Foster

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Well, it's 6 days since the last GM post, so anyone who's not posted yet has a day. If you all get your posts up today, then it'll be fine.

@Silverwind Blade

Speaking of which, I'm not sure we've dealt with how to let-go of Swiftalon's character with a flair for the dramatic.

Her F-2A was out for her first post due to 'repairs', possibly engine trouble.
-There was mention of a 'mole'. Sabotage is also possible

Equally possible, is the engine was fixed, but has a higher than rated specific fuel consumption (it burns too much fuel/bad mileage), leading to fuel-starvation en-route and becoming lost at sea.
-Also possible: Problems making the in-air refueling (IAR) in time.

I'm also wondering if the cultural media influences would have turned-out differently. Particularly if the enemies in HALO weren't portrayed as religious zealots.

WAVE 2: FIGHT!

-Too much time to think. Rampancy ensues.

Edit:
...

I think I'll go take a walk for a bit.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Same, with the cat thing... putting a twenty pound (formerly stray) kitty on a diet is not fun.
-Fecking tigers.

Well, so long as we've got somebody crunching the maths and graphs behind the posts I'm fine. Those technical details usually don't get into the IC unless relevant for advancing plot or in order to predict to the best of our ability the path of the RP.
-Such as: knowing what planes can carry additional weapons, and by roughly how much.

I mean, even though I know how the Chinese mechanical-capstan Partial-Pressure G-suits work, and the limits of the early helmets made bubble-canopies a moot point up until the mid-90's (the visor/helmet would not turn with your head, it just stared straight-ahead: always) none of that made its way into my IC-post.

Anyways, I've made something like 3 OOC posts here today. So here.. have a video, I guess.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

It was only a logistics-concern. A minor detail in an RP _{which if exploited properly in a sandbox-RP can give one player quite the advantage over others}. Plus it would give excuse enough to divvy the unit up and have the patrol-units operate in shifts (or sit together on-alert and shoot pool with other pilots that are waiting for their jets to get refueled).

But as always it's probably a good idea to check with the GM before getting carried away drafting charts and graphs and pulling up maps of secret forest installations in French New Guinea...

*Goes back to find info on non-NATO brevity codes of the former USSR and China*

So far, it seems we are on an express ferry-flight to a new Forward Airstrip inland of F. N. Guinea, and upon arrival do... something that keeps a building from getting explodey...

How we do the underlined part, I'm still not sure. so for me it'll be a surprise.

Also.. I may.. have an issue with obsessive-compulsive OOC posting.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

The Mage vs Maths.

Going to have to think on how we expect to 'secure' a compound using fighter-jets, though.

The A-10C / OA-10 could do it pretty swell in the daylight-hours with a... one hour loiter time over the objective?

And considering it's a 2-hour round trip plus refuel for that plane, what are we going to do for the other 16-18 hours (depending on how much the A-10 pilot wants to fly at night)? Eight of which will be at night.

Sure, we could try using UAVs, and hoping our MiG-21/F-20 love-child can react to a scramble well enough (and it can, sadly not a single F-20 was sold), or even try stationing the pilots of the less-capable planes on the ground as forward-observers (I've noticed we've all got rifles... or at least firearms...).

The Chinese fighter situation of 1970, which was being very rapidly addressed after the 17-day Sino-Vietnam war (during which time more people died than the entire US-Vietnam conflict). [Yeah]

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Just so you know:

Su-35, F-15C*, and Tornado ADV have combat-radii (x2) near that of the ferry-range of the ASF-14, and J-7 (even with the F-404 turbine).
-I seriously mistrust the combat-radius given for the JF-17

So they could carry either a weapons-load, or a buddy-tank to self-refuel some of the less fortunate aircraft.

In all cases, refueling should occur within 1,000 km of the carrier.

*F-15 and Tornado can each get a cambat-radius of nearly 2,000 km, unrefueled and with a bombload. While F-14 has a ferry-range of just shy 3,000 km. And now that I think about it, my plane would be running on fumes by 1,700 km with its current loadout.

For the most part, it would be a good idea to keep the combat-radius down below 500 km.

