S1E3: Overcoming Challenges

1) Podcast stats and health; 2) Radio anxiety; 3) Breaking down challenges of BVR into challenges of Situational Awareness and Bullseye; 4) The challenge of learning Bullseye; 5) Microprose news and Self-Motivation to Learn; 6) Example caller

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
You've tuned into the Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon BMS.
Welcome once again to the Tactical Frequency. My call sign is Bible Cleaner,
and I'm going to be hosting thisshow again for the next hour.

(00:30):
I'm kind of excited about where we'reat here. This is episode three,
and obviously we're still in our firstseason. We're doing everything pretty much the
same as the first two episodes.I did want to share a little bit
about where we're at with the podcast, though. The first thing is I'm

(00:50):
still continuously getting very nice feedback,very positive feedback, and i'd like to
thank everybody for that. I thinkthat's fantastic. If you guys do have
negative feedback, but it's constructive,by all means, please share it.
I'm not against constructive feedback, evenif it's negative. If there's something you

(01:11):
don't like, even if it's youropinion, feel free to share it.
I just wanted to get that outof the way for now so we can
move on to other things. Idon't want to just have people tell them,
oh, it's great, it's great, and they don't want to tell
me what they don't like. That'smy only concern, So if we're clear
on that, I'm happy. Theother thing is we are now on Google

(01:36):
podcasts, so primarily we're on spreaker. Spreaker dot com is where we're hosted.
After that we are pushed out toSpotify, to iHeartRadio, and now
to Google Podcasts. So that's agood thing. Now we're getting out to
other places and we might expand further. We have to take a look at

(01:59):
how to get on some other someother listings. The main thing I do
have to just make sure everybody's awareof in terms of changes that I did
on the previous episodes. I finallyput ads through Spreaker on episodes one and
two. If these ads are annoying, if they stop the playback in any

(02:23):
way, if there's anything disruptive aboutthem, let me know. That's also
part of feedback. If something isdisruptive to this show or the community or
the experience of the Tactical Frequency podcast, I gotta know. So I won't
be offended if people give me opinionson this, but it's just something I
want to put out there. Sothere will be ads, and I'll be

(02:45):
rolling them out to future episodes aswell, so you can expect to hear
those at least if you don't havean ad blocker. But that's kind of
where we're at with that. Anotherthing I should bring up is that the
stats for this podcast are very,very healthy, in my opinion, So

(03:07):
we have over eighty people that havejoined the discord, and I have to
say thank you to every single oneof you that joined, and thank you
to those who gave feedback who participated. I mean, obviously I expect some
of this because the BMS community.I'm familiar with many people in the BMS
community, and I know that peoplecan be very helpful in this community.

(03:30):
So in that sense, I expectthat kind of positive feedback and support.
But on the other hand, Ihave to say I'm a little bit surprised
because that's a lot of people toget in such a short amount of time,
in my opinion, So thank youguys once again for joining. The

(03:50):
download stats are we're well over sevenhundred and fifty. Now I think we're
gonna be pushing eight hundred, Sowhen you're hearing this episode, we very
well might have been over eight hundreddownloads of episodes one and two. So
I'm actually kind of excited about thatin terms of where we're going with the

(04:12):
future of the show, I wantto be able to transition to doing these
episodes live. Right now, theyare prerecorded, and some of these sessions
will be on the discord, sothat if you're on our discord, you
might be able to catch some ofthese prerecorded sessions. We might be doing
an interview, we might be doingthe actual show, we might be doing
different things that are prerecorded, andyou'll be able to hear it as it's

(04:34):
happening on discord. The goal isto be able to combine that with a
live performance, so you'd be ableto be in discord, listen to the
show, hear it going on,and it would be going to spreaker and
from there being pushed out to everywhereelse. But we're not quite there yet,

(04:55):
but hopefully we'll get there. Stickwith us over the break, we'll
be back to join the tactical frequencydiscord use invitation code, uppercase, ROMEO,
lowercase, Charlie Niner, Sierra Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papa Whiskey,

(05:20):
QO. When you want to joina flight, doesn't matter which member
of the flight you join. Itdoes, in some sense each seat in
the flight has a particular role.We can break this down. The first
member of the flight the number one. He's the lead. He's in charge
of the flight and he must ensurethat the tasking for the flight is carried

(05:43):
out. Number two is his wingman. He's an extension of number one.
He will probably be flying some formationmost of the time, at least until
the action hits. Number three isthe element lead and number four is his
wingman. If number one gets shotdown, the number three takes over the

(06:04):
flight. In a four ship,one and two form an element and three
and four form an element. Youcan think of a four ship as two
elements, mimicking a sort of twoship relationship. However, you can break
down each element into two separate aircraftdrag Net one single group, Rock two

(06:29):
seven twenty thousand track south Bogie.You're listening to the tactical frequency. Welcome
back once again to the tactical frequencyagain. I'm your host, Bible Clinger.
The subject for today's broadcast, soI wanted to touch on, is

(06:50):
overcoming challenges. Now, obviously we'retalking in context of Falcon BMS. I'm
sure that a lot of advice thepeople give for overcoming challenges applies to many
other things other than just BMS.General advice could apply to BMS, and
BMS advice could probably apply to otherapplications. Just because challenges sometimes bear similarities

(07:19):
to each other, they're not necessarilycompletely unique in every respect. Now,
obviously BMS is not super serious inthe sense that it's not a serious life
issue or anything like that. We'retalking about overcoming challenges that are specific to

(07:41):
Falcon BMS. So I reached outto people on the Tactical Frequency Discord and
I asked them for feedback on challengeswithin Falcon BMS, and I got some
replies. Some were not surprising,but I was a little bit surprised at
some of them. So let's talkabout some of these. And I added

(08:03):
my own to this as well,subjects that I've heard before I put this
out. The number one thing thatI think people who have been discussing even
before I put out this thing thisrequest was radio anxiety. So let me
paint the picture of that. You'reflying one of your early multiplayer flights.

(08:26):
You're number two, You're in acap flight. Your mission is to take
out enemy aircraft. Your lead isdirecting you where to fly. You hear
a call from awax. You knowwhere the enemies are, or at least
you kind of have an idea.Let's say you're new and you don't even
really fully understand bulls I yet,but you know their bad guys out there.

(08:46):
Your lead is directing them, directingyou towards those bad guys. All
right. Now, your lead givesyou the target, you know which one
you need to shoot at. Youlock them up, you're ready to go,
and he's telling you to your shooter. They're like, okay, I'm
going to do this. You getready to go, you push the transmit

(09:07):
button and you can't remember what tosay, or maybe you have an idea
what to say, but you havelike sort of the equivalent of stage fright.
You know you need to say Foxthree, and you know you need
to describe something along the lines ofthe location and to give bull's eye,

(09:28):
but it becomes much more difficult inthe moment to say it. And I'm
sure there are all different variants ofthis. In fact, one of the
pieces of feedback I got somebody wrotequote radio fright, not per se,
but related to understanding spoken English.I solved it by listening to an Italian

(09:50):
and Scottish guy trying to get thingsthrough my ears repetitively kind hearts work their
way in end quote. So inthis case, it wasn't so much stage
fright, let's say, but alanguage barrier issue or something along those lines,
maybe not being as comfortable in thelanguage. And that's fair because when

(10:13):
you think about it, brevity isnot exactly natural English. The things you
say in brevity. If you justsaid anything like that on the street,
even if they made sense in acontext of what you're trying to say,
people would look at you like you'reyou've got three heads on or something.
It doesn't flow naturally. So it'sbasically a new way of speaking that you're
learning, and you have to putit all together in the moment. And

(10:37):
when you're flying, you're already stressedto begin with, because you're being shot
at, you're shooting at somebody else, and then you have to think,
what do I want to say?Then you have to translate it that into
what you're supposed to say. Sohow do we fix that? Well,
the first thing that we can dois we can be prepared. The best
way is to know what the properforms of brevity are. And yes,

(11:01):
This is going to take a littlebit of time, but you can actually
learn these things ahead of time.So, for example, fox calls.
If you freeze every time you goto fire a missile and you don't know
what to say, this is somethingyou can practice. You can literally practice

(11:22):
making a mock missile shot, evenif you're just flying around in single player.
Let's say you lock up a targetin single player. You don't even
have to shoot it. You canjust pretend you've fired at it and just
look down and read the bulls eye. And so what would you say if
you did shoot that fox? Threebulls eye three six two? Not wait,
that's not right. Can't be threesix two because it's only three hundred

(11:45):
and sixty degrees. So you looka little close. Oh I misread that
number. You know, things likethat, you can practice a little.
You don't have to worry about itwhen you're doing it yourself. And then
the more confident you are and yougain confidence because you know the material and
you've practiced it, okay, thenthe more confident you are. This helps.

(12:07):
Just like the feedback that we gotthat pilot achieved success by practicing,
by redoing things over and over andby listening to people, and that's how
you have to do things. Soin aesstance, it comes down to being
prepared and then really knowing the materialand then gaining confidence. Now Prime Aviation

(12:33):
Plus, as he's known on YouTube, he likes to remind everybody when he
trains people that the transmission button foryour radio it's supposed to be a push
to talk button, not pushed tothink. He likes to say that quite
often it's pushed to talk, notpushed to think. And what he means
by that is that often when we'renew, we tend to make a mistake
and we hit the transmit button firstbefore we know what we're going to say,

(12:58):
and that effectively jammed the radio becausenow nobody can transmit on that frequency,
including to us to tell us thatsomething's wrong. So we're locking out
everybody now on that frequency when wehold the button down. So if you
ever heard anyone do a Fox threecall and get stuck on the bull's eye,
that's because they pushed the button first, most likely, and then realize

(13:20):
they don't know what the bulls eyeis. And then if they're really stuck
and take forever, they're probably lookingat their fcr their radar, trying to
read the bulls eye from there,and then realizing the font the text of
the bulls eye is too small,and then they're trying to zoom in to
read it. And I'm sure thereare people listening to this broadcast here this

(13:41):
moment and saying, yeah, I'vedone that. That is me. I
know I've done it, and Iknow I've heard people. I know I've
heard people do this where they queuethe button, they go fox three,
and they just stop and then theyor they'll pause for a little bit and
they'll say bulls eye and then theypause for an even longer amount of time.
That's a telltale sign. So toPrime's point, you have to think

(14:03):
about that first fire the missile.Go ahead, if you know, fire
it when you need you, don'tdelay firing. But before you're going to
transmit it, just look at theinformation. Pull the information first. You
already know what you need. Youneed the bulls eye, you need the
altitude, right if you already knowthe fox called Fox three, bulls eye
two six five thirty eight twenty sixthousand, flanker. Okay, well that's

(14:28):
like but four things, the bull'seye, the altitude, the type of
the aircraft, right, like whatelse could you possibly throw in there?
Obviously we'd throw in an addition likethe fox number counts too, So like
four things, it's it's not reallythat difficult to think about it if you

(14:48):
take it slowly, but when you'repanicked, it's very difficult. So that's
one way of getting by it.There are other things that we can also
talk about related to all of this, and that's the other thing, by
the way, I should mention beforewe get to our next break. Some
of the challenges of the BMS arenot individual challenges, but when you add
them all together, that's why newplayers and multiplayer get overwhelmed so quickly.

