My first month as a contributing author to AVSIM has slipped on past, and those of you here in the UK will agree with me that it was a very wet one, especially for June. It certainly put a damper on flying activity, as there were not that many VFR days to be had. At least it didn't dampen the simulation side of flight.

Thank you to those of you who have been sending me e-mails. I have had a steady receipt of requests from people asking me to add them to the e-mail list, which I am currently establishing. Looking through the e-mails it is evident that simmers in the UK come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but it is equally clear that they all possess a love of virtual flying.

This past month has seen the release of the new B747-400 Precision Simulator (available from R C Simulations at Lulsgate Airport), which I have found to be a truly remarkable program. I am sure those of you who were lucky enough to get a copy before the batch sold out will agree what a great simulation this is. Considering it cost £150 the level of fidelity is incredible. I believe this to be the most realistic IFR and systems trainer to be currently available on the domestic PC market. It is certainly a clever piece of programming to fit the code into a mere 6MB of disk space.

I have been keeping an eye on developments this past month on simulation activity within the UK. There have been a couple of developments on web sites and within the Virtual Airline world. I am personally working on a commercial flight simulation project at present, where we are emulating the Flight Management System of the Next Generation B737. Certainly interesting work, and I get to fly simulators (to evaluate them) and get paid for it! On the web there are two sites that I would like to bring to your attention. The first of these is a Royal Air Force web page where there are FS5.x aircraft in RAF colours available for download. The URL is http://www.asgard.co.uk/raf/ and the web master is John Burtenshaw, who is also taking part in the British Isles scenery freeware package. The other web site for UK simmers this month is Zoomoon, where UK liveried aircraft are available for downloading. The web page is http://wkweb4.cableinet.co.uk/zoomoon. The web master is Paul Keen.

For those of you that enjoy Virtual Airlines, and spend many an hour inside the cockpit of a Flight Simulator hauling pax or freight around for your 'virtual' dispatcher, I have tracked down some more VAs that have operations in the UK. If you recall last month, I mentioned Transit Air Charter (part of the TIA Group) and British International. In addition to these Virtual Airlines, here are another 3 with flights to/from UK destinations. Saturn Airlines operates a London Heathrow hub, run by Gary Oliver (Flyinf@Hotmail.com) and can be found at http://www.soft.net.uk/olly. The fast growing Orange Air has had hubs springing up all over the world lately, and the UK is no exception. They are also based at Heathrow, which is managed by Tim Costello (timcostello@bbrcompany.com) and can be found on the web at http://orangeair.horizon.nl. One of the main industry giants, Noble Air, have been in operation for several years and have a great deal of experience in the administration of simulated flights. They have five hubs in the UK at EGLL, EGKK, EGCC, a Highlands operation, and a hub at Prestwick.

If you are involved in a UK based Virtual Airline, or know of a good web site for UK scenery or aircraft or want to be added to my UK AVSIM e-mail list, let me know by contacting me at MPGreen@avnet.co.uk