Frag Out! Magazine

No problem, one click and he's back on the highway. Our No.2 had the opportunity to use such help: we was to cross the river, but the slope he chose to enter the river proved too steep, and so the APC went into the drink, flooded before it had a chance to right itself and swim. The 16 million Zloty vehicle took very short to sink, but then the instructor intervened and off we went to the other side of the river in a blink of the eye. The fighting compartment experience was even more interesting. – At first you had to accustom to the specific modus operandi of the controls. What most of game users would take for joysticks proved to be just handles – the real turret and gun controls are operated by right-thumbing the mushroom-shaped knob by the base of the handle. The left thumb controls weapon selection, ammunition selection and fire-mode selection. Traditional trigger finger (right index) operates the rangefinder – while the real trigger is situated on the left handle. Apparently it would be difficult to point the turret with the same hand that fires the gun, and so the functions were separated. Once we got the hang of all that, neutralizing the targets proved quite easy. Fortunately we were not shot at by the targets – I'm not sure if our fire- mission would be so much successful then... The hardest part was the instructor-induced turret power-controls malfunction, when you had to traverse and elevate the gun by turning two cranks. It's a hard, tiring manual labor, thankless and borderline-effective. A Rosomak with no turret power ceases to be an asset in the fighting, and becomes a liability in no time – it is a high time to break contact and turn tail towards the nearest maintenance center. Contrary to the driving simulator, the displays are mounted inside the periscopes, and not the large displays outside, so you don't have any boundaries to ignore – but it would be tough on far-sighted people without corrective lenses. Two hours spent in the simulator went like a snap, we had wonderful fun. Did we exited the simulator as a deployment-ready Rosomak crew? Negative. Would we be able to mount a real thing and ride it into the boondocks? Perhaps not, as well. But it would have gone a far longer way towards that ultimate goal than two hours of lecture, though. The real crews have some preliminary preparation, and then they train not just a couple of hours, but dozens of them. According to the instructors, just a dozen hours are enough to let the crew take a real thing for a ride and be sure they won't ruin it. So, well, we're still ten hours short, but maybe sometime... www.fragoutmag.com

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