DCS World: Pilot to GCI in 1 Minute

DCS is quite the unique experience, very akin to those found on more open sandboxes like Arma 3 or modded Squad; just with a lot of extremely detailed aircraft and not with infantry and armies.

At one point you can choose to join a server to fly the F-100D with some friends, but in an instant you will have to leave your wings behind and tackle the important task of guiding your friends towards enemy targets as a Ground Control Intercept officer (GCI).

That is what happened to me just last night, an experience I thought was worth sharing here with all of you.

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At first, my friends and I joined this Cold War server to get some flight time with our new F-100s, bombing some targets and maybe getting into a couple of dogfights. This happened for around an hour, an hour in which I downed two MiGs with the Catfish while we weaved through air defenses and allied AI fighters.

It was at a certain point in the night where a couple of problems became apparent: Whoever set up the radio frequencies for the EWR stations forgot that The F-100 cannot tune into under 200Mhz frequencies, and that the available AI AWACS was as blind as a bat. So I just said: Fine, I'll do it myself.

That's when I got off my aircraft, and jumped into a spectator/GCI position, and started guiding my friends around into enemy formations. There were many flights at the time, some over the water just off of Sukhumi's coast and some taking off air bases further inland.

During one of the engagements, the closest contacts were off the coast, so I guided Hueman with his F-100 there so that he could engage them. That was when the Super Saber's rudimentary navigation systems showed their age. I had to constantly course current Hue to his target, but he ended up in a furball, just as planned.

All was going well, until a four-ship of Fishbeds popped up out of nowhere, making it very difficult for Hue to handle all those aircraft. Thankfully, KOSMOS was already in the air, heading towards me thanks to me doing GCI work as I should have. Without a human in the loop, spotting those Fishbeds ahead of their inevitable encounter with Hue would have been pretty hard.

Kos intercepted the MiGs, sadly not in time to save Hue, but he still bagged two of them and went back home after I vectored him to homeplate.

I felt like I did a better job, and I might have had even more fun, as a GCI than a pilot yesterday. Playing what essentially amounts to a real strategy game (RTS) but with real players is always so much fun.

You should try it, too!

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About the Author

Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos

Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy