Don't play online? You aren't gonna learn BMS - Ever!

The Falcon Online TvT is over, and I honestly feel like it was "too soon," and I wish it had gone on a lot longer. I also understand why it ended and think Red did a fantastic job. With the deck stacked against us we still made it happen and at the end we became a damn problem for the blue. 

During the TvT I learned a lot about the sim. It was a crash course in everything, and it was literally sink or swim. I am fortunate that I spent a lot of time before the TvT learning the plane, because after that it was like drinking from a firehouse. 

It got me thinking about a subject that is often spoken about in the BMS community, Get Your Ass To Fly. I watched this video before agreeing to go to my first UOAF event. Since then, it's been a blur of flying with people worldwide who have one thing in common: train enthusiasm for the F-16. It feels pretty cool finding so many people who just wanna blow up stuff with the homies. 


I guess this is my version of Get Your Ass To Fly. The video version has been done, and some more have been done. I have even written about this before, but it bears repeating. If you are considering playing Falcon BMS online with others, do it. Stop waiting till you are an expert in the jet because you never will be. THAT my friend, is okay.

Consider this for me, please. A real fighter pilot will spend years living, breathing, eating, sleeping, and shitting this. Everything they do is because of years of focus, determination, and millions of dollars of training. The bar for entry is high, and the washout rate is even higher. 

They also didn't do this by reading manuals at home in their spare time. Most of us do not have entire cockpits in our houses or access to one we can train with routinely. We make do with what we have because our passion is about all we have in common with real fighter pilots. 

We haven't had an instructor with us for days, weeks, months, and years before flying the jet. However, we do have people online who have been where we have been. They know and understand the struggle. They also endured it, and their passion and enjoyment of the sim drive us to do better. These people also offer guidance, answer questions, and help you in any way they can. 

You can get all of that and never go online. What you miss by not going online is seeing how people who know the sim play the game. Seeing that is the best educator you can possibly have. Learning the fundamentals of how the buttons work in the cockpit is on you, but that's just if you are an overachiever. 

Most of the time I have spent online playing Falcon BMS, I have only really needed to focus on weapons, radios, navigation, and formation flying. I don't have to frag packages, follow waypoints, or worry about times on target. I don't have to worry about being caught off guard because I am with someone else who has done this before. 

All I have to do is focus on the jet and follow Lead. If I have a question, I ask. If I make a mistake and own it, it pays off. When you go up and only get a few kills, and the flight lead gets 40+ every sortie, you ask questions and follow their example. The next thing you know, you get medals, promotions, and people start asking you questions. 

Suddenly, you are like, what the hell? This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here? I am not confident enough to give much advice, but I can field simple questions that were alien concepts to me before. 

You don't get that experience RTFM. You get that experience getting your ass to fly. 

It is simple enough to do. Just join ANY Falcon BMS community Discord and ask to fly with them. People from all over this planet will swarm you with a desire to help you learn ANYTHING you want about this sim. 

The best part is that none of them are experts. Many people I am learning from are also fairly new to the sim. We learn from each other and push each other. One of us will learn something cool or try something different, and the next thing we know, we are lob-tossing JDAMs in the dark at MFs like it's cool. 

Because it is cool. 

If you are reading this, you want to play online with others, but have not. Join our Discord. It's smaller and full of like-minded folks who are honestly just like you. They, too, have had weird anxiety about playing online with people because, on the outside, it looks like everyone is an expert. 

They aren't. It just feels like it because you haven't gotten your ass to fly. You haven't seen all the other people suck as much as you do at the sim. You only see the ones that look good on youtube because its social media, no one is showing you the process. 

They just show you the finished product. We want to see the fat before and the shredded after. We don't want to see that awkward phase that people go through between the finished product. At least that is how social media is engineered. So, of course, you think everyone in BMS is an expert.

They aren't. They just have more experience than you. Learn from their experience and you can't learn it from the fucking sidelines. Put on a helmet and get in there. 

Good game! I'll see you in the shower...err Get your ass to fly!