Top ten oldest squads in Aces High?

[JVboob]

The 49th use to be bigger. If I remember right we had close to 60 a couple years back and split the 49th FG in to 49th FG 9th FS, 8th FS and 7th FS. These days were back to the 49th FG and growing again.




<S> 49Boob

[M1A1]

Duxford Wing RAF... Started in WB in 97-98 and then in AH close to it's inception. We have been flying quietly and respectfully for that long...

[MrKrabs]

The 49th use to be bigger. If I remember right we had close to 60 a couple years back and split the 49th FG in to 49th FG 9th FS, 8th FS and 7th FS. These days were back to the 49th FG and growing again.




<S> 49Boob

You guys bounced around in the 40's and 50's even before that when the 49th split off from us originally. This was true as well when the vTards split off from us and held their lemming numbers in the 70's.

[Dos Equis]

I can make a case for the Flying Pigs. Not AirWarrior old, but started with Hitech Creations certainly.

We used to be at www.flyingpigs.com. I started playing Air Warrior on GEnie in 1991, and that's when I met DoK GonZo and many of the legends of the Air Warrior crowd such as Drex flying the A20. If you want to hit the way back machine, I can remember when Air Warrior had a new module, a film editor, coded by a young programmer turk named Dale 'Hitech' Addink. Oldest player I knew then, and this was 1991, was Ghost Rider, who was in his late 60s early 70s back then, and I believe actually served in WW2.

The Pigs started in Dale's first venture, Confirmed Kill. This predated Warbirds. It was for pre IP stack Windows, pre Win95 machines where you had to install a telnet client and telnet to the server once you established a SLIP/PPP link and then started the game and ran it that way.

Early members were Tigershark and Sean 'eagl' Long. The Pigs fought for the Gold color (never Red, and especially not purple, that was the Black Sheep color). Chris "CJ" Martin (callsign: smut) actually founded the squad via a mailing list. Chris is best known for being a producer on what is, arguably, the finest flight sim for the PC ever created, Jane's F-15 by EA. Up there with Falcon 4.0 and the follow on F-18 game.

I commissioned an artist by the name of Mary Lynn Skirvin to draw the FlyingPigs logo. I'm ashamed to say I can't find the logo at the moment, and the flyingpigs.com web site is no more. But it was so top notch that I had to send cease and desist letters to guys in Singapore who made coffee cups and t-shirts with the logo and sold them on the street. A USAF squadron approached the Pigs and the flying pigs logo is now the official logo of a real B2 bomber, the logo was etched on the plane itself, on a steel plate near the ladder.

I know weird little tidbits, like the blue doll under the desk in the old Warbirds tower with the pins sticking out of it is Dale's little message to a certain player from that era.

If I can find somebody who has the flyingpigs old logo, I will try and post it somewhere. Tigershark had it professionally inked and it was very popular for a time. Other Pigs of that era where Steve 'ichi' Dunbar and Bernie 'Worr' Worrell, Glen 'roamer' Becker and many others, including Marko 'mili' Milisevic and Vila.

-XX- - apologies for any inaccuracies in advance

Edit: I found the logo. If you want to strip it and add it to the time line, here it is:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030321104156/http://www.flyingpigs.com/

[eagl]

If I recall correctly "The Flying Pigs" was officially a squad by late 1995, growing fairly rapidly and gaining several members through 1996 and 1997.

A tidbit to add to the flying pigs lore, we won the inaugural 10 v 10 dueling tournament.  Can't remember what year that was but the fights were epic, some of the duels going down to the last couple of planes on both sides.  I vaguely recall there being a second tournament and maybe we won that too?  My memory fails me but at the height of The Flying Pigs strength we were arguably the toughest squad to beat both in group or individual duels.  Strangely enough, other than the 10v10 dueling tournament, few of us spent much time on the dueling ladder.

