News Archives Ordered by Date ExhibitTitle Comments Year Thumb Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero checklists Added Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero checklists to the Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 2 exhibit.: * Takeoff * Descent * Engine Start * Carrier Landing * Field Landing * Waveoff * Pre takeoff * Combat 05-Jan-2001 John Hileman: Low flight over New Guinea John Hileman remembers a scary incident over New Guinea in WW2. Nav said "OK to let down" but as they descended below clouds at 16,000 feet, the crew reported trees in the bomb bay! 05-Jan-2001 B-24 Liberator ditching Chino said: "This picture depicts an actual ditch-test of a B-24 -- who volunteered for THAT???" 05-Jan-2001 B-24 Liberator Waist Gun Chino said: "Here's an interior shot, yours truly in the B-24 at Nashua... a bit crazed, looking to waste a Zero with my waist gun." 05-Jan-2001 First Official Cross Country Flight. Chino's flying skills improve. Another milestone was reached with his first Official Cross Country Flight. This is part of the ongoing series: Can I learn to fly in a flight sim? 05-Jan-2001 Hard realities in Sim-World ! www.combatsim.com has been around longer than most sites in the field and from the beginning was one of the best and most thorough websites devoted to simulation. As of December 2000 they have moved to a subscription model. 05-Jan-2001   Classic Sims: Falcon AT The first really hard-core sim I had was on my Atari ST. We used to start our 2 -player dogfights by racing over the bridge in the West as low as we dared! - yes - daring - that was us !!! - Falcon AT . 05-Jan-2001 Did you have a Mechy Xmas? Well I spent Xmas 2000 at P.C.'s place and got engrossed in this giant robot slugfest! SO engrossed in fact that I bought a copy home - NO NO NO !!!! I had promised myself to stay away from Mechs after losing months in MechCommander in 1998. And MechCommander 2 is due out soon. What can you do? * MiGMan jumps into the action * Long range tactics * Short Range * Repair bay * Sense of scale ... * and distance * the Manual * Graphics settings * By the way - the graphics are awesome in the extreme! 05-Jan-2001 Dam Busters Dam Busters was a classic sim from the days of 8 bit computing. This ran on the Commodore 64 and Elias Martenson has provided a series of screenshots which portray a typical mission. Thanks to Elias Martenson from Sweden for the screenshots and information. 06-Jan-2001 Development of Flight of the Intruder for Atari ST and AMIGA Dave Whiteside on the development of Flight of the Intruder for Atari ST and Commodore AMIGA: ".. a lot of effort was put into making it fit on two disks [floppys where expensive in those days..] and getting it to run in 512K [size of a cache these days..] the 1Mb version had a bit of headroom left - it cached the files off one of the disks..". 08-Jan-2001 Strike Aces or Fighter Bomber A new exhibit, for this classic 1990 sim. 12-Jan-2001 L plates Chino flies his first retractable gear aircraft - and breaks the 150 mph barrier! A personal victory anyway if not a world record. 12-Jan-2001 Scenery upgrade for Digital Integration's F/A-18E Super Hornet. In July 2000 Pretzelworks released a scenery upgrade for Digital Integration's F/A-18E Super Hornet. In January 2001 I took it for a spin and compared the difference with the default textures. 12-Jan-2001 A toilet in a fighter plane? Why not ? Su-32 - yes, and a bed, and a galley.. .. .. 19-Jan-2001 German Air Museum at Deutsches Museum - Flugwerft Schleissheim "It's next to an old castle and a small airfield that used to be a glider training center in the 1930's. When the German Luftwaffe was forbidden from training pilots by the Versailles Treaty, they formed soaring clubs and trained thousands of glider pilots who later became fighter pilots." 19-Jan-2001 Classic Heroes "Electronic Arts was on the peak of flight simulation after first Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and SU-25 Sturmovik . The P-51 Mustang is a nice plane for dogfight lovers, so they decided give it a try Heroes of the 357th - but this time, Rick Tiberi and the great team behind Su-25 Sturmovik weren't the chosen ones: a unknown developer called Midnight Software did the program. Heroes of the 357th." 19-Jan-2001 Bizarro World Say what? Did you read Superman comics as a kid? (Maybe you still read them? - I do !) Find out what this has to do with the Bizarro - B-58 Hustler. 