Our Approach
Our approach is generally somewhere near the glideslope, or at least somewhere near a carrier, though not always ours.
We're an internet airplane guild, also known as a virtual squadron. We fly in DCS World, and generally fly anything we feel like flying at that particular time. We're usually found in the VMFA-169 supported Operation Enduring Odyssey server, where we'll be in anything from F/A-18's to AH-64s's depending on what needs doing.
Primarily, we're laid back. We play other games together, we chat about anything and everything, and we try to help each other out, ranging from learning DCS modules to career advice. We're a wide range of folk - active military, students, sales, technology. Mostly, we're all just the bestest friends <3
Joining the Honeybadgers
All of our pilots are held to the same exacting standards, though they're not neccessarily high standards. To join, first and foremost we have to like you. That's going to simply involve hanging around in Discord, voice chat, and flying some time in DCS with us. From a technical perspective, if you can shoot a missile and bomb a thing and land then you're probably good.
While we're a carrier-oriented squadron, we recognize that some of you weirdos out there don't enjoy carrier ops. However, we are an accepting group, and theres space for everyone whether you like shore-based jets, helicopters, or Redfor aircraft. Other than scheduled ops and rare training sessions, attendance for which is encouraged but never required, we fly on the PvE server hosted by the awesome folk over at VMFA-169. We're not going to grade you or hold you accountable to being online at certain times, but as with anything, you'll get out what you put in. We're all dating, married, employed, students, busy with actual real-life things. We're not a job, we're not a commitment, but we'd like to hang out with you and get to know you.
Our recruiting process is as follows:
- join our Discord
- hang out, play games, make friends
- be active in text channels and join voice channels to chat
- this is all about getting to know you as a person - someone will end up suggesting we give you tags
- we have a 14 day timer against when you joined the Discord to filter out people who are super active for a few days then disappear forever without even leaving a note
- if a few people agree, we give you tags - nothing changes, you just have numbers now and access to a few more channels.
After that, you're free to join up with any of our squadrons - as many as you wish - and take advantage of as much training and as many ops as you wish.
Oh, and don't be a dick. Big requirement.
Meet the Team
400 - Osiris
Commander Air Group
Our illustrious leader, Osiris can be found playing Halo, Hearts of Iron, or Escape from Tarkov. When he's not ignoring DCS, he's playing Zeus in ARMA, luring us into instant and overwhelming ambushes while claiming to have "not meant it".
401 - Lasher
Commanding Officer
Our resident F-16 expert, he is - at this very moment - attempting to learn how to fly the JF-17, which he described as "The Walmart True Value version of an F-16". His first hostile act in the jet was shooting down 8Gigs, which is the correct way to employ any weapons platform
402 - Alchemy
Executive Officer
Alchemy claims to play DCS and flight sims, often even knowing the answers to questions posed by members, but ultimately he does paperwork, looks after the website, and generally annoys the fuck out of everyone
403 - Jackson
Every group needs a drunken British squaddie, and Jackson fills this role with commitment and enthusiasm. At least, he fills the first part of it with commitment and enthusiasm - the second part is usually complaining about weather or weapons or equipment.
404 - Not Found
405 - Bingo
He's one of our resident artist, responsible for the VFA-69 Hornet skins and our amazing merchandise. He's also somewhat prevalent in the patch design community. No-one's ever really sure where he is, but we like it when he checks in to say hi.
406 - A. Stevens
Stevens can usually be found somewhere in the Norvinsk region of Russia, raiding the local IDEA store or taking a stroll along the shoreline. When he's not out gathering supplies, he's in a Hornet, earning his callsign by trying to land on the carrier. Ask him about it.
407 - SpicyMiG
Noun - /'spɑɪ·si mɪɡ/
A provincial Canadian sex act involving a welding torch and a condom full of jalapeño peppers.
408 - Phil
Another of our British crew, Phil is arguably one of the more mature members of our group. He enjoys warbirds, jetbirds, whirlybirds, probably actual birds. He also used to work at Games Workshop, meaning he's never spoken to a girlybird.
409 - DarkFlare
Our local friendly drunken pilot - good with the A-10C, good with the F/A-18C, and has a Jaguar. We assume the car, though more power to him if he has a fighter jet at home.
410 - SchmidtStorm
WIP
411 - The_Robo
Robo is an FC for TEST and enjoys living in wormholes. Apparently, being on the wrong side of a pretend war in a different game of an entirely different genre isn't a good enough reason to ban him. Thankfully, he's not the worst pilot in the world. He's still a dirty pubbie :(
412 - Yaeger
413 - W I L D B O Y Z
One of our friendly local Brits,
Mr. B O Y Z represents half of the legendary duo known as The Royal Airplane Force, the team who would have won the Top Gun tournament were it not for the ground.
414 - JJnine
JJ is our acting OPCOM while Jackson works on his tan in the middle east. JJ is also legit a great GCI and has led VFA-69 pilots to great victories after having been shot down because he can't use Push To Talk properly.
415 - Solid
Janitor, USS Ron Paul, flies the F-15. For some reason he's always around on Discord complaining about how his uncle married his daughter and now he's lost Prussia. We're not sure if this is Crusader Kings 4 or if it's just a German thing.
