Computor Flight Simulator

I am an Flight Simulator Pilot with over two thousand hours of flight time on the Microsoft series of Flight Simulator over the last nineteen years or so, though I don’t bother to count hours any more. After a hard day at my real job or when I have a spare half hour or so I load up the programme, slip on the headset lower the lights and get ready for some relaxation, but I am getting slightly ahead of myself, let me take you back to how it all started.

My uncle flew Gliders into Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden on the night of 17th September 1944. He had been a Sergeant in the Royal Engineers when a year earlier in 1943 he saw a notice asking for volunteers to train as Glider Pilots in the newly formed Glider Pilot Regiment, he volunteered, passed the course and transferred to the new Regiment, and so it was that on a cloudy Sunday night the 17th September he crashed landed [all Gliders by default crash land] his Horsa MK 1 Glider carrying troops of the British Parachute Regiment into a dark field in Holland. He was later one of the lucky ones who acted as a guide to get the troops out to the Rhine where they were brought back across the river over a period of two nights by small boats.

After the war ended he remained in the Army and when the Glider Pilot Regiment was disbanded and the new Army Air Corps was formed he transferred and at first flew Chipmunk and Auster then later Beaver fixed wing and then converting to Helicopters, Scout and the Sioux. He retired from military service in 1970 his last active post being Officer Commanding Flying Wing at the Army Air Corps Centre at Middle Wallop. It was as a direct result of listening to him telling me lots of stories whilst I was growing up that introduced my interest in flying and later when like him I chose the Army as a career I too learnt to fly.

My first Flight Simulator was version 4 of the Microsoft series released in 1989. This consisting of a split screen on your monitor the top half attempting to provide a representation of the view/scenery and the bottom half the cockpit instrumentation. Of course by what we now think of as acceptable it was more than a little basic, but back then when it was all new and running on 8 Bit computers it was nothing short of revolutionary. Many happy hours were spent flying around a very blank and bare landscape trying to apply very basic navigation, the scenery only coming back to life again when nearing a major airport. I stayed true with FS4 until the release of MSFS 95 in 1996.

MSFS 95 had much better graphics [well I thought so anyway] and it was a much more slicker product, for the first time, well for me anyway, the pilot could chose between about 6 aircraft types and again the sim pilot now was able, in theory anyway, able to plan a flight from A to B and fly it, agreed the scenery at times was basic and the sim pilot was required to still have a fairly good imagination, but it was at the time a great product that was until the mould was broken by a company called Eidos Looking Glass Technologies.

In 1997 I was reading a computer magazine and noticed an article about a new type of flight simulator called Flight Unlimited II, this was in fact the second one in the series by this developer, but for some reason the first one had passed me by. However the article gave a web link where the reader could download a demo of the new simulator, which I did and I was absolutely blown away. The graphics were out of this world, the sim had a choice of aircraft type, it had a dynamic weather system, and it featured AI aircraft and an active and working ATC system, goodbye MS 95 hello FU II. I had to wait a couple of weeks before the whole game had been released in the UK but I rushed off to the shop and bought a copy. As I sat at home installing the game onto my computer I just hoped that my 8Mb of Ram was enough to cope with the huge jump in technology that was about to hit it, however I need not of worried, the 8 Mb ran it with no problems at all, I have to laugh now writing this, I have aircraft installed on my system now that are more than 8 Mb.

FU II also did something else for me. One day I was reading a flight sim web site when I saw a mention for a VA for FU II, I did not know what a VA was so I read on. It seems that a chap called Fred Brubaker had formed a fictional flying company based on the FU II simulator based at Half Moon Bay [KHAF]. He was inviting anyone to join and promised to provide virtual general cargo and pax runs in return for virtual pay, the company was called Bay Area Charter. When we think today of all the many VAs there are to cover every taste in the FS world Fred was years ahead of his time. He developed Bay Area Charter into a working company he invented stories to intertwine in between the flying, he had a web page with a pilot roster, everyone got paid at the end of the month, and he devised a flight brokerage where you could buy your own aircraft from the company, thereby allowing a bit more profit on earnings than hire a company aircraft from Fred where he took a cut. Some pilots would be invited by Fred to earn a little more by flying some ‘special jobs’. It was not long before Bay Area Charter had a following of about 30 pilots and I am sure many of us really thought that we were real pilots and that Bay Area Charter really did exist, that is how professional Fred was. Sadly however the end had to come, the bubble burst when Fred announced without any warning that he was closing up shop and he did just that, he shut the web site down within 24 hours and that was that.

