Hi guys,

 

Some of you may remember me as zzmikezz, a username that no longer works for me at Avsim, hence xxxmikexxx.  (At FlightSim.Com I am -- or rather was -- xxmikexx.)

 

I made a lengthy post to FlightSim late yesterday, the last one I will ever make.  It had to do with how I use FS these days.  (In a nutshell, I basically fly only my heavily customized version of the Cantu/Fox/Probst 727-200, but I use an enormous amount of payware utilities, gauges, what have you.) 

 

Since FSC global moderator Jim Skorna can't stand me, I told them in my post that if it was modifed, or moved, or deleted, or locked, that I would double check with Nels Anderson and his business partner Dan Linton to make sure that they really did, in effect, want to ban me.   My post was in fact deleted, I did inform Nels and Dan, and their subsequent radio silence has told me everything I need to know.

 

My question to the mods of The Hangar is, should I make that same post here and have us see what happens?  You might want to move it, but then again you might not because of the very broad nature of the issues raised.  (I couldn't find a way to pigeonhole it though you might.)

 

So ... I'll leave it up to you guys.  If you'd like to see what happens, post below me to say "green light" and I'll post what FlightSim didn't want to run.  (They're a dying site, and it's not hard to see why given their policies of the past few years, which seem to be reaching a crisis point.)

 

Let me know below,

thx,

Mike McCarthy

He'll probably troll you here as well... Just post it and see how it goes.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I guess it would depend on what was the issue with your post, that they objected too? The only thing that will get you in trouble here would be a rude personal attack type post, or if you were promoting copyright or EULA violations. If that is the case, that won't fly here either. Otherwise you should be ok!! You may want to read the Terms of Service (TOS) below if you want to make sure your post would follow the forum guidelines.

It was not a matter of either trolling or personal attacks. As long as Skorna does not have moderator power over this thread, I simply do not care what he says.  Now ...

 

The fact is that the FlightSim.Com people have become extremely thin skinned and will tolerate no criticism at all, not even by private email   (Been there.)

 

Below is the post, this time slightly edited.  If the Avsim mods choose to delete this post or this thread that would puzzle me but I'd be okay with it.  Here we go ...

 

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Greetings to the old timers who remember me. Also, it’s nice to meet those with whom I haven’t interacted before. For the information of those who’ve come since I left, I believe I have 5,000+ posts as xxmikexx. As an earlier incarnation, mikeymcc, I had an additional 6,000+ as I recall. (Translation: I’ve been around the FS block several times since starting out here as a lurker in 1998.)

Several years ago I conjectured to webmaster Nels Anderson that the half-life of a FlightSim.Com member was between three and four months. Judging by the very small fraction of current user names that I recognize, I consider the conjecture to have been substantially confirmed. As a former college math whiz I will observe that anything that tends to increase the member half-life inevitably will have a positive effect on the business aspects of FlightSim.Com. I hope that this post and its successors will inspire others to do exactly that – to stay with the hobby, and to use the hobby as a vehicle for personal growth just as I did years ago. The additional posts I hope to be allowed to make will cover some of that ground – will help you get started down paths you never dreamed you might ever hope to get involved with.

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Earlier today I made my first FS flight in almost two years. Why now? Because I needed inspiration. I needed to see whether I would still be interested in doing something I used to do, which is to write on a laptop while flying on a tower machine. (Getting ahead of myself the answer turned out to be yes. So, I’m going to exhibit write-and-flight syndrome, if you will.)

You see, I’m a writer now, full time. Not yet successful, not being paid by anyone, but a writer nonetheless. I’ve begun the first of what I expect to be a series of four novels to be published electronically, probably through Amazon. With good luck the novels will appear about six months apart. With bad luck they’ll be more like a year apart. I’ve also repurposed my personal website, http://www.lexonaut.com. I’m now a wannabe political columnist, and three of the four novels will be a direct outgrowth of this new activity. (The fourth is an idea of my wife’s, something she’s been urging me to write for at least ten years. I wasn’t ready before this. I’m ready now but it’s number two on my priority list.)

So … While during the mid-2000s FS was the central focus of my life outside work, recently it has played no part at all in my life, and even now the revived interest will be but a footnote to my self-imposed writing responsibilities. (Translation: I'll do some flying but my hobbyist career as an aircraft customizer is over. I'm a writer now, not an airframe mechanic or panel designer.)

