When your kids get older you have to be really specific on what you want for Xmas.
This was the old Cessna 152 that I learnt to fly in, picked up on sale from Carenado:
I bought it mainly because @chipwich pointed out the excellent XPv11 conversion for it. It works wonderfully in VR (unlike screenshots). It has some really nice touches like being able to do a pre-flight walk-around, top up the Gas in the wing tanks manually (by pouring!) and has been generally excellent so far:
Finally, I resisted the urge to install this before today, the new Orbx UK South scenery pack:
Here I am over Bristol (stock XP11 not the new Orbx one), where I flew about X number of years ago (where X is a too large a number).
Cockpit is so nice and familiar. You can put in all sorts of Garmin toys, but if I am almost going backwards at 85 kts then it’s easier just to find a road.
I hope you are as impressed with the OrbX True Earth scenery as I am! That 152 looks great too! I might have to pick it up just for for the nostalgia factor. I learned to fly in Cyprus using the RAF Akrotiri Flying Club C150’s. That was, ahem… 24 years ago.
This is my post first solo photo with my instructor Geoff Coles. He flew the Blackburn Beverly when he was in the RAF. Great guy. I wish I had stayed in touch with him.
I really am so far. Doing the ‘look for my house’ flight series of places we lived in the UK and am enjoying it a great deal. I bet the Orbx North (Scotland) is going to be spectacular as well, and I basically just put aside a new SSD for this stuff as it’s inevitable I’ll go for it. I’ll need RAF Cranwell for nostalgia, but I think anything above The Wash is GB Central. Oh well, into the cart you go.
I also saw in the end of year Orbx announcement that the Pacific Northwest is going to be their next X-Plane series, so that’s a must-buy for me as well.
Pretty much everyone in my near and extended family are/were either RAF/RN/RM. I did cadet stuff but followed the money into computers after college. Fun to think back on the paths you choose though.
That 152 panel brings back great memories (and reminders of how that plane smelled!). I think mine didn’t have digital radios…it still had the slightly older ones with the window with the rolling digits that you’d clunk in. $13 an hour wet at Quantico MCAS. Wow.
I remember discussing my career options with my mom, eons ago. I was contemplating following my dream into aviation, or go for a master in computers. Hey! Don’t laugh! I was the guy you called for editing autoexec.bat and config.sys, installing soundblaster cards, and what not. I said it was eons ago…
Anyway, my mom, being a Mother™, said: ”I hear the future in the IT sector is promising”
Never the one to discourage her kids. Just nudge them in the safer direction… Bless her kind soul.
Put this in its own topic, as wanted to post some more but felt bad doing it in the general screen topic.
It’s hard to capture, but the ‘VR walkaround’ stuff is such fun. The preflight allows you walk around in VR and to check control surfaces by wiggling them. Immersive fun. As my VR captures are so poor, here’s the mod’s author’s ones to show what I mean:
Geoff is my Grandfather. I have just sent this post to him, he will be thrilled to see it!!
Unfortunately due to ill health he is now too sick / old to fly.
I remained good friends with my CFI over the years. He went to the Caribbean and flew Twin Otters, then back to the States on the Dash 8, only to be furloughed during a recession. He had to put food on the table, so went back to dentistry and taught flying at night. His dental career remained ahead of pilot hiring, so he founded a practice and quit instructing. Such is life, often choosing necessity over passion.
Neither of us have flown much in the last 10 years, although he still keeps a workshop adjacent to the T hangars at PDK. When I visit Atlanta, I can find him hanging out there on the weekends helping other pilots wrench on their birds or sitting in a beach chair watching the 5 o’clock push from Signature or students doing touch and go’s.
I’ve got 3 kids to put through college and flying has gotten so expensive. I’m seriously thinking about building one of these. The kids can fly it without a license under part 103.
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