Hello from an old (late 60's pushing 70) flight simmer and a new member of the forum.
Memory lane, ah yes, remembered quite well. Started flight simming about 1982 on a Z80 based now what we would call primitave PC. TV as the monitor and programs saved to tape.
First flight sim was written in BASIC with text/number input only to "land" a 747. Actually quite complex for the times.
Amstrad CPC 464 and F-15 as a flight sim. Fairly simple "chase a Soviet bomber" type of sim but interesting enough. A "spitfire" shoot 'em down sim that was sort of ok as I recall.
I am not all that interested in combat flight sims. I saw close enough to the real thing in my teens and early 20's but as a cadet first and some training in another military branch during the Vietnam conflict years. I never saw active service though.
IBM clone PC, a 286. MS Flight Simulator version 4b. Great, actual civilain aircraft to fly and reasonably good set of flight dynamics for the time. The great thing about FS 4b was the in built aircraft design module. Had a lot of fun designing, testing, flying, crash and burn with a canard jet I designed. Actually would reach 4,000 knots. Amazing. Takeoff was more thrust than aerodynamics and landing was all aerodynamics with a stall speed of about 180 knots and landing speed of about 200 knots.
MS Flight Simulator 5, great. I wish I could still play with this on today's PC's but too much fiddling with VM ware to run old DOS programs.
Jump to MS Flight Simulator 98. Yes !. Add on aircraft, panels, scenery, the lot. Many years of fun and re-living actual flying (single prop CFR rated I was like most casual pilots). Fly a Cessna 172 from the Aero Club on a Sunday and fly a Cessna 172 with FS 98 on Monday night over the same area. The melding of actual flying and flight sim flying, same aircraft, same location was a blend of both worlds.
With FS 98 I was for a while an unofficial part time sort of member of Pegasus Aviation Design. I had aboy 25 years of aviation literature and plans/blueprints/data on many aircraft which went to the actual members if they were working on a project at the time. I tried designing a few aircraft with (I think it was a Bruce Artwick program) a good design suite and my efforts were terrible. Have you ever seen a swept wing Harvard ?. Things like that.
I skipped MS Flight Sim 2000 (although I have it stored away) and went to MS Flight Sim 2002 Professional. Flying under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, great fun and actually done as early as the 1940's by a brave pilot in a Lancaster bomber. I think he was "grounded" for that stunt. As PC's and grahics cards became mor powerful I could load more complex graphics details with each new PC I built. Why, in those days buy a PC for a fortune when you could (and still can) build your own to the specifications you want.
My favourite flight sim is FS 2004 or more correctly FS9. And, totally incompatible with Windows 10. I will stay with Windows 8.1 as I managed to do a few tweaks and black magic of my own and FS9 runs perfectly under Windows 8.1. (the recipe for my magic FS9 potion is free if anyone is interested). The order in which the installation is done and the Microsoft patch and where (which folder you run the patch from and which folder you have FS9 in are crucial).
With FS9 I like to take the default DC3 up to about 7,000 feet, settle at 120 knots IAS, full flap, gear down, and play ducks and drakes with the trim until the rate of sink is about 2 feet per second. And just watch the DC3 woofle along slowly losing height. Relaxing, totally realaxing.
Anyway, enough. I get too wordy sometimes and this is one of them.
Cheers to all,
Better to Burn Out. (apologies to Neil Young and Crazy Horse).
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