Flyin’ and Ridin’

Yes, I’m back. And in France again, yippeee…! But what was meant to be the second half of our holidays, became a nightmare because of a tiny and untypical mistake by yours truly. I clicked on a link in a fake email, and attracted a trojan viurs from Russia. Although I saw it immediately, computers are quicker than the human mind. So the virus planted bad code in thousands of programs in 11 of my 31 web sites.

I first spent 4 hours finding out WHAT had hit me and how to get rid of it. The actual virus. That was relatively easy (Google is your friend!). The next phase was, unfortunately, not.

So far 13 days have passed and I got my main websites cleaned an back up and running – mostly. But others are still out of order, and two of them have been totally destroyed by a program that was meant to clean them.

Today my Silver Cloud and EuropeRides sites are gone. The only thing I have rescued are the databases, so maybe I can still re-create them.

Some of the other sites are cleared, but not yet re-installed. And 3 are still waiting for download and cleaning.

Needless to say these past 2 weeks have been a major disaster for my private and business life. Backups don’t always help, and often simply are not possible.

Oh, and you can’t backup your life, spool back and start over again.

I doubt the guys who did this have an idea as to the amount of grief they cause in the world. On the same day more than 500.000 web sites were hit !!!

And IF they have, they are even bigger assholes than I know they are. There.

We’ll  try and pick up our holidays again, even with 2 weeks of work to catch up with, and will report on some of our trips hopefully!

Keep the oily side down!

Don’t you wish you started doing what you really wanted to do 30 years ago? I do…. often. Alas, no turning back.

It only dawned to me recently that I was probably made to work with old aircraft, but at the time nobody knew……. *grin*.  I was building kits of Spitfires and Halifaxes back in the early 60′s, constructing diorama’s, hanging off the fence of airfields and driving my parents crazy with piles of old aviation magazines strewn all over the place.

But after the airforce turned me down because I wore glasses, that all came to a screeching halt.

Fortunately men remain boys and continue to dream, much to the distress of their wives and girl friends of course. And in our modern society even some women can perform this trick these days. And so it happens that at almost 60 I am back into aviation full time, if only  reading and writing about it …..

So I read about THIS company all the way down in New Zealand, specialized in restoring vintage aircraft and warbirds. Maybe not so special, but what certainly IS special is that they are well underway to get a true DeHavilland Mosquito in active flying state again !!!!

Check out their website here !

I just bought me a new camera. After much researching and pondering, scratching my head and searching my conscience, I ultimately decided to buy yet another Nikon. This time a more professional one than my current D70. I opted for the D300s. Not the best, certainly not the least either. Its 12 Mpixel chip together with a Tamron stabilized 18-270 zoom lens makes this my weapon of choice for the foreseeable future.

Yes, there are better DSLR’s, but my budget was limited in the end, and I picked what I believe to be the best match for my kind of shooting.

Toy or Tool? A bit of both I suspect. Most certainly fun to have such a high-tech bit of equipment to play with. But also a necessity. Magazines don’t accept much below 12 Mpix, my old camera was only 6, AND it as slowly starting to malfunction at times. I’ll probably do as my friend Dick, and store it in the car to have something handy for unexpected moments.

Oh yes, and Glenn reminded me of Ken Rockwell’s wesite again, where you can find some great guides on how to use these modern-day cameras. Thanks Glenn! (and Ken!).

Ken Rockwell’s site.

I’m sure you’ve seen it before: AOPA’s new initiative to get more people interested in (learning to) flying. I posted one of my Why Fly columns on there and it got published today. Unfortunately the link to Why Fly Inc. was taken out… must be seen as competition. Where it really is NOT, of course. Both sites – and a few others – are all about the passion for flying.

Personally I think we should join forces, stick together and further the cause by helping each other. Having said that, we are mostly a ‘for the love of it’ company and ‘losing’ money for now, whereas AOPA nowadays is big business and Big Bucks.

Oh well.

We’ll have some super Photo Essays on Why Fly shortly, about Oshkosh and other fly-in’s. There are wonderful stories and other columns there as well! Check back often !

Yes, it is time again…. we’ll be heading for the States this Fall again and planning on seeing a lot of friends, most on 2 wheels, with or without wings !

