S1E5: Multiplayer Squadrons and Communities

1. Meet the Community initiative; 2) Falcon BMS tips and tricks and metainformation; 3) Interview with Ripper on squadrons, communities, and multiplayer; 4) More with Ripper on his wing, the 6th; 5) Leadership and your community's health; 6) Comedy and the State of the Podcast

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
You've tuned into The Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon VMS.
Welcome once again to the Tactical Frequency. We're on our fifth episode of
season one, and we'll talk moreabout the podcast, the state of it,
and things like that later on,but today's an episode is going to

(00:31):
be focused on community online squadrons,subcommunities within the larger Falcon BMS online community,
and that sort of thing. Thisis also going to be our first
episode that will feature an interview basedon the Meet the Community initiative. So
we've already had guests on this podcastbefore, but this is the first one

(00:55):
that's going to be centered on thisinitiative. So this is a reminder.
The Meet the Community initiative is aboutbringing different subcommunities of the greater Falcon BMS
online community together. So if youhave a squadron and you guys fly BMS,
or if you have a loose communitylet's say, and you fly BMS

(01:17):
and you'd like to advertise your groupwhat you do, Please reach out to
me, reach out to this podcast, join the discord, let us know
what you do. We'll be doingsome free advertising for some of these groups
with these interviews we might bring youon. Maybe we'll take a short little
add If you guys want to putsomething in, we'll talk about it.

(01:38):
Let me know what you guys do. But for now, let's change things
up, and let's because we're talkingabout online squadrons and multiplayer, let's talk
about getting ready for that sort ofthing. Let's talk about multiplayer intricacies,
tips and tricks, meta information notrelated to the flight itself. If you

(02:00):
recall earlier, I had Prime onas the first guest actually, and he's
known as aviation plus on YouTube,and he has a phrase he likes to
call some of this knowledge BMS tribalknowledge. The reason being is that much

(02:20):
like tribal knowledge, some of thesetips are not things that you're going to
find in maybe the manuals or onwrite ups or articles or anything like that.
You're not going to find a tutorialnecessarily that tells you some of these
things, but rather you're going toget it from inside the community. If
you're part of the community and youfly enough, and you fly online with

(02:43):
people through word of mouth, you'llhear some of these tips and some of
these tricks. Let's talk a littlebit about third party software, particularly software
written by yours truly, if youstalled Falcon BMS and you'd like to move
your copy of Falcon BMS, Ido have some software that will help you

(03:06):
with that. It's basically real simple. You just need to move BMS from
one directory to another. But thenthe complicated part is you need to edit
the registry and if you don't knowwhat you're doing, that's where people panic,
because for as long as Windows hashad a registry, if you do
something wrong, you can break it. It's not really that complicated, but
for peace of mind, I didcreate some software called four reg path stands

(03:30):
for F four Registry Path, andit is on GitHub and it will be
linked in the discord. Similarly,if you'd like to improve your dedicated server
performance, there's another piece of softwarethat I've written called F four DX wrapper.
It's also on the GitHub, andagain the GitHub page will be linked
on the discord. And yes,by the way, for that last one,

(03:53):
BMS does have a feature to dothis already. I have heard anecdotally
from a server adman that he wasstill getting better performance from the DLL that
I wrote that's part of the fourdx rapper package, So in essence,
he claims it's still making a differencefor his server. You'll find both pieces
of software there on the GitHub,and you might also find the helipack theater

(04:16):
there by the way, but pleasedon't expect to run that on any current
version of Falcon BMS. It wasmade for a specific version and maybe in
the future will update it. It'sa theater lets you fly helicopters in a
very let's say, questionable flight model, not realistic, but it's incredibly fun.

(04:39):
So I just want to get someof that out of the way.
That's some of those tips that you'reprobably not going to read or here anywhere,
is that I do have some softwareout there, third party stuff,
very very specific to let's say,particular needs in BMS. So we'll continue
this on the next side of thebreak. Tips for multi player to join

(05:09):
the tactical frequency discord use, invitationcode, uppercase, Romeo, lowercase,
Charlie Niner, Sierra Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papa, Whiskey, Kilo.
Have you heard a wax or GCImentioned bulls eye and bra These are
different ways of giving locations in away that pilots can understand. Bulls Eye

(05:31):
is an arbitrary position agreed upon byall parties. Locations are given relative to
this fixed location. For example,zero nine er zero fifty is fifty miles
due east of bulls eye. BRA. On the other hand, stands for
bearing, range, altitude, andaspect. BRA is relative not to a

(05:53):
fixed location, but to the aircraftinvolved in the radio conversation, such as
your aircraft. Bullseye has a numberof benefits, one of which is that
all aircraft listening in on the transmissioncan understand the information presented if they are
using the same bulls eye. BRAis easier for the aircraft that is being
referenced, but much more difficult forother aircraft to decipher BMS. Lets you

(06:16):
customize a wax to speak always inBRA, but you should really learn bullseye
from multiplayer Falcon one, drag Netone picture clean, you're listening to the
tactical frequency. Let's switch gears hereor not. Really, Let's continue where

(06:46):
we left off, actually with tipsand tricks from multiplayer meta information for multiplayer.
The first one we're going to coveris fragging on a live server and
transferring the I and I file.So what do I mean by live server?
This is where the clock is tickingas you make the mission. So

(07:08):
for example, there's some public serverslike Veterans Gaming they have a public server,
and Falcon Lounge they have a publicserver, and each of those communities
have their own rules and requirements tojoin. But as far as BFS goes,
they're open to the public. That'sI guess the best way of explaining

