Prologue: As we all know, in the first few months of this year, the world found itself in the midst of a viral nightmare. Some might think that the following piece about “playing video games” might be thoughtless, even silly given the scope of suffering that humanity is experiencing. I offer the opposite. In the darkest hours of my life, I’ve found that limiting my exposure to anxiety and worry, and attempting to replace it with joy and fun is truly powerful therapy. In the year 2000, I spent months living in a blur of surgeons, chemo and radiology doctors, and waiting rooms populated with sad faces and anxious looks. I lived through many bleak days (and nights) filled with questions regarding my health, my family, my career and pretty much everything in between.

I survived that year with the love of my family and friends, the medical heroes that brought me through that horrific tunnel, and the “therapy” of doing things that gave me joy. Loving my wife and children, staying in touch with siblings and friends, and (yes) logging time in front of my computer were the suave for my wounds. I could be in a world devoid of needles and cancer cells, twisting and turning through the clouds, and losing myself for hours at a time flying…albeit in a make-believe world, but flying nonetheless. When I exited that dark tunnel of personal nightmare, I penned an article titled “Take Two Sims and Call Me in the Morning”, and it was about just that. Using a beloved hobby to keep my mind from drifting where it had no business living. I know that now, as I spend days on end in my home, I’m staying sane using the same “therapy” I used two decades past. Love of my wife, children, siblings and friends. Lots of reading, writing, movies…and yes…my “addiction” to cyber flying.

The following is my promised entry about flight simulations.

 

“Hello…My Name is Bill, and I’m…”

…a flight sim addict.”

 

 

There, I said it. I’m essentially addicted to flying cyber aircraft around in a cyber world. Do I have other “addictions “and hobbies? Of course, I do. For instance, I’m dangerously drawn to a computer keyboard (obviously).  Also, in my teen years, I was consumed with two early loves (three counting flying machines). They being an attraction to motorcycles, and sports (both as a participant, and a voyeur). To this day, I find football season to be my favorite time of year, and I’m drawn to watching the four “major” golf tournaments like a fat kid to cake.  Concerning the two-wheeled wonders, I find it impossible to resist stopping to admire a gleaming, shining, motorcycle whenever the opportunity presents itself. My last addiction concerns the past. I love most everything history related, with my most compelling interest centered around modern (read 20th century) military events. Ask me the differences between Passchendaele, and Pelelui, the significance of Haiphong, and Helmund, Incheon and the Ia Drang…such is the byproduct of being a history nerd. This fascination of military history nicely dovetails into my love of flight simulations, which will be explained a bit more later. I’m compelled to say that I lay this last addiction squarely into the laps of two people. My dear father, and Adolph Hitler (seems that might also need some further explanation).

At the tender age of nine (circa 1965), our family packed up its worldly possessions, (lock, stock and barrel like many times before), and moved to a different military base. This particular move however was radically different than the others. Where we had crossed an ocean before when moving from Washington State to Hawaii, we had never actually relocated to a foreign country. We were now bound for the historic Bavarian city of Nuremburg, (West) Germany. I had no idea that it was to reveal undreamt of sights, sounds, tastes and a host of other things that my feeble young brain had never before contemplated. We began our two-year journey (to include a move to Munich the following year) by living, not on the Army base, but “on the economy” (meaning, in a neighborhood with the natives). I was gob-smacked to say the least, but the adventure was exhilarating. Lacking information to reflect on the momentous, world-shattering events that had taken place in this country a mere 20 years before, I had no idea that the scars (both physical and emotional) of World War II, were still very much a part of daily life here. My introduction to the fascinating world we call “History” was about to begin.

My parents were amazing people. First of all, because they were smart enough to have a kid like me (lol), and secondly because they never wasted an opportunity to throw us five “kinder” into the trusty old family station wagon and traipse us out into the German countryside. We traveled to castles, we visited museums, we drove to other Deutsche cities and towns, we even took a day to visit the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. I was but a mere lad of 10, but that day is seared into my memory, and the things I saw, and the feelings that I experienced will haunt me to my grave. It was a very confusing and upsetting day. Many days, and conversations later, my young brain started to faintly absorb it all. It was all so frightening, but I was drawn to the story of what had taken place HERE, where I was living, a mere two decades before. I wanted to know more, and the more places I visited (especially those that involved famous [and infamous] World War II locales), the more I started to feel the “tug” of the past.

 

(My brother John and I standing on an M4 Sherman tank somewhere around the Munich airfield that my father flew from, circa 1966-67. Apparently, it was used as an Me-262 jet base by the Luftwaffe at the end of the war.)