That said, distance from Bahamas to French New Guinea is 3,500 km. So a refuel-stop will only be utterly necessary for the Super Tomcat and the Super-7 (and any F-18Es), and could easily do-so by using the A-10, Tornado, and Su-35 as tankers while the others travel non-stop.
-The Rafale, can even make it unrefueled.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Retconned largely because I'm pretty sure Dmitry would not have appreciated a twin-footed kick to the chest.

Flechettes, mmm-mm good.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

*reads IC* Oh-oooh... did I just do that?

@MachineSoul

Running into a very short and petite and rather remarkably pissed-off Chinese pilot is up to you.
-Managed to read your IC went very well past that, so threw it into a hider and called it good.

She *is* a good 29 cm shorter and 31 kg lighter than you, after all.

You may now commence shipping.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Pilot Officer First class Kei Feng arrived late, due to being forced to land by going bingo-fuel after missing a tanker in bad weather somewhere just short of the Panama Canal Zone.

self-retconned moment with Dmitry

Since her arrival at Stormcloud, she'd been walking the maze of corridors in a dazed stupor when a rather large Russian bumped into her. It had been a long flight from China, and she did not need to be squished against a bulkhead and called profanities for getting in the way of a much larger person, simply because he was larger.

She lifted herself up on the railing gave him a forceful shove with both aviation-booted feet, "No, YOU watch it! If you walk these halls like a bull in a pottery-barn, expect to be treated as such."

Although she'd missed on quite a bit of sleep, and the briefing, she did manage to get some 'power-napping' in on the ferry-flight over. She ate in the mess hall while reviewing the roster where she was slated to act as a supporting wing-person and for passively suppressing air-defenses.

As such, her plane carried a rather hefty load, a pair of PL-9C air-to air missiles that she carried on her wingtips all the way over from the airbase in China, a KG-300 jamming/targeting pod and a targeting-pod on centerline, a pair of twin-mounts for MAR-1 anti-radiation missiles on the outer, and of all things, a pair of French Matra JL-100 rocket-pods with fuel-stores. It was a very strange assortment of weaponry to issue someone who was only expected to fly backseat-support on yet another ferry-mission.

The plane was already being linked to the catapult as she climbed-in and double-checked her pre-flight checks which were checked before and after landing herself, as well as by several ground-crewmen while they were towing the plane into position; the plane's engines hadn't even enough time to cool-off. the conformal 'saddle-tank' on the spine was still clearly visible and reminiscent of the MiG-21SMT and completely ruining the 'round' cross-section and giving it a 3-leaf clover cross section of an F-4 Phantom fuselage.

Finally, she dialed in the radio to hear the brevity of pilots checking-in.

"Short Fuse, ready for takeoff. Sorry I missed the rodeo earlier."

Mech Designer Competition: Corporate Warfare

What is the limit on total overall initial starting points?

*drops out due to the idea of making 13 super-organized posts involving multiple OCs in a week before another weeklong-flurry followed by termination of RP*

Lots of work, little pay-out.
-I'd rather be that guy in the garage who invented Rollerons.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

It' actually the prototype that lead to the JF-17 in many ways after the J-7S Saber II program got scrapped when US involvement backed-out due to a thing that China refuses to admit ever actually happened.
*Pakistan apparently didn't seem to mind, though.

-Had it gone through, it would've been a Chinese MiG-21 with an F404 turbine, an F-16's intake, and an F-20 Tigershark's radar; plus the option of using either Soviet, or NATO compatible weapons.

The widespread adoption was largely hamstrung because the engine and radar EACH cost more than an entire J-7M. So without outside subsidiaries, it quickly got scrapped as "neat plane, no thanks".
-One of its neatest features was the ability to automatically coordinate drone-strikes.

Meanwhile in that 'other' China...

PS: I was originally aiming for a male pilot, but trying to find "Chinese Fighter Pilot"... I gave up after 10 pages...

Edit: read history... added bio... Yep, China was intense. Also, BTW... I may had been inspired earlier to RP the opening stages of the Sino-invasion of Manchuria from the POV of a light tank crew.