(07:29):
it. But anyway, those servers, they have a live clock the servers
running. It's active. You can'tpause it and just you know, edit
the you know, edit the missionand transferred around. You got to edit
it live. And what you'll findis that people that know what they're doing,
they'll give you an I and Ifile and it's called a nine I
file because the extension of the lastthree letters of the file are I and

(07:51):
I after the dot, So likemission dot I and I or campaign dot
I ANDI or whatever it is.You know that they named it. And
that file contains threat steer points,It could contain your target information, all
sorts of things it could be inthere that would be useful for you to
have. Now, the problem isthat BMS is way of how they handle

(08:16):
these files is a little bit complicated, and what we've discovered at the six,
for example, is that when we'refracking live, BMS doesn't really want
to use then I file that someonegives you, and you got to go
through a complicated series of steps often, and so I wanted to share a
way that we do it that actuallyseems to work consistently for us. So

(08:37):
the first thing you're going to dois, let's say you have your INI
file that somebody gave you and said, don't worry. Slot in is my
wing man. Here's an I file. It'll have all the threat steer points,
will know where all the SAMs areat. Okay, so step one,
join the campaign slot in just normallylike you normally would. Step two
save the mission, and let's sayyou save it as client save. Now,

(09:03):
don't do anything with this save file, by the way, outside of
what we're going to be talking about, or outside of something along these lines.
Don't use a client save file tohost on a server. That's probably
not going to work very well foryou. Okay, So now you have
your save file. Number three,do a click dance and you hopefully you

(09:26):
remember from previous broadcast or you alreadyknow the click dances, or you save
your data cartridge through a series ofsteps. Okay, step four, now
open the campaign directory for this campaign, you got to find that I and
I file. So step five openthat I and I file. It'll be
let's say, clients save dot Iand I if you save the mission as

(09:46):
clients save. Step six this iswhere you delete everything in the client save
dot II and replace it with thecontents of the I and I file that
your buddy gave. All right,so everything now inside clients save that and
I will really be what was givento you by your flight lead. Now,

(10:13):
next step save behind I file,and now the last step go back
to b MS, open the datacartridge and click load. If everything worked
out right, you should now seethe threat steer points. You should see
the steer point lines that were inthe NFL. Everything should be on the
map exactly the way that you're leadintended. So that's just one thing.

(10:35):
It's obviously, you know, it'snot something that everybody will be doing.
Not everybody's fragging or planning missions ona live server, but you have to
figure that that's probably where a lotof people get their start in multiplayer now,
right, they might go to aserver that's already open to the public
and they might try to do amission there. So it's useful information and

(10:56):
it's useful particularly also in let's sayT versus team servers, where the server
will similarly be running live. Allright, let's move on to another another
little tip here. This one's alittle bit more for the people that might
be a little bit newer. Thisis Weapons Delivery Planner. How do you
get kneeboards onto the pilot in WeaponsDelivery Planner? So if you don't know,

(11:22):
you could have a three D pilotmodel and you can actually have the
kneeboards on the pilot's legs. Youcan actually look down and see information.
Now, the default information is nice, but you can actually customize and put
your own information on there. Andso one way you can do this is
through this software called Weapons Delivery Planner. If you just do a search for

(11:43):
it Weapons Delivery Planner Falcon BMS,you should be able to find it.
Okay, basic information and kneboards.How do we get it on there?
Step one? Open Weapons Delivery Planner. Number two. Open that saved mission
that we talked about earlier. Clientssave not the ONI file but the actual
the actual campaign mission step three,it's going to ask you for your package

(12:07):
number in your flight. To choosea flight. You can enter your package
number right from there, and thepackage numbers you can get from BMS.
So enter your package number, selectyour flight, and then you can edit
the information anything that's pretty much inthe yellow boxes in Weapons Delivery Planner you
can edit so you can type inwhatever information you'd like, anything that's useful.

(12:28):
And when you're done, click onupdate kneeboards. It's actually going to
be up D uniform PAPA Delta kneeboard, but you know, I just read
that as update kneeboard. Click onthat and then you're going to have the
ability to select the pages that youwant on the left and right kneeboards and
that's pretty much it. You dothat, click save and you should have

(12:52):
all the information that you need now. Before saving, you really should think
about what information you need for thatmission. For example, you can select
extra information for which tankers are goingto be available for that mission. There
are times on stations or frequencies youcan choose up to two to automatically have
their on the data card, andyou could put bombing profile information, target

(13:18):
information Let's say you have steer pointsninety six through ninety nine is targets that
have been assigned. And if you'renumber four and you're tasked with target steer
point ninety nine, then you couldactually write that as a note under the
primary target information. You know,you could write ninety nine fuel depot or
whatever the target is. Now,the main pages you'll probably want are the

(13:39):
data cards. Data card left,data card right, And that's how you
can have important information call signs,joker, Mango. All sorts of information
can be on the kneeboards. Now. Weapons Delivery Planner also lets you add
threats, so it can mark theSAMs that are there in the campaign,

(14:01):
so you can tell I want tomark all the essay twos or whatever.
You make those changes in Weapons DeliveryPlanner, save it there and then go
back into BMS and click load andyou should be able to see everything.
Let's talk about another simple problem.How do you join a multiplayer flight?