Well not quite, three pilots from BAC me, Richard and a lady called Shawn decided BAC should not just die, but there was not a lot we could do about it, or was there. After a furious flurry of e mails between the three of us Shawn just said ‘Why don’t we set up our own VA still based on FU II but moving on a little from BAC’, why not indeed agreed Richard and I, so we did. The new company was called Pier Glass Aviation and moved its FBO from Half Moon Bay to San Jose International. We got all the other BAC pilots to move with us, Richard who worked in IT put a web page together, I wrote a set of assignments and put the roster and wages page together and Shawn wrote the background story that Fred had been dealing with the Mafia and forgetting to inform the IRS about some [or most] of BAC earnings and so had been arrested one dark night. In an attempt to salvage their property the BAC pilots turned up at Half Moon Bay before the Police and FBI could get there, they collected anything of any use or value and flew whatever aircraft they could out of Half Moon Bay into San Jose and painted all the aircraft markings out.

So it was that PGA took to the virtual skies.

PGA answered to nobody, they paid no bills no taxes, and they stole from everyone except themselves and lived by the motto ‘If your paying we are flying’. There was no such thing as bad weather or unserviceable aircraft, you flew or answered to ‘The Boss’, if you flew [which was wise to do so when told] you got paid and a monthly share of the goods which was mostly booze stolen from some cargo run or other.

It soon became clear to us at PGA that FU II was far to limiting in terms of area and so after a discussion we agreed to change to MSFS 98 and 2000 that had been released in 1997 and 1999, by changing back to MSFS the whole world opened up to PGA and for some years the VA flourished, like all VAs some members left and some new members joined. It came to the point however that we could not write enough assignments and so changed to a random number generator similar to the type of thing that is used on ‘War Gaming’ to provide an assignment and the level of pay. Sadly however this proved to be the start of the end for PGA. It was not a popular choice and pilots found it hard to invent funny stories about their flights when the assignment had been selected for them on the basis of a number generator. Over the next year or so pilots drifted away until PGA consisted of about three or four regulars, and mostly it has ground itself into the ground. PGA still lives on, the web site is still there, I have a look from time to time by all is silent there now.

So here I was just about to change from MSFS 2000 to MSFS 2002 but I soon grew bored with flying on my own again however good 2002 and its third party following was, I for one needed a direction, I needed a VA. Like most things I was browsing a few web pages when I found Solent Airlines, a UK Southampton based [though later moving to Southend] VA flying a mixture of Prop and Jet short to medium flight pax and freight. Solent was a formal airline, no pay, no stealing lying or cheating, the pilot bid for a flight flew it and had their hours recorded. It sounds dull after BAC and PGA but it wasn’t, for some reason the formal structure was fun and it had a great and lively forum and everyone got on together. Solent went from strength to strength, we all flew when we could and all being UK based we all met in the evenings on the forum and had a chat with each other, it really was good. Like most thing in the FS world the day came when Bob and Julie who ran Solent decided to close it down, their two daughters then becoming teenagers needed a little more Mum and Dad time and so sadly Solent Airlines closed just as I changed from MSFS 2002 to 2004 my current simulator.

Here I was back to flying on my own, it was okay for while but while I was enjoying 2004 but it soon became clear to me that however good MSFS is and despite the advance from Version 4 to 2004 I need some friends. I was one evening looking for a good helicopter and was browsing the Hovercontrol web site when I started to read the forums a post caught my eye about some VA that paid you [the pilot] money, dear me I thought we were doing that way back in BAC not very original is it I thought but for some reason I read on, it intrigued me, maybe it might interest me I thought, I made a note of the web address and moved on to another post.. It was some hours later when I thought about seeing what this Sweet Shell was about so I cut and paste the web address and sat there as the page loaded.

I looked around as much as I could, I read some of the posts that were open to me without becoming a member, what a set of oddballs I thought, hey these guys are off the wall, half of them are obsessed with naked woman the other half……………well I dare not think what the other half were like……………. I sat back in my chair and laughed, this is the biggest set of pirates I had met since PGA days I must have some of this, these guys really know how to enjoy themselves.

I signed up and put my first post on the forum and waited, then I got some replies hey I was welcomed into the fold, these guys were normal, that was blow, still who cares the point is everyone is part of the fun, everyone is equal, we are all part of a family and that family is Sweet Shells the biggest group of Hippy Sky Truckers around and we are proud of it. We like our flying, we like our woman naked and we like our booze.

So here I am almost 60 years old mixing on equal terms with guys half my age [or less] with something we all enjoy and have in common Flight Simulation.