(15:13):
It's not just radio anxiety, it'snot just bull's eye. It's not just
situational awareness. It's not just thecontrols that they have to worry about.
It's not just maybe flying at night. It's not just BVR, it's not
air to ground. It's everything.It's everything all at once. And when
you're surrounded with a bunch of challenges, you can get distracted when you're trying

(15:37):
to fix one by another one croppingup. So that's why when you're in
the jet one of the biggest fightsis for situational awareness. One of the
biggest fights is that you don't loseyour understanding of where you are in the
world, where your jet is,where the mission is, where your steer

(15:58):
points are, where you are.If you understand where you are where you
should be, that's a huge portionof the battle already, and that's why
you have to fight for that.You can't get distracted and new players,
just by definition, new pilots arenot experienced and they're not going to be
able to manage all of these things. And even with experience, it's very

(16:21):
difficult. We're going to cover somemore topics on the next side of the
break. Please stay with us.We're just getting started. We'll be back

(16:48):
soon after this message. Alpha,Bravo, Charlie. You've probably heard phrases
like this in military movies. Thisis part of the NATO Fintic alphabet.
It's a way of saying words thatrepresent letters. For example, Alpha represents
the letter A, Bravo represents theletter B. You can probably already guess

(17:10):
that Charlie represents the letter C.These words are used in place of letters
because they are meant to be usedover military radios. Radio transmissions are not
always clear, particularly when you're inthe middle of a war. It also
doesn't help that English has many lettersthat all sound similar B, C,
D, E, G, P, t V, and even Z if

(17:33):
you're from America. There are evensome pronunciations that matter. Quebec is the
code for Q, but it's supposedto be pronounced K. Back. Knowing
all of this, you can spellany English word with this system. Tango
foxtrot would be the initials of thispodcast. The Tactical Frequency Falcon one Dragnet

(17:57):
one. We're keeping you informed onthe tactical frequency. Welcome back once again
to the Tactical Frequency. We're discussingovercoming challenges in Falcon BMS, and we
talked about radio anxiety. I'd liketo talk about one it's a little bit

(18:21):
more complex, and then I'd liketo break it down. Let's talk about
the complexity of beyond visual range combat. We won't be able to cover everything,
not by a long shot, butlet's just talk about some of the
general problems. One of the thingsthat I've noticed is that new pilots don't

(18:42):
really understand the concept of the BBRtimeline, or if they do, understand
the concept. The struggle is inapplying the theory to the actual practice.
So what am I talking about?The BBR timeline or beyond visual range timeline.
You can think of it as asort of series of, let's say,

(19:04):
distances at which certain things should behappening along the fight. Now,
I'm making this very simple. Thisis not the best explanation of it if
you're trying to learn BVR, butI'm just trying to make it simple.
Here. There's at the very leastone value that you should know, and
that's called MAR. That's the minimumaboard range. Now, for simplicity's sake,

(19:26):
let's just pretend this is a strictnumber. It's not really, but
let's just pretend it is. Let'ssay it's twenty miles. So what that
means is that when you're coming upagainst an enemy jet, you have to
turn away before you get twenty milesfrom the enemy jet. That's just if
you want to avoid his missiles.So if he fires at you at thirty

(19:48):
miles, doesn't matter. As longas you turn away by twenty you're okay.
That's the basic idea of MAR.Obviously, this is very simple.
If you guys know BVR very well. You understand how simple this is.
But we're gonna keep it easy.Let's say, for example, you're a
new pilot and you find yourself constantlymerging. You're getting into dog fights every
time you fly multiplayer. You know, you're flying at this guy. He's

(20:11):
flying at you, and you fireat him, he fires at you,
you get the miss, the warning, you turn away, then you turn
back. Yeah, next thing youknow, it's a dog fight. He's
like right behind you or you're behindhim, and more people are joining into
help and you're on the radio screamingyou need the assistance. If that happens
every flight, let me tell youyou're either flying in nineteen eighties theater or

(20:32):
you probably are not flying according tothe BVR timeline. So what can you
do about that? Well, thechallenge is that in the heat of the
moment, you're probably not as Inotice a lot of new pilots are probably
not paying attention to the distance,probably not paying attention to your speed,
your altitude, the enemy speed,the enemy's altitude. You're probably just not

(20:56):
and so you need to, inmy to overcome this challenge, break this
down to certain problems just distinct problems. One of these could be that,
as I was saying, you're justnot paying attention in the moment. You
know where the guy is. Youdon't have a problem with that, you
know he's out there. But youget target fixated. You get like blinders

(21:18):
on. You can't see anything otherthan just the targets in front of me.
I gotta go get them. Ifthat's you, then you have to
start training against that. You haveto start training yourself to behave differently.
So here's one way you can doit. Get on discord with a friend
or somewhere that they can see yourscreen. So do some screen sharing,

(21:41):
have a friend to watch you,and when you get within whatever it is,
come up with a mar number liketwenty miles or whatever. If you
get closer than that, have yourfriend declare you're dead and that's over for
that fight. So do this inthe dog fight module. Get in the
dog Fight model module rather and goup against something like a MiG twenty nine.