(14:22):
How do you know which squadron tojoin, which airbase to join? Usually
that's the first question people ask whenthey're connecting online. Hey, what squadron
do I join? Don't ask thatquestion. There's a simpler way of figuring
this out. First, just figureout which side you're joining. Look at
the colors of the air bases.Join the right color. Figure out who
your lead is. When the leadis slotted correctly, click on comms.

(14:46):
Find your lead's name, right clickon his name and click join. Now
you've joined the same squadron that he'sjoined, and you could look at the
ATO listing right there and join onhim. Now, if your lead tells
you, hey, you go aheadand get slotted before the briefing. I'm
going to go grab a coffee.Well, okay, now you've got to
find it more manually. You canscour the air bases to figure out which

(15:09):
squadron is the one you want.Alternatively, look through the ATO. Open
the ATO, click on the boxto select all of the flights, and
then you could choose the one youwant there. Right click on that and
click join. You can find itthrough there. It might be easier.
All right, we got about aminute left. Let's talk about a couple

(15:30):
more things here. Package coordination.If you want to see the steer points
of other flights, you can dothat through the ATO. There's a box
next to all the packages there.Every package has on where you can mark
that and it'll show all the steerpoints of that package. It's very useful
if you're fragging, by the way, and you want to match one flight
steer point with another flight steer point. Now there's some hoodities with it.

(15:54):
When you get these steerpoints from otherflights, they will not update, so
if somebody else moves, it won'tbe reflected. You've got to unchecked that
box and recheck it to get thelatest information. But it's very useful for
coordinating. Last tip I'll give,by the way, is something i've actually
seen. Please don't join multiplayer withlow bandwidth settings. If you choose the

(16:18):
default settings of one twenty four orsomething like that, they will cause issues.
In my experience, it's led tospooky crashes into buildings from great distances,
usually near an airbase. A jetwill mysteriously crash into a building that
isn't anywhere near him. Please don'tenter in low bandwidth. Follow the steps
in the manual. We'll be rightback. We're just getting started. We'll

(16:52):
be back soon after this message.You're excited to get into a Falcon BMS
multiplayer session just to find out thatthe mission would require air air refueling.
That can be intimidating, particularly ifyou already know you're no good at getting
fuel from the tanker. If you'renew to BMS, I wouldn't recommend rushing
to learn it unless it's very importantto you, But eventually it's a good

(17:15):
skill to have. So where doyou begin. Step one, become proficient
at flying formation. Others have suggestedflying formation with the tanker in single player
as initial practice. Step two.Understand that the throttle of the F sixteen
will feel a bit delayed. Reactahead of time. If you know you're
going too slow. Don't wait toapply thrust. Step three. Rock the

(17:38):
throttle aggressively, but give gentler movementsto the stick. Step four. Be
patient. This is like riding abicycle. You'll be terrible at it until
one day it just clicks. Stepfive. Once you have it, practice
periodically to keep in shape. Falconone drag Net one. We're keeping you

(18:02):
informed on the tactical frequency, andwe're back once again to the tactical frequency.
We are going to go to aninterview that I had with Ripper,

(18:26):
and so this segment we're going totalk about communities in general, and hopefully
this will be a good start againa reminder if you have a community that
you want to advertise, let meknow. All right, let's get into
this prerecorded interview. Joining me nowto discuss communities in BMS is Ripper.

(18:47):
He founded and runs The Sixth whereBMS, DCS and ARMA are all played.
He's also a longtime member of theFalcon Lounge and currently on the training
staff of the Falcon Lounge. ThankRipper for joining us today. Hey,
how are you Doingyboddy doing pretty good? Full disclosure of course I fly at

(19:07):
the six with Ripper. I justwant to get that out of the way.
But first question, I wanted toask you what is the essence of
the Falcon BMS multiplayer experience and howwould you say that it's different than other
SIMS or other genres. To me, the chre essence of Falcon multiplayer is

(19:29):
it comes down to the lead andwingman. It's like these two positions working
together, the complete and objective andprotecting each other. Now, with whole
flights we expand on this, itbecomes a package and it becomes you know,
this can be a huge, youknow thing, but it always comes
down to that intimate connection between thewing man and this lead. How important
would you say multiplayer is for thegrowth of the Falcon BMS pilot? I

(19:53):
think to me multiplayer is the endgoal. It's the ultimate experience. It's
again flying with a group of yourbuddies and a large scale mission. All
these you know, mechanisms running inthe background. You're a cog in this
wheel that's running. It's just amazinghow to overcome obstacles. The limited number

(20:18):
of lives, limited supplies, allthis gives you a feeling that your actions
means something, that there's consequences toyour performance. And then when you're flying
with as large package, you don'twant to your actions to jeopardize the mission
or other people's flying experience. What'sthe difference between a wing, a squadron

(20:41):
and a community. Typically a squadronis would be a group of a few
pilots, and a wing would bea group of squadrons. Usually maybe they
might fly different airframes or even likeus, they fly different games. Whereas
on either side, a community isn'tas structured. They don't have as the
same level of expectations, requirements tojoin or stay. Usually communities have lower

(21:07):
bars entry and they don't require acertain level of attendance, whereas most squadrons
are going to require you to bethere and to stay there because they're gonna
put a lot of time and effortinto getting you up to their standards.
What are the different types of onlineFalcon groups and do they approach multiplayer in

(21:29):
the same way. You have groupslike I would say Falcon Lounge, RAF,
Falcon Online. Each of them areFalcon communities, but they all kind
of tailored to different things. FalconLounge is really geared towards like pickup lights
or flying on the Falcon Lounge server. Veteran's Gaming would be a similar type