First we’ll head over to Aruba on Sept 30, to celebrate Vivian’s 30th birthday, then we’ll hop over to Florida for a few days only, and then it is on to Seattle (arriving October 15th). From there we’ll board a flight to Alaska, and back, and visit Washington with our friends Della and Barry.

After Washington we’ll fly down to California for our first ever visit to the famous West Coast, staying with Richard and Jacqueline in Benicia.

We’ll try and see (and do) as many people and things possible….. although running towards 60 does impose some limitations on energy at times, and also try and get some ‘work’ mixed in.

We’ll keep you posted of progress of plans and actual activities via this blog (and on BMWST.com of course) !

…. for a while, leaving again in 3 weeks.

Lots of ‘stuff’ happened between now and the last post (and most of it was mentioned on Facebook already). To summarize; had several mishaps with trailer, motorcycle, back….. new car has a scratch already (no note as to who did it, of course), walked through a fly-door, coffee machine broke down (and got repaired miraculously), got stuck in traffic for hours on end on the way back….. and, og yes, scratched the helmet visor as well.

But, we still had a good time, especially in Italy with our friends Marjan and Anthony. Weather started with heatwaves and ended with cold.

Now back home tending to umpteen websites (and reducing the number going forward!), and working on posting photos on several places. You can even BUY them (shameless and mainly unclear plug).

Just ordered a new Nikon camera and lens because I managed to wear the D70 out in 5 years !

We plan on doing more riding when we return to France (and hopefully with less mishaps!), and will then prepare for our Aruba/US trip in October.

But before that, lets see if we can make some money to pay it all…… need a website designed, anyone !!?? Lemme know !

Todd Bishop, a reporter writing on Techflash, called me the other day to talk about the cascade Games Foundry and the loss of Flight Simulator. I just found his published article and you can read it here. I still have very mixed feelings about the CGF initiative and from everything I’ve read it doesn’t seem as they will be catering for the Flight Simulator fans. Alas…… !

Yup, I’m not done yet…… not by a long shot! So here’s Step Three: Flightsim Plaza’s SimNews !!

I jokingly mentioned in another place that I was getting bored already, not doing the simFlight news pages anymore. That’s partially true. I certainly do NOT miss the constant pressure of having to provide ‘news’ each and every day. And I don’t miss the increasingly annoying fact that the news we brought there was less ‘news’ and more advertising over the last few years.

But… I DO miss a way of reaching out to all the flightsim AND aviation communities out there, and I DO miss a place where one can express oneself in an honest and open way about the things that keep us all occupied here: flight simulation and aviation.

So, SimNews was plannned all along for many years, and NOW has a REASON to be launched. You can see the first DRAFT here.

I have CLOSED the comments for now, but you can email me your opinion at francois at FSSupport dot com, as usual. And I am setting up a NEW FORUM to accompany the new web site, so we’ll be able to discuss there in future.

PLEASE NOTE: it is ‘under construction’, will NOT be updated each and every day, will have SELECTED news items (by me, no less), and will from time to time contain my (!) opinion on events, products and things.

And yes, it will also ‘promote’ my products from time to time. All this has to be paid for after all, one way or other

Hope you’ll appreciate the new start and what I am trying to achieve, and above all, what I am writing. If you have news that you want to be considered for inclusion (no promises!!!!) you can submit it to news at flightsimplaza dot com !

Something I wanted to do a long time ago already….. get those 40.000 digital images out on the streets!

So I opened an account on Fine Art America a while ago, and today started adding some thrilling (I think) pictures into its database. FAA has some nice products and good printing technique. I added a slideshow in the right hand column that links to the shop. Will make some more links in various places.

I can have an update to Facebook when I add a picture and Google Analytics is linked to it as well…….

I’ll use the same photos for some of the other – slumbering – photo and apparel sites and see if we can get some new life into them…and some $$’s out of them. Been paying for many years on some and have never really made an effort to get much out of them.

Lessee wahappens!

…of the re-invention has been made. In the form of yet a new attempt at setting up my own webshop. And although it proved to be cumbersome (what else is new) it seems to be running and functioning now, ON a new server too.

I have put the also new Gloster Gladiator for FSX up in the shop window, and despite some early download problems, all is going well. Customers love the Gloster (so do I), shop works and the path to new expansion is laid out.

