF yesterday and
we were doing an air to groundmission. There was thirty of us in
there, and we were the strikepackage. There was an escort package of
seed peals like six other flights.So we were flying in our package or
in our flight doing orbits, andnext thing I know, I see a

(47:59):
fifteen, say fifteen on my RWRand then two seconds later I get launched
at of say fifteen with bombs everything. So I'm getting launched at. I'm
defending and and uh I do getaway from it, but I had to
jettison everything to have a chance toto live. So I flip over upside
down. I see, I gettally of the of the uh, the

(48:22):
smoke trail, jettison everything, doa couple s turns downwards, and get
away from it. Now I'm onthe deck with no bombs. My flight
members are up there doing whatever,and now I'm tumbleweed, like the lead
is tumbleweed now, so I haveto develop my situation awareness again and climb
up where that SA fifteen is notand actually develop that MC mental picture um

(48:46):
uh in that moment and in thedebrief. I remember watching the debrief and
maybe about eighty five percent of thatwas was it matched my mental picture in
the game as it does in tactfew. So I did learn a lot
of things in TAC few because thetactics or the tops and of the essay

(49:09):
fifteen is a twenty two thousand feetand I was at twenty two thousand feet.
So something that I learned is tostay above that, especially first time
you get launched at. But debriefingis definitely, definitely, definitely important.
I remember another story of we can'ttell the whole thing, but it was

(49:29):
really funny. There was a seedflight where they were doing something like what
you were doing. It all seriousand everything, but their incident happened on
the way back. They are comingback to land and the lead tells us
number two to wave off on thelanding, and the number two panics and
crashes as he's right about the touchdown. And the funniest thing about the TAC

(49:50):
view is that everybody had a totallydifferent idea of what happened. This is
a story how number two told it. And when number one came back,
he's like, yeah, I toldmy number two get the way. You
got way and I landed. Everythingwas good. And then we find out
that after we're watching the you know, the TAC view, we realized no
one was identifying the other aircraft correctly. Nobody added the proper essay as to
who was where and what was goingon, and so it just led to

(50:13):
this whole cascading issues. But Imean, it's it's hard. Essay is
hard. It is very hard.And with that that concludes our segment right
here. Thank you again, Primevery much for joining us. Yep,
thanks drag that one slowdown, onecool podcast right here on the tactical frequency.

(50:50):
That was our interview with Prime.I'm really happy he was able to
show up. And by the way, if you in the audience have a
guest that you would like me tobring on the show, please join the
discord. Let me know who youhave in mind, and if it's yourself,

(51:12):
that's fine, you know, justlet me know in the discord.
We have a whole way of lettingme know what guests should be on here
and what we should do. We'relooking for all sorts of suggestions and ideas.
This is our first attempt at aninterview. Let us know how we
did, let us know what you'dlike to see, what you'd like to
hear all of these things. We'restill looking for feedback this segment with Prime,

(51:32):
obviously we touched on some of thefundamentals. I would like to stress
again that debriefing, in my opinion, is one of the most important things
that you can do in terms oflearning BMS from outside BMS. Obviously,
all of your work is going intoflying but seeing how well you flew,

(51:54):
seeing how well you understood what wasgoing on, whether or not you hit
the target, all of that afterthe fact, it's really important to do
that debrief and I hope that isconveyed through what we mentioned before. TAC
few, I'll remind everyone again,is free, so if you'd like to

(52:15):
get that by all means, youcan just search that and download that.
And I did mention there is apaid version. It's actually it does have
some features that are nice. Sowhat really made it less useful was discord
screen sharing. Once you could dodebriefs with screen sharing, people could see

(52:37):
everything. One thing it really kindof killed one of the main features of
the paid version of TAC few,which was that you can connect and view
the flights as someone else's giving theirdebrief. But there's still use cases where
that's useful, and there's some otherfeatures you might find useful. The most
important thing if you're new, though, is to just get that sudden shock

(52:57):
of realizing what you were seeing versuswhat you were You know, what you
were thinking. We'll be right backto join the tactical frequency discord use invitation