(21:52):
group like that, whereas RAF wouldbe like they're big, large scale package,
you know, twenty thirty pilots goingup. And then Falcon Online is
like kBT, so it's always it'sabout team versus team PBP experience, so
each one has different flavors. Ifa pilot is new to Falcon BMS,
should he look to join a squadronright away if you can find a squadron

(22:18):
as willing to train new members,and I would say yes because it's one
of the best ways to get pairedwith an instructor and get one on one
training. The caveat is it takesa lot of energy to train new pilots,
so that they're going to expect alot from you, regular attendance,
you know, getting better. They'regoing to have the requirements and expectations they

(22:40):
are going to put on you gointo a community like the Falcon Lounge or
Vennors Gaming. You may be ableto pair with somebody and have them teach
you, but it's not going tobe a structured So there's caveats on both
sides. What are some red flagsassociated with squadrons or communities or groups that
should make a pilot thing twice aboutjoining? The first thing, I would

(23:00):
look at it when you join anycommunity, especially if you have like a
discord or form is. I wouldjust go back and read old posts,
read interactions, See how their leadershipinteracts with other members. See if how
the culture is. Is it toxic, is it supportive? See if they
have realistic expectations. Do they sayone thing, do something else, And

(23:23):
just kind of get a feel ofthis is a place that you want to
be in. And that goes forany squadron, community, anything. If
you just want to make sure thatthat jails with what you want and expect.
How important are sps or standard operatingprocedures? Can you give an example,
We're flying with a squadron is morehelpful than just flying with random community

(23:45):
members. Squadrons use soops to givestructure and streamline any kind of process that
they're going to be going to happenthey're flying. It's again about setting the
correct expectations and then having all thosepilots to meet those expectations. The problem
we're flying with randoms is sometimes youhave different levels of skill, different levels

(24:07):
of experience, the different levels ofexpectations. So sps are very big because
it gives you an ability to saythis is what I expect to happen and
this is what we should do.Would you say there's a trade off though,
because for a squadron you'd have tomaybe learn a little bit more about
their ways. Yes, and differentwings, different squadrons have varying levels of

(24:30):
their SOPs. And there it's almostlike this a melsim You know specialmen.
Are they casual or are they hardcore? And where do they fall in in
between? So let's say there's aloan pilot out there listening to this he
wants to join a squadron, what'sthe best way for him to go out
and find these groups and discover whichone is right for him to be honest,

(24:51):
A simple Google search for Falcon BMSmultiplayer and all the lists of all
of the you know, FALC loungefo all the long squadrons have come and
gone or are going to be thereon the BMS forum. It's also a
thread that a lot of the groupsand wings that put on their information,
so you can go through ALUs andfind one. We had a pole at

(25:15):
the Tactic Frequency Discord and we discoveredthat some people are still flying single players
their majority of the time. Whatcan you say to them in order to
recommend them, like, should theyjoin a community, should they fly multiplayer?
What should they do? I thinkthat all pilots at some point should
experience a multiplayer but I understand thatsome people may stay single player based on

(25:41):
timing, Maybe they live in atime zone where there's not as many pilots
available, or maybe they just don'thave the time to invest. So single
single player flying is okay and acceptable. However you want to play the game
is artist sim is up to you. Nobody's going to gate keep you.
But I just say, if youhave any chance to experience a multiplayer and

(26:02):
especially experience it in you know,ten, fifteen, twenty pilot packages,
it will really change the way thatyou play the game and enjoy it.
Now, a lot of multiplayer groupsseem to have regular events, particularly the
squadrons, like a regular flight time. How important is that in keeping pilots,

(26:23):
let's say, avoiding getting rusty andlosing what they've learned. It all
of flying, It's all about currency. It's about continuing to train, fly
and repeat the same processes so youcan get them down better and better each
time. One of the hardest thingswe have is if we ever step away
for a certain amount of time we'vebecome rusty. We lose their skills,

(26:45):
you know, air to air,refueling, landing weapons. It's all a
skill and trade that is that youwill lose over time if you don't confue
to practice it. Is there anythingelse that you'd like to say to the
audience, in particular about Falcon BMScommunities or the Falcon BMS multiplayer experience.

(27:06):
I know a lot of people whenthey first get into multiplayer, they are
nervous, They're scared, they're afraidto mess up. But I can tell
you that nine out of ten thatthe communities are out there are open.
They're willing to learn, they're willingto take chances on people, they're willing
to help. You can look atthrough the Falcon Loulenge help threads where there's
people putting in their time every dayto help just a random strangers on their

(27:30):
little bugs or things that they needto fix in DMS. And I think
once people realize how open and helpfulthe communities are, that'd be more willing
to actually go and fly. You'relistening to an interview with Ripper that we
prerecorded. This section was about communitiesin general. In the next section,

(27:51):
we're gonna be talking specifically about hisgroup, the Sixth, and then in
the next segment after that, we'llbe talking about leadership in community and how
that's important. Stick with us.We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.

