Weekly online gatherings on Thursdays

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As our small online crowd evolves, we sometimes find it best to change the time of our main weekly gatherings in order to accommodate the needs of the majority. As of 03Dec2025, that time has come again.

We are changing our main weekly online gathering. Hereafter we will have our gatherings each Thursday (in the USA) as follows:

01:00 Zulu time (very early Friday morning in Europe) (That's 8:00 PM USA Eastern, 7:00 PM USA Central, 6:00 PM USA Mountain, and 5:00 PM USA Pacific. It's 8:00 AM Friday mornings in the Philippine Islands.)

These gatherings usually attract a small online group of players, flying in a single mission for about 2 hours (sometimes less, sometimes longer).

It's usually best to activate mumble for voice communication BEFORE activating LAC. At that point you'll start out in the "root" channel of our main LAC mumble server.

While our online community is small, we tend to use the "root" channel of our mumble VOIP server at LinuxAirCombat.com to verbally coordinate our gathering, choice of missions, and team affiliation.

Thereafter, we generally rely on LAC's "Auto Mumble Management" to switch us into the proper mumble channels as we enter the various available missions. Note that each mission gets 3 channels as follows:

1 of 3: BlueTeam channel. Depending on which recent version of LAC you are using, BlueTeam players may automatically be switched here when they enter the mission. If they ever switch to a different channel, they can always get back here by pressing "F10". We call this the "BlueTeam Teamcast Channel". It's for use by BlueTeam members who want to talk with one another. RedTeam members are allowed to join this channel too, but because mumble always alerts players of arrival and departure into and out of each channel, the BlueTeam members will be aware when a RedTeam player is listening. In general, RedTeam members should consider themselves unwelcome here unless a specific exemption is negotiated.

2 of 3: RedTeam channel. Depending on which recent version of LAC you are using, RedTeam players may automatically be switched here when they enter the mission. If they ever switch to a different channel, they can always get back here by pressing "F10". We call this the "RedTeam Teamcast Channel". It's for use by RedTeam members who want to talk with one another. BlueTeam members are allowed to join this channel too, but because mumble always alerts players of arrival and departure into and out of each channel, RedTeam members will be aware when a BlueTeam player is listening. In general, BlueTeam members should consider themselves unwelcome here unless a specific exemption is negotiated.

3 of 3: MissionCast channel. Any player participating in a mission can always switch to this channel by pressing "F11". Players tuned to this channel can transmit to and hear transmissions from both of the other channels. It is commonplace for all participants in a mission to agree to switch to this channel so everybody can talk with everybody else. (More and more often lately, we use this channel more frequently than any of the others, because it is commonplace for us to want to talk to EVERYBODY in the mission regardless of team affiliation.)

Because we generally want voice communication with allies AND with opponents, once you start a mission, I recommend tuning to the mission's "MISSIONCAST" channel. No matter what mission and realm we choose, you can always switch to the appropriate MISSIONCAST channel by pressing the "F11" key in flight. Leave the rest to LAC's automated interface with the "mumble" VOIP communication program. (While in flight, the LAC server generally prompts you with a prominent text message near the top of your windscreen urging you to press "F11" to switch to the MISSIONCAST channel, so you don't need to write this message down now. You'll see it during the first minute or so of flight.)

It's easy to toggle LAC's "Auto Mumble Management" on and off by pressing the "a" key in flight, as discussed HERE:

https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/wishlist/thread/2e3d76a8be/

If you arrive late you may miss our early mission selection negotiations in the root channel. If you suspect this, use mumble's application frame to see the channel where the proponderance of our players are tuned (you'll see their names in a prominent list). From that you should be able to deduce which mission we are playing and it will be easy to join that mission in progress. Use your own best judgment to join one of the two teams in that mission.

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Although these weekly Thursday online gatherings tend to attract the most robust attention from our small online community, you can generally find at least one or two players monitoring the root channel of our mumble server at LinuxAirCombat.com all the time. These are LAC's true fanatics, and they frequently help newcomers. Give them a shout and expect to have a grand time learning about LAC with them. This is discussed further here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/general/thread/e68166f628/

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Since the beginning of new year 2026 We have been accumulating YouTube video clips resulting from these "Thursday LAC Sessions" in a new YouTube PlayList named "LAC2026", which you can always find in THIS page:

https://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacOnYouTube.htm

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Update 13Apr2026:

Recently our weekly online gatherings on Thursdays (evenings in the USA) have attracted too many Sentient players for practical use among the "Replay Blokes" of REALM01.

With so many "Sentient" players, it's best to avoid the "Replay Blokes" that have often served as our online opponents. We now have a need to divide players into two teams of "Sentients" instead.

The LAC Server populates only the missions of "REALM01" with Replay Blokes. Accordingly, from time to time we should expect to divide into two distinct teams based in the missions of REALM03 instead. (The LAC Server gives performance preference to odd-numbered REALMs, so we'll skip REALM02.)

It's very easy to switch REALMS, but since many of our new online players have never done that yet, I made two very brief YouTube video clips showing EXACTLY how I do it. They are:

1 of 2: "How To Change Linux Air Combat To Realm03". Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/HmgNagHNmq0?si=DpbntZ1FupOl_Ri3

2 of 2: "How To Change Linux Air Combat From Realm 03 To Realm01". Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/9TmFmItugRs?si=EUMixxzvBSo86fcI

Please watch those two very short video clips and practice switching back and forth between REALM01 and REALM02. When you make those changes, LAC will automatically switch mumble into the best, most appropriate, resulting channel for you according to whatever mission we choose in the designated REALM.