User:Haley Callahan

Character Information
Haley, in a nutshell.

Character Description - Shortened
Standing 5'7" tall and weighing in at 145lbs, Haley's build is mostly muscle and thick fur, though with a fair bit of fat to round out the curves to so to speak. Due to her thick fur and acclimatization to Aleut, she wears as little as possible (even during winter) - namely a white vest, grey and blue camo cargo pants, grey-black steel-capped 'tanker' boots (which protect her feet whilst doing mechanical and industrial work, having an engine block or heavy bolt fall on your foot is something you want to avoid!) and brown oil-stained leather gloves for hand protection. Haley always wears a toolbelt which has various miscellaneous tools (screwdrivers, spanners, othersuch items) as well as a large metal monkey wrench and a combat knife with a serrated 8-inch blade.

Haley does not visibly state her allegiance to the League in the form of colours or hats, though her belt buckle is recognizable as the gear from the League flag compass, she's changed to a blue and grey camo pattern on her cargo pants lately.

Notable visual features:
 * Distinct heterochromia. Left eye red, right eye green. Gives her an unsettling countenance, see below.
 * Oversized canine teeth, even projecting out over lower jaw approx. half way to her chin when her mouth is closed. Kept sharp.

Character Background
Raised on Aleut, only child of Antonov and Erin Callahan. Spent several years learning from parents/local schooling before hitching a ride (with permission - not a runaway) to Echo Academy - paid for flight and tuition with mechanical skills learnt from her mother Erin. Often ended up using melee skills to dissuade would-be suitors.

Antonov (Haley's father) trained her from a young age, honing her physical attributes and skills above the norm. First it was merely exercises and punching bags, but eventually they went up to full on sparring, which she quite literally gave her all. Of her waking hours, when she wasn't beating the stuffing out of her father or learning how to read, write and other mundane tasks, she was down in her mother's plane workshop, either helping with the odd bit of heavy lifting or getting some hands on experience. As a result, she is a fairly competant mechanic, though she is no miracle worker, and a terror in a brawl.

Obviously, these skills attracted quite a bit of attention, and quite a few would try to win her affection though none would succeed. Others tended to be less polite about matters, but soon realized they had bitten off more than they could chew, so apart from a couple being hauled off to hospital there was little of note. Haley also found they tended to get a lot more polite (or at the very least apologetic) if hit in just the right places. Wrenches and vices are also quite persuasive! Eventually, she tired of both them and the Aleutian snow, and hitched a ride to Echo aboard an old Kingfisher with her parent's permission, paying for the trip and eventual tuition with her mechanical skills.

Family

 * Antonov: Local militia drill sergeant. Extensively trained Haley in hand-to-hand combat from a young age. Demanding training regimes.
 * Erin: Full-time hangar-based mechanic. Taught Erin mechanical skills such as engine and plane maintenance.

Character Personality - Shortened
Energetic, cheerful, sometimes violent. Especially violent when provoked or interrupted during engineering work/exercise. Can be genuinely nice if she actually likes you. Tends to form quick judgements and is strongly opinionated, however. Little respect for would-be authority figures can compound with her already occasionally violent moods to get her into trouble, though she can get herself out of it most of the time.

In the air, Haley is known for her dangerous and unpredictable flight behaviour, mostly due to sheer determination and her Dauntless' surprising durability, thanks to it's heavily modified frame.

Morning Routine

 * Wake up
 * Get coffee
 * Make breakfast
 * Assault punching bag vigorously
 * Get some other exercise
 * Shower
 * Get more coffee
 * Get to work already!

League Involvement
Only two places could ever hope to reliably contain Miss Callahan's dangerous tendencies - the League, or Independency. The latter would be a harder route, and the League certainly has it's benefits. Haley's penchant for mechanical engineering (primarily in the fields of engines, and more importantly, heavy-duty weapons, like cannons) and the League's... flexibility means she has plenty of room to work, and resources and connections to call upon. She currently resides on Islo like most of the newer League members despite having been with them for a while, and spends a considerable amount of time in the air testing experimental weaponry whilst keeping the skies around Islo safe for civilian shipping. The Frank Exchange of Views (or simply 'Frank') - a venerable Dauntless with an easily modified frame - serves as a test platform. Or used to, anyway;

The Frank Exchange of Views has since been phased out, and replaced with the Type S, a heavily upgraded Dauntless that might as well be a Tier 9.

