Posted By: BeachAV8R
EECH Training Mission Report #1 - 08/09/05 10:05 PM
Welcome to EECH training. Our first training mission will start off with the basics of flying and navigating in EECH. Though we will be using the RAH-66 Comanche for this training scenario many of the procedures and techniques cross all of the possible flyable platforms in EECH.
The first thing we need to do is look at our mission requirements. For this training mission we will be concentrating on flying and navigation with the mission objective being a recon of a suspected enemy position. The briefing screen gives us all the pertinent details regarding the assigned mission.
The map screen is extremely important for planning purposes. It is better to plan ahead while you are still safely on the ground instead of devising a plan while you are trying to fly, navigate and fight.
The next thing we need to do is load our helicopter. The Comanche was designed for stealth so it carries much of its payload in an internal bay to reduce its radar reflectivity. It is possible to carry external weapons loads which will be mounted on stub wings on the side of the fuselage. This will increase your radar reflectivity however, so for scout and recon missions where engaging the enemy isn’t the primary objective it may be wiser to leave the stub wings and weapons behind. Our loadout for today’s mission will be 4 AGM-114L Hellfire (Laser) missiles and 4 AIM-92 Stinger missiles along with a full cannon load and full fuel.
Once you have decided on the loadout it is time to look at the mission map to determine the best flight path to and from the target area. Keep in mind that EECH simulates the “fog of war”, so areas on the map that are shaded offer little in the way of information about the enemy. Flights into the shaded areas by your own and other allied flights will start filling in the blanks as the campaign progresses. You can see that the default waypoint placement for the mission leaves a lot to be desired, with the flight path not taking into account known site SAM sites and other enemy troop concentrations.
You can add, delete and drag waypoints wherever you wish on the map both during the planning stage and during flight, which is a very convenient feature for changing planes “on the fly”. Here I’ve moved the waypoints to avoid the major concentration of enemy troops around the major airbase. The single SAM threat still on the flight path I plan to avoid by flying low to waypoint ‘C’ then transitioning into the river and arcing around the site to the west. I could take a further detour out to the east (around the major lake) but that would also push me out into unknown territory, so perhaps the devil you know is better.
With the preflight planning completed, it is time to step into the aircraft. The RAH-66 Comanche with the special training skin by Polak.
Climbing into the cockpit we can fly from either the front or the back. Our flight instructor will be sitting in the rear cockpit today, so we’ll concentrate on flying from the front seat today. The first things we see are the annunciators on the eyebrow panel. These lights tell you what systems are operating and the status of other systems. Right now we have the rotor brake engaged and the wheel brakes on. On the right side we see a low RPM annunciator and two other lights that indicate that we have our Aircraft Survivability Equipment (ASE) and Counter-Measures (CM) on the automatic setting. With the ASE set on AUTO the avionics will detect radar threats and launches and automatically deploy countermeasures in the form of active jamming, chaff and flares. Other annunciators we will address later.
Cont.