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MAY 2007 VOLUME 11 - ISSUE 5 - This is the full magazine in digital form!
Avalon Airshow 2007 Report
“As March ‘07 approached the anticipation for Australia’s biannual International Airshow grew. With mostly positive thoughts about the last Airshow I packed my bag with a hope that I would again be surprised and enjoy the ’07 show. The theme of this year’s show was “Breaking The Barriers” It relates to the 60th anniversary since the Sound Barrier was broken by none other than the Airshow’s special guest General Chuck Yeager.” John Tavendale provides a full airshow report.
Bride of a Flight Sim Zombie Part II
“I still had my work, my friends and Vancouver’s lousy stinkin’ weather but very few things left in the house to remind me of my husband. There were a couple of postcards from Australia, his cell phone number stored in my phone and a framed photo of me, taken by John that night on the streets of Osaka. I don’t even like the photo.”
P06D – An X-Plane Challenge: Part II
In the March issue of Computer Pilot I described a rather strange airplane designed by some graduate students at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Their instructor named it “P06D”. Herein lies Part 2, the concluding piece to this challenge!
Truscott: A Journey to Australia’s Secret Wartime Airbase
“Among my earliest childhood memories are nights spent in the company of my dad, Gordon, and his mate “uncle” Bill. I still remember a player piano, a billiard table and seemingly endless war stories. Gordon and Bill had been stationed during World War II at what was known as Australia’s secret airbase, Truscott…”
Mission Possible!
Long term MSFS users will be familiar with 'adventures' where you could download packages from online file libraries and enjoy the ride. Despite the fact that you needed to be very dedicated to produce them with the basic tools that were available, some dedicated flight simmers regularly released new scenarios. Well, move over - 'adventures' are back with a vengeance under the banner of 'FSX Missions'!
Flight Into White Hell
“It was Friday night and the beginning of the Presidents’ Day long weekend and beginning to snow. CW4 (Chief Warrant Officer W-4) Jake “Ski” Dombrowski of the New Hampshire Army National Guard and veteran of the first Gulf War, felt a heavy gust of wind as he landed his UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter close to the Snow Ranger shack on Mt. Washington Regional airport (KHIE)…”
Round Robin Adventures
Scheduled ANA (All Nippon Airways) flight. This route will take us from Tokyo’s New Narita Intl airport (RJAA) to Seoul’s Incheon (RKSI) Airport, via the Sea of Japan. Then it is on to Nagoya (RJNN) Japan and finally back home to Tokyo’s Narita International.
Bill Stack’s Column
Aviation Accidents Alarm the News Media
From the EDITOR..
At long last I have managed to get Flight Simulator X running at reasonable details levels with reasonable frame rates. This is thanks to a recent investment in a new nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card. Now, this isn’t an advertisement for said card, but rather a hint to those who might have a few extra dollars to throw at a new video card. If that is you, this is my hot tip for the month. These cards are DirectX 10 compatible too, and they deliver amazing performance, over and above any other card currently on the market. I still recommend, however, having at least a dual core processor and 2Gb of RAM to ensure FSX won’t cause a bottleneck in any other area of your system. And along with the FSX Service Pack 1 due out any day now (see news column), more people may just be able to make FSX a little more frame rate friendly and flyable.
One of my writers recently commented on this and mentioned that users shouldn’t have to pay US$400 (which is the rough asking price for these new video cards) to use a $50 piece of software. Fair enough I say, but remember that when FS2004, FS2000 and other versions first came out, no one could really run them at their full potential either for at least 12 months following the release, when hardware technology “caught up”. So it’s a bit of a waiting game at present it seems, but the signs are all there that we will have the technology to make full use of the FSX software, probably sooner than later.
On another note, I wish to extend my personal congratulations to Tony and Maria Liatos on the birth of their second baby – a healthy baby boy named Jacob! Older brother Jamie finally has a little brother to fly paper airplanes with! Tony is our graphic design and layout artist for the magazine, and Maria has been seen on the pages too in photos over the years (namely the intro photograph for our Flight Instructor lessons).
Congratulations again to them both!
Now, I’ll let you get on to the rest of this month’s issue!
Enjoy the May issue of Computer Pilot Magazine – The World’s Favorite monthly flight simulation resource!
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