Menkijärvi 2nd - 5th July 1998
Mosquito Meeting '98
Online Reportage

Day 4 | Day 3 | Day 2 | Day 1 | Construction | Network | Sponsors

Mosquito Meeting '98 is now over! We all had a swell and unforgettable time and you can see a small portion of the program and events in the form of pictures and text in this page.

For information about the daily program please check out the MM98 invitation page program section. And yes, there were plenty of mosquitoes around...

Some of the Mosquito Meeting '98 participants have compiled their own MM98 pages, please see the Crasher's Club MM98 page. Also, many of you who were not there sent us lucky ones warm and welcome greetings (and flames) by email, thx for that too!

We are already working on the Mosquito Meeting '99, you will find more information about MM99 in the Icebreakers home pages some time in early 1999. We hope to be seeing you all in MM99 too.

Day 4 - Sunday 5th July 1998

The last day of the convention was basically hectic packing. Some of us were awake all night and had good time to some final operations in the online arena, however most of the attendees spent the morning sleeping. As a final climax for an aerofilled and longish weekend most of us pointer their noses to the Tikkakoski Air Museum. The museum is famous for its good collection of Finnish WW2 planes and we spent a fair amount of time around the good old Gustav.

Day 3 - Saturday 4th July 1998

Bex adding the top secret ingredients to the traditional Flakpanzer Oil, officially known as "Der Alte Flakpanzer". Also known as "tar sludge". A mere whiff of this stuff will knock you off your feet, and if you take a close look at the photo you can imagine why.

Saturday opened up cloudy but it did not bother the wb freeks fighting in the virtual skyes all night long. A disaster struck the convention during the long hours of last night and we had to send out a patrol of highly skilled volunteers to buy more Flackpanzeroil ingredients. We fully trust on the capabilities of the under cover unit to save the event from further misery. The disaster brought out something good too and a new drink called "Spiral Climb" was introduced with great success!

Hexa (1st. Lieutenant Aki Heikkinen) of Icebreakers didn't have the time to attend the con... in a manner of speaking. He did do a few modest flybys over the Menkijärvi airfield in his F-18C Hornet though. If you ever need a Hornet flyby in your wedding party or so, just call 1-800-HEXA.

Today's programme offers lot's of action for the Icebreakers and their guests. We started a H2H ladder on Friday afternoon and will carry on on Saturday in semi-finals with randomly chosen aircraft. The challenge will reach its climax when the winners of the penultimate round face each other in the ultimate battle of the aces flying the Bf 109-G6 'Gustav' fighter in the final. In the end, the -=ICE=- jr Cosmo won the competiotion and fine prices. As Cosmo is starting his national service right after the MM98 we gifted him with a colouring book and a Bf109G6 model.

Neck getting his last rites before flying a Taifun (Typhoon) in the tender care of Seppo Lamminpää. Neck landed that sucker two times and is still walking. Tells something about the value of experience gained through WB flying.

We will also have more duelling for those willing to risk their butts being kicked in a paintball match. There'll be no mercy for the opposing side - only paint, blood, sweat and tears (of laughter). After several fites and exotic tactics the third was Lart, second StuBit and winner Korva. Congrats to all attendees!

Getting a hang of a real flight yoke On Saturday those who wanted got a chance to try what a real flight yoke feels like. We dragged our sorry feet to the nearby Menkijärvi airfield, which was first set up as an auxiliary airfield for the FAF in 1937. Jyty acted as our liaison officer and stroke a deal with a pilot who was foolhardy enough to take us into the air. The aircraft represented 1960's French aviation technology and it could fit three standard weight (> 220 lb) first officers from the Crashers' Club. Us virtual pilots with thousands of flight hours needed only short instructions and we ready to roll. Throttle fully open, hand on the yoke, feet on the pedals and hey, this doesn't really feel like your standard CH issue - more like your wrist-breaking Thrustmaster equipment. And where the hell is the trigger???? Lipfert was the first to grab the controls with Oiva and OPJ scared stiff on the back seat - getting stiffer as Lifpert steepened the climb considerably. The fellows in the back feared that we'd start sliding backwards tail first back to the runway. However, when the plane had been trimmed for level flight, banking and turning showed that Lipfert was really on old hand - at least he thought so. A few times round the landing pattern at the airfield, then into the final and for landing with a little help from the plane's real captain. Down on the ground we played Musical Chairs and the last one ended up in the first officer's seat in the front ready to take the controls. This was only fair considering that the passengers were scared shitless while the one having the controls got an overwhelming feeling of self confidence and 'Trust me, I know what I'm doing'. Back on the ground after the last landing we got into a heated discussion about the differences we found in the 200-hp light aircraft and the old WWII fighters modelled in Warbirds. The rocking of the plane in the wind and the foul smelling fumes from the plane's exhaust pipes should definitely be included in the next release.