(22:04):
Fly up against. If you getwithin twenty miles, that's it.
You lost that fight. And youdon't even need a friend for that.
You could just do it yourself.Record the ACME, open up the ACME
file with tac few and just measurethe distances. You can set it so
you can see the distances between youand the enemy, and every time you
get within clothes don't count. Thatis a win. Count as a loss.
Doesn't matter if you won. No, Obviously, that's not the way

(22:26):
I want you to run it practically. You know, if you're flying a
campaign and you kill the guy inthe dog fight, good for you,
that's a victory. But my pointis for training purposes, count that as
a loss. And that's one wayof getting out of this problem where you're
constantly merging. But now let's backup. Let's say that's not your problem.
Your problem is that you're merging becausethese guys are coming out of nowhere.

(22:51):
They're coming left and right, center, from above you, from below
you. Every time you know youjust look around, there's another MiG somewhere,
or you're getting shot and you haveno idea where it came from.
That's probably a situational awareness problem.And that's, honestly, situational awareness,
in my opinion, is the biggestproblem for a pilot in Falcon BMS.

(23:11):
No matter your level of experience,you will never stop fighting to maintain your
situational awareness every single flight. Thisis just the reality of being a Falcon
BMS pilot. There are all sortsof things fighting to take your concentration away.

(23:33):
You have to know what's around you. You have to know where you're
flying, where you're going, wherethe enemies are. Now, there are
certain things that, yes, youdon't need to pay attention to everything.
If you're, for example, ifyou're the seed flight, it's more important
that you're paying attention to the activeenemy sam's than you are the enemy air.

(23:56):
So if you get merged because theCAP flight is snoozing and a snoozing
GCI doesn't tell you anything, okay, maybe that's a bigger issue elsewhere.
But in general, if you're theCAP flight, let's say, you should
know where the enemy air is.You should know where they're coming from.
You should be in constant communication witheither AAX or GCI, depending on whatever

(24:18):
the protocols are. If you're talkingabout GCI, maybe you don't have to
speak to them all time. Youcan rely on them to give you picture
upgrade. It depends right what youragreements are. But my point is that
your situational awareness needs to be maintainedand The only way to really do that
is to practice doing that. Youhave to ask yourself where the enemy groups.

(24:38):
If you ask AAX, hey,request picture an AAX gives you a
group and you're like, I haveno idea what he just told me.
I wasn't really paying attention. Igot distracted. Okay, that's a problem.
You've got to be able to prioritize. So when AAX talks to you,
when GCI talks to you, youhave to pay attention. And some

(25:00):
of this goes back to being proficientflying the jet. If you are distracted
by basics of just flying the jet, you're not going to be able to
do the combat as well. Soagain, we're talking about breaking down the
problems here, right, But let'ssay you're bad at BVR. Maybe it's
because you're bad at situational awareness.You don't really have good situational awareness.

(25:26):
But let's say that's not the problem. Let's break this down further. Let's
say your problem really is that youhave trouble with bulls eye. You're listening
to a WAX, You're paying attention, you're not distracted, you just can't
make sense of what a wax ittelling you. At only three groups asthma
split you know, South group bullseye one eight zero, twenty five twenty

(25:47):
three thousand track East two ships.You know, and you're thinking, okay,
that's that's a group one eight zerowhere Well, that's something you got
to learn bulls eye. And thatbrings me to another challenge. It's hard
to do the mental math. AndI will say, by the way,
if you're a wingman again, I'mfocused on the fundamentals of flying, particularly

(26:10):
just flying off the wing of yourlead and weapons employment, all the basics.
You don't have to listen to allof these calls and understand them right
away. You don't have to bea bulls eye expert. But the moment
you realize you've got control of thejet, you're flying where you need to
be. It doesn't take all ofyour brain power to maintain your speed and
altitude and everything. If you're atthat point, start listening and on the

(26:33):
radio transmissions, start listening to thebulls eye calls, and if you're able
to do it, start figuring outwhere those calls are without losing control of
the jet. Now, one importantthing, by the way, is that
you do not have to learn bullseye and BMS. BMS gives you the
option to use bra at all times, which is kind of like bullseye,

(26:57):
but it's in reference to you aircraft. Don't do this. I'm just telling
you right now, this is goingto be terrible for multiplayer. You won't
really learn how to use bulls eye, and when you get into multiplayer you're
gonna be completely lost and you're gonnaneed everything given to you in braun all

(27:18):
over again. It's just not agood way to learn because then you have
to unlearn everything that you learned.Now. As to why you want to
learn everything in bulls Eye, it'sbecause when you hear a bulls eye call
given to you or given to anotheraircraft, it's going to make sense either
way. It's an objective reality thataircraft is there. It doesn't depend on

(27:42):
your location, or your wingman's locationor another flight's location. So we're going
to talk a little bit more aboutlearning Bull's Eye in the next segment.
But I hope you can see theidea of breaking down our problems and figure
out why we of issues is goingto help us solve them. We'll be

(28:03):
right back. Don't go anywhere.We'll continue after this break. There have
been a number of scandals in othergames and SIMS outside of Falcon BMS,

(28:27):
in which individuals were accused of passingclassified materials. While many of us love
the idea of realism in our SIMS, this breach into classified materials is an
obvious line that should not be crossed. It shouldn't need to be said,
but let's say it anyway. Inthis community, we should not be passing

(28:47):
around anything that is classified or restrictedto the public. This podcast is about
a civilian grade study sim called FalconBMS developed by Benchmark SIMS. On this
podcasts we're discussing the F sixteen incontext of Falcon BMS, or discussing military
aircraft in context of Falcon BMS.We're discussing weapons in context of Falcon BMS.