 

I vividly remember standing on the concrete and marble podium where Adolph Hitler addressed the masses at the rallies of the 1930s, and I was enraptured by the enormity of it all. My father schooled me of him and his evil ideals (my Dad was roughly the same age as myself during those dark days of the Second World War). I remember there were forested areas with signs reading “Verboten” alerting folks that these woods had not been cleared of dangerous ordnance left from the war, and thus, they were closed to the public. I watched films and TV shows (a favorite of my generation was Vic Morrow’s “Combat!”), and I began to understand that what we call “history” isn’t just black words on a white page. I concluded that It was a living thing…past our spot in time…but living nonetheless. Real people, with real lives (and hopes and dreams and loves) stood where I was now standing, and I could almost feel them. Be it at historical places in 1965 Germany, or almost 50 years later, seeing the caves of Saipan, flying past Iwo Jima at 35,000’, or walking the invasion beaches of Normandy, it’s as if I could easily imagine myself in that place, at that moment in time. I loved it then, and I love it to this day.

 

(The Nuremburg podium, the island of Iwo Jima, and the “Dog Green” landing beach at Omaha .)

 

So back to the “addiction”.

Flash forward to the year 1995, I was living in Dallas/Ft. Worth and traveling the highways and by-ways on my “Honda-Davidson”. My shiny red VT1100 Shadow was an awesome bike, and it fully stoked my love of motorcycles. It didn’t offer one thing however; and that was any protection from the thousands of dumbasses that I was sharing those highways and by-ways with. Having lived through some scary moments when I was a teen delivering my paper route on my little Suzuki 125, I was pretty up to speed on keeping an eye on the cars and trucks that were all bent on my destruction. But on one particular warm, sunny Texas morning, on a very busy super highway in downtown Dallas, all that changed. Suffice to say that at my speed of 80+ mph (just to stay with the traffic), had the divine hand of the good Lord (or whatever else might have been looking out for me), not stepped in when they did, I would’ve been but an ink spot (and an obituary) chalked up to “those damned donor-cycles”. A rapid lane change caused one car to hit another in front of me, and I was merely going to be collateral damage in this event, but dead is dead and blame be damned where I was concerned. The next day I found myself at the Honda dealership selling this beautiful machine (a sad day to be sure).

 

(My 1988 Honda VT1100 on a road trip in 1994 with my ex-college roommate Rick. He has recently retired as a Boeing 777 Captain at American Airlines.)

 

Shortly after closing the motorcycle chapter in my life, I entered an entirely new world for me. I bought a computer and began a journey through the cyber-world. That old Gateway 2000 was a monumental mystery to me, and I was a COMPLETE moron when it came to this contraption. I was such an idiot, and was on the phone to the Gateway Help Desk so often I think I knew them all personally (“Oh, hi Bill.” “Hi Jason.” “What did you need help with today Bill?”). Slowly but surely my knowledge base began to grow, and I found that even though the beast known as the internet wasn’t a daily thing back then, one could still have fun without it (and the dail-up connection it required). I also found among the stack of software discs that came in the box (you know, the ones explaining how to use your printer, and your “AOL email”, etc), there was one stack with the intriguing name of “Aces Over Europe”. Huh? The Gateway package also came with a little thing that had suction cups on the bottom, a few red buttons on the base, and one on the top of what looked to be a small joystick. WTF was this?

 

(Literally my “Gateway drug” into my world of flight simulations.)

 

OK, I had to try it out. Being an intrepid aviator in R/L, I couldn’t pass this up. AND, if it truly did portray some sort of what it was like yanking and banking in a P-51 Mustang (or Bf109) over the Normandy fields and the forests of Belgium in 1944…then I simply could not let this pass. It was surprisingly fun, and (much to my liking) the missions, campaigns and pilots listed was uncannily accurate. Although by today’s standards, the graphical representations looked completely cartoonish, and downright silly, it was quite entertaining being totally new to the scene (and having no idea what the future would bring).  As I beat back the resurging Wehrmacht in the Ardennes, and battled Goring’s Luftwaffe in the European skies, I was seeing something intriguing for the first time. My love of history was playing out before my very eyes…and I was a player in this strange little CRT world.  Again, the flying aspect of it was very cool, but I was totally surprised that the folks that made this thing seemed to be history buffs also. To quote an iconic American television character…” fascinating”.

Within a short period of time, my neophyte “flight simulation” library gave birth to a new addition by the name of “Red Baron 3D”.  I was now indeed THE famous Albert Ball flinging my wood and wire Se5 through the skies over the blood-soaked trenches of the First World War. Wow! With the passing of four years, and the leaps in computer technology, the visuals concerning everything from the terrain to the machines themselves really started to improve. I wondered…do they make jet and or helicopter versions of this stuff? Next came a title by the name of “Hind” (showcasing the Russian Mi-24 helicopter in their war in Afghanistan), and I was in the heavenly world of military choppers that I had grown up in as that kid way back in 1960s Germany (see my piece titled “Going To Work With Dad”). Shortly after that, I discovered my first “fast jet” title by the name of “Hornet Korea” …and that little gem led me smack dab into the brave new world of the internet and online flying.

 

 

(Box covers of the early sims “Red Baron 3D”, “Hind” and “Hornet Korea”.)

 

In the next installment, I’ll tell about my first foray into the online world of flight simulations.