Rebel Squadrons

RgF NL – July 6, 2006

By ADM David "Heavy" Pasiechnyk
Unit: Renegade Fleet
Fleet NL, Jul 06, 2006
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*Intro*

Hello pilots. This newsletter is going to be a long one so please make yourself comfortable or wait until you have a decent amount of time to look at it, as I do want all of you to have a look at this and understand certain repercussions of events and misinterpretations, etc. Although this intro does make the NL seem ominous, negative and boring, well, it is large, but largely positive and … well probably boring, but I hope well informative. “/shrug”

*New Members to the Fleet*

This past month (and two) have been quite fruitful in the accumulation of new members into the fleet, and I would like to make a formal fleet welcome to all of those who have recently joined our ranks.

MGN Joshua Hawkins, BGN Jairo Pantoja, and CPT AkinaMaru are longstanding RS members but have just recently joined the RgF (with Licah following AkinaMaru back into the fleet). A warm welcome goes to them.

A flux of cadets worth welcoming includes: 2LT Kalurrachit, 2LT Kane Redron, 2LT Wes Randen, CDT Han Sarganar all having been placed into squadrons.

Others who are yet in the academy process to be welcomed are: CDT Adath Creel, CDT Thrasher, and CDT Sentinel.

A warm welcome goes to all of you new members (and deep apologies if I missed anyone)!

Another thing that comes to my attention when it comes to new cadets, recruitment, and helping cadets with grad requirements is a MAJ DaLe. He has been helping MGN Phil Darkfire very well in that he almost is the greeter, person of contact, and friend that the cadets interact with all at once, leaving Phil the bare minimum. From such hard effort, and a recommendation from Phil, I am happy to award DaLe with the RgF Pilot of the Week medal. This medal is one of great achievement and honour in the fleet. Wear this medal with pride, DaLe!

*WoW*

This past month’s WoW (June) came as a surprise to us (and the other clubs that participate). We were not notified until the day that it started by one of our own observational pilots. Thanks to Spokes for finding out about the June WoW. Even with such a short notice, we still made a good show for the fight.

Four pilots, MAJ DaLe (15 games), VA Spokes (6 games), 1LT Whisper (5 games), and a new face to the crowd, MGN Josh Hawkins (2 games) took the fight to the other clubs.

The medals presented for their efforts will be as follows:
MAJ DaLe – Valiance Combat Citation
VA Spokes – Valiance Combat Citation
1LT Whisper – Valiance Combat Citation
MGN Josh Harkins – Merit Commendation (first but small showing, yet still deserves good credit)

Congrats Pilots and Great Thanks for flying, and I hope to see you all flying next month as well.

*ITOD*

This month’s ITOD mission was quite the eye popper for me this month. First off, we had an overall turnout of 33/42 pilots! This is a good 78%! Congratulations to all of you who flew hard and well (and of course had fun!) during the month.

This mission also saw some odd events occur (which will be addressed in the next section) and therefore I am going to be awarding people for effort, determination, and work with their fellow members on this mission. There will be no Top Ace, Top Squad, or Top Wing.

The first mention I would like to make is the wonderful and partially unexpected (by the rest of the fleet) 100% participation from Dragon Squadron. I always love to see those numbers get high, and when squads work together or somehow get the info flowing between the members to get flying, I feel that much happier as a CO. For this great accomplishment by the squad, I would like to reward its hardworking CO, CPT Jair Karredo with the Unit Commander’s Commendation. He has constantly been working with the pilots of his squad trying to pep their energy, get them doing things, flying together, and getting them to fly in the TOD missions. Great work Jair!

Next is Red Dragon Squadron. They have achieved yet another 90% participation level. This is certainly a well-knit squadron of pilots who continually prove to be a force of reckon. For many of the same reasons given to Jair, I award the Unit Commander’s Commendation to CMDR Rahvin. Congratulations Rahvin!

Another hard working member of the RDS group is CPT Carth. He has been doing a great deal of work for his squadron by doing things such as squadron NLs, website work, narrative activities with the other pilots, and recruitment activities for the squad and fleet as a whole. Therefore, I award CPT Carth with the Merit Commendation.