(FIY, the Gladiator will also be on sale on simMarket soon, and we’ll have an Flight1 Wrapper version available too later). The CD Version will have to wait until August.

The intention is to not only sell FSAddon products in there, but others as well. And maybe even other stuff than just FS ….. we’ll see.

Step Two is already been started, in the form of a new news site. But I want to keep it under wraps until it is fully up and running and filled already….. stay tuned for more !

On another NOTE: I finally solved my PC starting problem. Turns out there is a CMOS reset required for some reason, AND it has a CMOS reset button in the back. Had never heard of such a thing. Just goes to show you are NEVER too old to learn anything!

First thing to change had to be my old Silver Cloud Publishing web site. It was the first ever WordPress site I made and I hadn’t changed it from its default orange ‘theme’ since I made it.

There wasn’t much to read on it either. So it got changed.

I designed a brand new theme for it, added the pricing of my web services and a few other things, took out some old information that now is no longer valid and generally prepared it for the new business(es) that are around the corner.

Silver Cloud Publishing’s URL didn’t change, just the way it looks!

Next to publish will be the new Silvercloud-store that is now running and almost ready to advertise. And then there’s the new FS News site that is slowly taking shape… but a lot less urgent.

Stay tuned for more….. now I have to finish the Gladiator first for a weekend release !

…. well, sort of. The Russian based development company who brought us the great WW1 flight simulator, has some news to share:

"…. As many of you have already read on the forums, 777 Studios, previously the North American publisher of Rise of Flight has acquired all rights to Rise of Flight and the neoqb brand. The neoqb brand will be gradually phased out over time and replaced by 777 Studios. This was a friendly merger and was done with an eye towards future development. We want to make it clear that there are no plans to change the core team that has created such a great product. The corporate headquarters will be located in the USA and development will continue to be located in Russia. Current development plans for ROF are still in place and the team is working hard to give you such items as multi-seat aircraft and a new Career mode. Further development plans will be announced when appropriate….".

Rise of Flights web site is here.

The User Manual is done. The aircraft itself is done. I ‘wasted’ a day flying it of course…… sorry….. too much fun! And now I am working on the Installer software to build the package for release. Oh, we set the price for it too. US$ 19,95 will get you the three versions and loads of fun!

I am also working on a bunch of new ‘combination packages’ for people who do not yet have all FSAddon products (can’t be that many, right? < cough>).

Stay tuned for release news somewhere late NEXT WEEK !!

Oh, and another snippet of news…. Andras Kosma from Budapest has his Andras Field almost ready. Andras Field is a fantasy airfield, like Emma Field, where ‘customers’ can actually ‘own’ a bit of land (as was experimented with at one of the earlier Georender fields as well (Diamond Point).

Mathijs and I had talks about a year ago to combine the (to-be-built) Andras community and the Emma Field Club. We still might, provided we have an Emma Field

From various sources news reaches me that flight simulation as a hobby is on the decline. Obviously Microsoft pulling out after 25 years did not help the hobby a bit. But probably also the increasing lack of patience and shorter attention spans of younger people and increasing number of distractions are debet to that.

But, is it true at all? Some of the shops are selling better than ever, and as soon as word came out that FSAddon Publishing is now independent of simMarket, offers to cooperate and sell our products poured in ! Or is THAT a sign of a worse market? Who knows.

What we DO see is that the main mags are still there, some new ones have come and faltered  (as usual), activity on many forums is less than before, but some others are still going strong, there are many new add-on products on the market – although many are also not very good or interesting – and at least MY contacts are for the most part still ‘in the business’.

Difficult to say if said ‘decline’ is fact or imagination. Nobody has ever had good figures on it, not even MS !

Just to be on the safe side, whilst I remain with flight simulation, I am also moving slowly to ‘real aviation’ where ever I can.

But maybe we are going back to the good old days when there was a much smaller, but more tight community of flightsimmers. That wouldn’t be all bad, now would it?

On first sight these two things have absolutely nothing in common. Correct.

But what if I tell you that I was happily working on building my new FS News website, when Nina reminded me that the pile of wood in the third bedroom would start to rot if I didn’t get my sorry behind off the chair and start working !?

