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A
report by François A. Dumas
Great show and Bob Iken says good-bye Last
weekend, October 13 and 14, the Dutch National Aviation Museum Aviodome
organized the second Flight Simulator Weekend this year. This time the
theme of the show was Cockpit Building. The show had been organized by
Bob Iken of the DFSO and Raymond Oostergo of the Aviodome.
During the initial participant's briefing it was announced that this has
been the last time for Bob, a statement that clearly was met with sadness
from many in the audience. Bob has organized it five times now and has decided
it's time for a successor. That person will be Jan-Willem Knoppers, chairman
of the FSGG, the flight sim users group of the HCC (Hobby Computer Club).
Bob, many thanks on behalf of your fans here at AVSIM and, I am sure, many of
our readers!
Also
present at the briefing and later during the show were television teams
of two of Holland's TV Channels. Although I did not see it myself there
was a news item with an interview on the evening news on Saturday. That
clearly attracted some extra visitors the next Sunday, despite the
beautiful weather.
The show was well organized as we have come to expect by now. The only minor
point of criticism could be the fact that all visitors were pointed to
the left after entering, into a fairly small room with 4 participants (among
which AVSIM). Many of them looked kind of surprised and some even panicked
and asked if 'this was all?', not knowing that the main body of the show
was actually in the main museum hall. We cannot complain too much, since
everybody had to come and see us... but nonetheless ;-)
In the not so distant future the show is planned to move from the current
location at the Aviodome to Lelystad. But that is not expected to happen
until somewhere in 2003, so the next ones will still be held at Schiphol
airport.
AVSIM at the show For the first time in the history of the FS Weekend AVSIM was present with its own little booth, manned by myself and Matt Johnson, who flew all
the way over from London. And due to the morning fog, that took him a while
at that. Although due to circumstances we did not have too much time to
prepare for the show, and thus did not have a lot of material for the visitors,
we did get a lot of interest and had quite a few interesting discussions.
Many visitors turned out to be regular readers and all of those expressed
their compliments for our work... which I hereby convey to all the AVSIM
staff and Partners... Well done guys!!
Oh yes, truth be told, there was some criticism as well, mainly about the
speed and layout of the library system and its search engine. That is
being worked on, so we hope to improve in the future.
You will excuse me for being so selfish and start with AVSIM first... it's
done now. So on the rest of the show...
Let's begin to say that I admire ALL participants. All sacrificed another free weekend, and many a lot of free time to prepare as well. Many had to travel
from far to be present. And all (except the very few commercial entries)
were giving this all for FREE ! A big 'thanks' equally goes to the Aviodome
and the entire staff... And let's hope this show has helped the aviation
history a little bit too... more on that later.
Obviously there were differences in what people could bring to the show. It varied
from the very simple one-man show with a PC to just show the very basics
of flight simming (like our neighbor at the show) to a full fledged F-16
cockpit, or a helicopter simulator setup with multiple PCs, beamers and
commentary. From a one-man hardware panel setup to entire clubs flying
their PC's over a network with ATC and everything. But especially to the
novice flightsim enthusiasts, and to many people that did not have a clue
what to expect, it all was really interesting again.
Some of the 'specials' It's
impossible to mention everybody separate, there were 122 participants this
time. So I have to make a choice. I'll just present some of the things
I thought special, some people I met that I know, or didn't know but do
now. And I'll let the pictures tell their own story.
Where to start. Ah! Of course! The NL2000 Scenery Version 2.0 of course.
You might know I'm a fan. I'm Dutch myself and have written about version 1
a year ago, did the review at that time and have been using the scenery
ever since... well, until my PC crashed 2 months ago and I had to reinstall
the lot. I left the NL2000 off due to lack of space. Now I have to start
looking for another 57 or so Mb's to put this new version on. One of my
colleagues will post a review on AVSIM within the next few weeks, so watch
out for that! What I've seen on the monitors and the big screen it looks
terrific again. At the end of the second day there were already 5000 downloads
!!! Read all about it here.
What else... yes... A new DC-2 with a fantastic panel ! I posted a few screenshots some weeks ago. Rob Cappers has been working on this panel for more than a year now and the result is fantastic! The aircraft modeled is the DC-2 "Uiver" PH-AJU, as it exists in the Uiverdome at Lelystad airport. This particular aircraft was flown over from the US in 1999 and has found a place in the museum. The flight model is by Steve Small, with input from Jan Cocheret who flies the real aircraft. And the aircraft itself is designed by Jan Visser, who was also at the show. While I was talking to Rob he and Jan found some little issues with the panel and therefore it is not yet available for download... don't you hate perfectionists !!?? Just kidding. It will be available soon, together with a special web page made by Rob, explaining a little bit of history and information on flying the aircraft.
Another
rather interesting outfit is the Euroflight Group, now an AVSIM
Hangar Site. Alexander Reijnders has joined the group and James Yardley,
the founder, was at the show to meet him and a few other members. They
have recently renewed their web site and although it is a bit slow in loading
the site looks absolutely great. Very nice art work and a mature layout.
I downloaded their Fokker 100 but have not had time yet to fly it. To date
they have a few Fokker 100's and quite a number of 737-900's available... looking
good and more to come! Find them here.
Jos Grupping came by and told us enthusiastically about his new site, covering the history of Flight Simulator. I first misunderstood and thought
he meant flight simulators in general. But Jos grabbed the mouse of our
PC and showed us his site. What he has been building over the past year
is web site covering THE Flight Simulator...the grandfather of Microsoft's
FS2000, the one Bruce Artwick first made for the old Apple II when studying
at Champaign's, IL, university. When you started your simming career like
I did, with Bruce Artwick's sim, that I can tell you, this is a great site
to visit, if only for the sake of nostalgia. But also for those that started
with FS98 or FS2000, or Fly. It is really interesting to see the advance
that technology has made on our PC's and in the software. To see his site,
click here.
I also met a former colleague of my development years. We still work at the same
company, but had not seen each other for many, many years. He stayed in
Holland whereas I went on to an international function. He started flight
simming recently and didn't know AVSIM yet... so that is now corrected
! ;-) But it goes to show that this is a small world.
Ah, another Very Interesting Company was the one that showed the beginning
of a 'true' Cessna 172 panel. And with panel I mean 'panel' ! Not
just a thing with a yoke and switches and a monitor balancing on top of
it, like so many others... nope. This panel has the real gauges! You'll
have to check the pictures to believe it... And I said the 'beginning
of a panel' because not all gauges were functional yet. The ones that were
are being controlled by a little servo and each has it's own processor.
They are connected to your PC by USB, where they are controlled by FS2000.
I have not been able to verify that it actually works, but the plans of
the company, TRC Development B.V. of Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
are impressive. A full featured Cessna panel, followed by a real yoke,
and even a 6 axes full-motion add-on. The latter is clearly not for the
average flight simmer and aimed at flight schools. Prices are not yet known,
but you can check their web sites here
and be kept up to date of developments.
Apart from the above there were numerous mock ups of cockpits of all sorts, Airbus, F-16s, helicopters, Cessna's. Some of the pictures will give you an idea.
The sophistication of the entries was quite different, from really professional
looking, with people in uniforms, to very simple yoke and rudder pedals.
But everybody was just as enthusiastic and serious, as always.
Enjoy the Picture Gallery and till next year!! I can only say Thank You to the organizers and Good Show to all participants.
I'm sure we'll be participating ourselves again next year, so See You Then!!
(To preserve our precious disk space and bandwidth the following pictures are
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