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As some may know, I spent two weeks in Lebanon in October. It's a fascinating country and I dare say one of the most diverse ones on Earth for its size, which coupled with local sectarian mentalities is why it had a 15 year long civil war between 1975 and 1990, and tensions are still felt 26 years after it ended (Israeli occupation of south until 2000, Syrian occupation until 2005, devastating Israeli bombing and invasion in 2006, flareups and clashes between various groups until 2009, and a spike in bombings and clashes in between 2013 and 2015 - it's kind of calm now). Here's a sect map of Lebanon to illustrate the blessing and curse which is its diversity. It's interesting that locals will boast about the country's unique religious diversity while it has caused so much strife and the locals themselves are often suspicious of members of different sects and seldom go to regions where another sect is a big majority. Still, daily life goes by normally, and it's a pleasant place to visit providing you don't stay in Beirut for too long. However I was fascinated by Beirut so I did stay there for a while and basically walked through 90% of this compact but very crowded, cluttered and claustrophobic city's neighborhoods and suburbs. Here are some photos in two categories - the ugly and the beautiful, categorized according to the accepted international standard of my subjective opinion. And added info to perhaps make this crazy place less of an unknown for you. The Ugly Most of Beirut Beirut is incredibly dense. Concrete is everywhere, (re)construction is everywhere, war ruins are everywhere. The one word to describe Beirut is contrast. Luxury five star hotels are flanked by abandoned war ruins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis drive by refugees sitting in the streets, run down neighborhoods and refugee "camps" without basic utilities are flanked by fancy new upscale glass residential buildings, decaying and smelly streets full of garbage lead into spotless new bars or restaurants that offer fine dining. There is a huge military presence and walking randomly will probably lead you into a heavily fortified checkpoint in about five minutes - these include concrete barriers, portable pillboxes, barbed wire, armed soldiers and often one or several military vehicles, often armored. Taking photos around these guys is a bad idea, which is great since the most beautiful part of the city with the most historic ruins, mosques and churches is saturated with military presence, as it's also the part of town where important state and international institutions are located. I didn't take photos of these (not that I didn't try, but usually there's one soldier at least who's very alert all the time) but they look like this, this or this. They are prevalent all over the country, but especially in Beirut. Armed patrols are also common on major city roads, convoys of 3-5 Humvees with .50's mounted in the back, soldiers manning them. Hezbollah also maintains its own checkpoints in areas where it's dominant, like south Beirut or the south and northeast of Lebanon. There is only one public park (excluding the American University of Beirut's campus which is also kind of a park) and it's far from the city center and was closed to the public until 2015 for "security reasons". Construction and ruins and contrasts This is in my own hostel Your typical protected building, only this one didn't have armed guards, but you can see concrete barriers and tiny windows. Garbage is a massive problem in all of Lebanon, it's normal to throw water bottles and lunch leftovers out of cars or public transport. Here I took a picture of Beirut's most known and photographed attraction, the Pigeon Rocks, from a slightly different perspective for more context. Beirut's Holiday Inn hotel worked for less than a year after it opened in 1975. As the civil war broke out, militants fought fierce battles over this and other high rise hotels because they offered a vantage point over much of the city center. Now, over 40 years later, it still stands in ruin, towering over the posh center of Beirut, because of an ownership dispute. Electricity is a problem in much of Lebanon, and even in Beirut, most of which has the luxury of 24 hour electricity, going outside the city center one will notice that street lighting simply doesn't exist in some places. Couple that with rubble or pieces of large garbage like remains of scaffolding lying on the pavement sometimes, or open manholes. Joy. Towns and villages outside of Beirut rely on generators to cover the outages - these are frequently provided by private companies that cover entire neighborhoods or villages and turn on automatically a few seconds after the outage starts. This over/underpass and road are totally unlit Surely Beirut is urban chaos at its best Dawra is an eastern suburb of Beirut and transport hub for anything going north or northeast of Beirut. It's an area heavily populated by south Asian and African immigrants. They're a caste of their own, and work almost exclusively as cleaners or gas station clerks. I was surprised to see that Lebanon has so many immigrants from far away, but apparently they can get jobs that the Lebanese themselves don't want to do, and there are entire armies of these immigrants working low tier jobs everywhere around the country. These people are (like Syrian refugees) royally ripped off by their Lebanese landlords. As my host Marwan told me, a 2 room apartment costing 400$ per month is rented by the room by the person for 100$ to immigrants/refugees, thus you would have two families living in one apartment, each in their own room, paying 100$ per person each, and being from Africa and Asia these are usually bigger families.

Two weeks...

