I wasn’t expecting this, just found it was released yesterday.

To those of you of a certain age will remember KCMI Willard as the true home to early flight simulation. Yes Meigs became its home base in later releases, but in those early days of the Commodore 64 flight sim on cassette our world was based at KCMI and ended at Kankakee in the North.

It was a world of white lines on a green background and the white outlined shape  of Willard’s runways and taxiways from a downwind position will be forever burned into my brain.

I don’t care how good or not the modelling is on this product it’s an instant buy for me so I can return to my “happy place” the only issue is it’s download only, it’s not available on cassette 🙂

 

It looks good, but is it just my setup that restricts watching the video at 720p?, seems odd to use such a low resolution

6 minutes ago, jon b said:

I wasn’t expecting this, just found it was released yesterday.To those of you of a certain age it’s not available on cassette 🙂

 

Nobody in the forum is old! Not a single one of us!!

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

Nobody in the forum is old! Not a single one of us!

Of course not, my exact words were “ of a certain age “ 😄

I saw your post about Willard last year, Jon. I asked Gary if he thought it would be a good idea to develop an MSFS version of this airport, and he approved 

8 hours ago, jon b said:

Of course not, my exact words were “ of a certain age “ 😄

I was just a kid then (1985) but I remember Williard.  And Frasca Field.   Now I'm "legal age" but not old!   On the Apple //e the scenery went west to Bloomington-Normal airport as well.

Incidentally FLYT Simulations did a payware Frasca Field scenery for MSFS but I do not have it.

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I saw your post about Willard last year, Jon. I asked Gary if he thought it would be a good idea to develop an MSFS version of this airport, and he approved 

Oh well done Christopher, so you’re responsible for this homage, well done indeed, genuinely means a lot.

Please pass on my thanks, I bought it instantly via my iPad , not fired up the sim pc today to try it though.

I really hope this sells well for Gary.

I’m actually toying with the idea of flying to Chicago and having a couple of days in Champaign this summer, and seeing if I can fly some circuits at the airport.

It was true magical escapism for me as a teenager flying my sim around Illinois, and later as technology advanced, California.

It still blows my mind sometimes that I’m actually flying into these places like JFK, SFO and MIA for real as captain of a big jet having spent so many hours flying into them on my early simulators as a kid.

 

Edited January 31, 20251 yr by jon b

1 hour ago, Mace said:

I was just a kid then (1985) but I remember Williard.  And Frasca Field.   Now I'm "legal age" but not old!   On the Apple //e the scenery went west to Bloomington-Normal airport as well.

Incidentally FLYT Simulations did a payware Frasca Field scenery for MSFS but I do not have it.

Frasca was just a line on the ground back then wasn’t it.
Yes, I have the FLYT Frasca and its goodl, I was a little disappointed as they announced they were doing KCMI as well, but it never got released.

I also have the Bloomington-Normal scenery that was released by a different developer in 2023 or 24 I think which is also good, and a good  freeware Kankakee. It’s where I learned VOR navigation flying from Champaign to Bloomington and back on the Commodore.

 

Edited January 31, 20251 yr by jon b

I should add that there is a payware Willard available already that I own, it’s recently been updated, it’s not bad but I’ve always bought UK2000 airports from FS2004 days so I’m delighted by this release.

Edited January 31, 20251 yr by jon b

59 minutes ago, jon b said:

Frasca was just a line on the ground back then wasn’t it.
Yes, I have the FLYT Frasca and its goodl, I was a little disappointed as they announced they were doing KCMI as well, but it never got released.

I also have the Bloomington-Normal scenery that was released by a different developer in 2023 or 24 I think which is also good, and a good  freeware Kankakee. It’s where I learned VOR navigation flying from Champaign to Bloomington and back on the Commodore.

 

Yep that all sounds familiar.  On the Apple //e the scenery did extend to Chicago and I used the Joliet and Pontiac VOR's quite a bit for practice.  I wonder if the Commodore version you had was FS1?  My version was actually Sublogic FS2 (FS-II). 

 

No, it was Sublogic FS2 but it was the Commodore 64 cassette version, disk drives weren’t that common and were a real luxury item in the uk back then.

The C64 FS2 floppy disk version however included the scenery all the way up to Chicago as I guess it could load in relatively quickly.

The real torment was though that the paper map you got with the cassette version was the same one as disk version, so I was aware of all those airports out to the north of Kankakee, but they just didn’t exist for me. I had to refuel at Kankakee and head back down to Champaign 

Ah that explains it, I did have a 5 1/2" floppy.   I didn't get a hard drive until 1992.  It's starting to feel like a long time ago.

I will pick up Frasca Field on your recommendation, maybe do a little Beechcraft Sierra flying between Williard and Frasca.  Shoot an ILS at Williard and then over to Frasca.

@jon b these are great memories. I spent some time driving to and from Champagne-Urbana in those years – courting the girl with whom I have been lucky to spend these many years. At that time, it was a great pleasure to “virtually” fly out of Willard International to reach Meigs Field and the big city. Anyone who knows Central Illinois knows that the Sublogic team got the terrain just right – it’s as flat as a felt green pool table. 😎

13 hours ago, Fielder said:

Nobody in the forum is old! Not a single one of us!!

I'm not even that young and daily you guys make me feel like I'm 20 lol

My 12yo self started simming @ Willard as well.  Good ol' Sublogic FS2 on the Commodore 64 with a cassette drive.  The following Christmas I talked my parents into getting the disk drive and that was it for me!  I was totally hooked.  Living an hour from Bloomington/Normal at the time, it was so cool to be able to fly around central Illinois and of course Chicago.  I still live in the area so of course I have flown to many of the airports around here in MSFS2020.  The first addon for 2020 I bought was Frasca Field.  Fun little place to fly out of.  I'll definitely be grabbing UK2000's Willard (this is in fact the third dev who's done it, NMG and the basically freeware that is being passed as payware from MSFSScenery/FSXScenery.  

Comments about Sublogic are awesome.  If not for Bruce Artwick and Sublogic, we may not even be having this conversation.  🙂