(29:14):
Nothing in this podcast should be construedas being real advice for real pilots.
Let's be smart and avoid the mistakesof others. Package two five or
zero roll call right here on thetactical frequency. Welcome back, folks.

(29:41):
You are listening to the tactical frequencyand again I'm your host, Bible Clicker.
We are covering the theme of challengesin BMS and how to overcome them.
We've looked at examples of radio anxiety, situational awareness, bulls eye,

(30:02):
BVR, these kind of things.I finished last segment talking about bulls eye,
and if you're lost about what I'mtalking about, let's back up a
little bit. Bulls Eye is anarbitrary location agreed upon by all of the
pilots in a package and the aWAX. So everybody that's on the tactical

(30:23):
frequency for that package is talking abouta specific location. Locations other locations are
given based on that first location,so they're relative to where bulls Eye is.
Bulls Eye is an actual arbitrary location. So let's say you're flying in
Korea. The bulls Eye could beright in between South Korea and North Korea.

(30:48):
Now, let's say you get acall from a WAX and says it
says something like there's an enemy groupzero nine or zero fifty. Okay,
that means if you were standing justvisualize this for a second here, if
you were standing on Bull's Eye andyou had a compass in your hand,
you would turn to heading zero nineor zero, which is due east,

(31:12):
and you would look for the secondnumber. If it's zero hindred zero fifty
you would look fifty miles out inthat direction. If it's zero nine ers
zero one hundred, you would lookone hundred miles out. And then the
next number they usually give us thealtitude twenty thousand, thirty five thousand,
fifteen thousand. That's obviously vertical inthat case, if you're standing there,

(31:34):
how far up and out you needto look? Obviously you can't see these
things with the eye if it's likefifty miles away, one hundred miles away,
and you're talking about a small objectin comparison, But with radar this
makes more sense. Now these largedistances you have to actually think in three
D space. Okay, So nowwhen you start getting these complicated scenarios where

(31:59):
you like three groups and there's anEastern group and a Western group in a
southern group and they're all given bybulls eye, how do you make sense
of these Well, one of thethings that you need to do is you
need to be able to understand firstvery quickly, where bulls eye is in

(32:20):
relation to your mission. So ifyou know you're going to go to the
flot let's say, right on theborder between North and South Korean, and
you're gonna go bomb something right nearthe border and the bulls eye is right
there. Well, then if you'rebombing something right next to bulls eye,
then a call where the second numberis very large means that that call is

(32:42):
far away from your target. Right, if your target is literally on bull's
eye and you get to call asan enemy group to six five one hundred,
that means he's one hundred miles awayfrom your target. So you don't
need to worry about him. Andwhen you prepare mission, you can actually
place the bulls eye to make itadvantageous for your group. And even if

(33:06):
you can't place it, you canstill get certain ideas. Again, for
example, let's say the bulls eyesright on the border between the two sides.
Well, you can understand that everythingnorth of the bulls eye is coming
from North Korea, So that's enemyterritory. It doesn't have to be an

(33:27):
enemy, but it is enemy territory. So if you know there's an enemy
group and it's north by fifty miles, well you can visualize that. Now
it's fifty miles north of the border. Well, how far away are you?
Well, you know you're sixty milessouth of the border. Okay,
Well, fifty plus sixty. Imean, now you realize he's a long
ways away. You don't have toworry about him. And these little tricks

(33:49):
with bulls eye, they allow youto understand these things a little bit better
while you are in the jet.While you're flying. Beyond this, you
can also use a very very simpletrick. And this is kind of like

(34:10):
the cheating method in the way ofyou know, where kids are trying to
do math and they count on theirfingers and then teachers would say, don't
do that. I don't know ifyou've been part of the school where they
used to do that, but Iknow they used to be a much bigger
thing many years ago in certain places. For whatever reason, they just thought
it was a bad habit. Childrenshould not do that. But there's a

(34:31):
way to do that in the jet. And what it is is you switched
to your HSD, which is thescreen that shows a map, very crudely
drawn map, with your steer pointlines and all of that other stuff,
the SAMs that you have marked.You go to that screen and move the
cursor on that and that screen hastwo different bulls eye readouts. One is

(34:55):
your bulls eye and the other oneis your curse bulls eye where you're pointing,
and now you have an idea ofhow to find the target. If
you're flying let's see, you're flyingat this you're not flying north, and
you're not quite flying east or south. You're flying something in between. You're
flying lake west, northwest or something, and you get this call and you

(35:19):
can't really you know, you're gettinga little bit confused with exactly where you
are and where the call is.What. You can move your cursor right
over to the bull's eye and moveit around the bulls eye and see which
direction is what. So if thecall out is two three seven forty five,
move the cursor around bull's eye untilyou get to two three seven,
and then move it out in thatdirection from bull's eye until you see forty
five miles away. And now youknow where that enemy jet is located at.

