This is the Mosquito Meeting '01 online reportage that was updated on regular basis during the convention.

Mosquito Meeting '01 is the Nordic Euro Convention for online flight sim fans. The traditional 7th annual Mosquito Meeting is arranged by Virtuaalilentäjät - Virtual Pilots registered society and it is the oldest existing WarBirds convention, however all WW2 online flight simulator fans are welcome. The MM01 invitation page is archived here.

WarBirds Head2Head - Finnish WB 109 G-6 Championships 2001: Rules were to fly a Bf 109 G-6 with full 100% fuel load and merge at 3km altitude, after that guns hot. First round of the competition ladder put 18 hot shot pilots from WarBirds, Aces High and CFS2 communities against each other. As you can imagine - some fights were short and vicious, some unlucky, some dragged on and pilots were sweating, with large crowds gathering behind the guys. Final round - Korva vs Lart. All heil LART - the 109 G-6 champion of 2001! Lart won himself a Thrustmaster Afterburner joystick set, kindly sponsored by Thrustmaster/Guillemot and World War II Online t-shirt.

In addition, those six leftover pilots who didn't fit to the actual WB 109 G-6 ladder arranged their own alternative WB Gustav ladder using the same rules. This alternative ladder was dominated by COSMO, who has beaten the ladders many, many times in the Finnish cons before. Cosmo is the H2H winner in 2, maybe 3 of the Finnish cons. One day we might send him abroad to kick some foreign con ass!

Aces High Head2Head - Finnish AH 109 G-6 Championships 2001: Rules were to fly the 109 G-2, with 100% fuel and no wing cannons. The semifinal saw two AH pilots against two WB pilots. Two LeLv 34 pilots against to VLeLv Icebreakers pilots. Final round saw Korva (ICE) against Camo (LeLv 34). Korva ruled in the WarBirds H2H as well, almost winning that trophy and now people were getting very excited - could Korva beat Camo in his own game? The fight was long, long one and the win seemed to be very close shave. When Korva's 109 crashed to mountain side missing its rear control surfaces Camo was as well losing oil from engine damage... But Camo did it, he won. All heil Camo the master of 109 G-2! Camo won himself a Thrustmaster Afterburner joystick set, kindly sponsored by Thrustmaster/Guillemot and World War II Online t-shirt.

And Korva, who scored in such excellent way, coming 2nd in both WarBirds and Aces High duels, got a top pick as well with the prizes. He came away with one World War II Online t-shirt, Eurofighter Typhoon flight simulator (sponsored by Gamedog Oy) and Keisarin Uudet Kuviot game.

Two rounds of darts were organized during Friday and Saturday (evenings and nights). Rules were to throw 5 darts and you had 4 tries. Best result of the 4 tries was counted. The first round was played about 00:30 in the middle of the night, and many complained that you didn't see the darts flying, some not even the dartboard itself. You heard from the hit sound if you hit the target or the building wall. Iku was the definite highlight - 4x5 darts later his best result was 3 points, and the darts had to be collected from all around the wall. FlakPanzer does the job.

The second round of darts was played in daylight and Iku surprised everybody totally! Best throwers of first round were not allowed to Phase II, so the loosers would have a chance too. The winners won themselves World War II Online t-shirts and a free computer game, Iku selecting copy of World War II Online. Cahill's selection wasn't unfortunately marked up. Yet another rounds of darts were organized for the squadrons. Crashers Club average 32 points, misc/no squad average 30 points and Icebreakers average was 28 points.

Also most kilometers travelled was rewarded for his efforts. The award went to Rum / JG77, who had travelled 20 hours in train from his home join the convention. Rum got a World War II Online t-shirt for being a tough guy with good endurance. May you never ditch, Rum!

The Saturday saw also some RL flying action and a ditch to a field. Our troops rushed to the no man's land and the pilot was miraculously rescued.

There was a civil owned (former FAF) Gnat at one of the plane halls at Räyskälä... Some tuning on the chasis may still be required before the flight certification.

Mosquito Meeting network Sonera installed the frame relay in good time before the meeting. Connection quality was *the best ever* experienced in Mosquito Meetings - WB's pingtest result time was typically 180-200ms, and line was rock solid through the whole meeting. WAN: Sonera Frame Relay, 256kbps (guaranteed bandwidth) LAN: C-class NATed network and 10Mbps switch as a backbone, most of the computers connected straight into the switch, rest into hubs connected to the switch 256kbps line capacity was sufficient to cover all the computers communication needs - and there were at least 25 of them. Most likely the line was really well used, but still not at the saturation point. 9600bps per computer seems to be a good rule of a thumb for meetings. Soneras support was exceptionally professional, the line was installed in time, worked like a charm and we were kept well informed of the situation all the time.

The online battle finally ceased for about two hours between 06:00am and 08:00am. Are we getting old? Anyway, the second convention morning opened with blue sky and red eyes and by 10:00am most con goers were actively fighting the virtual skies of WarBirds, Aces High and World War 2 Online. In addition, some of the pilots headed for the airport for a few sorties on RL planes.

During the Saturday we also had some time for a game of Crud.

