Does anyone fly anymore?

[andarlite]

Phil

You crack me up .... that was a great story.

In between waiting for panels to arrive from Phil, I usually do some flying. After years of putting up with my build in our family room, my wife said six magic words to me the other day "Can you teach me to fly?". The last few days we have been flying together (in a Cesna) and it's been fantastic. I hope to have her up to speed on the 767 one day. 


Henry

[Aerosim Solutions]

LOL that was bloody funny Phil!! I see some obvious parallels in our paths!

My own flying... Years of FS then I started lessons in a bunky C150 with Phoenix Aviation at Jandakot Airport YPJT, I solo'd at 8 hrs then GFPT rating at 20 hrs. Three summers later the novelty of forking out $200 an hour for flying C172s and Eagle 150s ended in 2003. After about a hundred hours in my log book and I hung up the headset, or sold it on Ebay to be more accurate! I had started to build my first cockpit after being inspired by a mate Dean who I still catch up with from time to time. I then took on a project to build an A320 TQ for Michael D. (Bindook) and this lead to someone else asking me for another TQ, then another, then parts for our own Trevor, Maurice, Jackpilot, local simmers, UK crew and kaboom Aerosim Solutions was born. I invested every penny earned back into the workshop, CNC machine, welding gear, lathe, compressor, more tools and pretty soon I was making parts for people all over the world that were far superior to what I had made for myself in my original cockpit. I bet Phil would agree that it is sometimes heartbreaking to build a beautiful piece of kit then have to hand it over to someone else aaarrrgghhhhh!! I hardly flew my sim and it went into storage for two years. When I eventually pulled it out again I decided to rebuild it to the best possible standard I could muster and I stripped it back to it's bare steel frame. This was a huge mistake because I recently realized the basic steel frame is the only piece I have recycled and this has been heavily modified and increased in size to full scale. I could have left my old sim together and sold it. A new steel frame would only take a weekend. I did sell many pieces of the old sim and I hope they are out there getting some good use in the virtual skies. I got caught up playing Gran Turismo on PS3 for a while and I built a car sim with a Logitech G27 wheel and racecar seat, this lead to a series of racecar sim sales, more time away from my Boeing and single seater. Whilst using the racecar sim I thought it would be good to have a sidestick and throttle set up as a fighter sim so I built another frame which is my current FSX ride whilst the Boeing is being constructed. I fire it up for a blast in the A2A Spitfire or the PMDG 737 & 777 about once a fortnight I guess but the sim build still takes priority. Aerosim work made it impossible to work on my sim and I had to make the decision to put Aerosim on hold. I did that in June 2012 and it made little difference, to this day I still get a few requests for parts everyday and I have to refuse and turn customers away. I am sorry folks but the plan is to finish the two Boeing sims I am working on and my real C172 fuselage conversion, then Aerosim Solutions will be back bigger and better. My partner in Queensland Gordon has been extremely helpful making parts for our customers and he has also become swamped to the point of exhaustion. He is now also going to take time out to work on his own 737 sim.  Flying and training for Worldflight in the awesome FDS 777 sim at FlightCity777 for about 10 months was fantastic and it inspired me to crack on with my sim build.... I will finish my 737 in time for Worldflight 2014, there's my new year's resolution!!! Then I will fix my embarrassingly neglected website and get back to the exciting development of new products for 2015.

Actually flying my cockpit....the dream will come true this year!

[smg id=1058]

Cheers all, Gwyn

[blueskydriver]

Thank you everyone for posting in this thread, as it gives unique insights to flying versus building versus everything that gets us to this point. I admit just about everything Karen and I have done circles around the sim(s), and by what we've read here, many others do the same.

Thus, please keep posting in this thread. Newcomers and Old Timers alike, hearing from everyone is great.

John