Is it real or not?

There’s something timeless about flying a mission with someone you trust. Not just as a friend, but as a fellow aviator. That’s what I have with Dave — my wingman in countless sorties across Falcon 4.0 and DCS World. In a world of fast clicks and frantic voice chat, Dave and I do things differently. We take our time. We fly like it matters — because in our cockpit bubbles, it does.

We’ve been flying together for years now. From the Cold War realism of Falcon 4.0’s BMS to the hyper-detailed modules of DCS, our missions are planned with care and executed with mutual support. We’re not just in it to score kills or rack up stats. We're in it to fly the mission right — and to make it home alive.

That’s the unspoken part.

When we launch, there’s minimal comms. Yeah, we're friends, but on a mission, we respect the silence of the tactical airspace. A quick “fence in” or “music on” might be all we say. Everything else is understood through our experience together, intuition, and mutual trust. We’ve poured over the same manuals, dissected the same debriefs, and studied the same fighter combat tactics — Shaw, Spick, and everything in between. It shows in the way we approach things. Or certainly try to get as close to the real deal as possible.

There’s immersion, and then there’s believing — and sometimes things get dicey enough that it’s hard to tell the difference anymore. When we’re deep over enemy territory, tanking low on fuel, or threading the needle through a SAM-infested corridor, I know he’s there, playing his role without ego, without panic. It’s not about who gets the kill. It’s about getting through.

We’ve had close calls. We've had victories that made us sit back in silence after the last wheel hit the runway, hands off the controls, just letting the tension bleed out. And those moments — those are why we fly.

It’s easy to forget this is a sim. But that’s the magic of doing it with someone with whom you share a similar approach. We bring our full selves to the mission — the study, the discipline, the mutual respect. I realize this is not how everyone approaches the sim world, and that's fine. You be you. But for us - we fly like it’s real, and in doing so, it becomes something greater than a game.

And I know I’m not coming home alone.

~ Chief