Hello

[Novy]

Hi there,

You can call me Novy, I'm from Hungary but I live in the UK. I'm 25 and currently doing my PhD in physics.

Military flight sims were a big part of my life as a kid already, I played the hell out of Wings over Europe with my crappy, probably 10 pounds/euros worth joystick. It was a very simple game, but because of that also fit for my age. Then one day in the game store I saw a CD box that immediately captivated me. It was Lock On: Modern Air Combat, Eagle Dynamics' simulator before DCS. I dismissed my original idea of buying 3 games from the "choose any 3 for x amount" section and even spent a little extra than I planned to get just this game. I can't remember the exact year, but I believe it must have been a few years before DCS came out. Lock On was a large step up for me in terms of simulation details, too large in fact. I gave up on trying to fly any sort of missions, because I kept being shot down. The game had a huge influence on me nonetheless, and throughout my teenage years I kept coming back to it, mostly just putting on airshows for myself. Sometimes I would put on cool music and just fly low level and do cool manoeuvres.

I remember I did see something about DCS sometime after it came out, but I was too distracted by other things at the time and I also knew my HOTAS would need an upgrade so I just ignored it. Until my uni years that is. The urge to fly virtually came back and I finally made the google search thinking "what was that mega realistic flight milsim again?". Of course, I found DCS pretty quickly and looking stuff up about it I became confident that I want it in my life. With that, I made the big step. I ordered the Logitech X52 Pro HOTAS, Delanclip headtrackers and purchased the F/A-18 - Supercarrier bundle, which was on sale at the time with the F18 still not out from Early Acces.

It has been a little over 3 years since. After playing DCS on a laptop screen for like 2 years I finally have a large monitor and my rig has also seen a huge upgrade. I still use the same HOTAS, but to be fair I have no major complaints about it, it does the job (but maybe I just never tried a high-end HOTAS). Now, here's the thing tho. I've only ever played Single Player. I've played through almost all campaigns there are for the F18 and A10C, multiple times over some of them, but I never joined a Multi Player Server. The biggest reason for this, is that the element of DCS I enjoy is getting immersed, playing out the realistic details and flying realistic scenarios. I get this from amazing campaigns in SP, but in MP I would need to join an RP community and commit to schedule etc. This seemed to me a daunting step which I didn't feel like I could really take. But the idea of RP-ing with real people rather than the quite stupid AI ingame, and the step up in fun it would provide, has always been in the back of my mind.

Now, I finally feel ready to make the step and commitments required. I'm looking to fly the F18 and A10C with others. I also own the AH64, but I gave up on learning to fly that damn thing, I just feel like rudder pedals are a must for it and it's too difficult to fly realistically with twisty joysticks. I'm open to learn the CPG seat however if I find a pilot who's willing to take me.

[Duke]

Hey, Rafiar now uses discord for 99.99% of comms, see link below

https://discord.gg/tE2NyDNH