Resurrection and Ragnarok Squadrons also did great showings with participations of 54% and 80%, respectively. Their Commanding Officers and Executive Officers deserve great appreciation and respect for their efforts in running well working squadrons.

As for the five reports that I received in, I had a wonderful time reading over them (after many stressful emails). All were quite interesting to read, however there were two individual narratives that strongly stood out for me amongst the group, and I was extremely hard pressed as to who I thought had the more worthy narrative. But, with a late night comes greater indecision. First off, LCM David Vaughan’s narrative was quite interesting and enjoyable to read for me because I found that he was using much of his other RS experience (particularly the Logistics Office) in his narrative. CPT Jair Karredo on the other hand, took the narrative writing in a totally different direction from the rest of the reporters in that he changed some of the smaller details of the mission (craft, etc) to create what he felt would be a much more realistic happening of a mission. As such, both of these pilots did quite well in their narratives and therefore I would like to award both with the RgF Mission Report Medal for putting ingenuity into their writing. I thank you both for well-written narratives. Also for the other three people who wrote narratives, I was very pleased with your submissions as well and would like to present 2LT Phelan Kell, 2LT Kane Redron, and RA Licah Fox with and older and less used narrative medal in the RgF system, the Red Star. I award this medal to you as thanks for good writing and good time put into your narrative submissions.

RgF 410 is currently under testing and review, and should hopefully be out for you eager pilots by the end of the week. That’s my target. :)

*Notice about Cheating on RgF 409*

Dear Renegade Fleet pilots, an unfortunate event has come onto my desk that must be addressed appropriately and immediately. For the past week I have been busy at home with work and farm life and a poor Internet connection, and so problems that could have been dealt with quickly and cleanly are now growing into too large of proportions. Thus is the case that I am addressing.

As some of you have likely already seen, there are 3 members who have had their scores replaced with a zero over the weekend. This is because there were allegations that these three people were somehow cheating on the mission. There was a lengthy discussion amongst 3 people, the alleger and my XO and SO, for about 5 days prior to the changing of scores. I had intended to be back on July 2, the day of the change of score, but I had not been able to and so came back today on the 4th.

I have had decent arguments from both sides of the situation, and am having a hard time to come to a solid conclusion on this matter. Details of the two discussions are going to be closed off due to very possible problems that may occur with some of this knowledge presented. Even after this, both sides sound convincing and as such I am still hard pressed to come to a conclusion on the matter.


After long (but not long enough) deliberations, I have come to what I feel should be done in this case, even though it may not seem fair to some or even many, and it may seem I am going light on those accused. However, cheating is something I want to take seriously, but not over-extensively. Cheating can be a sure cause of confrontation amongst pilots and it will invariably cause some who do not cheat to leave due to the poor environment. Also, too much punishment to cheaters will be too discouraging to them as well. Thus, this is what I have decided to do:

1. All scores will be left on the board as reported. No zero scores (unless reported as so) are to remain.
2. Medals such as Top Ace, Top Squad, and Top Wing will not be awarded due to the obvious conflicts that we have here (is it cheating or no? cheating will be assumed to have happened but not fully known as to whom or why)
3. Medals will be awarded to those who are well deserving: COs for getting their squadrons to the excellent activity levels, MRM Medal, and other such medals for appropriate service to the fleet.
4. I will be requesting that the next mission reports from Anton, AkinaMaru, and JcMcGoO will be in some form recorded as to what events took place when during the mission. If you were truly not cheating, then this will simply be a solid proof that you were not, and if you were then it will hopefully discourage you from doing it again. A program that I had recommended to me is HyperCam (http://www.hyperionics.com). If you wish to use a different method, please inform me prior to doing so for permission.
5. Any fishy suspicions about scores will be directed to me, Rekio, Rahvin, (or whomever the RgF CS may be) and the alleged cheater all at once so that each side can be properly presented and then decided upon with more solid (or black/white) of a decision.
In the future I do hope that this will either not happen again, or that a better handle on the situation will be had.


":|

BGN David "Tenacious 'D'"

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