Thought it may be interesting to know what folk's first flight sim experiences were. For myself, it was flight simulator for the apple II e. At 5 years old or so I was amazed. How times and tech change.

What's yours?

microsoft flight sim 02
i now have ms fsx

I have always loved to fly. You could say it is in my genes.

I began on Microsoft Fly Simulator (the original) when I was just a maggot.
Flew up to Microsoft Combat Fly Simulator (series) when I wanted excitement.
Now, I enjoy the latest release from the Microsoft Fly Simulator series:

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And, I fly DogFight.
I guess you could say that I'm still a maggot at heart.


....oh....you said....FLIGHT....simulator.....sorry.

My first flight simulator was plastic with three inch wings. The motor always sounded funny though and it never could do a loop right.

Good topic!

Flight sim 3.0 on a 386 ibm computer. 2 5.25 inch floppy disks! Monochrome display with a frame rate of about two per second. No mouse, no joystick A far cry from the 2 gig program FSX is.

I was prob 8 when I started (1988)

All my FS time enabled me to take my first real training flight without having the instructor touch the controls once!

When they were making FSX i was working the line crew at Kenmore Air in Seattle and it was neat to see the Microsoft guys come out and make sound recordings inside and out of the DHC-2 Beaver.

I have flown 66z many times, which is the Beaver in Kenmore colors, and pumped a lot of gas into the privately owned Beaver they copied the green and cream colored scheme from.

Interestingly, the green Beaver they copied was involved in a mid-air which killed two in a Cessna 152 at Renton Municipal. The beaver sustained float damage and was safely landed in the grass at Renton.

Swop and I were talking about the old WWI map and combat simulator for flight sim. The enemy aircraft were literally stick figures! I guess five or so sticks is all it takes to make a biplane, lol.

Great stories.

I too have been looking to the skies for as long as I can remember. Never took the plunge into licensing though. Perhaps as the kids get older. I have always loved the looks of the Beaver. Something rustic and adventuresome about that radial out front.

For now, I can look at a little screen or tilt my head toward the sky and dream of flying.

Lets keep the stories coming.

D

falcon 4.0 anybody?
real fun

Falcon 3.0 here! Very fun. Talk about a fat manual!

Smokepiper, the Beaver is a dream to fly, and the sound is the best! At $600 per hour for dual instruction, I was lucky to log about 30 hrs for free on the company dime. When they take a beaver and exchange the Pratt R-985 for a PT-6 turbine it makes me want to cry.

After working line at Kenmore I spent five years in the engine shop doing major overhauls of R-985s. The 985 engine first ran in 1929, Pratt's third engine. By 1953 they had built over 40,000 for use in over 70 aircraft including helicopters and even 1 tank! Many of the engines I worked on sat for decades before getting much needed work. Did any Navy guys fly behind a 985 in pensacola, mid 1960's? Ive overhauled about a dozen engines that were removed from trainers there '64-'66.

the falcon series had HUGE manuals

WTG (must type that carefully),
Did you know that DENT breaks planes, too?

Has anyone figured out how to fly multi-player on X-PLANE 9?

Paul, yes I did! He works on Dorniers I think?

We used to say at Kenmore: "the college grads break 'em; us high school grads fix 'em!"

Also noteworthy: working on machines that are operated daily in salt water is a mofo!!

And MIFs= maintenance induced failures. They do happen, like when you do an oil change and dont put oil back in! Lucky me, I never had to anwer for anything like that!

I did get to do several NTSB accident reports on engines that came out of crashed Beavers. Dispite the gravity and knowing people died a few feet behind said engines I must say the challenge of reconstructing how and why they failed was most interesting!

The Falcon game brings back lots of memories! Played the original when it came out. But my favorites were the Battlehawk 1942 and the sequel Battlehawks 1942: Batte of Britain! Spent many a weekend playing them (and a lot of weekdays when I should have been studying my books) as a cadet!

I wanted to add an all time favorite: aces over the pacific. There was a europe version too that i never had. This was around 1993 I think?

Awesome game!

I had forgotten about Battle of Brittain. Aces over the pacific was another longstanding after school obsession. How about secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. Ah, memories.