(35:45):
And by the way, you canalso move your cursor on the FCR
and do this as well. Soeven if you use the HSD to find
it, you can then switch tothe FCR and move your cursor to that
same location. And that's one wayof doing this. Now you should use

(36:06):
the earlier techniques that I was talkingabout because you can't always just drag your
cursor on all over the place lookingevery time you hear a group. It's
going to be very slow to do. Now, admittedly I do this because
every now and then you get distractedor you're not entirely sure you want to
make you want to double check allsorts of reasons why you could still do

(36:27):
this. And that's fine, especiallyif you're if you really don't know what
a wax is telling you, dothis method and just move your cursor on
the HSD, find the bulls eyeand get good at doing that, and
from there get better at visualizing wherethe bulls eye is and visualizing where you
are and where your mission is andwhere the target is and what you're trying
to do. So we started,by the way, with saying, okay,

(36:53):
why am I bad at BVR?I find BVR to be a challenge,
and then we worked our way,maybe your situational awareness is a problem.
Okay, well why is that achallenge? Well? Maybe because you
didn't really understand bulls eye. Maybethat's a challenge. So sometimes solving a
challenge involves breaking it down further andfiguring out what the root causes. I'll

(37:16):
give you another example. Let's say, for example, you're feeling very confident
flying in single player in most ofyour missions, and then you get into
multiplayer. Give that little rough spotwhere you're trying to learn multiplayer. But
now you're feeling confident multiplayer and you'refeeling really good and you're doing quite well.

(37:37):
You can get complimented on your fly, telling you were you know,
your lady is telling you were withme. You exactly do what you need
to do, and then next weekyou're ready to go. You get into
the jet. The next event comes, you fly with a group, and
all of a sudden you realize it'sa night flight and you don't usually fly
at night. And suddenly, forthat whole flight you're lost. You can't

(38:00):
really see your lead, and youfeel lost the whole time. You're slower,
You're like slower to respond. You'resluggishould understanding what's going on. Even
the bullseye call outs aren't making asmuch sense to you. What's really going
on there? Well, you're probablygetting disoriented because you rely more heavily on
looking outside the cockpit and I'm lookingat the ground and seeing the clouds,

(38:22):
and you're not really using your HUDor the other instruments to really tell you
where you are and what you're doing. Maybe you don't really have a good
grasp of the data link yet,or maybe you're not even using TAGN or
maybe all sorts of things. Buteither way, take away your visual cues

(38:43):
outside the cockpit and suddenly you struggleand it's not night that's really the issue.
Maybe it's how you approach the instrumentsand the other things. It's not
to say night flag is easy.This isn't to say you should you know
once you can fly properly in theday O night it's easy. Just follow
the instruments. No, it's goingto be more difficult. But the issue

(39:05):
here is to figure out why isit more difficult? Can you do something
about it? And if you can, that's great, start working on it.
If you can't, that's when youhave to work on this to figure
out what's really the issue, Howdo we solve it? What's going on
here. That's just one further waythat you can take this. We're going

(39:29):
to switch gears in the next segment. We're going to talk about news with
regard to Falcon BMS, So we'llbe right back. We'll be right back

(39:50):
after this break. Stay with us. When you fire an air to air
missile in Falcon BMS, you're supposedto make a FOX call to let people
know what you just did. Let'stake an example, Fox three Rock two
six five forty five twenty five thousandflanker. The three in FOX three means
that the caller has fired in AIMone twenty AM RAM or a missile that

(40:14):
is in the same category. Theseare missiles that have their own radar and
contract the target on their own.Rock in this example is the code name
for the current bulls eye. Inmany multiplayer communities, if there is just
one bull's eye, you might hearpeople say bulls eye without a code name.
Two six five forty five That isthe location of the target with respect

(40:36):
to bull's eye. Twenty five thousandthat's the altitude of the target flanker.
That's the NATO code name for thetype of the target. In this case,
it could be a mid twenty nineor a two twenty seven. For
more information on FOX calls, havea look at the manuals that come with
Falcon BMS, Falcon one Dragnet onego Ahead with exceptions on the tactical frequency,

(41:12):
Welcome back. We are discussing overcomingchallenges in Falcon BMS. But like
I said before the break, Iwanted to switch gears here and just talk
about something in the news that Ireally should address, and I won't take
too long to discuss it. Butin the first episode I talked about some
rumors and so just to refresh everybody'srecollection here if you already knew about this,

(41:37):
or maybe you have no idea what'sgoing on and you're jumping into this
podcast in episode three. So alittle bit ago, some news came out
that Atari was buying a bunch oflicenses for old games. At the same
time, Goog announced that they wereno longer selling Falcon four point zero.

(42:04):
Now, the reason why that's importantis because Falcon four point zero is required
for BMS for legal reasons. Thisis because Falcon BMS is based off of
the leaked Falcon four point zero sourcecode, So officially it's marketed as a
mod for Falcon four point er,even though it's really a separate standalone doesn't
need four point zero. It couldrun itself just fine. Okay, So

(42:30):
these two things together, Atari buyingall these licenses and Geog announcing, Hey,
something happened to the license and we'renot going to sell this anymore.
Those two things put together led tosome speculation that Atari had reacquired the license,
and then from there people were speculating, what's the future of Falcon BMS.

(42:51):
Is BMS going to be able tocontinue or not? Because as we
were discussing actually on this podcast,we were looking at the possibility what if
Atari says, you know, we'dlike to make our own commercial Falcon product,
Well, maybe they'll would tell theBMS team to cease and desist.
And there's a whole history with that. If you want to look into the

(43:14):
large history, vast historical events thathappened in Falcon's life in the last couple
decades, there's a lot to actuallytake in there. But it turns out
that the company that actually has thelicense is Micropros. Now this isn't the

(43:36):
Micropros of the past. There wasa very interesting turn of events where there
was a fan of the old Microprosgames and he decided, you want to
know what was going on with thesetitles, these old MicroProse titles from back
in the day, and he nowowns the MicroPro's name, and he's been
going around getting a bunch of theseold titles, and that new Micropros has

(44:00):
taken over the Falcon four point zeroname. So Micropros released a statement and
I'm just going to read part ofit. They say here quote, we
also want to take a moment toacknowledge the incredible work that the Benchmark SIMS
team has done with their BMS modfor Falcon four point zero. We recognize

(44:22):
the passion and dedication that they havebrought to the Falcon community, and we
are committed to fully supporting their effortsin any way possible. With Micropros's support,
there is no end in sight forthe work of the BMS team.
The future of the Falcon franchise looksbright and we can't wait to share more
with you soon end quote. Ihave to say that's good news. Yes,

(44:46):
think could always turn to something negativein the future, but I mean,
at face value, this is tellingus BMS has a very bright future.
We're not here to interfere. Wethink it's great what you're doing.
This is Micropos now talking to theBenchmark Sim's team, the guys behind Falcon
BMS. So that's great because Iknow a lot of people were worried about

(45:09):
Atari, and we were kind ofwondering what's going to happen in the future,
and this is a nice answer.Benchmark SIMS released a statement where they
confirmed they confirmed this turn of eventsfrom their point of view, and the

(45:30):
statement is very positive. I'll reada portion here. Quote our team is
committed to delivering the best possible experienceto our fans of Falcon with Micropos's endorsement
and support. Assured, there isno end insight for the BMS mode or
the Falcon series. End quote.So's it's pretty good. The one thing
that was interesting is that they didsay they are excited to continue our work

(45:52):
with their full blessing and support.It sounds very nice. So I just
want to get that out of theway, make sure because I did speculate
a little bit about the Atari side, I thought it's good if I bring
up the turn of events with Micropose, which is obviously it's good news.
So that's fantastic. So let's moveon from here. Let's talk about something

(46:20):
a little bit more different here.Let's talk about the challenge of BMS from
a perspective of learning. One thingI have noticed that's a negative with some
people is that there is sometimes alack of a personal drive to learn.
Obviously this doesn't apply just to BMS, but this is something I've noticed within

(46:44):
BMS, particularly with new pilots,and the problem comes in that people are
not motivated to self learn. Nowpersonally, I think this needs to change.
And it's not because we don't wantto help. It's not because the
community's not helpful. But the problemis that BMS is way too complex for

(47:07):
me to explain it to you infive minutes. I covered some of this
in the first episode, but thepart that I want to get across to
you here is that the motivation ofthe learner has to be high because he
wants to learn, not because wewant to have him learn, not because
we're inviting him to fly, notbecause he thinks he can spend an afternoon

(47:30):
and just try a new experience.But he has to say I want this,
I want to learn this, Iwant to fly this, I want
to do these missions I'm seeing onYouTube. He's got to be able to
want it like that. And soI did want to say, you have
to think about what we discussed earlier. Radio anxiety, situational awareness bulls,

(47:52):
IBVR, all of these types ofthings. Put all of this together and
think about the common thread here.The common thread is that the person learning
has to put in a significant amountof effort. Now, the good news
is that you can overcome all ofthese challenges. Let's say, for example,

(48:13):
you're brand new and you were lookingat this and say, look,
I'm a visual learner. I justdon't do well hearing things. I don't
do well and you know, whenI'm hearing instructions, I need to see
videos. I need to I can'tjust read text. I need to see
diagrams. I need to see things. Okay, that's fine, that's something
that you could probably cater your materialstoward, Like the way that you're consuming.

(48:38):
You can get YouTube videos, linethem up and watch them, and
that probably will work just fine foryou. Now, you should probably still
use the manual, don't throw itaway entirely. But on the other hand,
you might be somebody who says,I don't do well with YouTube videos
and people talking, especially when it'syou know, they're only covering this,

(48:58):
or they're only covering I want tomanual, want be able to cross reference
everything. I'm gonna be able tostart this and read it like a dry
manual. Okay, you know youcould do that too. Learning style doesn't
matter. Do what you want todo. Now, where this is a
little bit different is where people comein there and say I need an instructor.
I need someone to talk to meone on one. Maybe that would

(49:21):
help you, But nevertheless, you'vegot to be able to get over the
fact that we probably cannot provide oneon one instructors for every new person that
joins this community. It's just notrealistic for us to do. We can't
really support people in this way.Now, you might be fortunate to find
a group where someone's got the time, he's got the energy, he's not

(49:44):
tied up with any NISI sure,I'll take you off, I'll show you
this, I'll show you all sortsof things. That's great. I mean,
if that happens to you. I'mnot saying you shouldn't enjoy that experience,
but just know that it's not realistic. And I am saying the good
news is that you can overcome thesechallenges. But the bad news is that
the method you may want to usemay not be available, and it may

(50:07):
not be the method that you needto employ. To best learn Falcon BMS.
I would like to make it clearI'm not really talking about disabilities,
So I understand if you have anactual disability, I understand that that might
actually inhibit you from learning in theway that I'm suggesting, or doing something

(50:30):
that I'm suggesting. That's fine inthe sense that, yes, you can
acknowledge you have a problem that isgoing to hold you back in a certain
area. But I still think thatin many cases, what we find is
that even in those cases, peoplethat are highly motivated are usually able to

(50:51):
come up with fantastic workarounds for thethings that are get in their way.
And I've seen people do that.I've seen fantastic feats performed by people who
by and large people would suspect wouldnot be able to do what they've done.

(51:14):
So overall, unless you're actually deadstopped on doing something, you can
work around these problems. And tobe honest, a lot of the people
that I do see in the BMScommunity don't really come across as if their
challenges are those types of challenges.They really come across with the way that
they carry themselves, in the waythey share their problems and their experiences.