(28:22):
We'll continue after this break. Haveyou ever listened to a multiplayer emission
and heard people say something like foxthree or defensive essay two. This is
what is known as brevity. Arepilots who fly flight sims just trying to
sound cool by speaking in a sortof pilot code. No, not at
all. First, let's understand thatthe radios in the F sixteen are half

(28:45):
duplex. When you're transmitting, you'reblocking yourself from hearing any other transmissions on
that same radio. Another problem isthat if two pilots transmit at the same
time, these two competing transmissions endup clashing. In Falcon BMS, the
non transmitting pilots don't hear voices.Instead, they hear garbage audio that sounds
like bad dubstep music. Using brevityis not strictly necessary, but a team

(29:11):
that doesn't use it will be ata disadvantage. You can begin learning brevity
by watching videos of multiplayer missions,as well as by opening the real life
non classified manuals that come with BMS, specifically the BM and atp Falcon one,
drag Net one Trespass two, we'llguide you out on the tactical frequency

(29:41):
Welcome back. If you're looking fora squadron, then you might want to
pay attention to this segment. Comingup. We're going to resume the interview
with Ripper where he talks about thesixth and what they do, and again
a reminder to everybody if you havea group out there, if you fly
BMS, maybe even if it's justa group of buddies and you're looking to

(30:03):
expand, let us know, youknow there, it could be could be
worthwhile to let us know and tomaybe come on the tactical frequency. Let's
resume the episode or correction, theinterview with Ripper. We've been chatting with
Ripper from the Six about communities andsquadrons and wings and Falcon BMS multiplayer.

(30:26):
This segment, we're going to switchinto our first let's say official meet the
community segment, and we're going todo that with Ripper. We're going to
be talking about the group that heruns, the Six. So Ripper tell
us a bit about the six.What is it all about? The Six
started really just as the small groupof friends, four to five guys we'll

(30:47):
call the Ogs, and they startedjust playing games online cus Go one Z
one, you know first one theshooters Falcon b MS explain, and it
just started as a small group thatwanted to play games together. We would
do it after we get off workevery night. And twenty fifteen, twenty

(31:07):
sixteen, I really grew into usdoing a lot more MS and an arma
and in DCS, and so it'sreally just about the group of guys that
spend some time together in the eveningswe went off work and you know bill
blow ups and pixels. What typeof events does the six have for Falcon

(31:27):
bms? We fly a mixture ofcampaigns and TSE. Right now we're on
a like a two month to onemonth rotation between deployment, campaign and training,
So we'll be two months of campaignsand then one month of training.
What time zone and what region,let's say does the six fall in?

(31:52):
Is this North American? Is itfavorable for the Europeans? What market are
you going for? Most members ofthe Six are North American. We do
have a few European and we havea Kiwi. But the time zone that
we fly is a ten pm Easternand so that's really hard for you know,
most European or other other size ofthe globe. But again for the

(32:15):
North American that's the time we're offwork we're able to fly. So it's
usually Tuesdays and Thursdays ten pm Easternand a few Fridays for our creating squadorns.
Is the Sixth open to the publicor is it a members only group?
The six events are members only,but recruitment is open. We do

(32:36):
have a public discord that you canjoin be a part of and communica and
talking about different games, but it'sgenerally the operations are member only. You
mentioned recruiting. Is it currently opennow and if so, what are the
requirements to join the six Is therelike let's say an age limit or any
other restrictions are Recruitment is reopening Junefirst and it will run to the thirtieth.

(33:00):
This June is our training month.We're doing Red Flag and so it's
a perfect time for people to comein and get into flying. After the
thirtieth it will close and it won'tbe It won't open until September one.
Again, what founcon BMS experience shouldpeople have prior to applying to join the
sixth our senior officers. Star Freehas a general purpose and multi capable minimums

(33:24):
and this is them. Can youramp start not always required? Can you
taxi and take off? You navigateusing steer points? Can you pickle something?
Can you land? Can you keepthe lead in sight not to be
confused with formation flying? And canyou communicate while doing all of the above?

(33:45):
If yes to all then come andfly. What's the recruitment process?
Like? Do people just send amessage over discord or do they what do
they do? First? You wouldjoin the discord. I would also us
go into the website looking through justkind of get an idea of some of
the flights we've done, some ofthe stuff we have there and if you're

(34:06):
interested there to join a discord button. Once you get into the discord,
you can go into the public recruitmentsay you're interested in it. PINS is
a questionnaire I for you to fillout and then schedule a check ride.
Based on the questionnaire and a checkride, you'll be placing in the active
squadron or the training squadron based onyour levels and needs. What type of
people are you looking for at thesix we're looking for pilots. I want

(34:31):
to fly, we want to learnand get better. We aren't always seeking
the best, but those that havedrive. It doesn't matter we have a
thousand hours or a handful. Wherematters is that you have to drive to
learn, help others and enjoy thetime with your fellow pilots. You mentioned
checking out previous events. Is therelet's say a number of YouTube channels or

(34:54):
Twitch channels that you could recommend forpeople to look to see what a six
event is like. Obviously, Brianand myself stream and do a lot of
videos, so we both have youknow, hundreds and thousands of videos on
YouTube, Gump Star Fury, there'sa few other members. We have a
pubblic media and a go in alive channel and you can easily look through

(35:16):
there and see different pass operations.You mentioned Millsim in the last segment as
a spectrum of how serious a groupis. Where does the six fall on
this spectrum. I've always called thesix semi realism from when we started.
We are not hardcore Milsim. We'renot you know, going to beat your

(35:38):
head with the book, but wewant to attempt realistic tactics, realistic strategies.
We want to fly to our bestability. A lot of members Into
six are form military and they're notwanting to role play military. Most of
the roles in the ranks that wehave Into six are just usually there to

(36:00):
show that that member has, youknow, the ability to lead, they're
able to cut take command, butthere's no there's nothing about feeding egos or
anything like that. Most groups havespecific rules in place, what are your
bannable offenses or what behaviors are therethat are strictly not tolerated. The biggest