It happened in late 2012 but I've only started properly translating it from Croatian now. There's a lot of text and translating it takes a lot of time https://mjesecdanauiranu.wordpress.com/intro/ Intro and first four chapters for now, about 25% of the whole text which is 100 pages, like a small book. Lots of photos, and I write in great detail about everything. The first chapter is about the overland trip from Croatia to Iraq, the second two chapters are about Iraqi Kurdistan, the fourth chapter is about my first impressions and part of my experience of Tehran. The untranslated chapters go on more about Tehran, then Esfahan, Yazd, Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, Kerman, Mashhad and again Tehran and the return trip home. I hope to translate the rest before New Year. Formatting is still work in progress, the header and some popup image captions are in Croatian because I imported the pics from the Croatian version. Hope you find it interesting and insightful

Thanks Ovy, we can also fly the Mig-21, I have that and know how to use it

Привет товарищи! I've been giving the Ka-50 a lot of time lately and I absolutely love the thing. Most of all I favor going low behind enemy lines at very low altitudes and taking out SAM systems and other ground targets, the whole sneaking and sniping gig gets my juices flowing every time. I would love nothing more than to decimate enemy assets in a team effort with someone else, so that we can designate and share targets via datalink and inflict the most damage. It's a lot of tense fun sneaking behind enemy lines, never knowing when you're too high or when that phantom AA missile will explode you without warning, always trying to strike the balance between the safety of staying very low and at the same time being able to see targets beyond ground clutter like trees and buildings. There are a few servers where we can do this, one is DCS-NL, a freeflight/training server but with some deadly hostile ground units in the north of the map where I do most of my flying/training and usually attack the enemy airport at Beslan. Another is the popular 104th Phoenix server, which has a few mountain valleys with targets for the Ka-50. We can also use the DD server when/if it goes online for our own missions. If anyone is into this with the Shark, hit me up here or via PM. If you don't know how to fly the Kamov or are unsure in how some systems work, I'll be more than happy to provide in-game instructions/training to the full depth of what I know. I'm also happy to do other helicopter ops as well, although I have only the Mi-8, but will buy the Gazelle when it's discounted, and probably the Huey as well. I <3 helis.

Is that a Danger Dogz production?

Yeah I would insta-buy it but I figured I'd rather get more familiar with the modules I have while waiting for the Gazelle to become discounted.

Nevada map is mostly desert but includes an entire true-to-life Las Vegas, as well as the Nevada Test Range and other things in the area. I mainly bought it to be able to simulate a Syrian/middle eastern theatre for my Ka-50, Albatross, Mig-21, Mi-8 and soon Gazelle. I don't at all care for having a Nevada setting otherwise, maybe I will if it ever becomes a real warzone.

Yep I second that, 1.5 is a priority. I just bought 2.0 recently but most of us play 1.5. For now, they'll merge int one once they update the terrain engine of the Caucasus map.

You can always fly helicopters FT

I'm all for it, DCS has taken up +80% of my flying interest in the last year so naturally I'd love if we had an online home in it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/25/whoops-norwegian-fighter-jet-mistakenly-machine-guns-control-tower Hilarious, thankfully no one was hurt.

Oh Lord I will use this instantly.