(51:36):
A lot of the learning is stuntedbecause they don't want to put in the
time, and that's a shame.And that's really what I'm talking about,
those particular problems where somebody looks atthe manual and says, oh, that's
too long, I don't want toread it. Well, you can't overcome
a challenge if you don't want toactually face it, and that's what needs

(51:57):
to change. The motivation, thementality, the investment. You have to
be personally invested in BMS. Solet's take another example. I asked for,
as I said before, some exampleon things that you need to learn,
and one of the things that cameup, but a couple of times
was air to ground operations, thingslike why are these bombs not releasing when

(52:22):
I pushed the weapons release button,forgetting procedures with these weapons, techniques,
with lofting, and somebody actually evensaid he found it much easier to fire
air to air missiles than he diddropping bombs, especially in multiplayer situations.
He found it to be a hugechallenge. Okay, So for these kind

(52:45):
of things, some of this isjust because it's a complex subject. There's
a lot to air to the groundoperations there's a lot to these weapons.
Maybe that's the problem, is thatyou've got too much that you're trying to
handle it any given time, andyou have to break it down and or
quick practice, or maybe you needchecklists. Either way, I'm convinced of

(53:06):
the majority of people can learn FalconBMS. We'll be right back to join
the tactical frequency discord use, invitationcode, uppercase, Romeo, lowercase,
Charlie Niner, Sierra Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papa, Whiskey, Kilo.

(53:30):
What are some of the prerequisites tolearn Falcon BMS? Here are just
a sample. First, you needself motivation and time. BMS is a
study sim You need a personal commitmentto learn, one that doesn't rely on
others. Second, you need tofly regularly. You won't get better unless
you're learning new things and solidifying whatyou've already learned. Third, you need

(53:52):
some hardware. A throttle and stickare greatly recommended, particularly a pair with
a lot of had switches. Canyou fly with a keyboard and a mouse?
Yes, painfully, it's really notrecommended. Fourth, head tracking or
VR, get one or the other. The gold standard for head tracking is

(54:13):
track IR, but other cheap alternativeswill do just fine. Fifth, you
need to buy a copy of Falconfour point zero. It goes for about
five U S. Dollars on Steam. Falcon BMS itself is free, but
its license as a mon for Falconfour point zero for legal reasons. Falcon
one, drag Net one copy fuelyellow sending relief. Please stay on the

(54:37):
tactical frequency. You're listening to thetactical frequency. And we finally made it
to our last segment of the hour. I wanted to talk a little bit

(54:57):
about the experiment that we're trying here. I said before, we're trying to
get this into being a live alive episode, live show format, and
that's why I've done a lot ofthe things that I've done, and one
of the things I keep mentioning thatI have as a vision is to take
calls. Obviously, we're not usingthe phones we're we're using discord or other

(55:17):
technology, you know, different thingsat our disposal. And I've got this
system in place where I'll be ableto have people speak to me and it'll
be picked up for the broadcast.Now, because we're doing these prerecorded for
now, these sessions only take placefor the time being on discord and only

(55:38):
among the people that are available whenI'm doing my recordings. I tried to
do a prerecorded session of this episode, but I didn't like the quality of
it, and it's very important tome that we have a high quality segment.
There were a number of technical issues, and if I'm completely honest,

(56:00):
I did not perform very well anyway, even with the technical issues. But
what we did get out of itis an actual call that showed that my
vision is one viable as a modelthat people can call in. They I
think the format works and technically speaking, we're able to accomplish it. So

(56:23):
I want to play a short examplenow from our prerecorded session, the one
that didn't quite work. But I'dlike to play that and what you guys
think of this. We're going totry to go back now to our first
caller. I understand there was aproblem with I think his phone. He

(56:44):
tried to call in earlier. Webrought him on his phone died. They're
going to try this one more time, mister p X one. Welcome to
the tactical frequency. Hello, Yesyou're on Thanks Bible. I think it
can be summarized that BMS you canreally get good at it, just with

(57:06):
a lot of small tips. Forexample, one tip I learned is to
draw a steerpoint line facing north fruthe actual bulls makes it a hell of
a lot easier to calculate bearing fromit. That's just one tip I learned.
That's just an example. Someone toldme. BMS can really be cut
down to a very small, short, little advice that makes it a lot
easier to fly, and you canfly a lot more efficiently using it.

(57:30):
That right, there is an exampleof the type of calls that I'm looking
for. Someone calls in, givesa quick summary of their point, or
ask a question and to his point. By the way, that's an example
of what Prime Aviation Plus talks about. Is BMS tribal knowledge. You know,

(57:50):
it's the type of information that's knownwithin the tribe, within the BMS
community, things that everyone just passeson as oral history, and we all
know about these kind of things,but it's not as clear to the outsiders.
And you're not going to necessarily findthese things in the manuals or on
in tutorials or in YouTube videos.But it's something that if you ask them

(58:12):
the people, you'll find a lotof people know so that's my vision for
the future. I hope to domore sessions, with more of these calls,
more people participating. If you're noton the discord, please join.
We would love to have you.We're already at eighty plus people and we're
growing, and I'd love it ifyou were part of this journey too.

(58:35):
If you already joined the Discord,thank you very much for your participation.
My name is Bible Clinger. I'vebeen your host for this hour, and
I hope we can keep on doingwhat we're doing. We'll catch you next
time in another two weeks. ErFalcon one Dragnet one, you are now

(59:58):
leaving the tactical frequency