416 - Schlumpy
He claims to be British, goes so far as to say he lives in the south and can even describe where in the south he lives - we've all been in voice chat with him though and he's clearly Australian
417 - iChaZz3r
Never let it be said that 1990's Yahoo! Chat nicknames don't have their place in 2019, we're pretty sure he only joined for the illicit memes once Article 13 goes live.
418 - Barbarossa
419 - seapilot IV
Just go to our Discord and type "from: seapilot_#7777" into the search bar. It's like he doesn't have an off button and just dank memes and spicy rare pepes out of his ass all day. Fits in well, 10/10, would recruit again.
420 - Ravenhold IV
CVW-69 pilots used to get to pick their own Modex. Ravenhold pounced on this one. We'll leave that to the reader to decide what this infers about him.
421 - Flyler
422 - DsrtFx
Responsible for the legendary "Daddy stennis let go uwu" while LSO'ing a guy with a stuck hook, DsrtFox has quickly become one of the sharpest knives in the fleet, so much so that we're considering dedicating a page to DessertFx quotes...
423 - Lyndon's Johnson
Lyndon joined voice one evening after finding us. In this voice channel, he found Alchemy trying to land a ship on the Mun in Kerbal Space Program. Four hours later, after watching Alchemy fail repeatedly at retrograde burns, we finally heard him break - the high-pitched laugh, exasperated speech, and disconnect from voice. We'd broken him, and Alchemy landed.
424 - Nullspec
"But yeah engine gave out as I was approaching tanker. Tanker desided to pull back in its bong as I hit zero in the lean counter. things got SKRRRR quickly so I had to stop in at wawa." - yeah, he's a special kinda special.
425 - Fish
426 - Boosterdq
British, quite well spoken, and serves as our exercise commander. He runs our training ops, making missions and helping folk learn things. His composure while a training flight decided to drop 20,000lb of ordinance on the USS Ron Paul was almost saintly.
427 - RickyTan
RickyTan heads up our Harrier group and is also one of our finest mission designers, running complex and action-packed campaigns week after week. If we wanted to cover all the good things about Ricky, we'd need a page dedicated to him. Thankfully, he's Scottish, which negates anything good about him, so he just gets this.
428 - Goobs
Goobs showed up right around the time of the infamous oops incident and proceeded to create our fantastic oops reaction. We're considering changing his username to Goops, mostly so we can say "goops, your b fell over"
429 - Hackervoice
430 - kevin0m
In Discord, you can react to messages using emoji's. There's an emoji that's just two eyes, wide open, watching. It's :eyes: if you want to try it. Any time this is used, you can almost guarantee it's Kevin. At first it was fun, but now in the darkness at the edge of my vision, I see faded eyes watching, staring, waiting.
431 - digiebola
With a full VR pit set up at home, Digi immerses himself in flight sims and space sims - Rift S, MFD panels, Warthog HOTAS, Streamdeck, multiple keyboards and keypads, a full surround system. Everything he needs to remove himself from reality and live in that cockpit. Sadly, for all the technology and talent in the world, he still hasn't learned how to use push-to-fucking-talk
433 - SENDIT
Sendit is our resident lightweight. Also one of the only people who actually knows anything about IRL Air Force operations.
434 - Larry Fisher
Canadian, talks a lot. Like, a lot. Is overly-excited about everything. Well, I say Canadian, he's one of those weird French Canadians, so neither France nor Canada really wants him. We do though, because his enthusiasm tends to remind us old and bitter folk that DCS is supposed to be fun.
435 - White Crow
Our other resident artist, White Crow pumps out exceedingly high-quality liveries with worrying speed, all while using a mouse for painting and a PC that can't cope with running DCS and Photoshop a the same time. So, in our Discord, you'll find a channel for skin commissions - go give him money, get an awesome custom skin, and help him toward entering the Pentium era of computing.
436 - Frosty-nee
439 - Ziggurat
Zig didn't start watching The Expanse until Season 4 had already finished airing. Couple this with him running a virtual trucking company in Euro Truck Simulator, we don't think it's unreasonable to suggest he be one of the first to go up against a wall.
440 - FrozenDroid
Our only Dutch member, which we're legally required to have under EU law for diversity purposes, Frozen hopped onto our server and quickly made a good impression. Now we just need the mash-up of R2D2 playing the MIDI version of Do You Want To Build A Snowman.
442 - Lynchie
444 - Sixshot
Sixshot is a man of few words.
446 - Causkey
!!!
463 - drgw463
If you can figure out a brevity way of saying this for comms, please let us know. Dee are gee doubleyou had an issue while learning the F/A-18C and skidded into someone. Other dude got mad. Other dude can go fuck himself #officialsquadronstatement
469 - Llama
As mentioned, we used to pick our own tail number... Llama is Reddit personified, which tends to border the line between hilarious and horrific. He has a special place in our hearts, and likely also a special place in Hell.
Honorable Mentions
TheDevilDogGamer
We did a flyby -https://streamable.com/m8dqu
He got mad when kicked for teamkilling - https://streamable.com/mc9pc
He threatened to dox Alchemy - https://streamable.com/di9k8
The most distressing part of all this is that he thought we were part of his fan base. Anyway, go watch his channel, his videos are easily the best tutorials on how not to fly anything in DCS. Though, on the upside, at least people have heard of you now!