My upgrade report

Gang,

I got a great deal on a 3 GHz I7 on the place. Today I installed Steam on it. I noticed that FS X SE was on sale today but I didn't need to buy it a second time after I logged in to Steam on the new machine - it had a link to download FS again.

It seemed to take forever to download, my DSL was going 1/10th rated speed, and then the scenery took longer than it did on my inadequate computer that I was using before. However, after I planned my first flight (46CN to 99CL, 12 minutes) and took off it was clear right after lift-off that this was going to be very much like the real thing. Wx was harsh, wind 249° at 19 gusting to 25 knots, temperature 89° and climb rate was very slow starting from 3400'. It was great to use the hat switch to pan around without delay and I never saw blurred terrain until I was on base approach and admittedly way too low. Before that I even hit some turbulence that had me out of control of the 172 I was flying, at least in pitch. The turbulence affected the plane about the roll axis at the same time, but that wasn't bad.

I didn't fly anymore today because after hours and hours of installing everything I was pretty tired and it's a hot news day, but I can't wait to get back upstairs once I'm fit to enjoy it. Oh, I hope this isn't against the rules of the forum, but MegaSceneryEarth is offering some items for sale. I thought they only got up to 50 cm/pixel with V.4, but their California entire state package mentions a 50 cm source. I just looked, things are still on sale.

I believe in a few days I'll be writing my junior senator, who is on the transportation sub-committee, about the joy of general aviation. She's pro-business, maybe I should do a little research and name small plane manufacturers as my main axis of thrust to go along with how fun it is to fly. As far as I'm concerned, what I've got right now is just as good as flying with my Dad when I was small.

If anybody wants to help out, I could use manufacturer names. I can think of Cessna, Piper, Maule, Legend, Beech, Lear, and that's all. Here's a list,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Manufacturers_Association#Members

but some are foreign. Anybody know which ones with normal business types (i.e.: "Inc.") are from the U.S.? The Senator will not react well to promoting foreign business unless a majority of shareholders are domestic. Thanks for any help.

Best,

Sean