One of The Flying Pigs favorite squadrons must have been the Dweebs of Death.  Those guys would launch 40+ aircraft on a massive base raid and half of them would auger during their first dive bombing pass, and later find out that most of their troop carrier ships either ended up at the wrong field or aborted due to the phone ringing or a pizza delivery or some such non-game nonsense.  Those guys had a lot of spirit and a lot of fun but darned if I can remember a raid of theirs that we opposed that didn't end up with me augering because I was laughing so hard

A few years before we slowly faded out, The flying pigs and a few other squadrons formed the "BarnYard Animals Composite Air Wing", or "BYACAW".  It was dreamed up by a few of us at one of the conventions.  We'd have a handful of squadrons full of people we met at the cons (such as the Rogue Gryffins) join up in a single country and we'd spend a few hours crushing the arena.  We tried to not do it too often since it probably wasn't too fun for everyone else to see 100-150 well coordinated opponents rise at once to kill everything in sight and attempt to take the whole arena in a few hours, but that's one of the things we'd do every month or two.

I'd have to ask "smut" but I think the original flying pigs designation was VF-214 or something like that?  I can't remember for sure but the original idea, before the squad formed up as a non-denominational killing machine, was to represent a historical Naval squadron.  The squadron had switched to "The Flying Pigs" before I joined and I remember fighting against the likes of -XX-, smut, worr, sqid, mili (who made the original WB/AH scoring pages that still haven't been matched in quality), and the rest, wondering if I could ever join such a squad.  Turns out they were a great group of guys and joining wasn't hard, just had to have the right mix of fun and desire to kill everything to fit in.  Good times, lasted for years.

[eagl]

Oh yea, I also remember running across a lighted sign for a "Flying Pigs" pub in Amsterdam in 2005 that was essentially our squadron logo with a couple of very minor color changes.  Strange how some things spread around.

[JVboob]

You guys bounced around in the 40's and 50's even before that when the 49th split off from us originally. This was true as well when the vTards split off from us and held their lemming numbers in the 70's.

Were in the upper 30s right now. The lowest weve been since ive been a 49r was 11 and thats when i joined up. But were always recruiting and we draw alot attention as of late with our antics and teamwork.

[oboe]

An absolutely great logo, thanks for that find!   I know I've seen this before, and even the patch that is on the same page.  Great stories, too.



Someone get this squad going again again!     

I know weird little tidbits, like the blue doll under the desk in the old Warbirds tower with the pins sticking out of it is Dale's little message to a certain player from that era.

Very interested in more info like this.  Wish I had a screenshot of the old WB tower.  I don't recall a blue doll, abd I started in late '98.  What is the message?  A warning?   Who is he other player?

Funny, I remember my exposure to AW was AW III, and I could not deal with the cockpit/screen arrangement.   I never made it online.   But WB grabbed me immediately.

[Dos Equis]

The stories are Hitech's to tell.

Last bit, because the Pigs are a storied group and there are alot of stories. But these two deserve mention - Lephturn from the Pigs for at least 2 years in 98-99 ran the trainers in Warbirds. He spent countless hours helping new players learn the game and get good to keep them interested.

And James 'snak' Schuldes.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030114014352fw_/http://www.flyingpigs.com/pigs/snak.html

Snak should be familiar to many here. Snak and another non-Pig player (if anyone can help me here, it would be appreciated) ran the scenarios for several years. Weekend events such as the Solomons and the Fast Carriers series, which had online moments so insane I have yet to see modern games like Eve Online that are built for carrier war and metagaming haven't equalled.

Solomons II was such a big deal, I know DoK came back and helped put work into that event. Multiple weekends, strategic objectives. I found a PDF map still around:

http://www.bobheffner.com/overlays/sol4v1.pdf

DoK still has his design for his T-shirt up after all these years
http://www.siliconchisel.com/silicon-chisel/designs/warbirds-solomons-ii-t-shirt/


Snak would come to the arena and only fly bombers just to test accuracy and spend time on autopilot so he could network all evening with players and squadrons. He spent countless hours planning and coordinating these large events. Those were fun.

[oboe]

<S> Lephturn, SNAK, DoK

Whatever happened to Bob Heffner?  His maps and aids made a big impression on me.    Great quality, great looking documents.

[Dos Equis]

The Aggressors, a Air Warrior squadron from the early 1990s, had lots of jokes about mating with sheep.

Here is one of their recruitment pictures, this one REALLY needs to make your timeline:

http://www.gonzoville.com/DoK/AW/images/aggies.gif

[oboe]

Oof!

That is a click I wish I hadn't made!   

[Arlo]

DoK GonZo showed the re ... errr .... aggressors no pity. 

http://www.gonzoville.com/games/ancient-regressors-exposed/