I'm back in the [virtual] air

[TobyV]

Hi chaps,

I was once a regular on here (in my student days), but then I got a job and well, I'm sure you can guess the rest of the story. Anyway, I recently decided I had to do something about my laptop which was getting old and slow, the battery was dead, but I didn't fancy buying yet another device, suffer Windows 8 and find that none of my "old" software was compatible anymore, so I replaced the HDD with an SSD, upgraded from 3GB to 8GB, reinstalled Win7 and FS2004. Bought a fancy Logitech joystick that finally gives me control over the rudder too and I'm back in business.

My first full flight was Alderney to Southampton (the stock airport, not my own version, yet) in this nice little Heron I found that was made whilst I was "away". To save you from total boredom, I condensed all my screenshots into one image


Images are; leaving Alderney,French north coast (2 pics), over the Channel, approaching the IoW, contrail, fluffy clouds, flying above the river Hamble towards Bursledon, final approach to SOU Rwy 20 (2 pics), touchdown, parked.

No doubt I'll be asking more questions (trying to refresh my memory) and hopefully even contributing a few things soon.

Toby

[Dev One]

Toby,
Nice to see you back in the Virtual again, but having read you have changed to a SSD, have you stopped W7 writing & rewriting to your SSD - this process is a known killer of SSD's which become lifed very quickly. I bought a Samsung 840 EVO that came with appropriate software that changed the necessary settings in BIOS automatically.

BTW I have no problem with W8.1, seems very stable at the moment been on it 6 months.
Regards
Keith

[TobyV]

Hi Keith,

That's interesting about the SSD - is that related to this?

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-s ... ws7-1.html

I must admit I haven't checked such settings, indeed I probably ought to check if there are any BIOS updates available for me.

Toby

[Garry Russell]

Toby

[Dev One]

Hi Keith,

That's interesting about the SSD - is that related to this?

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-s ... ws7-1.html

I must admit I haven't checked such settings, indeed I probably ought to check if there are any BIOS updates available for me.

Toby

Yes, a quick looks as if it is. I didn't go into my BIOS because the Samsung software did it for me, but quizzing it (Samsung magician) just now says AHCI needed, so presumably set. My Samsung is just a 120GB, with only my operating software on it, all my other programmes Gmax, FS9 & FSX, Office etc are on a 500GB HDD, so not getting best performance out of the SSD, but as the CPU is a 6 core job, I don't think I would notice much difference!
Good luck
Keith

[TobyV]

And another piccy...

This time I downloaded a freeware mesh for Switzerland, Austria and Germany from allnodes, jumped in Dave's twin seat Hunter and went off in search of Axalp (where the Fliegerschiessen event that I sometimes post photos from takes place):



Compare this view with this (real one). My perspective is the aircraft external view and thus not on the ground, but even so, I'd say this mesh isn't bad at all.

[Airspeed]

Hi Toby
How could we be bored with your piccies? We're FS enthusiasts!
Whose Heron are you flying there? Is it the CBFS "unfinished symphony"?

[TobyV]

Hi Garry

Hi Mike, yes I guess so. Seemed good enough to me. When I left FS, one of the last things I downloaded was the Project Tupolev Tu-154M. Beautiful aircraft and the cockpit was very detailed with all gauges and switches nicely captioned in Russian. You needed to read Tolstoy's flight manual just to start the engines though (when you loaded the aircraft everything was reset to cold/black status). All well and good, if you want to fly that and only that aircraft, in nauseating levels of detail. However, for the rest of us, who would prefer to emulate the likes of Eric Winkle Brown and try as many types as possible (cos let's face it, we're not going to get that opportunity in real life, not even the professional pilots on here), I'm perfectly happy with something of the quality of the Heron. Well done chaps, even if there were still a few bits n bobs you wanted to add here and there

[TobyV]

Thanks to Peter W pointing me in the right direction, I now have a nice Swiss Vampire. I know it's not "Switzerland Professional" (which is about €130), but I do really like this free terrain mesh from ANB and I can at least recognise some of the places:


Departing Mollis (Canton Glarus), heading towards the Walensee


Over Giswil, heading towards to Lungernersee


Approaching the Eiger (far right)


Eiger flypast


Approaching the Aletsch glacier

The real thing (with Venoms):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDwreSP1iOc