December 15, 2022
Welcome back. Today in Microsoft Flight Sim, I’ll be flying the twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning, one of the fastest and most successful American fighters of World War II. n the process, I’ll be telling the story of Dick Bong, a P-38 pilot in the Pacific who became the top-scoring American fighter ace of all time. […]
December 15, 2022
Welcome to Courmelles Aerodrome, on the southwest outskirts of Soissons, for a tour of the French “Aisne Sector” of the Western Front today in MSFS, in the Dorand AR.1. The Dorand AR.1 is a two-seat observation biplane (the AR stands for Avion de Reconnaissance) developed in 1916, in response to the newer, deadlier fighter planes […]
December 15, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Sim I’m going to be flying the Nieuport 17, one of the premier French fighter planes of the First World War. Introduced in early 1916, the Nieuport 17 was the first French plane to make use of the German-invented synchronized machine gun, timed to shoot through the blade of the propeller […]
December 15, 2022
Today on Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’ll be flying a famous stubby-nosed racer, the Gee Bee Super Sportster, that won speed records in the 1930s – but proved deadly to many who flew it. And there’s a reason I’m here under wintry, overcast skies at Detroit’s Wayne County Airport, because this is where this plane, at […]
December 15, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Sim, I’m back to flying the Spitfire again – but this time the original Mk Ia version which fought in the Battle of Britain. You might recall that a flew a much later model Spitfire, one with a unique post-war story, here: This Spitfire also has a special story. KL-B (P9398) […]
December 15, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Sim, I’m off to the interior of Brazil to fly the Embraer EMB200 Ipanema, and explore the surprisingly fascinating world of crop dusters. f this airplane looks familiar, that’s because it was the model for Dusty Crophopper in the movie Planes. Well, technically Dusty is an Air Tractor AT-502, manufactured in […]
December 14, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator I’m going to be flying the Fokker F.VII, one of the world’s first civilian airliners that, in the hands of aviators like Richard Byrd and Charles Kingsford Smith, also blazed new paths to uncharted reaches of the globe. Anthony Fokker was Dutch, born in the colonial East Indies. In 1910, […]
December 14, 2022
Today in MSFS, to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, I’m go to try out a unique made-in-America piece of innovation, the Rutan Long-EZ, over some uniquely prohibited American airspace: Washington, DC. The Long-EZ may just look kind of weird to you, but its story harkens back to the early days of aviation pioneers, and […]
December 14, 2022
Welcome back to Microsoft Flight Simulator where today I’ll be flying the Mitsubishi A6M2, Japan’s main fighter of World War II, famously known as the Zero. Introduced in 1940, the A6M was dubbed the Navy Type 0 carrier fighter or Reisen (零戦, “Zero Fighter”) for short, in reference to the Imperial Year 2600. To set […]
December 14, 2022
Welcome to Vancouver, British Columbia, where today in Microsoft Flight Simulator I’ll be flying the Lockheed L-10 Electra, an early all-metal airliner from the 1930s. The reason I’m in Vancouver is that this is based on a real airplane, the very first purchased by Trans-Canada Air Lines (which later became Air Canada) in 1937. This […]