Rob Diebold

At age 5, though, was when I first began my love affair with aviation, when my father would take me to Gen. Mitchell Field in Milwaukee to watch the planes. Soon after, I became aware that my grandmother's house in the Chicago suburbs was right at the pattern crossing of O'Hare and Midway airports. I would spend endless days reclining in a lawn chair in my grandmother's backyard, binoculars and notebook in hand, watching and documenting the different aircraft and airlines I saw.

To top it off, my grandmother's next door neighbor was a member of the World Airline Historical Society (at that time, it was still a small group called the World Airline Hobby Club). He showed me his airline memorabilia collections, and I was forever hooked. Since that time, I have had several ties to the aviation industry, including working at Seattle-Tacoma Int'l Airport as a baggage-handler for international flights, and majoring in Aviation at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT (although my eventual degree was from Eastern Washington University, with a double major in Finance and Economics).

I began "flightsimming" in high school in Olympia, WA, sneaking out of class and into the computer lab with my SubLogic FS tucked away inside one of my books. At the time, the only computers my school had were "state-of-the-art" Apple IIe's (which tells you a little about how old I am). When I got into college, I bought my first computer, a 286SX-16 with 524k of RAM (once again, state of the art at the time), and along with it, I bought Microsoft's Flight Simulator 4. When ATP came out, since airlines were my first love, I ran out and bought it, and learned to fly "like a pro."

It wasn't until I played around with a friend's FS5.0 that I began to see where flight simulation was headed. I got onto the Internet, and began to see "wonders of the modern age," such as FSFS planes and add-on scenery. I ran out and bought FS5.1, and although I was living in Spokane, WA at the time, I downloaded my very first FS add-on, Bill Otten's Tampa Bay scenery. It was that scenery that inspired me to start designing scenery on my own. Since my family lived in Ft. Myers, FL, I decided to make Southwest Florida Regional Jetport (now Southwest Florida International Airport) my first design. After all the other sceneries I've done over the years, I keep coming back to RSW, continually updating and improving it, using it as a testing ground for new techniques I'm learning.

Looking back, my skill as a designer had reached a plateau until the day I was asked by Northwest Virtual Airlines to create scenery for their Memphis hub. It was then that I realized I couldn't just continue to use default buildings and such to try and create realism. So, I taught myself to use VOD, and building creation became very important to me. With the Memphis scenery, I proved to myself that I could create complex and realistic scenery, and that has helped to improve my craft with each scenery project I do.

I have lived in the Tampa area for the last four years, and have been working as an advertising sales representative for the Yellow Pages. In my spare time, I've been playing semi-pro football and softball, as well as coaching a local youth football team. I've also recently signed a contract to play professional football in Finland, and will be spending 5 months of the year in Europe as a player/coach for the Oulu Northern Lights. My hope is to someday return and play professionally in one of the North American pro leagues (NFL, CFL, or Arena).

Rob Diebold
Lightning62@aol.com