25-Jan-2001 Spitfire classic Spitfire Ace was developed by Sid Meier in 1984. It was programmed by R. Donald Awalt and Published by Microprose. 25-Jan-2001 Keys please Raz from Digital Integration made a printable keylist available for F/A-18E Super Hornet. 25-Jan-2001 Coffee table book Chino reports that "Front Row Center: Inside the Great American Airshow" by Erik Hildebrandt has probably the best air show photography I have ever seen. 25-Jan-2001 Sturmovik Mark Shamblin tells us how to takeoff in the classic DOS sim SU-25 Sturmovik. 05-Feb-2001 Las Vegas Helicopters Chino reported: "I was walking Back to the hotel and passed Las Vegas Helicopters -- well, didn't QUITE pass! I took a 15 minute sightseeing ride in a stretched Jet Ranger." 05-Feb-2001 Missile avoidance in F-16 and MiG-29   05-Feb-2001 Re: Mission: High Wire. ".. although I am former crew chief on the F-16C/D aircraft for the USAF, and that it is still my favorite bird and I play Falcon 4.0 quite often, I do have to say that the terrain graphics on the Fulcrum are dynamite." 05-Feb-2001 DFC citation for the mission over Wewak We've found the original text of Charles H. Cook's citation for the mission over Wewak in World War II. 05-Feb-2001 Barrett Tillman: Flying Author Barrett Tillman - with his father he owned and operated two WW II Navy planes: An N3N-3 biplane trainer and a Douglas SBD-5 dive bomber. Many books later he still has the passio 05-Feb-2001 A-10 Tank Killer Remember the days when CPU speed was measured in single-digit x megaherz? That's 8 x 1000 Hz. Herz is a unit of measurement referring to cycles per second. Typical personal computers today run at 200 times that speed. Mind you - the sims don't look 200 times better.. .. .. or maybe they do? 26-Feb-2001 Photos of a P-51 Mustang in flying condition   26-Feb-2001 Steve O'Neill remembers how he got hooked on flight sims. "I started playing A-10 Tank Killer in 1989, when I was ten (or eleven... I can't remember when during the year it was released...). I was hooked immediately, and when I learned of version 1.5, I irritated my father enough for him to pre-order a copy for me. To this day, I still sometimes get the music beeping from the pc speaker stuck in my head... " 26-Feb-2001   AWOL I've been on holidays the last couple of weeks in Canberra and Sydney -hence the lack of updates. Over the next few weeks I'll post pictures from the Australian National War Museum (Canberra) and snaps from a light plane jaunt over Sydney Harbour. 26-Feb-2001   Added a link to the website of Harold Coyle Added a link to the website of Harold Coyle in Books - Fiction: Harold Coyle. Harold Coyle graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and spent 14 years on active duty with the US Army ranging from Tank Platoon leader to operations officer in Korea. 26-Feb-2001   The Simple Science of Flight The Simple Science of Flight : From Insects to Jumbo Jets by Henk Tennekes - An amazing thing is the single graph that compares the flying properties of virtually everything, from gnats to Cessnas to 747's - -- with this and X-plane future aeronautical engineers could get a jump start on really understanding how stuff flies! 26-Feb-2001 New links: Retro Gaming sites   09-Mar-2001   Air Power Shades of Crimson Skies - Air Power was a sim set in a fictitious land and set your colourful planes against zeppelins and other nasties! 09-Mar-2001 A.C.E. (Air Combat Emulator) Did you play this sim? If so tell the Museum what you liked and disliked about the sim. 09-Mar-2001 Game or sim? Airfix Dogfighter Well - game - and it may be just the thing to entice someone into flight simming. Who as a child didn't use their plastic model aircraft to stage furious dogfights? 09-Mar-2001 SVGA Harrier Assault: new Apple Mac screenshots Peter Nilsson has sent in some terrific screen shots to this sim. They are from the Mac version - but hey! I'm not compaining. Read why this was an all time classic. - SVGA Harrier Assault 09-Mar-2001 A.C.E. 2 Did you play this sim? If so tell the Museum what you liked and disliked about the sim. 09-Mar-2001 Su-27 Flanker 2.5 Su-27 Flanker 2.5 is a FREE upgrade to Su-27 Flanker 2.0 released in 2001. 18-Mar-2001 Aircraft versus Aircraft by Norman Franks Although the text and photos are great, it’s the "diagrammatic paintings" that are the heart of this book. They clearly illustrate many of the great battles and aircraft match-ups from WW1 to the Gulf War (showing the set-up and maneuvers in an easily understood format). 