Must've been the mid 80's when a friend of mine asked me: "Hey, Jan! You being such an aircraft nut, did you know that you can fly an aircraft right at home if you buy this computer and a special program?"

"No, I didn't!" I replied,"Tell me more about it! Must be pretty expensive, huh?"

"Nah," he said,"Only 600 guilders (about $300)."

"Really?" I replied, getting more and more excited,"Where can I buy this thing then?"

Thus started my flight-simulator hobby, very much regretted by my wife. She already had to cope with my interest in aviation, R/C aircraft models, modeling aircraft, railroad, ships, making Super-8 home movies, keeping tropical fish, lizards, and our dog and cats, oil painting, drawing and a few other bits and pieces on the side. If that wasn't enough already.

On top of this, around that time and before, from the mid-60's on, I was a practicing musician, playing bass-guitar in quite a few different bands, even scoring a world hit record in the 70's ('Little Green Bag', now-a-days used in quite a few TV commercials all around the world and also part of the music track of Quintin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, a great piece of work 'movie-wise' but not exactly my cup of tea).

The 600 guilders got me a Sinclair 48K Spectrum. The 'special program' turned out to be 'Nightflight', a well-chosen name because apart from some crudely-drawn 'gauges' and 12 (could even have been 18...) white dots depicting the runway, everything was pitch black. I cannot say how thrilled I was when later on I upgraded to an Atari 1024ST and Flight-simulator II ... this was the real thing!

Follows the typical story of one computer and one FS version leading to another until ending up with FS2K and currently a Dell XPS450 with 19" monitor.

I took up FS aircraft design first thing MS A&SD hit the shelves and, like with FS itself, I have always been upgrading to newer design programs so I'm working with FSDS now, compared to A&SD, AAF, AF5, AF99 and in cooperation with AA and FS2K a real 'FS aircraft designers' Heaven'. Thanks a million Louis Sinclair and Co.!

The old and venerable prop airliners are my main interest in aviation hence my current Douglas DC-3 project with which I hope to release many versions/liveries and upgrades with emphasis on 'bare-metal' skin texturing, kind of a hobby-horse of mine. You can bet your bottom dollar a DC-4, 6 and 7 and especially a Connie are already 'lined up in sequence' Only time will tell when they'll eventually get their FS take-off clearance since it's not unlikely for the odd aircraft of another gender to sneak up in between.

Jan Visser

E-mail Jan at jan.visser1@chello.nl