Dave,Lucky you! I'd love to get my hands on the C-130. I too was a C-130 Flight Engineer for the USAF. I logged a 1,000 hours and then got out to do my own thing. Ahh... TOLD :) It's been about a year and a half since I crunched numbers! Nothing like smoking a marlboro light and whipping up some data and then rushing to the plane to pull the nose pin and fire up the engines!I was stationed at Ramstein in the 37th, Dyess AFB in the 39th and spent my 5 months of training at Little Rock when I cross trained from crew chief.The only thing I thought was funny was that the screen shots on their site shows a refueling boom with the Ramstein C-130. Other than that, the graphics look killer.

Hi Eric,I was stationed at Coast Gaurd Airstation Sacramento at McClellan AFB for 9 years and also at Airstation Kodiak here is Alaska for 9 years. Had H-models to work and fly on... Been about 6 years since doing actual TOLD but is was like riding a bike... Procedure just filtered back into the brain :0)Fly safeDave

Dave,I imagine. We did TOLD so many times it's like second nature (riding a bike). Not sure if before you retired, they started adding in all of the obstacle clearnance stuff. Around 99 - 2000 they started hitting that really hard due to some of the accidents that happened. That 50 ft Obstacle clearnance was becoming a pain. It was either you make it or you do a max effort takeoff, which became quite the normal experience for quite some time.They released a new 1-1 before I left and luckily, I was done flying at that point. Everything got really bad and by the regulations, the things we were doing for a long time became "unsafe" according to the new data. There were waivers up the yin-yang for a while. I'm sure they got it sorted out now.

As is evident from their defunct "website," Captain Sim has folded up shop. I wouldn't expect support for any of their products anytime soon.Maybe the owner of Captain Sim was knee-capped by the Russian mafia?:-lol :-lol :-lol ricardo

Yeah, not sure what's up with them. When they announced the C-130, I contacted them to ask if they needed any help with beta testing or info. or such. I'm a current C-130 pilot, getting ready to transition to another airframe, but never heard a thing from them. Then looking at their screenshots, it's pretty evident that this C-130 isn't representative of what we've got here at Little Rock, the world's largest C-130 base. Oh, well, maybe someone else will tackle the Herk. I was pretty sure this plane wasn't coming with SCNS either, so as far as I'm concerned, there's freeware plane and panel out there that are probably just as good as what we'd get from Captain Sim.

I seriously doubt Captain Sim could replicate SCNS (Self Contained Navitagion System) because they probably wouldn't have access to it at all. They would probably substitute with an FMS system instead.

At this stage of the game, I would have serious doubts about Captain Sim replicating a Self Contained #### System (SCFS). But, hey, I'll be a beta tester. :-)And it's too bad, they had some nice stuff on the horizon. But hey, bigger life speaks to us all at times.....billg

I don't think he ever got the beta. I read in the story that he provided data for development and was told he'd be part of the beta team, but for a good while now has heard nothing and been unable to contact CS at all.If that's how CS treats people supplying them with the data they need to make their products I don't want to know how they treat their customers once they no longer need them (i.e. after they have handed over the dough).

well, at this point I think we should assume that CS is dead. Even if they miraculously appear in 2 mths with a product of some kind, who is going to buy it? Some die hards, for sure, but not the kind of volume that they'd need to support a product. As we've seen already, hehe. Too bad, another one bites the dust. Wonder if we can have a CS forum here at avsim? Just to exchange ideas and blah blah. I have 3 of their aircraft (and it's not going to be 4 any time soon) and it would be cool to have a forum to chat....billg

That was an addon I was eagerly awaiting too. I saw a video sometime around November or October last year - looked like it was almost complete...wonder what happened?

yeah, it's tough for me. The first payware I bought was their 727. And I'm happy I did. It's totally outclassed now by the DF 727, but in its day it was the cat's meow. I got more than my money's worth out of it, by far. And the 104-which I never have figured out how to land--is nice too. For me, it's a one way flight, get lot's of gas before you go up because you're coming down the hard way, hehe. It's my fault, not the aircraft's fault. And the 707 really has potential. Not much left to do on it, but it's been 2 or 3 mths and not a word out of them. So, no, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for something coming out of CS in the next while...billg

Well I would not like to speculate on their reasons for going into hiding, but if they have, they have a duty to all their existing customer to come out of the wood work and tell us whats going on. After buying the F-104 I swore I would not buy another plane from them but alas i fell in love with the 707. However I wish i did not.Captain Sim come out and do the right thing.I hate to tar people with the same brush, but russian Addon devs dont seem to be that good, SSW anybody :(Jason

Hi Dave,We exchanged C-130 trivia on the CS forum before it was closed.As for what's up with them, I have given my opinion on their forum on how they treat the Beta process and the testers that volunteer quite a lot of their time. As someone who has beta tested for CS since the 727, I am amazed at how backwards their process is compared to other developers I have and am testing for. There is no contact with the Dev. team, either through a forum or directly. They send you the Beta and ask you to test it with no guidelines, no furom and no Dev./Tester interaction. You send in your reports and then hear nothing. As far as the 707 was concerned, there was only 1 Beta release and the final release was no more than the Beta with a few extra paints. With interaction like this, it's hard to make free time to test something when you know it makes no difference.If this is how they treat their business plan, I think they are about to closed the hangar doors forever. I would like for CS to prove me wrong on both accounts but I don't see it happening.Cheers,JohnBoeing 727/737 & Lockheed C-130/L-100 Mechanichttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/ng_driver.jpg

From reading all the post, it looks like CS took a lot of folk

I'm not saying CS is closing or running with people's money or anything like that, BUT, it'd be like a developer calling Boeing's FMS and FMGC, or Airbus' FMGC an FMS and getting away with it. Heck, maybe they should just licence the old DF737 FMS and attach that to the C-130. There are a lot of things in the SCNS that need not be simulated in MSFS, I don't personally fly military a/c around in MSFS, but even the real world SCNS is very, very simple in operation, doesn't offer a whole lot to routes or anything like that. In fact, there's no performance calculations at all in SCNS, so it should be real easy to implement. Heck, PMDG's, PSS and even the freeware Fanda Dash 8 FMS/FMGC are all more advanced than the C-130 SCNS route function.Oh, well.