(36:22):
for us is going to be teamkills, Blue on Blue, Bitter Sweet.
We don't tolerate multiple team kills,and especially a lack of understanding why
it happened in trying to correct what'shappening. We have a finite amount of

(36:42):
time to fly, and we wantto make sure that all of our pilots
have a good experience. And ifyou're constantly being shot down every week by
the same people, it becomes notfun very quickly. So that's the biggest
way to get kicked out. Theother side is just to not be but
ahead to people, to be respectfulto you know, be a team player,
supportive, you know. But ifthere's an occasional team kill, that's

(37:07):
clearly not what you're talking about,right, You're talking about someone that's consistently,
let's say, going out of theirway to throw missiles where they shouldn't.
Yeah, it's one of the thingsyou can easily tell you most people,
you know, when it happens,they have remorse, they're sorry that
it happened, and they will tryto correct what happens. But you know,
the occasional team kill. It happensthat, you know, things don't

(37:29):
go the way or something. Iused to make the right decisions. You
know, I have shot Bible downmyself, So it happens. I remember
that I almost got away too.I was I was going for the deck
and I almost made it. Itwas a legit um. I made the
radio call and then as soon asit said friendly, I'd already had my

(37:52):
finger on the trigger and PULD.So it's literally a split second if I
would have waited, But obviously ithappened. Essons learned. Speaking of lessons,
there was a recent revamp at thesix I understand that, you know,
we were all part of this bigthing and getting it together and everything.
What was the twenty twenty three revampof the six UM? What did

(38:14):
we do and what did that involveand why did we do it? We
found we were spending a lot oftime in briefing and having a hard time
getting into three DM flying. Wewere, and we were a lot of
times briefing the same topics, thesame subjects, and so previous we talked
about SPS and so this was usbuilding a certain set of x soops and

(38:37):
expectations prior to the flight. Thisincluded using some of the new Discord features
like mission boards allows us to createthreads for specific missions. We could put
the briefing material everything that's needed there, so all the pilots have that before
they even get into the briefing.They can see exactly what they need,
their I and I file, theirtarget, their seats signments, the IP

(39:00):
address. They have all that together. Taking the briefing and the flight and
the debriefing is separate segments. Howlong does each take in a typical sixth
event where you generally aim for abouta two hour totally event, So the
briefing will be thirty minutes, theflight would be an hour, in the

(39:20):
debriefing will be thirty minutes. We'llbe back with the next segment. In
the next segment with the last partof the interview with Ripper, and then
after that we'll be discussing leadership.Stay with us. We'll be right back

(39:50):
after this break. Stay with us. When a human is GCI and you
ask them to declare your target,you can get a number of de from
replies like friendly, hostile, banditand bogie. But what do they mean?
Friendly and hostile are probably the mostobvious. You should spare the former
and shoot the ladder. The otherreplies require some explanation. Bogie means unknown.

(40:15):
The aircraft might be hostile, butGCI is unable to idea it for
you. Bandit means that the aircraftis an enemy, but you're not necessarily
authorized to shoot it. Think abouta situation where you're flying for Israel and
in this campaign all of your neighborsare unfriendly. Nevertheless, you're only at
war with Syria. How does GCIdeclare a Jordanian aircraft in this scenario,

(40:37):
GCI couldn't answer friendly, and theyshouldn't authorize you to fire by saying hostile.
This is where the call bandit wouldmake the most sense. As a
bonus, keep a listen for outlaw. Outlaw means that the aircraft is coming
from a known hostile location, likean enemy airbase. It doesn't make the
target automatically hostile though drag net onesingle group. This is the tactical frequency

(41:15):
welcome back. Let's get right intothe last part of the interview with Ripper.
Let's say someone has already been acceptedinto the sixth He's a new member
walk us through a sample mission frombriefing to debriefing. From his perspective,
the first thing you would do isyou would look at the events tab and
discord for the week, and youwould see the flights for Tuesday, Thursday,

(41:37):
or Friday, and you would clickinterested on that flight. Maybe you
click interested that means you're registering andyou're wanting to fly. Thirty minutes to
an hour prior to the flight time, you would receive a ping in the
mission thread on the mission board,and in this thread would be your seat
assignment, briefing materials, IP address, flash, theater, any other emission

(42:00):
related information. And then five toten minutes prior to the start time,
you would markle into the reading room. You'd use this time to chat,
whether the pilots check your gear settings. If you know that you're having a
problem prior to that, you wantto go into voice channel early and try
to ping another pilot or the wholeBMS to come and assist you, because

(42:21):
if you know thirty minutes of flight, we have time we can figure out
your issue. Right, it's astart of briefing. You're probably gonna get
left behind at the start of thebriefing you'll fall into the BMS stage to
receive your briefing from the package commander. Once the briefing is set or is
done, he will do a IBCcheck to ensure that all the radios and

(42:43):
comps are working in game. Ifit does not, then you'll work out
there's issues in your individual flight briefingwhich your lead. After the mass briefing,
each flight will separate into the flightrooms to brief their individual objectives that
Once complete, the package commander willcall we're back into the reading room,
last minute questions, will do abio break, and then once everybody's back

(43:05):
and ready, they'll mute. Servergoes one x time. You can make
via the brief option to either taxyour ramp now. Once you're in the
pit, you want to ensure thatyour comms are set to the correct be
set for your victory and uniform gamewith your lead. Wingmen do not need
to call over uniform only leads to. Once a jet is set, call

