Lowland Tiger Meet 2007 Report

[Joe Kurr]

LLTM Lockon Report

 

Last weekend Virtual Aero's Hangar 23 was the theater for the ninth Lowland Tiger Meet.

In three sections participants battled it out for the European Championship Lockon, IL-2 and Falcon 4.

Because I had little chance to visit the Falcon and IL-2 sections, I'll limit my debrief to the Lockon section.

 

On Thursday afternoon, the door opened for the first participants to build up and have some time for free flight.

We spent the entire afternoon setting up the network and configuring the servers for the competition.

LigerZero also set up our demo cockpit, which only lacked the intrument panel, because Wasserfall wasn't there yet, and would take it with him on Friday.

Build-up was quite slow, as usual, because many people stopped by for a chat, and so it got quite late before everything was working correctly.

 

On Friday morning we arrived early, and had to wait for Ice to open the door

He arrived half an hour late due to heavy traffic, so we decided to invade Viper's camper in the meantime.

At 8:30 the door opened and the newly arrived participants could start building up.

After a few hours of laying cables, helping people set up their computer for the network, and a few minutes of free flight, it was time for the first briefing.

 

The first mission was a mixed SEAD mission, where two teams of 6 had to destroy each other's air defences.

Main target was a command bunker deep in enemy territory.

For this mission we had Su-25s, A-10s and a MiG-29A at our disposal, the latter for escort and to shoot down enemy attack aircraft.

The mission was set up like a short campaign, where the server stayed online between rounds to simulate a real combat environment.

Between rounds the teams could use their gathered intelligence data to plot their new strategy for the next round.

 

After the SEAD mission, where I found out the hard way that an S300 is an enemy to watch out for, we had a chance to regain our breath in the next mission:

 

The Airrace.

 

This was a challenge which was inspired by the Red Bull Airrace, where we had to fly under bridges, through narrow valleys and between gates marked by antennas with an Su-25A.

The race started at Sochi-Adler, and went through the Kaukasus range, along the eastern boundary of the map, over Kerch, along Crimea over Simferopol, Belbek and Sevastopol, to finally land at Khersones airbase. We had two hours to complete this route.

A nice extra challenge in the airrace was that there were no waypoints. We had only the maps we received during the briefing to find our way around. This made flying the track a lot more difficult, especially since there were SAM sites everywhere, which were ofcourse not on the map.

Unfortunately the server got progressively slower during the mission because of the number of SAM radars and all the data it had to export for the competition, so in the end precise flying got nearly impossible.

 

After the airrace it was time for the Nighttime BVR mission, with two new teams.

For this mission, both teams had five pilots and one GCI controller to guide them.

The GCI was an interesting concept I hadn't seen before, and tried my skills as a controller during the first round (which we won!)

Just like a reallife night mission, we had to cope with sleep as well, since the mission started at 8pm, and lasted until 1am.

 

The first mission on Saturday was a daytime BVR. This was basically the same as the last mission from Friday, except we had no GCI controllers this time, so now we had to rely on our own radar, and radio calls from our fellow team members.

To make our lives more miserable up there, the ground at the frontline was littered with medium-range SAMs, which took me out in all three rounds.

 

Next up was a CAS mission, where we had to clear a corridor to an enemy ammunition bunker well beyond the front line.

In this mission I scored my first (and only) kill, of which I'm rather proud since it was also my very first combat mission in an A-10.

I didn't have much time to celebrate my kill, since I was hit by an Osa missile from the same site I was attacking, and lost a wing.

 

When the CAS mission was done, we entered the head to head Dogfight Knockout contest.

This was a guns-only competition, where the first to win two out of three fights was on to the next round.

As our team has never done dogfight practice, none of the Dutch Flanker Display Team pilots survived the first round.

We used the extra spare time this gave us to do a crash course in aerial combat.

 

During the lunch and dinner, there were two online formation displays.

The lunch demo was flown by the White Ravens, with four of their Su-27 Flankers.

During dinner, people could watch the Virtual Blue Eagles perform their show with six P-51C Mustangs in IL-2.

 

This left only one mission for Sunday: the already famous LLTM Airshow.

The airshow started at 12pm, and until that time all participants had time to practice a 5 to 8 minute solo display with their favourite aircraft.

This gave the audience a nice two-hour airshow, with a variety of aircraft performing, including the Su-27, Su-33, MiG-29, F-15C, MiG-29S, Su-25A and A-10.

