Firstly let me welcome you all back from our annual R&R and wish everyone a prosperous New Year!

While last year had some trials for No457, we're planning to bounce back stronger than ever! To achieve this we've needed to alter our structure somewhat which will be announced this week. On top of this our long serving Adjutant, No457_Stretch has tendered his resignation of the post and, due to his current situation, has asked to be placed on Reserves for the time being. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Stretch on behalf of No457 for all the good work he's done for the Squad over the past 5 years! Well done mate and hope you can get back to 'Active' soon!

As such a new Adjutant will be announced this week as we move quickly toward getting our Squad back into 'War' mode. Also with Spits departure the role of Tactical Training Officer has been left open. At this point consideration is being given to reviving this role in an augmented fashion. More on this later, but it is in the works.

With regards to 'War' and the Squad in general we have several new ventures in the works. The one that is most outstanding is that we are very close to having our very own dedicated server thanks to the hard work and generosity of No457_Squog! Our server is currently running via Squogs personal DSL connection but will soon be on a 512/512 100mbit connection so will be ideal for hosting PF missions, supplying downloads of 'Official' No457 skins, missions and such.
BUT, the best is yet to come! As most of our members no doubt know by now, we have been running a very successful Campaign on the PNG map using the excellent Scorched Earth Online War (SEOW) program and I must say it far exceeds my expectations! What's more it is still in development and can only get better! It is planned that we begin to negotiate a Squad V Squad War as soon as practical as we still need to 'test' the SEOW program and our server, design some templates and wait for the servers connection to be upgraded on about the 13th (where is that new Adjutant…his case load is building! ;-)

Other things that may be noticed is that we finally, after 5 years, acquired the "No457.com" domain name! From now on when you want to leave a link to our Squad it is a simple matter and be sure to update all your bookmarks and signature links! We will also be setting up some sub-domains such as forums.no457.com and hopefully another for our SEOW site….

In order to keep this edition of News to a reasonable level, I will not post general Squad business this week, but rather hold it over till next week.

S! Chaps

I would like to express my apologies for my absence of webmaster duties. Below is the news from our CO which was supposed to have been updated a month ago! I was flooded with an unexpected workload, and only now has it allowed me to continue updating the HQ from where it left off from.

As for other news, most of the squad are combat ready in the Pacific Theatre (Pacific Fighters), and with the R&R period slowly approaching this will hopefully make the transition a lot more easier. With all optimism, by the end of the break, all of us will hopefully be quite adapted with the many challenges that Pacific Fighters enstills.

First of all I'd like to officially congratulate Clump and Snowy on gaining their Wings. Clump was awarded his wings several weeks ago and has now been placed in Blue Section while Snowy is seconded to White Section as is usually the case. Well done chaps!

I'd also like everyone to join me in welcoming our two newest Cadets, No457_C_Sparky and No457_C_Aubotron. I trust they will enjoy their time with us and wish them well as they carry out their Evaluation flights.

On the War front, things are going well but we can do better! Keep the debriefs coming so we can isolate and improve on the areas where we are 'underperforming'. Further to that, Staff has decided to go ahead and implement a new Training Night. After considering the responses in the Forum it seems that Friday is the best night for the majority. I must stress that this will be a trial period of four weeks! After that time we will reassess the situation within the Squad. I believe a slightly earlier start time of 8:30 was suggested also. We will begin this new Training time this Friday 8th of October at 8:30. For more information view the relevant thread in our private Forums - Cadets will be advised by the CTS.

Due to the new training night and in an effort to continue our VWF War missions with JG11 uninterrupted, Wednesday nights will be our dedicated War mission night until further notice!

As usual much has happened since my last News post. We've flown VEF missions and more recently VWF. Unfortunately neither seem to suit our purpose at this stage. We're currently looking at Forgotten Skies which looks promising and I'm sure our Adjutant will have some more info on this shortly. As some of you may know already, RAAF_Mako has been working on his own new and improved replacement for FBDaemon. Anyone who has tried it will agree that it works fantastically in conjunction with DCG producing subsequent maps which immediately reflect all your hard work in previous maps... assuming you've been working your vbutt off! We look forward to the final product but in the mean time, you can try out this server on a 'part-time' basis in the Hyperlobby when Mako hosts a server for testing and tweaking purposes. The server appears in Hyperlobby as OZFB_Campaign. I highly recommend this server to anyone lucky enough to be online when it is hosted! Trust me, once word of this server gets out we'll all be taking numbers to get a flight in it, lol.

Other News, although quite dated now, is that No457_Spit has left our Squad after a long career. He's formed No3 Squadron and No457_Koala and No457_Bazzill followed him out the door. Their website HQ is at http://users.bigpond.net.au/Spit/ for those that wish to drop in on them. Naturally we've had to reshuffle the Sections once more, although this has been kept to a minimum by shutting down the Section filled by the chaps who've split from No457... Yellow Section. Red and Green Section are currently flying as a single Section until we gather enough recruits to fill them out. With enlistment re-opened it is hoped this will not be too long a wait. At this point it is unclear if we will reactivate Yellow Section in future. With quite a few new 'RAAF' squads created of late, we'll have to wait and see if there will be enough interest.

On the training front, we're now having Red/Green Section and Blue Section fly VWF missions against JG11 in lieu of training. The first mission was run on Wednesday August 4th and was enjoyed immensely by all! While these Sections are at War White Section and those pilots seconded to White continue to train in all aspects while simultaneously standing by to fill any planes made available by late, 'no show' or 'on leave' pilots assigned to fly a War mission. Judging by the turnout for the first VWF training night, I dont this will happen often!

Generally speaking, keep up the good work and continue to train all aspects of air to air and air to ground combat. The War type scenarios that are in the pipeline are much more realistic in their approach and well rounded pilots will achieve much more than those who limit their skills to one aspect, most notably air to air!