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Okay. Enough of what I used to call shameless self-promotion when I wrote articles for the front page of this site. (If such self-promotion is now forbidden to me, color me gone.)

My flight today was a relatively short one, about 350 nm, Denver International to Salt Lake City International. It was in FS2004 because I have, literally, thousands of dollars invested in it in the form of payware addons – aircraft, utilities, scenery, etc etc etc ad nauseam. I was, in a word, rusty. Very rusty. Yet I hand flew all of the instrument departure that I"ve invented for this trip, and I hand flew most of the instrument approach. My only real foulup was landing alongside the runway instead of on it. (The passengers were uninjured, by the way. I wish I could say the same for my pride.)

The aircraft I used was my custom 727-223 ADV, a heavily modified version of the Eric Cantu 727, originally built for FS2004 but now available for FSX, as I recall. I’ve extensively modified the Charles Fox FDE that is included in the Cantu FS2004 package, these issues to be discussed at a later date. It literally took me years to make all the changes and additions that I wanted. However, getting into panel.cfg and aircraft.cfg changes is much easier than you perhaps have been thinking. In a future post I’ll discuss how, for example, to install a manual panel lights switch in the default 737, the switch coming from one of the default Cessna aircraft, I forget which one.

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My aircraft, my rules, my goals. One of the things I wanted was an authentic steam gauges era analog flight director instrument. Perhaps things are different now but the only source of such a gauge five years ago was the CaptainSim line of historic aircraft. However, to get the CS FD to work requires that the CS version of the Sperry SP-50 autopilot be installed. This creates an issue as discussed in the next paragraph.

The panel is almost entirely home-grown in terms of layout. Scratch it deeply enough and you’ll find the Richard Probst 727 steam gauges panel available through HJG. However, years ago I modified the Probst panel C code to a) eliminate some irritating bugs of long standing, and to B) make the simulated Sperry SP-50 autopilot behave the way I want it to behave, which is my choice of AP control of roll with manual control of pitch, or AP control of pitch with manual control of roll, or full automation in NAV or HDG modes. For reasons I’ve never bothered to chase down, my 727 requires that both the CaptainSim and modified Probst autopilots be installed and operating in parallel. They interact in complex ways but I developed an AP mode entry checklist sequence for avoiding the problems.

I also used a couple of gauges from the Dreamfleet 727, which is a fine aircraft in its own right, just not the aircraft I want. Finally, I equipped my 727 with the Reality XP weather radar and terrain avoidance gauges.

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In addition to the things mentioned above I use the following software in my FS2004 setup. In no particular order we have …

Manuel’s Airport Chart Viewer
ActiveSky
Ultimate Traffic
FlightSim Commander
Contrails Pro
FsDiscover
Ground Environment 2006
Night Environment
PerfectSky
MyWaterProject
AiSmooth
FsStrComm
FsRealTime
FsPause

Over time I expect to tell you why I use each of these things. Whether they’re available for FSX I cannot say. Returning to the panel and FDE, my customization efforts have given me a 727-200 with the following features …

true analog FD
dual VOR
dual ADF (both units are operational)
terrain avoidance gauge
weather radar
Garmin 430 GPS
autothrottle (it was in fact available from Boeing as original equipment regardless of what you may have heard)
transcontinental range (Heathrow to LAX against the wind, with the proper FAA-mandated fuel reserve)
realistic flaps lift/drag ratios and associated power settings
wind gauge
fuel quantity gauge
fuel flow gauge
taxi gauge (modified by me)
custom minipanel to replace landing view

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So … That’s my FS life in a nutshell. For practice I fly either Denver to Salt Lake City or Denver to LAX. When I need a break from routine I invent long flights and plan them using FlightSimCommander. My most recent long flight – the one I made almost two years ago – was Munich to Capetown. I’ve done Miami to Point Barrow (Alaska), Tierra del Fuego to … um … I think it was Seattle … and so on.