Icebreakers squadron flew the first official squadron mission in World War II Online. The squadron considers moving to WW2O, though the move must wait until the game works better online. Icebreakers took Ju-87 Stukas and grouped to a beautiful formation ready to deliver awe to allied ground forces. "Fire to the balls and let the blood spill" was the battlecry. "I has visual to target area." "Enemy ack, pushing though and giving him 500 kg greetings." "Own shrapnel hit me, thats why this looks dizzy." "There are the enemy tanks. Tanks in the woods, friendlies." Stubit finds enemy, pulls up and begins vertical dive. Infantry shooting - HIT - friendlies checking the wreck. Mission summary: some losses, much shouting, many people watching behind their backs and enjoying the show.

Vuosikokous - Annual meeting The first annual meeting of the Virtuaalipilotit r.y. Virtual Pilots registered society was held in the evening. The society now has a new administration and it will keep on rocking the worls of the virtual skies. More details of the society and new administration will be available at the virtualpilots.general newsgroup.

Dining in Friday. The fols were ushered outside and gathered for the food attack in the aerodrome restaurant. Warm food was served daily in the restaurant, 15 minutes walk away. But even the short walk was too much for some participants, and they packed into Oh-eni's small pickup. The little car finally had 10 guys sitting in each other's lap or handing their arses in other's faces. Of course you couldn't keep window open so the heat levels just jumped up and everybody was soon sweating like little pigs. The last bit of the route was walked and guys grouped together outside the restaurant, waiting for the attack order.

Around midnight the first round of darts competition was organized. There was several interesting challenges for the participants. First of all, the darts table was located interestingly between couple small and large windows. Second, participants were grouped in big chaotic group where loud debates about this and that included "ok, who is next" yells. And it was somewhat dark - you didnt see your darts flying, and knew only from the sound whether you hit the darts board or not. Rum surprised himself and others making great 29 points with his first throw out of four, and then saying "I suck in this" and leaving. His score was unbeaten for a long time.

At 13:00 the official program read "Glider flying", so the volunteering test pilots headed to the airfield less than 1km away. We had 3 gliders and trainers reserved for us for the whole afternoon. For the next 3 hours our pilots rose to the cockpits and into the blue skies. It was hard the get the guys out of the cockpit after landing. Out of the 39 participants 18 flew gliders. Some reserved more flight for the next day. Maybe the flight clubs will get some new members, who will start working towards their own glider pilot's license.

We had also a reconnaissance plane that Cosmo succesfully presented to the con goers. Until the tree jumped out of nowhere and captured the innocent kite. We had to activate all the ack's available in the area end in the and otto was able to free the plane from the hospitality of the tree. One evil Aces High fellow videotaped the ack action and commented it as "WarBirds field defence practise".

Thanks to Oleg Maddog we had permission to demonstrate IL-2 Sturmovik simulator in the convention. Four participants were betatesters and we had Oleg's and Plan 1's blessing to show the sim in development. IL-2 was shown as 4 pl online combat, as single demos and through the video projector.

As the last pilots went to bed, the early birds woke up and headed for breakfast. A few pilots took a morning swim in the lake as well. The last pilots woke up as the Finnish Airforce BAE Hawk Mk51 gave us a fly by wake up call precicely at 10:00am as agreed. What a service! After waking up, they headed back to bed, though. The computers lit up as the pilots resumed their normal online flight duties.

We also had a video projector and some WW2 films and gun camera shots to keep up the spirits. Comments flew as the pilots recognized familiar planes and pilots on the films.

The first day took us a lot of beer, sauna, and offline games as our traditional netmaster and sysop from Oulu had to spend his time on travelling. With a lot of new WW2 simulations having popped up, the players were eagerly showing the other players their newest games. Warbirds 2&3, World War 2 Online and Aces High were on almost every monitor. Definately the most anticipated WW2 sim at the moment, Maddox Games' IL-2 Sturmovik was shown as well. More than a few smiles were seen on the faces of the test pilots. As the network finally started working around 3am (Friday), the pilots rushed into the online arenas. The first field captures of Mosquito Meeting '01 were achieved only minutes after getting online. The IL-2 beta saw continuous online testing as well!

After the sauna, we gathered around the barbeque place and enjoyed some A-class whole meat with mustard. The conversation naturally turned to WW2 aviation, Pentti "Buffalo" Kurkinen enlightening the crowd with the Bf 109 G model variants and their differences. The upcoming days are likely to see fearsome debates on different ammunition characteristics and gun effects.

After a hard day of travelling, the exhausted virtual pilots refreshed themselves. In between consuming their beverages, they headed to the sauna beside the lake. The sauna was hot as usual, not to mention the shower room which reminded more like a turkish steam bath. Grendel had been in charge of heating up the 500 liter water heater and had really put his effort to the job. The result was a huge barrel of boiling water, which steamed up the whole sauna building. Actually, it was hotter in the shower room than in the sauna. As the pilots climbed to the sauna seats, the hot and humid air was soon filled with the "beautiful" sound of grown men singing almost politically correct student songs. When the athmospere got too hot and loud, a refreshing dip in the lake felt more than good.