B-B-B-B-B-EEEE-E-EAUFIGHTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Been making this for the last few days. Brief This is a target practice mission with minimal risk involved providing you stay well away from Sochi, which is the only hostile SAM site. The mission features various air and ground targets, most relatively close to the starting air bases. You can engage these or just do a free flight, your choice entirely. Difficulty: full real apart from external views for all units and all units visible on the F10 map. No icons. This is easily changed according to preference. Time of year is spring, weather good with sporadic clouds at about 2000m, wind about 12m/s, mission time 09:00. We are blue, enemy is red. Aircraft and takeoff: All currently released modules are available in hot and cold start! There are no airspawns. There are three cold start AND three hot start slots for most aircraft of the same model to choose from, although this number is less for a few craft (Su-33, C-101EB, C-101CC and hot start helicopters). Takeoff airfields are marked in this color on the maps below. These airfields are: Kobuleti: All WW2 planes, all helicopters as well as the F-86 and Mig-15 start here. Note: WW2 planes are available only in cold start. Senaki: All aircraft that are not available at Kobuleti are available here, spawning in cold start. Kutaisi: Same aircraft as at Senaki, only spawning hot - already spooled up and ready to go. All aircraft that are starting from parking hot have (HOT) written by their name in the aircraft selection window. All aircraft that are starting hot are armed with missiles and/or rockets and/or bombs and other goodies. Each one has a different loadout. All aircraft that are starting cold are unarmed apart from any internal guns. Use the radio button to contact ground crew --> rearming before you start your engines, and you can select what you want to fly away with under your wings. If you want to change armament on a hot start aircraft, you have to turn off the engines, which effectively means you have to mostly cold start it after rearming. Air targets: All air targets are unarmed and not a threat! Air targets are divided into six groups, each group consists of two or three same-model aircraft flying in circles at the same altitude. They may not be close to each other though. All of them will circle for about two hours and then land at various red airfields. Refer to this map for specific air targets, their altitude, distance from the starting air bases and the general headings to follow from those air bases in order to reach them. Ground targets: There are six ground target groups and one naval target group. Yellow targets have no anti-air ability (EDIT: well, I found out the hard way that they may not be completely powerless, as APCs will shoot machine guns), orange targets have AAA defense, the red target has a layered air defense with two kinds of SAMs as well as AAA. Target circles represent their anti-air range (with yellow ones obviously not being a threat at all as they lack anti-air capability). In case that the targets are moving, serrated lines show their plotted path. Remember you CAN view the units on the in-game map if you can't find them! Ground target breakdown Sochi airport Features a four-launcher BUK SAM system, Gepard AAA and Stinger MANPADS guys. Also some parked aircraft, APCs and other vehicles. Mobile artillery site Eight various self-propelled artillery pieces defended by four Shilka and one Gepard AAA unit, as well as infantry, a few MBTs, APCs, bunkers and support vehicles. Don't worry, the artillery won't shell our air bases. Convoy (east of Kutaisi) Twenty vehicles (mostly trucks and cars, and an APC or MBT here and there) with two dedicated AAA vehicles. This convoy, like the other one, moves slowly at 20km/h. Insurgent hill Units spread out over this hill include several GRAD launchers, mortars (they appear as just the tubes, with no personnel), support vehicles, infantry and two truck-mounted AAA guns. The hill in question is right in the middle of this image. Insurgent mountain base Mostly along the road by the village, in a little lake valley surrounded by mountains. A road checkpoint, several other fortifications, a dozen vehicles and infantry. Convoy (east of Kobuleti) Contains 15 vehicles, mostly fuel and supply trucks, with a few other vehicles. Ships 4-5 unarmed ships. That is, they are armed, but I set them to hold fire. If I did this wrong, you'll know it. The mission also has a few friendly aircraft flying about at low altitude, and if you want a show you can external-view an A10 getting shot down by the Sochi BUK soon after mission start and about 4-5 minutes later a low flying Su-25 gets shot down over Senaki by the Tunguska AAA/SAM at that air base. DOWNLOAD FROM THE VAULT: http://dangerdogz.com/forums/files/file/791-dcs-target-practice-mission/ I hope to host this if I can make my router become hosting-friendly. Of course anyone else can download and host it as well. This is my first ever flight sim mission, hopefully everything works, any feedback is much appreciated!

You mean like "when applying left aileron in a roll, also apply left wheel brake to roll faster"? But seriously... Put up some annotations in the video where you got it wrong, explaining what you meant. Can do that through Youtube, no need to reupload.

Splendid Fen! Ze Germans just keep lining up in front of you!

That's outside around the runways and on the mountain underneath which this place is. So yeah, outside you don't want to walk off pavement. Still, this place has been visited by people countless times, they even mapped it and there's definitively no mines inside. Just rubble everywhere.

Revisited this place today. In short - was a huge Yugoslav underground airbase under a mountain, was blown up with a lot (A LOT) of explosives in 1992 during the war, now there's little more than rubble and charred tunnels. In long, it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDeljava_Air_Base In 2009 we extensively explored the whole complex, which has over 4km of tunnels in total. This trip was a bit shorter and much more artsy photo oriented. We mostly stayed in the large main tunnels that planes would go through, seldom entering the smaller side tunnels that housed generators, workshops, supplies etc. Would have stayed longer than 4 hours to take much more of these colorful photos, but the dust and soot inside are unbearable and I'm never going back without investing in a proper respirator, not the cheap paper face masks that literally = not having anything in your face. Asbestos? What asbestos? PCB contamination? 'Tis but decadent west's propaganda! So how much conventional explosives do you need to do this to a nuclear blast door? Airplane shaped exit

Here's a Fenrir from a couple of weeks ago And my forming up on two F-15's and an Su-27 on a free flight server yesterday. The guy with the smoke was doing his own navigation thing I think, the other two and then myself all formed up on him spontaneously. I buzzed them from a steep dive at Mach 2.0 a few times before that The two other planes disappeared later, I followed the lead F-15 all the way to his landing airbase. I never knew the Mig-21 is HALF THE SIZE of an F-15!

Politics completely aside, great Syrian Mig-21 video. Brave pilot to fly this rusty battered thing, it looks like an airplane version of the walking dead. I guess it's somewhat of a nice example of its reliability.