18-Mar-2001 Flight Testing your sim. Jeremy King wrote in to thank me for the flight test cards: " I just wanted to say thanks for having the aircraft test cards on the 'net. They are a good resource, and I'm using them as a guide in creating some of my own. " He gave me a few corrections and extra definition. 18-Mar-2001   Links and Free missions for F/A-18 by Janes Matt Wagner of the Janes F/A-18 team has created a FREE CAMPAIGN. The campaign consists of 51 missions and is 17.7 megs. Also other useful links 18-Mar-2001 Understanding Geek-Speak What are those acronyms? What is an acronym anyway? 18-Mar-2001   Apache Training   18-Mar-2001 The Wright Brothers: How they invented the Airplane " What impresses me about the Wrights is the combination of inventiveness and persistence that they applied to solving the problems of powered flight. They were pioneers in wind tunnel testing, flight control design, and many other challenging disciplines. They also taught themselves to fly, of course, and then became the first flight instructors. They were too stubborn to give up!" 18-Mar-2001 Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific by Eric M. Bergerud I recommend this book to anyone who wants a detailed treatment (626 pages!) of the air war in the Pacific. It’s a blend of military history (units, actions, strategies, etc.) with oral history - the stories of the airmen. 18-Mar-2001 B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force by Robert F. Dorr "The B-24 was heavily utilized in the North African and Mediterranean theaters by the USAAF's Fifteenth Air Force, with operations over the Ploesti oilfields in Rumania being some of the most famous missions undertaken by the big American 'heavy' in World War II." 18-Mar-2001 The Mighty Eighth by Gerald Astor "A wonderful oral history based on hundreds of interviews with WW2 airmen. A good companion to to B-17 Flying Fortress 2 and a great read." 18-Mar-2001 Ace of Aces An early Mosquito sim - maybe the ONLY Mosquito sim! Mark Pajak takes an in-depth look and Demetrius Kiminas at www.gamebase64.com provided a box scan. 18-Mar-2001 Daughter of the Air: The Brief, Soaring Life of Cornelia Fort "It succeeds as a flying book, as a biography of a woman who was ahead of her time, and as a fascinating slice of pre-war and war-era American life." 18-Mar-2001 Aliens on the beach Bodegabay reported finding Aliens on the beach in B-17 Flying Fortress 2. ' "If you were to play the CD as you were to play a music CD, you would find that the 8th track is a Morse Code signal. This signal, once translated, spells, "L-Y-M-E-R-E-G-I-S" There is a town on the south England coast named "Lyme Regis". READ ON 18-Mar-2001   Flight of Passage by Rinker Buck "Flight of Passage is the (true) story of a flight across America by two brothers in July 1966. Kern Buck was 17 and had just gotten his pilot's license. Rinker Buck was 15, and had also learned to fly the family Piper Cub." 18-Mar-2001 New Book Reviews Chino reports - "I’ve always had a "thing" for airplanes. When I was a kid, I built airplane models, and flew orientation flights with Civil Air Patrol. In the last few years, I’ve had flight sims, web sites, internet friends who share my enthusiasm for aviation, air shows, museums, and now at last, real flying lessons. But in between, there were a lot of years when I could only get my aviation 'fix' from books - so I built up quite a library (it doesn’t help that I’ve also always had a 'thing' for books). " 18-Mar-2001 War in the Air by Stephen Coonts Coonts collects 26 stories from WW1 to Vietnam, mainly excerpts from books (some no longer in print) written by the airmen themselves. 18-Mar-2001 Night Raider Night Raider was released by Acme Software in 1988 (Europe). The same year it was imported and released to the US by Epyx as Dive Bomber. 