(53:20):
code uppercase ROMEO lowercase Charlie Niner,Sierra Niner, Bravo Yankee, Papa Whiskey,
QLO. Falcon BMS comes with alot of manuals. If you're new
to BMS, where should you start? The first manual you'll want to use
is probably the training manual. Thisis meant to be used when you fly

(53:44):
through the Tactical Engagement training missions.These training missions come with Falcon BMS and
are there for you to learn varioussubjects, from starting the jet to operating
the radios to employing weapons. Butthe training manual is how you know what
to do every step of the waywhile you fly these missions. You should
have the Training Manual andy on anothermonitor or on another electronic device. The

(54:07):
other manuals you want to read arethe DASH one and the DASH three four.
They're called this because they have DASHone and DASH three four in their
very long names. If you're lookingfor a reference on how to fly the
F sixteen or use any of itssystems, you'll want the DASH one.
If you're looking for information specifically onweapons employment, you'll want the DASH three

(54:29):
four, Falcon one, drag Netone, copy Fuel Yellow Sending Relief.
Please stay on the tactical frequency.Then we are back with our final segment.

(54:52):
Actually of the show, it onemight kind of quickly. Actually for
me, hopefully, it was entertainingand I had the right balance of everything.
So one of the things I justwanted to mention again, I know
I'm beating this drum, but pleasejoin the discord, join the community,
give us feedback. It really doeshelp, and it gives us an idea

(55:14):
of where we should go. Iagain would like to say I am really
impressed with the quality of feedback thatI received from certain people. It was
very nice. It's actually very nicetoo, because you put in a lot
of work into something like this andnot everything goes exactly the way you want
it to. But it's nice tosee that the community sees what you're trying

(55:37):
to do, how it's going.They complement on different aspects, they give
ideas. There's some passionate opinions beinggiven about where we should take this,
and I think that's fantastic. That'sexactly what we want in this community.
I said before that I want thisshow to be a forum and a venue

(55:59):
for people to speak their mind onall things related to Falcon BMS. I
wanted this show to be a positiveforce in the community, and so far
I've been getting a lot of exactlywhat I've been asking for. Really,
Now, where we want to takethis, obviously, is I'd like to

(56:19):
be able to do this show live, or at least record it with people
around that are there when the showis being recorded. And this opens up
the idea to what I mentioned beforein the first podcast. I'd like to
be able to have you, thelistener, actually interact with this show,

(56:39):
interact with the live production, sowe could have a topic being discussed,
for example, even just this interviewwith Prime. Imagine if in the second
segment, instead of it just beinga discussion, we could have actually taken
the equivalent of calls. We couldactually have people on the discord join in

(57:00):
and for ten seconds, you getten seconds what would you like to ask?
And you could have asked Prime aquestion, or you could have asked
me a question, or you couldhave stated your own opinion on what you
think is a fundamental in BMS formultiplayer. That's what I'm envisioning. I'm
seeing a future where we have enoughpeople in this community, in this subset

(57:22):
of the Falcon BMS community, whowould like to participate and we can actually
have segments where we talk live ifyou would like to see that, if
you'd like to or would like tohear that rather, if you'd like to
be part of that, please jointhe discord and please look at the information
we have there on how we're goingto do this, how you'd join a
call, how we would do allthat sort of thing, and let me

(57:45):
know if you'd like to hear liveepisodes or if you'd like to be part
of these live recordings. If thisis something that's not as important, then
tell me what is. What isit you'd like to hear about Falcon BMS,
what lessons would you like to hear? You know, we can make
some changes to the format, wecan get possibly different guests, different ideas,
But what's important to me isn't somuch some of those details as much

(58:08):
as it is that what we're providinghere is something that the community wants to
hear. There's no point in memaking this podcast if it's not entertaining to
you, the listener, So please, by all means, keep sending in
that feedback, keep letting me knowwhere I can improve, keep participating,

(58:30):
and just be part of the BMScommunity in a very positive way. My
name is Bible Clayer. I've beenyour host for this hour. I'd like
to once again thank Pisa Bay andttsfree dot com. That's where I got
all of the music and the soundsfrom the voiceovers, and again just thank

(58:52):
you. This has been quite ajourney and I hope it'll turn out to
be something even better. Falcon Onedragnet One, you are now leaving the tactical frequency