To mark the end of the competition, all participants still at the event performed a mass take-off and fly-by, before leaving the virtual airspace of Belbek.

 

After the airshow it was time for the closing ceremony, where we had some kind of luxury problem, because there were too many prices.

This 'problem' was easily solved with a lottery, after which the winners of each section were announced.

 

When the closing ceremony was over, it was time to pack up, and go for a drink at Virtual Aero.

Frazer and I took the opportunity to book a flight in the full motion simulator, which earned me another drink :)

At 8:15pm, Scudslaker, Frazer and I were the last to leave.

 

All in all it was yet another perfect event, which went by way too quickly.

I've met a lot of interesting new people, on top of the many ones I learned to know in past events,

and exchanged lots of information and experience.

 

I would like to thank the people from Virtual.Aero and Tobit for the excellent location and supply of food and drinks for the entire weekend, and of course Jan 'Ice' Hilt for organising yet another wonderful event.

Many thanks also to the sponsors Linksys, Saitek, NaturalPoint, Tecpoint24 and the RNLAF 323 Squadron, for their generous offer of prices and making the whole event possible.

 

In a while we will announce the date for the LLTM 2008, which will be the tenth edition of one of the most popular military flightsim events in Europe.

 

To close off this report, here are the results of all competitions flown during the weekend:

 

Skills competition Il-2 FB

 

1. 1.JaVA Erretje - Keben

2. JG-154 Klaus – Dietrich

3. 88.IAP Adam – Andre

 

Dogfight competition Il-2 FB

 

Finale round was between JG-154 (Bruno – Emiel) – 88.IAP (Andre – Adam)

Winner was 8IAP.

 

F4AF

 

1. 49th Black Diamonds “Invaders”

2. Belgian Virtual Tigers

3. Campground 2

 

LockOn competition

 

1. vJaBoG32_Pjotr

2. vJaBoG32_Prinzartus

3. vJaBoG32_Laud

 

You can find some pictures made by vJaBoG32_MightyM, Emmer and me here: http://bweijers.myphotos.cc/gallery/?dir=LLTM2007

 

Also, 33rd_SeBur has written a nice article (in German) about the event, which can be found here: http://www.lan4friends.de/

[Reaper-6]

Congrats

 

vJaBoG32_Pjotr

vJaBoG32_Prinzartus

vJaBoG32_Laud

 

Thanks for the Report Joe

[Frazer]

This report of the LLTM was on the German TV, check links here: http://www.buddy-spike.de/vb/showthread.php?t=2650

[Scudslaker]

hey Joe, hey Frazer, hey the other tigers,

 

what a nice report!) enjoyed to read and to watch aswell..well i hope next year we will see more participants from LockOn section..it is really awsome to meet you guys in real!)

Those who couldn t visit us in Ahaus, have absolutely missed one really great event in this year..nice atmosphere, interesting people and an combining spirit, you can call tigerspirit...wow

to be honest i did not had the time to fly much these days, but the nice pilots and discussions and what the brought with to this competition was really nice pleasure...to many impressions i still have to sort..

[Frazer]

Hello all,

 

Uploaded my pictures to the White Ravens FTP, enjoy

 

ftp://217.150.200.62/

 

Greetings,

WR=211=Frazer

[Scudslaker]

many thx for that !!! i think really nice quality pictures

good job:thumbup:

[Woodstock]

LLTM 2007 LockOn Section Movie

 

33rd_SeBur has put together a nice movie about the weekend:

 

Movie: http://www.lan4friends.de/retrospection.rar

Download Mirror: http://www.virtual-jabog32.de/index.php?section=downloads&subcat=28&file=727&lang=en

 

LLTM 2007 Homepage: http://www.lowlandtigermeet.com/2007/index.php?lang=en

 

SeBur´s Homepage: http://www.lan4friends.de/

 

Check what you have been missing out on and see you all next year on LLTM X!

[Groove]

UNfortunately i couldnt attend this year because of holiday. But i will try to participate next year ! Nice report and pix btw :D

[VMFA-Blaze]

This is really nicely done... It's well organized and seems like it's a lot of fun to attend...

 

I only wish that we had something this cool here in the States, but I really don't think that it would have that much support...

 

And if it was put together here, it would most likely be out West somewhere..

 

So for me it would extremely difficult to get to.. If I had to travel to get there I personally would prefer to go the this one anyway...

 

 

~S~

 

 

Blaze

[Groove]

Blaze, just buy a flight ticket and come over next year ! :D