F/A-18 Korea

MiGMan’s Combat Diary

The faithful Jindivick target drone... an Australian design!

Air to Air training starts on the aircraft carrier and involves hunting Jindivick target drones.... proudly made in Australia! The faithful Jindivick target drone... an Australian design!

A Jindivick Target Drone bites the dust!

Air Combat in F/A-18 Korea is a real challenge... a REAL challenge!

You have to watch the RWR like a hawk and listen listen listen to the warning tones.

When the inevitable missile launch occurs, Ctrl-4 gives you a missile padlock view.

However if your Situational Awareness is not up to speed at that point, the padlock view probably won't save you.

Those MiG-21's are darn good at evading your missiles.

I finally nailed this Su-27 Flanker in a training mission. But look at my airspeed.. 97 kts indicated. Only the Fly-by-wire systems of the Hornet are keeping the aircraft under control at all and I'm a sitting duck, upside down and with almost zero manoeuverability! I

In a "combat" situation" I'd be dead meat! Not good enough I'm afraid...

Instructional material

The sim contains a wealth of instructional material, with the comprehensive manual having been written by a US Marine pilot.

The Lag - Roll manoeuvre.

Basic Fighter Manoeuvres ( BFM ) are what you use to get your aircraft into a position of advantage while denying the enemy opprtunity to attack you.

It's a huge field of study.. and probably the most fascinating aspect of Combat Flight Sims for most fans.

F/A-18 Hornet: Korea has excellent in-game video lectures on BFM and the manual contains a substantial chapter by Major David Putze on the subject. It's worth buying the sim for this information alone!

The air to ground action in F/A-18 Korea is intense and fluid.

It is also dangerous due to the accurate AAA operators who tend to shall we say... discourage straight and level flying in the target zone!

Probably the first Air to Ground systems to master should be the HARM (High Speed Anti Radiation Missile) which you'll use to quieten down enemy AAA and SAM sites.

The F-117-A Stealth Fighter (actually a bomber!) will help you out as well as the enormous B-52. It's quite awesome to formate on one of those monsters.

After shooting down a few MiG's I felt ready to deal with the ground- pounders.

M1A1 and Humvee. This is a friendly convoy! You'll need to "cheat" using the '5' key to pick good form bad guys, as they're practically invisible from the air...just like in real life I guess!

Piece of cake.

I had destroyed entire battalions of armoured vehicles in other sims! How hard could it be?

Into the mission editor, plonk a column of armoured T-72-s on the range, throw in a ZSU-23 for good measure.

Load the a/c with five (5) Mk-83 2,000 pounders...we're going to kick serious butt! MiG's can be troublesome at times I admit, but tanks...slow, heavy, in a word...targets, he he he.

Ok.

Taxiing smooth, found a shortcut to RWY 36, do a hard right hand turn from the parking area and off we go.

Takeoff, turn due south. That's a B-52 up ahead, light the burners and get some formation practice in. Man, this bird is sluggish, oh yeh, over 10,000 lbs of extra iron hanging off the wings.

Seoul International off the port beam (left), select waypoint 2 and turn right to the range. Feet wet and the range is coming up, bombs selected, let's get some. Now where are they? ??? mmm...lower altitude... mmm... they certainly don't stand out like they do in some other sims on the market.

Oh yeah...the radar, turn it on (R), GMT mode to track vehicles (R). No contacts. Autopilot on to lessen the workload... play with azimuth, bar setting...must read up on that, oh...elevation ...not as easy as I thought and still no contacts.

Waypoint 2 reached...ok Back to visual search. autopilot off and go lower... where are they

❝

... z-iii-p

... r-iii-p

... Engine Left

... Engine Right

❞

Ah....I think I found them, or maybe I should say... they found me.