It’s been a very long time since I’ve simmed. The hoopla surrounding 2020 leaves me ambivalent. No matter how great it is, I can’t imagine sending all those great Captain Sim airplanes to the boneyard! Before I join them (!) I thought I’d drop in and say hi to Markez and any of the others of the old crew back when I was reviewing for AVSIM. I am involved in movies & novels now. I could use a little fact checking on C-47s if anyone is familiar. Anyway, Captain Sim made a lot of good memories and this board was the greatest.

Hi Tim. It certainly has been quite a long time since I have seen you in here. As you can see, I'm still here, and I'm still enjoying Captain Sim aircraft in FSX/P3D. :D ;D

Hi Tim yep I flew these birds, not much they were at the end of their life as my career in aviation began but I have the documents etc if I can find them, what would you like to know - see if I can help. Cannot promise a speedy reply due to being offgrid and off line a lot.

Mainly I was looking for intangibles: what did it smell like, any odd sounds, little details that only a pilot would know. The technical stuff is available, and, anyway, you’ve got to keep fiction really dumbed down these days  :(

Interesting - ah well they reeked of AVGAS OIL and Fear and paint. The fear is intangible it seems humans leave a phenemarone when they get a fright, it is a distinct amost metallic smell. Sometimes it was vomit as well mixed with left over aromas of coffee and perfumes or eau de colognes. It was a distinctive combination is all I can say - all the old piston airliners had a similar set of smells. Something that cannot be recreated in the sim LOL. We tend to forget most passengers in those days were in a state of wonder and perpetual fear of flying and despite the modern tubes with aircon etc that fear and wonder still persists. But I can say these aircraft had a smell very different to those of today.

I forgot to say they creaked and groaned and were unbelievably noisy inside and up front you also had the hiss or squawks of the heater and hydraulic systems as well. Brake squeal and groan was noticeable on the ground but really after they got going you could not hear most of this as they were hardly sound proofed and those PW 1830s made a hell of a racket at full power but settled into a lovely synchronised rumble in the cruise. You also picked up the props out of synch really quickly by the change in pitch from one side to the other in fact you set them to synch first by RPM then by ear to fine tune them.

Wow. Solid gold! Thanks! Fascinating.

I bit the bullet and spent a whole lot of money on a flight sim rig because... Yeah, because. Found every Captain Sim download code except the L1011. Now all I have to do is remember how the website works! I should say that the above expenditure is really for Captain Sim products, since that’s what I have missed. Even the rare bug (I recall an issue with the FMC that absorbed some time and slaughtered a lot of electrons) were at least bashed out in the best community in the business.

Enjoy I am in the process of migrating to a new rig and P3DV5 so a lot of electons being bashed. I think MSFS2020 is a con just like MS Flight was and if I was Capt Sim I would not worry about it - P3DV5 is where it will be for proper simulation and one can hope that the 707 and 727 finally make it across the divide if not I have a decade plus of FSX stuff that will go across so it is all good.