Freycinet

Can't believe it is stored outside. come on Japan, you have the money to preserve this better!

Grreat to see you here Mysticpuma, we go back a bit as well... :-)

"General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War" At that link you will find the complete book as a free pdf! - Fantastic tale of his time in command of the American air campaign from Australia and northwards, across New Guinea, etc. Those daring light bomber attacks on Japanese shipping and jungle airfields. Great read.

Thanks for the recommendation! - I downloaded the Kindle sample imediately when I saw it was by Ben Macintyre. His Spy and Traitor is an amazing book as well, highly recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story-ebook/dp/B07B4K1JVJ - Really gets you under the skin of the cold war drama of the most important spy of all.

Freycinet checking in. Some of you know me all the way back from the Ubizoo in 2001. My earliest flight simming memory was a moon lander simulator my dad programmed on his HP pocket calculator with red LED numbers (you may have seen one of those in a museum). It printed out XY coordinates, speed and angle on a paper strip, then you had to zero the numbers for a safe landing. I later moved on to a jet sim which actually had graphics: green for the earth, blue for the sky, and then the horizon line separating them, as well as a few polygons showing a landing strip, etc. After that an early MS Flight Sim with, GASP, more polygons! And then on to the glorious Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and the lovely European Air War, in which I went online (by telephone modem) for the first time and saw the future. In 2001 I fell in love with Oleg Maddox' original Il-2 Sturmovik and then a few years later with Rise of Flight. For my fast jet fix I enjoyed LOMAC as well. To help along the flawed masterpiece that was Il-2 Cliffs of Dover I made a few movies in that sim (unfortunately Youtube deleted my carefully crafted video annotations and borked most of the vids). I was thrilled to see Il-2 Stalingrad and its many sequels come out after that, and now loking forward to Jasons latest adventure. I rejoice in all sorts of flight sims coming out: it isn't about one versus the other. There is room for all of them. The first time I heard about Jason was back when he worked for Naturalpoint and made us all wear caps with a reflector dot and put funny little antennas on top of our computer CRT screens... It would'nt impress today's VR crowd, but it was amazing for immersion back in the day (I always hated hat switch viewing). In the real world I visited the La Coupole museum last week, installed in a huge underground bunker complex meant for firing fifty V-2's a day at London. They have a V-2 there, several V-1s and even a Fieseler Fi-103R. Next weekend I am going to see the fantastic old-timer air show at La Ferté-Alais. Here's hoping that Combat Pilot will prosper and grow and become a great new addition to the flight sims we already have. Onwards and (most importantly) UPWARDS!