Satruday will offer more instruction in the fine art of aerial combat. Capt. Majapuro will lecture on section tactics as the Icebreakers seem to lack a skill or two in that particular area. Someone actually suggested that the Icebreakers bear more resemblance to a rowdy bunch of (teenage?) punks than a fighting virtual squadron. There's no better place to put the advice into practice than a barracks full of virtual pilots committed to serve their purple country and who have sworn allegiance to the purple flag.

Commander Shaw gave us a perspective of how Warbirds (TM) got started by taking a look the history and development of air combat. Mouse is working ion a book on the subject and we had a good insight on the amount of information and knowledge he needs to gather and put together for the presentation.

Before the day is over we'll also fly the annual Mosquito Meeting joint mission. The details of the mission will not be disclosed to the pilots before T-30 to avoid any possible leaks of information (that is, the CO has no clue what the mission will actually be).

Day 2 - Friday 3rd July 1998

FAF Lieutenant Jyri Ruokonen (Jyty) and Stubit thought that the 40 klick trip from Kauhava AFB to Menkijärvi was just too much to travel by car. Or maybe they were just too wasted to drive a car judging by the photo...

Friday was early wake up for those that had time to go to sleep. Half of the team headed for Kauhava Airbase to test the FAF simulators. They were good... Hexa, one of the Icebreakers that could not attend the con amused those that were left behind to the camp by shooting his F-18C afterburners over the convention.

Commander Shaw pointing out the finer points of energy fighting. Watch out tonight: we have been trained by the best.

The CO Lark finding out the hard way that you actually need women for two things: sewing official Icebreakers (TM) patches to your shirt and... well. You guess the rest.

After a heavy duty lunch Commander Shaw gave a hour presentation on basic combat manouvering. The lesson launched the MM98 theme on wingman tactic theory lessons and Capt. Majapuro (Jamo VLeLv Icebreakers) continued with his lesson on wingman tactics.

We started today also the official MM98 competitions, among the toughest ones was the H2H duel amongs the participants aiming for the high value prices such as 100,- USD iMOL gift certificate. The winner of the duel is to be solved tomorrow...

Day 1 - Thursday 2nd July 1998

The first day of the con opened with a blue sky and hot weather. The con attendees started gathering during the midday and after several succesfull hardware additions we finally got the MM98 accounts active. We also have a priviledge to host the living legend Mr Bob "Mouse" Shaw in MM98. In the end, the sauna is hot and tents high fly...

Construction camp

The staab gathered at MM98 site early to tune the networking environment as well as to test the validity of the liquid coolers. The story is true, there are plenty of mosquitoes! Anyway, all the setting up work was finished in a record braking few hours and the convention is fully geared up to receive attendees...

MM98 Network Description:

Our small network of WarBirds workstations is connected together with traditional thin ethernet, and we have also a hub for those who have only twisted pair connectors.

Our gateway to internet is a old 486/66 running Redhat Linux 2.0.34, equipped with one ethernet card and two passive ISDN cards, providing us maximum of 256kbps of bandwidth. When we don´t need the full bandwidth, we can drop channels down on-the-fly, without causing any disturbance to players. Even though Linux is doing masquerade to ensure that we need only one "real" IP-address from our ISP, that 486/66 is running at about 5% cpu load.

Our highly honorable sponsors:

-= Finnish Airforce =-