For aircraft variety I do such offbeat things as flying my SR-71 on a dead reckoning flight from Denver to LAX. (If you don’t start putting the brakes on at Las Vegas you’re going to find yourself way offshore before you get slowed down, with no way to orient yourself other than by the INS, which would be cheating.) At other times I'll fly the default Jet Ranger. (And while I haven't checked in a while, I'm fairly sure that I got the FS2000 default Concorde running on FS2004.)

Few people are going to want to go to the extremes that I have, but some people may get ideas and some determination to bring those ideas to fruition.

:fool:

Hi Mike,

Welcome back here and post as often as you please. I hang out regularly on here and we are a good bunch of laid back individuals with great banter. 

Cheers 

I guess the message is more about Jim and your "relationship" to him than about a possible thread, but, IMO, just go ahead.

 

There's nothing wrong with telling what you want to tell.

 

Whenever I noticed my posts and threads deleted in the official Captain Sim forum (even truncated - the criticism deleted with a positive statement remaining, making me look like a complete ...), I would tell the community about it (AVSIM, in my case).

 

Mind the rules, but tell us what you think is appropriate.

Mind the rules, but tell us what you think is appropriate.

I've done that.  My purpose in making the post here is to get a dialog going.  (Why? because I'll be writing about FS on my own site and I want to see what people's reactions are to my way of enjoying FS.)

 

There's no need for me to include the material in which I criticized FSC site management, which presumably is what triggered the final breakdown of relations between me and FSC.  (That is, I can add that material back in but that's not what I want to talk about.)

Thanks for clarifying.

 

Lemme just rephrase my post above: Keep on minding the rules. No offence was intended on my side.

Thanks for clarifying.

 

Lemme just rephrase my post above: Keep on minding the rules. No offence was intended on my side.

No offense was taken, either.

 

The point I'm trying to make to people who are jaded with respect to FS is that learning something about aircraft.cfg and/or panel.cfg can open up whole new vistas -- whole new ways of enjoying the hobby. 

 

I started with very simple steps ten years ago but by three years ago I had become able to move mountains.(I'll publish my panel.cfg and aircraft.cfg files in this thread at some point.) 

 

Not only that, I've never read the SDK!  I'm entirely self-taught  -- and I had a ball once I overcame my initial fears of touching the third rail.

 

By the way, I'm going to re-fly my Heathrow-LAX flight today.  I still have all the flight plan material filed in a notebook so it will be a good way to re-familiarize myself without going through the hassles of planning a long flight, which usually takes me anywhere from a half hour to an hour.

 

While flying I will continue to write, partly novel stuff and partly website stuff.  I will also be reading the manual for a 9mm pistol that I bought yesterday as part of a home defense arsenal my wife and I are implementing.

Mike....Don't worry about 'him' he is a goof. just drop it already. Like I said. We are good folks on here with a good vibe and a good banter. no need to bring that other 'goof' up ever again....

 

Cheers

 

PS: Oh look at that, I am from Toronto, and I just googled for the first time. there is a Wiki page about the neighbourhood where I grew up, I had no idea their was an article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncho######ingoofs    :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

 

That Wiki page is true...I wasn't a goof but I lived there at that time, all we were doing as families was trying to make a change, it was necessary and what you are saying is true, it takes grass roots to make that change. As true then as it is now. many many examples of that all over the world.

 

Their are Goofs on these forums as there was in my childhood. nothing has changed. It is called behaviour. 

 

Where I grew up, they were all a bunch of idiots before the Internet. Now that neighbourhood is very expensive to live because of gentrification, the goofs are long gone now. TODAY the goofs (and there are many of them) live behind a keyboard and not on the streets any more, they cause trouble in other ways....Stand up when necesary, and most important IGNORE THEM when they seek attention, Amazing how they will disappear over time. I have been doing this crap since I was 14 and I am 40 now. I don't fall for it.

 

Cheers

Perhaps I missed something but I see nothing of concern in that lengthy post.

Perhaps I missed something but I see nothing of concern in that lengthy post.

 

I didn't either other then a guy that had a bad run in with others in the past.....he was just being diplomatic is all. best just to drop it really and not point names out. Make a difference by ignoring them and being better then them, simply by being a better person.

The reposted content isn't  inappropriate , the preamble commentary seems dirty laundry and isn't appropriate to this reader  .

Hi Mike,

 

Glad you are hanging out here. No problems from my end.

 

Kind regards,