On Friday I plan on using the whole night to teach the cadets about QRA and how it works, then simulate a scramble using our flight sim.
Does anyone have any tips or ideas of how I can make it as realistic as possible - and also is there a programme than can connect to P3D to track aircraft so I can set up an ‘ops room’ type thing?
Hmmm, chasing Bear D’s at quite a low altitude (all legal Your Honour! ) over the North Atlantic & whizzing by a USA carrier group (catching a couple of F14s unaware, boy did they break away when our fighter popped his radar on!), all very boring…
[I have a “10 Bear” Badge = actively involved in interceptions of the same, but the only place to confirm the aircraft identity was to check the serial number on the nose wheel doors…]
You ll need someone to play the part of the Telebrief Scrambler.Theres a very old film on You Tube of a couple of Q scrambles back in my day.One of them features a controller I worked with scrambling an F4. Another one is from Buchan and features another rather pretty young controller from back in my day.
You have to play the 6 hrs sitting around in a crew room on standby, playing uckers & drinking coffee, then the frantic change of status to scramble (meant to escalate to aircraft readiness, then perhaps engines running, then scramble!)… Expecting to head north for a couple of hrs, nope, vector 060, Tango at 100 miles!! A Bear D had meandered around North Cape at low level, toodled past Norway, wandered down the North Sea & popped up east of Flamborough Head!
Or, intercepting 2 Bears crossing the (very busy) North Atlantic airline traffic. Talking to civvie air traffic controller who asked; “Can you please ask the other aircraft to divert their track in order to minimise the inconvenience?” Oh how we laughed!
We ran a QRA sim at the squadron. 2 cadets with typhoons At Coningsby lined up on the tarmac.
1 cadet in another room who gets to pick an aircraft and an airfield from a small list. The goal is to land at an UK airport.
A 4th person acting as host and also with plan g. We had this linked to a projector so we could show other cadets how it worked.
They then act as the fighter controller. We ran it over a night had 8 successful intercepts. Cadets and staff both loved it.