Mudspike's Year In Review - 2016

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Mudspike’s Year In Review – 2016

By @EinsteinEP - May 29, 2016

Originally published at: https://www.mudspike.com/mudspikes-year-in-review-2016/

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The year 2016 was a dynamic year: the Summer Olympics; Brexit; Solar Impulse 2; the loss of Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder; the US election; etc. Things here at Mudspike weren’t quite that crazy, but it sure was eventful!

Articles

DCS World dominated our front page again, with PaulRix sharing his impressions of the A-10C Basic Flight Training Qualification campaign, yours truly reviewing the Mirage 2000C module and giving a preview of Baltic Dragon’s M-2000C campaign, Fridge walking us through tactical combat flying, Beach having a grand old time in the MiG-15bis side of the Museum Relic Campaign and then tearing it up in the F-5E Tiger, Sryan teaching us the basics of how to fight in the F-15C, and Chuck Owl’s Q&A with VEAO about the P-40F.

Beach shared his love of civilian flight sims in both FSX and X-Plane, showing us IRIS’ Battlefield Airlifter for FSX, Real Weather Connector, Aerobask ViperJet LXR, Air Hauler for X-Plane, and showing off his VR experience with FlyInside X-Plane 10.

On the hardware side, I took a good look at Thrustmaster’s T.Flight Hotas 4 and Rudder Pedals, Beach showed off his brand new GTX 1080, and Chuck Owl talked to us about the Rift CV1.

Beach also took us along for a dicey patrol in Arma 3 Tank Platoon and some exciting flying in the new Apex VTOLs.

FearlessFrog got a sneak peek at Combat Air Patrol with a Q&A while Beach got to try the early-access version — Combat Air Patrol 2: Straits of Hormuz — once it was available.

Tyco introduced some of us to Steel Beasts and Beach went back to SF2 to fight in Falklands ’82. Beach went truckin’ in American Truck Simulator and saved the day in Ship Simulator: Maritime Search and Rescue.

Beach explained why Cold and Dark is better and tried his hand at being the hero in our first View It / Do It: Cactus 1549.

Events

Forums

On the forum side, our resident Mad Wizard FearlessFrog was hard at work behind the scenes, bringing us new toys like Live Chat, DiceBot, and MetarBot: so far, wheelsup_cavu has managed to only destroy ONE of these!

Our most popular hangout in 2016 was our Where You Are Photos thread, where Mudspikers share their real-world life and adventures in pictures, videos, and stories. Our Game Deals and Book thread continues to expand with great game deals, although it still lacks any real book discussions.

The Screenshots & AARs forum saw a lot of great posts including:

To all of our fellow Mudspikers, thank you for making Mudspike a fun place to hang out! We’re looking forward to another great year in 2017.

The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.

— Walter Raleigh

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Ow, that reminds me that I still need to finish the Mi-8 campaign. It’s a shame I lost the save file but that’s what you get for playing in a beta version software.

All in all, a good year for Mudspike I would say! sips from mug

Perhaps the Christmas Fly-inn should added as well? I think it’s already a great readthrough and a little glimps in the approach that people take to flying it!

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I think that it has been a good year for the hobby. There is much fun to be had with a great community here at Mudspike! In my eyes, things are looking better all the time!

I am looking forward to 2017, enjoying what I have and waiting patiently for what is to come.

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2016 has been quite a year one way or another.

For me it marked a renewed interest in flight sims, mainly due to the Oculus Rift. IMHO VR is the biggest game changer to our hobby in a very long time. I can hardly wait to see the improvements that are bound to come in the next few years (hopefully higher resolution, wider field of view and at the same time, less bulky headsets).

This year also tells me that flight sims are alive and well. We are getting fairly frequent additions to the DCS stable as well as new or updated sims (albeit in early release form). I picked up AeroFly FS 2, CAP 2, X-Plane 11 as well as a number of DCS modules. Exciting times really.

Outside of the hobby, I made captain on the Global Express XRS earlier this year, stepping up from the smaller Challenger 604 and I also ran my first half marathon.

Here’s to 2017! :beers:

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Congrats! That looks like a fun plane!

That’s my goal for 2017, I am aiming for may/early june! When did you start training?

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2016 has been interesting for sure. Certainly glad that @BeachAV8R found one of my DiRT Rally videos for folks to enjoy, reminded me to come back and check things out. Been on nearly every day since :slight_smile:

I know the jet fans got some long awaited toys this year. Unfortunately, the things I was most looking forward to this year got pushed off, P-47, F4U, still no sign of that P-40 :frowning: IL-2 sticking around in Eastern Front for one more go. Had packed up the sim gear at the end of Feb. and not gotten it back out till a surprisingly good X-Plane 11 appeared.

So here’s to 2017, may you bring all the things 2016 promised to bring but deferred to you :stuck_out_tongue: :champagne:

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I’m not a great example of how you “should” do it. If you are not a runner already then 3-4 months before the event is do-able for a half. I kind of left it to the last minute, so I started just a couple of months before. Having said that, I was already running 3 miles quite consistently beforehand. If you are already running more than that then a half shouldn’t take you long to train for.

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There is a very pretty Spitfire about to be released that could tide you over. Think of it as being a member of a RAF Eagle Squadron before those pilots were pulled back into the USAAF to fly the P47 :wink: .

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It does look pretty and I’ve been trying to convince myself I want it. I am fighting it a bit though, as i’ve realized that over the years I spent a not so small fortune on things to hold me over without ever having what I’d actually like show up :smiley: It’s been a stuggle and I caved and pre-ordered another thing I am not particularly interested in Battle of Kuban this year, with hopes of seeing the Pacific there by at earliest late 2018 :wink: Oh forgot the delay in TF 5.0 in that as well, but they volunteer to do that stuff so not like I’m upset about it or anything.

If i can free up $40 from the X-mas budget I might just have to splurge, damn you! :smile:

Also forgot to congratulate you captain :thumbsup:

*edit geez there is some computer spy job going on, after just reading you say about the Eagle Squadron Spitfires, in the middle of all my Star Wars video recommendations was… a video for an Eagle Squadron Spit and that was on an entirely different browser :stuck_out_tongue:

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