The Type S features two linked 2 cm KwK 30 L/55 cannons mounted in the fast-turning roof turret, which is capable of 360 degree rotation and 90 degree elevation, covering an entire hemisphere above the aircraft. The lower nose features a quad 2 cm FlaK 30 mount in a Flakvierling 38 style, with each gun firing individually in a TL/TR/BL/BR sequence; if you were behind the plane, and linked the barrels in order of firing, you would get a Z shape - from the front, a back to front Z, or a kind of S shape. Between the two gun arrays, the Type S has impressive anti-plane firepower. All guns employ a new HVAP (high-velocity, armour-piercing) cartridge capable of shredding most plane protection and striking vulnerable inner components.

The turret has been upgraded with semi-automatic controls; it will automatically fire at the nearest, largest hostile radar signature when the safeties are released. It can be overridden by the pilot and have a target specified, locked into forward facing, or manually controlled by a crewmember. The automatic system is not stellar, but is fairly decent. It cannot effectively tackle the high-tier Performance planes, for example, and it cannot identify and target any weak points in a target's armour, instead aiming for center mass, give or take. The manual system allows the gunner to track via radar signatures or visual - the latter being more useful for large targets where precision is necessary.

Just like the old Frank Exchange of Views, the Type S features six hardpoints under the wings for external payloads such as large rockets, missiles, or the high-capacity rocket pods, holding 19 2.75" rockets. The frame still contains it's twin 5" racks, altered slightly to let exhaust gases escape through the rear of the rack during launch. The usual compliment of rockets (multiple HE reloads, smoke, flare, etc.) are still installed. The Type S is even more maneuverable than it was before as well, surprisingly. Sure, it might not outperform the Performance planes, but it's no Bullfrog either.

Recently, the entire 'skin' was stripped off and replaced with lighter, higher-quality steel, and the frame also reinforced with high-quality steel. With lighter armour, more could be installed without increasing the weight notably, further increasing protection. Spall liners help prevent damage to internal components as a result of rounds failing to penetrate but causing spalling. The entire plane is very solidly built now. Of course, doing all that meant upgrading the engines too - the two R-2800-65W engines were replaced with the higher-powered R-2800-103W, both water-cooled for increased performance. The full list of other engine modifications is too much to effectively list here, but if you can think of it, it's probably installed.

Of course, all this modification has come at considerable cost to the plane's cargo capacity and a chunk out of it's fuel capacity, reducing it's range somewhat. But hey, who cares about those when you've got enough firepower to level several airfields without stopping for a reload?

Missile Projects
The problem with rockets is that it's hard to get them to hit fast moving enemy aircraft. Haley's work on guidance systems has been slow, but so far, two projects have gotten off the ground fairly well.

A third has recently emerged, too.

AAM-2 "Bloodhound"
An early semi-active radar-homing missile, the Bloodhound is guided by radar beam reflections off a target, which is "painted" by the FEoV's radar. It has the highest accuracy and lowest chance of striking friendly aircraft, but it's warhead is fairly small. The FEoV's radar guidance requires a seperate operator to ensure the missile stays on target, but is more reliable than visual guidance, and more practical than wire guidance. The FEoV usually carries two of these.

ARM-3 "Wildfire"
A simple anti-radiation missile, the Wildfire has no friend/foe identification systems, and merely homes in on the nearest, strongest emitter of radio emissions, be it radio hardware, a radar or radar jammer. The Wildfire is highly maneuverable and hard to shake, and has a fairly powerful warhead given it's limited targeting system, but it can very easily strike friendly targets, or just plain wander off chasing a distant signal if it fails to lock onto something close enough in time. The FEoV usually carries four, as it tends to engage away from friendly aircraft, thus minimizing the risks of friendly fire.

AHM-8 "Volcano"
A newer and more advanced missile, the Volcano is a moderately powered heatseeking missile. Whilst it is sometimes fooled by the sun, and suffers from noise issues due to the heat from it's own electronics, the Volcano is still an effective weapon, despite the relatively lower heat generated by prop planes - after all, in the air, there's really not much else that's generating heat. It is not a standard armament on the FEoV, however, as it is still relatively new, and thus undergoing trials.

2.4

 * Determinist - CR-4P
 * Nuisance Value - Mastiff
 * Limiting Factor - Valkyrie
 * Gunboat Diplomat - Valkyrie Mark II
 * Wishful Thinker - Phantom
 * Frank Exchange of Views - Dauntless

2.5 / Other

 * Type S - Dauntless (Current)