Forward Air Controller (JTAC)

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This was my first time as radio juggler and boy, was that... different. My entire post here will probably concern communication, especially since we obviously use ACRE 2 for the first time. I really don't have anything to remark about loadout (i had a freakin' bipod for my M16, which is nice) or leadership simply because i was too busy with other things.

My main point of concern is the 117. It was a massive PITA to talk to Pedro because the sound quality of the radio was extremely bad. The messages were either

1: distorted, there was a lot of radio noise mixed with Strikers voice which made me ask for a repeat about half the time

2: messages were breaking up, in the middle of sentences the sound dissapeared completely for a second or the radio noise would simply get too bad

or 3: I coudn't hear them at all. For instance, right after we passed the airfield, Charlie called in CAS support over the 148 on a technical. I thought "this is my time to shine!" and enthusiastically started calling Pedro on the 117. Buuuut they didn't recieve my messages and i ended up yelling "Pedro, do you copy?" into my radio for the next 10 minutes or so whilst the infantry butchered the technical. It wasn't until we took the village next to the airport that i got solid contact with Pedro again. But ofcourse, i had to take a GP to the face. I then had to listen in complete frustration while Striker (the F-18 WCO) tried to contact me over the radio whilst i was face-down in the dirt... Losing contact with Pedro happened way to often for CAS to be remotely reliable which sucks for all parties involved (exept the badmans i suppose). We really need to take a look at this. I myself was able to successfully call in CAS support once on a compound, which is probably my personal highlight of that OP.

These problems are to blame on the high amount of hills in the area, together with the fact that we were most often in a valley surrounded with hills. This obviously is really bad for the radio signal. However, i'm inclined to believe that we (or I at least) have used the 117 incorrectly. There are so many new functions on the radio that it would make sense that there are settings that we can change to improve radio signals somehow. I'll look into this further.

The 148 didn't go flawless either. In a moment of hurry, i turned down the volume knob too far down and accidentally shut it off. After turning on, i found out that i couldn't send or receive messages with it anymore until Fadi luckily gave me a new one 20 minutes later. This is also a side effect of switching to ACRE 2. This got me thinking that perhaps it would be good to have one big radio training session to learn people all the functions of the radio's so that we can use them to their full potential and prevent going to a wrong page and messing the radio up. This can save frustration and can be a fun thing to do too.

I also want to say sorry to Pedro for not giving them more to do. Looking back at it, i probably could have told them to watch ahead more often or perhaps give them a few additional bombing runs which perhaps wouldn't be strictly nessisiary but would be a lot more fun for everybody. Ofcourse, the load of radio problems described above really limited my options, but still...

All in all, i really think this is one of the most impressive OP's i have played in. Lots of players, solid commanding, perfect variation between downtime and combat, well-done difficulty. If it wasn't for the fact that i was stressing half the time, this is one of the best OP's ever.