Yesterday I committed heresy.  I reinstalled FS9.   

Why would I do such a thing you ask?

When I was a preteen I was hooked on railroads.   I still am.  I eschew modern air travel for Amtrak these days.  But I grew up during the transition from steam to diesel.  It was wonderful.

My brother and I would go to the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street and ride the ferry across the bay to the Oakland Mole where all the transcontinental trains would arrive and depart.  The colorful liveries of the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Western Pacific.  And the air was filled with the pleasant aroma of diesel fumes mixed with steam.  It was a young boy's Nirvana, the golden age of railroading during the transition from steam to diesel

Later the same thing happened with air travel.  The transition from propliners to jetliners.  And Tom Gibson recreated that world years ago for FS2004.  And he still does.  His website, California Classic, is still popular and still produces those wonderful backdated airports around the world and the planes of the era.  But just for FS2004.  Mind you that it still has adherents in these days of P3D.

When I was flying my Kodiak between my FSX_SE home base of Novato CA to Death Valley the other day I got nostalgic to flying a Western Airlines DC-6B between San Francisco and Salt Lake City.  Low and slow and in the weather from VOR to VOR.  Reliving those days when the stewardess came up to your seat and said, "Excuse me sir, would you like chicken or steak for lunch?"

Before I became old and feeble I designed some FS9 scenery for Tom and California Classic.  I did all the seaplane bases for California complete with ai seaplanes of the era like SeaBees, Luscombes on floats, Grumman Geese (or Gooses if you prefer) and other oldies.  I also did a military ai package for California with all the oldies like T-33s, F-100s, C-124s, Skyraiders, for all the California military bases.  It was too big for Tom to put on his website but I offered it to anyone who requested it and would pay for the CD and postage.  I had quite a few takers.

Oh, I'm not giving up my FSX installation and my B737 that flies above the weather or my turbo Quest Kodiak but I'm going to go back in time for a while.

Before any of you youngsters who might be reading this and scoff let me say that thirty years from now when you are sitting at your desk flying P3Dv99 and the hypersonic Boeing-Airbus BA999 in a sub-orbital route between Los Angeles and Paris in 77 minutes you are going to get the urge to reinstall P3Dv4 and fly the low and slow B737 from New York to Miami.

Noel

 

 

 

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Before any of you youngsters who might be reading this and scoff let me say that thirty years from now when you are sitting at your desk flying P3Dv99 and the hypersonic Boeing-Airbus BA999 in a sub-orbital route between Los Angeles and Paris in 77 minutes you are going to get the urge to reinstall P3Dv4 and fly the low and slow B737 from New York to Miami.

Noel

I believe you may be right about this -  I will be 85 by then.

It's your computer Noel, you can do whatever you want to. I have an install of FS2004  "Golden Wings" myself, for much the same reason.

 Sue

Still haven't dumped my FS9 installation and fly it every so often for old time's sake. I can still be amazed how smoothly it functions on my current system compared to when it was originally installed in a much older computer (and compared to FSX sometimes) and, yes, I too still enjoy flying that great CalClassic freeware. I guess FS9 will go when I have to replace my computer but until then it is still great to revisit.

Bill

I had just reinstalled FS9 a couple of hours before I saw this thread. It's nice to know I'm not the only old guy who still sees value in what may to prove to be the greatest single advancement in flight sims ever (but you have to be an old guy to remember that far back ). There is nothing like having all the sliders full-right and flying along 300+ FPS.....who would have ever thought that could happen 20 years ago..........Doug

Meanwhile, I've gone from FSX to P3D V4 after having just bought a new computer last week.