18-Mar-2001 The Battle of Mogadishu Oct. 3, 1993. This is an excellent account of the events of that day. Very well written and documented with audio, video and maps. This is not for the squeamish and should dispel any notions some might have of the glamour of war! 22-Mar-2001   F-15 Strike Eagle roundup Mark Pajak started the ball rolling by sending in an animation of his Sidewinder kill prowess in F-15 Strike Eagle I. Now you would expect that after playing this game for over 15 years he'd get it right! F-15 Strike Eagle I - F-15 Strike Eagle II - F15 Strike Eagle 3 - F15 by Janes 22-Mar-2001 More cockpits   22-Mar-2001 Francis "Gabby" Gabreski Francis "Gabby" Gabreski - Francis "Gabby" Gabreski had 28 victories in Europe and then 4 1/2 more in Korea during the 1950's. After 18 hours, his instructor pronounced him unlikely to succeed... He stuck with it and eventually one of the highest scoring US aces! 22-Mar-2001 Meet Contributor Chino On meeting Gabby Gabreski - What's on the Hard Drive - How big is the hard drive? - What sort of stick? - Throne Room reading list. 22-Mar-2001 Field Trips: Screaming Pilots Combatsim.com has a nice article by Dr. Simon Ng on the Avalon Airshow. From an Australian F-111 pilot: "Trusting life to a computer, the pilot releases the stick and allows the plane to chart its own course across varied terrain at levels as low as 70m (about 200ft). When a hill appears ahead, the F-111 waits until the last moment to adjust its path and skim over it. At night, "on their first flight using the nap-of-earth autopilot, pilots scream" he told us. Sounds like fun, huh?" 22-Mar-2001   F16 Combat Pilot was a classic. I first played it in the 1980's on an Atari ST. The scenery was very basic but the cockpit was awesome! I used to fly on instruments most of the time and play with the comprehensive information available on the 3 Multi-Function Displays. 01-Apr-2001 Jet Pilot Chino reports - " Jet Fighter is a 1957 Howard Hughes film starring John Wayne and Janet Leigh ... ... the plot and acting are beyond ridiculous ... but there ARE a lot of good flying scenes!" 01-Apr-2001 Mallard Adventures Thomas Long reported: "In my opinion this is what made Flight simming really interesting - designing visually accurate (in a relative sense, or at least for the time) aircraft, that flew close to what the real planes did. And if they didn't, you tweaked it until it did." 01-Apr-2001 Cancellation of the Warthog Fans worldwide were bitterly disappointed when, in July 1999, Jane's announced the cancellation of the project. All we are left with are these tantalising glimpses of what might have been. 01-Apr-2001 Janes Simulation fans band together General Wasp of the 302nd VAW Hellions informed me: " With the advent of JCN closing down some friends and I have put together a new lobby site to launch from when Jane's goes down. It is chat room based right now and under heavy construction, but all Jane's sims, as well as Falcon 4.0 will be ready to rock by week's end." 01-Apr-2001   Meatwater pays a visit Meatwater is responsible for the sound environment of Battle of Britain and he first came to fame by creating sound enhancements for European Air War. You can still download the EAW sound pack (and others) free at www.meatwater.com. 01-Apr-2001   Starship Enterprise! This, you have to see to believe! This is more the Starship Enterprise than a cockpit.. 06-Apr-2001 Cheats for Mech Commander Cheats for Mech Commander - these are necessary - believe me!! After mission 16 it gets so tough that.. .. well put it this way. In a conversation I had with Jordan Weismann - the creator of the Mech Universe - he admitted that the development of Mech Commander had one flaw common in gaming: The "TFH syndrome". That's Too F&&& Hard!" 06-Apr-2001   Two DVD/videos which are supergeek heaven Chino looks at two DVD/videos which are supergeek heaven!: Apollo 13 and October Sky. 06-Apr-2001 A-10 Tank Killer programmers A picture and listing of the team who created the sim. " Over 25 of the industry's best programmers, artists and background crew worked together to bring this product to life." 06-Apr-2001 A-10 Tank Killer commands Thanks to Steve O'Neill the Museum now has the keyboard commands for this sim. Click on the images for a larger view. 06-Apr-2001 Buck Danny in the F-22 Raptor Chino reported: "I picked up the latest Buck Danny comic (#49, September 2000) in France on my last trip there. The book is called "La Nuit du Serpent" (Night of the Snake) and has Buck and his pals flying the just-introduced F-22 Raptor in support of a rescue mission over North Korea." 06-Apr-2001 Damon Slye: co-founder of Dynamix Damon Slye - co-founder of Dynamix and some of the classic Combat Flight Sims. Images added. 07-Apr-2001 A-10 Cuba link I found an amazing resource site for what is still a good sim. 12-Apr-2001 F/A-18 Korea updated Nigel Alefounder reported: ".. with the forthcoming release of the OpenGL version for the PC I will be able to go back to the splendid textured graphics I used to enjoy when I had my Voodoo card in place.. " 12-Apr-2001 Skyfox Skyfox by Ray Tobey came out in 1984 and I first played this on my 8-bit Apple II. There are no screenshots currently available 12-Apr-2001 Bill England on F-15 and calculator sims   22-Apr-2001   Links for F-22 Lightning 3 by Novalogic Added new links. 