(43:25):
green jet. Then follow your leadsto instructions and execute the mission. Then
after you land, you'll tax itback to the EO R, shut down
and exit. From there, you'llthen move to the BMS debriefing room and
discord. Now we die prior tothe end of the flight, exit the
game and go ahead and go tothe debrief channel. We don't want to

(43:46):
muck up the comms for those stillin the game, and that way those
that are out can then debrief aheadof time and kind of talk about what
happened. The debrief is approximately thirtyminutes and will be executed by a flight
leads. After the initial debrief isover all are free to leave or save
for a deeper dive. Then afterevery mission, the package commander will complete

(44:08):
a after action report summarizing the eventsof the flight, and all flights are
posted on the board. For himwas to go back and view at your
will. Again the debrief. Wehighly recommend it. It's where you learn
what happened and why. But iftime doesn't allow, obviously you're able to
leave, you can check the debrieflater. Thank you for joining us today.

(44:31):
Thank you, buddy, I appreciateit. That was our interview with
Ripper. It was actually our firstmeet the community segment. So again,

(44:51):
feedback is always welcome, and ifyou'd like to be on the podcast,
let me know. I wanted toswitch gears a little bit here, since
we're talking about can MS, communitiesand squadrons and things of that nature,
I wanted to shift the focus toleadership. Leadership is obviously, at least

(45:12):
I think to me, it mustbe obviously important. If you don't have
good leadership, then any group isgoing to inherently suffer because I think in
something like this squadrons in BMS,you need a direction, you need a
vision, you need leadership. Obviously, if it's just a couple of guys
just wanting to get together and play, you know you can do that.

(45:36):
But BMS is one of those thingswhere you really need leadership, if anywhere,
at the very least inside the simbut once you start getting it more
complicated and you've got multiple flights andyou've got to arrange multiple people, and
you've got scheduling, and you've gotfragging and you've got missions, you need
leadership at least if you want tobe efficient. Now, I talked in

(45:58):
the very first episode about community ingeneral. I said that we need to
be a good and welcoming community,things like that, and I wanted to
specifically talk about how you as aleader could let's say, analyze and see

(46:19):
if your group is doing well fromthe perspective of good leadership. Now,
I'm not claiming to be any sortof expert on leadership or any sort of
expert on squadrons, or really evenon BMS. I mean, there are
plenty of people that are much moreexperienced than me. But I think there
are some obvious things that I canoffer just to consider, just for some

(46:45):
basic thought. But I wanted toask a couple of questions, or really
a series of questions, and let'sjust you know, if you could answer
these yourself, if you're a leader, if you have a BMS squadron,
just think about what I'm asking.So let's go to the first question.
Have you conducted a recent analysis onyour own on the health of your group?

(47:09):
For example, have you conducted aswat as they call it. Have
you listed the strengths, weaknesses,opportunities and threats to your group? Let's
consider some other questions. Do youcare if your members are having a positive
experience? Are you open to criticism? Do you bridge divides between people within

(47:42):
your community? What about people outsideof your community? Do you bridge divides
between your community and others when youresolve the situation? Are you trying to
create a permanent solution as opposed tojust a temporary band aid. Do you

(48:08):
try to understand the members of yourcommunity? Now, the purpose of asking
these questions isn't to come out hereand pass a judgment, right. These
are questions for people to ask themselvesand to be as honest as they can,

(48:28):
and to look at these questions andsee what the answers are. Now,
in my opinion, if you answeredyes to all of these questions,
that's a good sign. That's agood sign of the status of the health

(48:49):
of your leadership. And again thisis just from my perspective, and if
you think about it, it's becauseyou're putting your members first. You're carrying
about the experience that they go throughand what they see day to day.
You have to remember they're going tobe people in your group. Statistically speaking,

(49:10):
if you've got a large enough group, they're going to be people that
are going to complain and they're goingto maybe troll or cause problems. I'm
just talking statistical probability, not areflection on the community. You're going to
have one guy maybe out of athousand, that might complain or say you're
doing a lousy job or just trollpeople, right, And you can't take

(49:31):
those people's opinions too seriously because ifhe's so, how you're terrible here and
need this wrong and you did thatwell, I mean, okay, maybe
he's just saying these things or he'swrong, and so you need a better
way of analyzing this. And you'vegot to be careful also on the flip
side, because there's going to bepeople that will go along with what you're
saying because they don't want to rockthe boat, or they have a certain

(49:52):
level of faith in you know,you've led us so far before, you
know, successfully, so we're notgoing to say anything even though we think
you're taking us in a wrong directionnow. And sadly, you can't take
those people's opinions too seriously because theyalso can be wrong. So that's why

(50:15):
it's healthy to do your own analysis. Are you really getting the feedback that
you should get? What if youare getting the feedback and you're ignoring it,
right, that's the danger. That'sthe danger of being a leader.
Let's go through some more questions.Do you assume that you and your group

(50:36):
will have success? Are you annoyedand impatient in dealing with the duties of
your group as a leader. Hasleadership become a burden? After people talk

(50:58):
to you, do they leave sadderor angrier? Do you rule by decree
without consideration of others? Do youhurt your community? Are you experiencing burnout?

