Status Report #29: 3rd of May, 2026

Good morning there, fellow Wombatants!

It's Michael here, and boy have we been busy! Should make for a good, interesting Status report, so let's get right into it!

-Blogging-

Well, we've clearly been spoiling you, these last two weeks.

Not one, not two, but three new blog posts! Please don't get used to that pace, we only managed to put those out in such quick succession because we'd already partially written them.😉

Although having said that, we are already working on another gaming post. One that, frankly, we never intended to make, but the game ambushed us, as it were.

Oh, also, with 4x4 Evo 2, we had a bit of a first, in that we uploaded gameplay of it to our YT channel and embedded those videos in the blog post. Mind you though, y'shouldn't expect to see a post about every game we upload videos of on YT. In fact, if we're planning to write about a game, we likely won't make any public videos until the blog post is out. We wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.😜

-Art-

Well, you've probably noticed some changes around the place. Our logo/mascot is done, and we've put it all over the place, including some colourful new banners! (I was the one who did the new banner for the blog, and can i just say, i -love- how that turned out.😉)

Since then, we've not had as much time for our new artistic endeavour as we'd like, but just yesterday, we started on a nifty new painting. It's going quite well so far, and it's an interesting little challenge we've set ourselves. You'll see what we mean. Also, this time, we're recording a speed paint, so there'll be something to share on the Tube! Hooray!

-Photography-

Remember last time, when we said we'd do a bit of a side-project and share some photos we take, too? Well somehow, we didn't anticipate the fact that we'd have -way- more photos than drawings to share. It's almost as if a photo, even when you really think about the composition, angle etc., takes maybe a couple of minutes to take, while a drawing can take days.😛

Plus, we've been taking nice little photos of stuff since we got this phone with a better (not incredible, but better) camera, so we've got a good backlog we'll slowly be releasing.

Just as a disclaimer: We do some light editing on the photos we share. Nothing major, just some small adjustments to things like colour balance and light levels. Nature is lovely, but that just means she deserves to be shown off in the best light.😉

We post our photos everywhere we post our art, so you can find it on our Cara, Pinterest and Instagram.

Oh, and Facebook, i guess, but that's only because it gets cross-posted with Instagram.

-Music-

Good news! We had a chat with Spotify support and got control of our artist channel! That was the final thing holding us back from uploading our long-delayed self-titled tune!

..... and now the bad news: On SoundCloud, our distribution request was rejected, because apparently the text on the cover art doesn't match the artist/song title. Well, at first we thought this was a straight error, since we didn't put any text on this cover, but then we realized: On that new logo of ours, there's a little button on the helmet that says "treble maker" (geddit?). Now, that logo is a big part of the cover art, so that might just be the offending text. We did a bit of an edit, replaced the text with squiggles and re-submitted. Hopefully that'll do.

In any case, we're aiming for a release on the 29th of May. It's a bit of a wait, but that's because we need some time to prepare stuff for release, send it off to curators etc.

-DCS-

Remember how we said we didn't have as much time for art as we would have liked? Well, DCS is partially to blame for that. And it's all because of this:

Before anyone says anything, it's a fictional Marineflieger livery.😉

Y'know, we had the DCS F-18 for years. I bought it long before Amalia even came into my life. And yet for some reason, we never really got into it.

We tried all sorts of different aircraft, like the F-16, F-14, F-4, even the recently added MiG-29, always in search of the the "super-plane". The one that can be our daily driver, if we had time to hop into DCS every day. (We already have one for helicopters: Apache best boy.)

Yet for some reason, we always found some kind of excuse to not look at the F/A-18C.

Well, this weekend, our curiosity peaked for some reason. We finally took a good look at her, and man, do we have egg on our HMD.

We've not taken her into proper missions yet, so the true test is still ahead of her, but we've been learning, and so far, we're rather fond of this thing. She feels just right to fly (if a bit slow), she can do just about everything the F-16 can and she's got some awesome party-pieces, like SLAM-ER cruise missiles that you can remote control via datalink from 100 miles away. Madness!

Also, unlike the F-16, she doesn't have a maze-like UFC system with 20 pages and sub-pages. So far, she's more like our beloved Apache, with most of the complicated things being done on the big screens, rather than a tiny little window with 5 square pixels. So that's nice.

There's also the fact that she can do all her stuff from a boat. The F-14 can too, of course, but the more we fly that big chonker, the more we realize that the Tomcat is actually somewhat specialized. Like a U.S. Navy version of the MiG-31, the F-14 is meant to be a long-range sniper, launching Phoenix missiles at bomber formations from long range. If you get into a dogfight, you're more manoeuvrable than most 30-ton planes, but well, you're still at a disadvantage against most contemporaries, especially those agile MiGs and Sukhois.

In terms of Air-to-ground, the Tomcat is basically just a bomb truck. Very fun in it's simplicity, but yeah, at the end of the day, she's quite limited in terms of A/G capability.

The Hornet, meanwhile, can do BVR -and- dogfighting, carries all sorts of cool A/G tools, can even do anti-shipping missions with harpoons -and- she can do it all from a carrier.

..... seriously, why haven't we taken a closer look at this thing, before? We had it on our account for all these years, but still bought all those other planes. Dangit.

Well, then again, maybe if we didn't have time in all those other planes, we wouldn't have frame of reference to appreciate the Hornet. And heck, maybe this thing will actually turn out to be awful to use in an actual mission environment. We'll see.😉

But uh, yeah, you can see that this has been on our minds quite a bit, these last few days.

-Life-

All that said, we're doing reasonably well. Though now, with our rebrand done and our priorities spread a bit wider, we're looking to get into a rhythm where we focus on a couple of projects at a time. With us doing writing, art, music and more, we're finding it very easy for our attention to be spread a bit too thin.

Gonna have to learn that we simply don't have the time to do everything at once, so we've gotta break things down into projects and work at 1-2 of them at a time, finishing them up before starting to work on new ones.😉

Of course, it also doesn't help that we're still involved in the inheritance situation. There's progress happening there, but it's currently slow going. Well, that's probably better than everything happening too fast an overwhelming us.😜

Anyway, i figure that's all we've got to report, this time. We hope you had a lovely fortnight, and that you'll have another one until the next report! Until then, stay safe, have a look at that DCS module that's been languishing on your account for years and have a good one!😉