02/08/2020 - Flight Simulators - Why?

Ever since I was about 4 years old, I wanted to fly.  Growing up as a kid in India, as long as I remember, my parents and I travelled mostly by plane (Indian Airlines mostly), as well as one memorable trip to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, flying Air Ceylon.

Flying in an assortment of DC3's, Fokker F27's and Vickers Viscounts were to me, one of the most exciting things I could imagine.

Then in 1973, at the age of eleven, my parents and I migrated to Australia.  This involved a trip from Madras to Singapore, Singapore to Jakarta and finally from Jakarta to Perth, Western Australia.  B707's and DC8's were our  "modus itinerantur" which at the time must have driven my parents to despair, given my excitement.  A visit to the cockpit on one leg (911 was a very long time in the future) absolutely confirmed in my mind, flying was what I was going to do.

 The next six years for me was an opportunity to prepare for a career in either the Air Force or Army, flying.  Flying anything, transport, rotary wing (helos), fast jets, anything.  

My academic results were ok, not exceptional, just ok. However I still held onto a hope that enthusiasm, a significant level of aviation knowledge and you know, enthusiasm would get me through.

Anyhow, to cut a long boring story short, I did attend a recruiting office appointment to be assessed for entry into what was then Officer Training College, Duntroon (now ADFA) to train as a Army pilot.  Well, that did not end well.  Unfortunately, to my great distress, I failed the Ishihara Test and the subsequent Lantern Test confirming beyond all doubt, that I was colorblind.

Being told that the only thing I would qualify for in the Army would probably be a kitchen assistant did nothing for my state of mind.  What it did do, was to make clear to me that my dreams of flying were over. This was in the late 70's, after which I sought and found employment in fields much different from the career I had originally envisioned.

In the mid 80's, I was working in the engineering department of a large agribusiness when one day, a graduate engineer installed a genuine IBM PC XT on a desk not far from where I worked.  A few weeks later during lunch, this engineer installed a copy of SubLogic Flight Simulator on the PC XT.  I was hooked.  This was absolutely amazing to me.

For those who experienced this early flight sim, you will understand how addicted to flight I was, given the tenuous connection to flight that this sim had.  Wire frame hills, land and no external view.  Blocky mono graphics depicting instrumentation and click, click, click sound for the engine might seem incongruous to the non simmer, but for me this was incredible.

Anyhow, that was incentive enough for me to save like crazy for my first PC XT clone, and my own copy of the sim.  It was the start of an incredible journey of discovery, of learning about computers and computing, all in an effort to make my simming journey more realistic.  I have lost count, but I believe I have built or had built around eight or nine PC's to facilitate my addiction.

I have spent manby thousands of Dollars on peripherals all in an effort to replicate the sensation of flight.

A few years ago I spent a couple of years training for a recreational pilots license with the hope that I would one day be able to buy my own ultralight and fly under these restricted conditions.  At the time my income level fully supported this plan, and to this end I was able to solo in a reasonable timeframe.

Ok, so just like "any good plan not surviving first contact with the enemy", not long after soloing, I was made redundant, so ended my plans for real world flight.  Back to flight simming it was for me.  But this time with a lot more knowledge of what it should be like, both procedurally as well as physically.

So what's next... What do I do while "simming".

Around 377 hours to go for the release of FS2020...