So, things being what they are, the floor got priority. Got almost halfway done, which means I need at least two more days to finish it. And all of that precious time will be taken out of my web building activities, of which a new FS site is just a fraction of the drive (and a free one at that).

So here I am typing with one finger that will surely be a lot thicker tomorrow – for some reasons fingers and hammers don’t mix well – and a back starting to hurt once again. Will need it Wednesday when I take the motor to Kenny again to get new shocks and a Xenon headlight.

Sorry folks, you’ll have to wait a while longer before the new web site will be revealed….. need to build a proper one again, before publishing it and I want to hit the ground running.

The market for Flight Simulator magazines remains a difficult one. I just read that the new PC-Simulations in France had to fold, after maybe only a year in existence. Other magazines that came and went are in the Netherlands, Austria and Germany, leaving us with precious little choice. Computer Pilot and PC Pilot remain the two main magazines on the topic. Lets hope they manage to continue.

I am sorry for François Pimenta and his staff. Their effort deserved better.

Sadly, my days at simFlight (and simMarket) are numbered and I had to decide to quit an 8-year ‘career’ running one of the world’s top flight simulation news sites. The main reason being the fact that I just couldn’t afford it any longer. An already meager pay – and declining at that – with an increasing negative outlook on the future just didn’t leave me any choice.

But also the decline in quality, the decline of influence and the fact that running simFlight (and making the simMarket newsletters, ads and other work) didn’t leave me much time to add some much needed money to the monthly income.

Since Miguel and I seemed to get into 180 degrees different views on many of this, I decided the time had come to quit and stand up for my own interests again. I am known NOT to do that, and hence get myself in trouble. Happened before (and will probably happen again before I’m finished on this globe).

So now, without much of any income currently, it is time to sit, rethink, regroup and come up with some new business. It will involve writing, no doubt, because that’s what I’m good at. It will involve flight simulation for as long as it is still feasible. It will involve aviation, of course. And it will involve Internet.

Anything else…. just wait and see.

The 8 years of running simFlight.com were not all wasted of course. I met many new friends, learned a lot, built contact lists for future use and, hopefully, brought some joy in other people’s lives along the way.

To all those that supported me and are STILL supporting me: THANK YOU!

Time for the famous Schwarzenegger line……" I’LL BE BACK!"

Why Fly is gaining momentum, but we need LOTS more readers still…. so SPREAD THE WORD ! It is FREE !

This week we had ‘relaunch-week’ and we celebrated that with a wonderful series of 6 articles by Glenn Matthews. He tells his (flying) life story in it. Glenn was the ‘speaker’ at the Abbotsford airshows in Canada for many many years and has great stories to tell and great pictures to show.

We’ll also have more great photos by Michelle soon, and videos, and some new stories as well.

Check out the latest on WhyFly.aero, and if you haven’t registered yet, do so now ! Thank you !

I already was a publisher, of FSAddon of course, but am now also a partner in a new venture: Why Fly ! Sure, you’ve seen me post about it already, and there’s a link on this page to it, but something changed recently. Two of the initial founders wanted out, the business model of selling subscriptions to read the on-line content wasn’t of this time (in my humble opinion) and the site was about to go bust before even having had much of a running chance.

Since the concept of writing about the passion of flying is one dear to my heart, and since the two people left to run the site are close to my heart too, I decided to step in and offer my services as the ‘techie’ and also to sponsor the site and pick up the running cost for now.

AND we decided to make it a FREE WEBSITE!

Free to the readers that is, because anything you post on the WWW needs to be paid for in some way or other. We’ll figure something out to cover for those cost in a later stage. For now, the site is saved, we’re putting up new content with a much higher frequency, it is free, and hopefully we’ll attract a TON of readers now !!!!

Just click on the WhyFly logo on the right and know we’ve got lots of great articles to read for ya…… by aviation lovers FOR aviation lovers!

Bear with me now, this is testing the Smugmug video embedding code……. Now, can we see this thing full screen in HD!!?? We SHOULD !

YAY! That worked. Now, if I can get the thumbnail to show as well, that would be grand! Oh, and click on the little square thingy bottom right and you’ll get the full-screen video to run on your monitor !!!