I just wanted to drop a few lines now that you´ve got me flying again...
I have started discovering FS in the late 80´s. Practically a toddler at that time, I was amazed at monochrome turning into four, then 16, then 256 and many more colours on the huge screens of those days. And I loved that early FS my dad brought home one day, even if helos would not have been steerable at all for me, given that I had to govern them by means of keyboard only. And I remember well that Cessna loosing its wings on Sears Tower... It was so much neater at that time to stick to Commodore 64´s "Super Huey" and admire the real SAR Hueys come and go to the hospital´s helo pad right across the street from where we lived (gotta find and scan you those photos of mine one day).
Since then I have been through Digital Integrations "Tornado" which had cost me a fortune back then (plus it was unavailable in Paris, France, where I grew up) and took hardware upgrade after hardware upgrade as well as weeks of learning the ropes to finally fly that little Tomcat´s sister for hundreds of hours. In the end, that very nice piece of aviation simulation kept me busy for a couple of years. At that stage, I took my bike and rode to the nearby airstrip to examine decomissioned planes and harass staff and pilots with thousands of questions. My real-life highlight in those years was the Paris Air Show where the Eurocopter Tiger went for loopings and where Viktor Pugachev performed the legendary cobra maneuver (at that time I thought any well trained pilot could do it and with any reasonable fighter jet *blush´n´laugh*).
Long story short: the following years I discovered other aspects of life, finished school, was in the German Navy and back busy with civilian life on solid ground. It wasn´t until 2010 that I decided to give flight simulations another try. So I acquired FSXA and my girlfriend remembered me talking of Thrustmaster dreams of the old days - that´s how I ended up with the T-Flightstick and a pair of equal pedals *hush!*. I thought that buying Add-Ons would raise the experience to another level and got a... uhm.... buggy variant of the Eurofighter Typhoon and Panavia Tornado and a couple of cheap Airbusses. Well... they only kept me going for a couple of days every now and then. When my last PC quit a couple of years ago, I was confined to her IMac, BootCamp and a Vista license - that´s where the DVD´s went right back to the drawer.
A couple of days ago, while I was packing my stuff for the move to come in April, I found those disks. And there I went again for BootCamp and Vista on that IMac. But I did not want to waste any more time, electricity and effort in relicts of the past. So I thought of having a look how other people faced the challenge and placed my order at google.
That´s how I found you, how I found Dino Cattaneo´s and Javier Fernandez´ tribute to Grumman and aircraft carrier ops. At first I did not want to put me back in the mess of tweaking here and there to get things running to no avail. But then it happened: history indeed repeats itself sometimes. As a matter of two days I got the two packages, got AICarrier and vLSO as well as a 38m mesh for France and AIBTC - and there it was again: that fascination that drove me back in the early days. To not only want more, but do more to get where I wanted to be.
Tonight, some 12hs after setting up Vista and if condensed to a single time span, I have the USNS Patuxent on an AI route from Marseille to Toulon whenever I go on a free flight, Le Palyvestre Navy being my standard flight homebase. And although this is still quite simplistic compared to what some of you guys do on a daily base with your gear, knowledge and enthusiasm, I really feel driven again. That passion for the most beautiful thing under these skies obviously never died, just fell asleep a long time ago (if mentioning that to my gf, always bear in mind that I will deny all knowledge about this post).
So thank you for refueling me after that starvation of mine in the distant past and subsequent mashing down towards the ground for so terribly long. My engines restarted, I believe. I´m´n´a get get back some attitude now and will talk to you later.
Thank you so much to the boards staff and members for your contributions, your support, for sharing, for your patience and tenacity (I came across many questions having been asked over and over again
) and well... for being there!Cheers, Pat
Do you know the Wembury turn? Watch this:
