I've been interested in aviation from the time I was old
enough to walk. I lived in a small prairie town and I can just barely remember
the first Fly-In at the local airport. Two things stand-out from that event;
a fellow that my dad knew crashed his Pitts just off the end of the runway
on takeoff and got killed, and the Canadian Forces flew in a C-130 Hercules
which had to use JATO to get back into the air. I thought constantly about
flying and got to go up with my dad and a few of his friends in the local
flying club.
Eventually I found out about the Royal Canadian Air Cadets,
joined and earned a Flying Scholarship where I got my Private Pilots licence
in 5 weeks at a Canadian Forces base and the Canadian government paid me!
Then I got married, and so much for real-world flying.
Then I found computers and the original Flight Simulator
running on a Tandy TRS-80. I've been bitten by the flight sim bug ever
since. I even took a 2 week holiday a few years ago and flew "Secret Weapons
of the Luftwaffe" the whole time! Since then I've flown many sims for MS-DOS/Win/Intel
platform. The best times were flying Microprose's F15 Strike Eagle III
in two player mode with my neighbour. We got a set of FM headset transceivers
and wired our computers together and bombed the hell out Iraq! Currently
I'm flying Falcon 4.0, Jane's F-15, FlightSim 2000, and the old DI Tornado
sim.
Over the last 3 years I've been working on ideas for a flight
sim cockpit and thought I was the only one out there until I found Derek's
website about 2 years ago. Since then I've got the controllers (Thrustmaster
F22/TQS/rudder pedals) and started on a seat (Thanks to Chris Van Lierop!).
--
Ian M. Stephens
Thorough Systems Inc.
http://members.home.com/ian.stephens
Canada
