Your host, Francois A. ‘Navman’ Dumas
After more than 35 years in the flightsim hobby and 5 years at AVSIM as a reviewer, writer and forum manager, followed by 8 years at simFlight as the Managing Editor and Forum Admin, Francois figured it was finally time to get his OWN (aviation and) flightsim news magazine running, and so he started Flightsim Plaza’s ‘SimNews’. Which you are reading now.
Francois has one thing for sure: a life-long fascination with aviation.
There’s also ONE thing he doesn’t have: his PPL.
It somehow never got to that with career, financials, work, family and other things always getting in the way of that one thing he’d like to have so much. So, one day…….
Here’s some more history. Francois has done many things in his life, being IT Director Europe of a large US (and global) company for the last 15 years in his corporate career. Before that he worked at a news paper, in advertising, as system designer, project manager and even did a few years of programming back in the days when punch cards had just been replaced by monitors. He’s been ‘on PC’s’ ever since they were invented and one of the true Internet Community Pioneers.
In his spare time he played the guitar – classic and C&W -, painted and made pen drawings, raced cars, traveled since he was 3 years old and learned to speak 5 languages more or less fluently. The nickname ‘Navman’ has something to do with that. Also in his spare time he got married to a beautiful lady from Romania, Nina, and together they had their daughter Vivian…. who now also travels the world.
Francois left ‘Corporate America’ in 2005 and decided not to return to the rat race. Instead he started his own company, working harder than he’s ever done and making less money than he’s ever done. But the freedom and happiness of having his OWN (and mostly happy) customers makes it worth it. SimNews and Why Fly are just more ‘projects’ to his many activities, but fitting wonderfully amongst all of them.
Actually, that’s not true. SimNews and Why Fly are part of his passion for aviation. So there!
Francois owns and runs Silver Cloud Publishing, writing for Flight Simulator publications, and providing marketing and copywriting services to some customers, designing and hosting web sites for small companies, writing for various flight simulator and aviation organizations, running his EuropeRides motorbike touring company, running FSAddon Publishing that publishes wonderful add-on programs for Microsoft Flight Simulator and ‘doing’ a couple of blogs and forums. All that gets complemented by his photography work and sites and writing two books currently.
And yes, one day he’ll just melt and you’ll never hear of him again.
Until that day comes, Francois and Nina live in Holland when they have to, and in France when they can.