22-Apr-2001 Links for MiG-29 Fulcrum by Novalogic Added new links for MiG-29 Fulcrum - (Novalogic - 1998). 22-Apr-2001 Super Huey and Super Huey 2: 1985 Superhuey was released in 1985 by Cosmi for the Commodore 64. The upgrade Super Huey 2 added extra missions : 1. Renegade 2. Brush Fire 3. Gulf of Terror 4. Arctic Rescue 5. Oil Blaze 22-Apr-2001 Early multiplayer sim: 3D Helicopter Simulator This sim must have been one of the first sims to support head to head play via a modem. Here's a classic tip from the manual : " When fighting against a human opponent, load a helicopter which blends into the background scenery. A little confusion always helps." 22-Apr-2001 Gunship 1987 had no external views In Gunship (1987) there were no external views available, just a cockpit with a bedazzling array of engine sensors and weapons displays. 22-Apr-2001 Award to the Flight Sim Museum www.icwhen.com gave MiGMan's Combat Diary and the Flight Sim Museum an award for contributions to classic gaming. 25-Apr-2001   Chuck Yeager talks I have one hour of free audio here for your pleasure and edification!. Listen to Chuck talk about Test Piloting and Dogfighting in Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer. 07-May-2001 The Integrated Fighter Pilot Fighter Pilot was the first combat flight simulation from the British developer Digital Integration. 07-May-2001 Computing on a Zenith 286 based laptop Tom Long told me - " At the time I received this I was computing on a Zenith 286 based laptop with a 20Mb hard drive running at 40Mb with Doublespace." - Microsoft Flight Simulator 4 07-May-2001 Cuban Crisis missions for Fighters Anthology Miles McCorsion of has drummed up a set of Cuban Crisis missions - quite timely given the release of the movie - "13 days" movie. 10-May-2001 MiG-29 Fulcrum or Su-27? A reader pointed out that the advertising artwork MAY depict an Su-27 Flanker instead of the more appropriate MiG-29 Fulcrum. Any other opinions? 10-May-2001 A great Red Rotary sim I had another look at Hind - what a great sim! Even though I couldn't get the 3DFX version working the graphics weren't a bother. 11-May-2001 The first 3-D FX experience I had I had another look at this sim - the first 3-D FX experience I had. After a few days in Hind (non 3DFX version) I was pretty happy. Then I loaded up this.... you can't go back, you really can't! 12-May-2001 Classic 1950's jet sim It's not often you get a combat sim dedicated to the classic 1950's jets - and this sim featured two of the hottest - the F-104 Starfighter and the English Electric Lightning. Unfortunately it never made it to the PC - but - the company Vulcan Software is still in existence - the original programmer is still working there - so maybe, just maybe, with enough interest from the community they could be persuaded to port it to PC. 14-May-2001 Stealthy Lightning "I wondered if this old Genesis sim F22 Interceptor at the Genesis Project was ported from a PC or Mac version. At the time I had a Atari 800, and when I saw this, I bought the Genesis and the F-22 interceptor because I coudn't find it on any other platform. If it was, it would be a good addition to your site. " Ray Cooksey 21-May-2001 Flight of the Intruder article Lars Gramkow Nielsen sent in a magazine preview dated 1989. I've turned it into a clickable image so you can zoom in and see what made this sim so special. 21-May-2001 B-17 Flying Fortress links Tom Duffy sent in some new links for the B-17 Flying Fortress. 21-May-2001 Dominique Denais: armchair pilot "After searching high and low for some answers to my problems with the Saitek X36F/X35T joystick and flight controller I came across: Fix your Saitek joysticks and throttles with MiGMan's step by step guide. - a wealth of information!" 21-May-2001 F-16 thrills and spills on a TV John "Bushmaster" Yasar took some photos of F16 Combat Pilot playing on a TV monitor. 21-May-2001 Programming the sims A good article on Voxel Landscape Engines as used in the Novalogic sims. 21-May-2001   How I discovered this magazine PC Pilot Magazine - I read this one. 21-May-2001 Back to the December 2007 WIP indexes
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