Cuba Demo Mission: "Five Planes In Four Minutes"

Subj: Cuba Demo Challenge
Date: 96-12-31 13:19:04 EST
From: RussilloSM

Here's a challenge for the Cuba demo Heavy Metal mission, I call it "Five Planes in Four Minutes." It is similar to a challenge posted a few months ago, though it is a little different.

1. As soon as the cockpit view comes up, pop the APU on (=)

2. While it's spinning up, get full flaps, HUD on, damage display, gun off safe and double rate (f-f-f-0-[kpd minus]-m-c). Stick full right and firewall the throttle (Shift =) as the engines wind up.

3. Roll hard right off the taxiway and rumble through the grass straight for the C-5 on short final.

4. Horse it up at 80 kts (the terrain may "bump you airborne") - by now the heavy is right on top of you, hose him down with the GAU and he won't make the runway. Deal with guilt for shooting at friendlies... ;)

5. Throttle back to 50% or so, (you will probably be heading right into the sun) clear the fence and bank hard right. Watch out for the mountain, pop (4) to see exactly where the other A-10 is on the taxiway. [Once I did this and the C-5 had landed left of the strip, slid farther left and took the other A-10 out, like a bowling ball nailing a 7 pin.]

6. Gear up (g). Back to cockpit view (1) and watch your airspeed as you roll in on the A-10 (keep yourself under 200 if you don't want to lose your flaps and most of your lift). Two or three one-second bursts, and check (4) to confirm his engines spinning down. OR, if you've had a bad day, hose him until he explodes. (Maybe better to save the 30mm for the MiGs....) Again, the guilt....

7. Pull up, and full throttle. The other C-5 is on his crosswind leg and if you banked right after hosing the first C-5 you should be able to get him shortly after his turn to downwind. Couple of 2-second bursts to his engines should drop him, confirm with subsequent checks of (4). More wracking guilt...

8. Roll left to a heading of 50 or 60 deg and get up to 3500 agl. As you get over the heart of the bay, look for the "sideways diamond"-shaped, tan colored cliff face way off in the distance, dead ahead. The MiGs will appear a degree or two to the left of this cliff, probably appearing on RWR first which will help you look. I usually dim the HUD here ("page down" key) or shut the HUD off altogether so I can look for the MiGs.

9. If you don't want a dog fight (and you don't. Rememeber what you're flying, and remember what they're flying) as soon as you see them on RWR or visual, drop throttle to 50% or even less, and brake down to 250kts or less. [rationale: This nose to nose attack will be your only really good shot at them, they have guns but no missiles, so make it last as long as possible.] Focus on the right MiG. If you are running the Cuba demo as a module in Attack v1.5 you can have AIMs and or HARMS, and now is the time to put them to use. (Occasionally, if you took a little extra time on any of the first three planes back at NAS, the left MiG will break to his right and follow the river as if you weren't even there. Go figure.)

10. Center him quickly and start with short bursts of cannon fire. Aim high if he's still a long way off bringing the 'T' down right on him as he closes. If the wind hasn't hampered your aim, this guy will die before he can get a shot off.

11. Sharp bank left to line up bachelor number two and hose him.

- If you hit but don't kill either MiG you'd better get down near the treetops and start turning. Pop (5) often to keep apprised of what your pursuer is doing.

- If you're lucky he's hobbling on damaged engines and you can (as I like to do if I can accelerate to 300+ kts or more and don't have any bombs) "Cuban-Eight his ass off." Sure, he can still climb, but you can loop tighter and it buys you some badly need altitude which you can trade for speed when you need to get back down into the weeds. When using this looping strategy, if you see your airspeed dip below 200 when climbing, go ahead and pop 'f' 3x to add full flaps--it pulls you in tighter to get you over the top of that loop quickly.

- When scissoring with a MiG on my ass, I've developed a bad (albeit effective) habit of "head faking": turning not by simply rolling back to wings level and rolling the other way, but by rolling deeper into the existing turn, through inverted until I'm banked and turning in the other direction. If you can resist the urge to snap this maneuver [a natural result of a) practicing it a lot and b) being inverted at low altitude] sometimes the MiG will bite and think you're tightening your turn, buying you a split second of time as he buys the fake. Surely there must be a name for this kind of 'reverse-rolling' turn. (I say it's a bad habit because I've grown fond of using it at 200 agl and less. Hasn't killed me yet but I'm sure it will soon.)