(51:22):
Now for these questions, if youanswered yes to any of these questions,
in my opinion, that could bea bad sign of where you're at,
or where your group is at,or where your community is at.
Let's consider some more questions here.These are more open ended. If you

(51:45):
were to retire your group today,who would miss it? Hopefully everybody would?
Right? Why do you do whatyou do? Where's your motivation to
run this group? When you makea decision that will be controversial? How

(52:06):
do you decide what's right? Sothese are open ended questions. There are
questions that obviously you know other peoplemay not be able to answer for you.
You have to figure out the answers, and hopefully the people listening are
realizing their group is in good health, right or they already know that long

(52:27):
before they listen to this. Now, let's look at some questions a community
can ask themselves. Do I enjoybeing here? Is the positive experience here?
Worth the negatives. Would I recommendthis place to a friend? Is
the leadership in tune with the problemsof the community. I think the saddest

(52:53):
thing for me in my own personalexperience was when I was part of a
group and when I realized I couldnot recommend the place. That's when I
realized it was time to leave.We'll be right back to join. The

(53:16):
tactical frequency discord use invitation code uppercase, ROMEO, lowercase, Charlie Niner,
Sierra Niner, Bravo, Yankee,Papa whiskey QLO. When you fire an
air to air missile in Falcon BMS, you're supposed to make a FOX call
to let people know what you justdid. Let's take an example, Fox

(53:38):
three Rock two six five forty fivetwenty five thousand flanker. The three in
FOX three means that the caller hasfired in AIM one twenty am RAM or
a missile that is in the samecategory. These are missiles that have their
own radar and contract the target ontheir own. Rock in this example is

(53:58):
the code name for the current bullseye. In many multiplayer communities, if
there is just one bull's eye,you might hear people say bulls Eye without
a code name. Two five Thatis the location of the target with respect
to bulls Eye. Twenty five thousandthat's the altitude of the target flanker.

(54:19):
That's the NATO code name for thetype of the target. In this case,
it could be a mid twenty nineor a twenty seven. For more
information on Fox Calls, have alook at the manuals that come with Falcon
BMS, Falcon one, Dragnet one, copy fuel yellow sending relief. Please
stay on the tactical frequency. We'vemade it to the last segment of this

(54:51):
episode, so we kind of endedit on a serious subject, and I'd
like to bring this back to somethingmore lighthearted. I don't want to depress
you or you know, deal withthings that are, you know, too
dark or anything like that, butI think it's it's worth exploring, right,
So let's do something a little morelighthearted. I wanted to introduce a

(55:14):
different type of content to this show. So let's listen to this little comedy
bit that we have right here.Bob the Wingman is about to score his
first multiplayer air to air kill.Okay, I'm ready to fire. I
am so ready. This guy's goingdown let's launched fox three. Wait,
what do I say? Now?Bulls eye target? Where's that? It's

(55:37):
on the HUD. Too much information? It's on the FCR bullseye three eight
one four forty four three eight oneis too high for an asimuth by reading
this right, I gotta zoom inthe correction to eight one four forty four
correction two eight one forty four altitude. I need his altitude twenty eight No,

(56:02):
no, twenty six thousand angels altitude. Print. I need the target
type. There's nothing on the FCRfor that. Waits on the targeting pod.
I have a targeting pot. Therehe is. I got him now,
print F sixteen sixteen Oh no,all right, Obviously we're just kidding

(56:35):
around here. I obviously don't takethis as we're making fun of newbies or
anything anything like that. The wholepremise of the Bob the Wingman joke here
is that we are all, atone point, Bob the Wingman, we've
all done something we shouldn't. We'veall struggled. It's meant more as we're
laughing at ourselves, and we're laughingat the shared experience. And a lot

(56:58):
of us have had either with radioanxiety or accidentally shooting a friendly down.
I mean, it happens, sothere is that. I wanted to also
bring your attention to the status ofthe podcast. So, as I mentioned,
we're on episode five and that isactually quite great in and of itself.

(57:19):
I'm happy with that, but it'salso worth mentioning that we have surpassed
well over one thousand downloads right nowbetween just between by the way, episodes
one, two and three. Soonce again, i'd like to thank you
guys very much for all of thesupport for actually listening and putting up with
me. Let's say, I'm actuallyjust really grateful. Now, our goal

(57:43):
is to put out twenty four episodesin total per season one, and they
will be output bi weekly as ageneral rule, so we'll be just short
of a full year. That's theplan, and I got some feedback.
I'll mention this now. I gotsome feedback from people, from one person
in particular who was telling me Ishould bring up the quality of the content

(58:07):
for advanced pilots, and that gotme thinking, you know, I had
three episodes out, I think it'stime that I do a poll and survey
the community. So I asked everybodyon the discord if they would be willing
to give it or feedback. SoI put out a pole and everybody on
the discord was very nice about Everyonewho responded said the show was a four

(58:31):
or five on scale out of five. They liked the content of where we're
going. They wanted a combination ofbeginner advanced guests community so newbie friendly not
newbie friendly, and then continue tohave guests on and Falcon themed entertainment.
And not surprisingly, the majority ofpeople who were listening, they fly multiplayer.

(58:51):
They're split between leads and Wingman andthe best part of the podcast probably
no surprise, is they vote theproduction value, and that did strike me
is that's probably our biggest strength.So in short, we're going to try
to continue what we're doing and bringyou the same content, but we're going

(59:13):
to be exploring like what we justdid in this segment with the Bob the
wing Men's sketch. So if youliked it, you hated it, let
me know, and if you wantto see anything else, let me know
what you want to see. Mycall sign is Bible Clinger and I've been
your host for this hour. Hopefullywe will see you again in two weeks

(59:54):
falcon One, dragnet One. Youare now leaving the tactical frequency