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Hello and welcome, my esteemed friends, to our Club's Annual meeting for 2024, and the inauguration of our new Home Airport, Merril C. Meigs, KCGX. To those who have been flying with us since the beginning and those who have joined us along the way for one or more of our Challenges, it's great to see you all again! To those who are flying with us for the first time and who are showing us the wonders of MSFS2020, welcome! Last Fall, ViperPilot2 had the wild idea of doing a flying event for some of the older sims. A few people decided to take him up on it. That became the Bendix Challenge. Some wove elaborate fictional narratives about their sim flights. And the weirdest thing happened: After spending October flying one event, we wanted to do another, which became the Route 66 Challenge, which saw us all spending Thanksgiving together on a California beach. And what did we talk about between Thanksgiving and New Year's? Doing another Challenge, this one so big and convoluted, with three different routes, each with its own character and rules set, that participation at times felt like it fit the legal definition of insanity. In this time, we've told a lot of stories, running a gamut from murder mysteries to science fiction. We've told a lot of jokes. We've packed our logbooks with a lot of flying hours. And we've consistently had the most active threads on flightsim.com. We've also seen each other through illnesses, major surgeries, and health scares to our spouses. To repeat a comment I made early on: Sometimes it's more than just pushing pixels around screens. There are real people behind the screen names. And we're still here, and more people are flying events with us each time. So, to paraphrase Microsoft, Where Do We Want To Fly From Here? And, what will it take to get us there? That's the purpose of this meeting. Or to put it in business world terms, what are our goals for 2024 and what is the minimum structure necessary to facilitate their achievement? The fact that we've been flying together for six months now, doing it all by the seat of our pants, and we're still together is amazing. It's time now for a little more formality, so that we can all be together to do this again next year. To support this, we'll be using a four-phase process: Preliminary: A simple, broad questionnaire was posted on Friday, with the request to consider our answers in private. The purpose of this is twofold: To ensure that all responses are exclusively the yours and not built on someone else's, and to allow you to post your answers with a minimum of time and effort. This step is now complete. Individual Ideas: The second step is the posting of responses. Have your say about any of the questionnaire items that is important to you, and more importantly, consider what everyone else has to say before we start discussing it. This step begins now, and ends the earlier of all members having posted their responses to the questionnaire, or 12:00 CDT on Tuesday. Getting all responses in quickly will allow us more time for discussion. Discussion/Consensus Building: The third step starts when the second ends, and ends at end-of-day Wednesday, or earlier by agreement of the attendees. This one presents the logistical challenge of having to take place across the globe, while still finishing in a short amount of time. Individual Ideas will fall into one of three categories: Agreement: We've been flying together for a while and know each other's styles and capabilities, so all answers to a given question say much the same thing. These will boil down to simply formalizing what we're already doing. Easy! I Don't Agree, But I Can Live With It: Answers that differ sharply will need a negotiated solution. While the goal is to include everyone's ideas to their satisfaction, sometimes that will not prove possible. Consensus isn't about pleasing everyone, but rather about each of us conceding just enough to keep the others happy without our concessions becoming issues for us later on. Adamant Disagreement: Some things just cross a line. If you search your heart, are not just being petulant and trying to get your own way, and the move toward consensus is taking us somewhere that you are just unwilling to go, say so and we'll take a step back. What doesn't work for all of us doesn't work for any of us. Hopefully, these will be few and far between. These are the ones we most need to catch and resolve in the broadest, most imaginative sort of way, lest we start losing members. 2024 Club Bylaws Publication: The final step starts when the previous one ends. Ideally, we will have developed the text during the Discussion phase, and will only have to compile it into a cohesive document. From the moment of the document's publication, we will have 24 hours for edits and comment. Let me end this introduction with a preliminary Code of Conduct, to both govern this meeting and as my proposal for a more permanent Code: Disagree without being disagreeable. Be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and leave pursuing grudges in the box in the attic with all the rest of the things from our childhoods. Express ourselves, perhaps even insistently when a point's very important to us, but put finding a liveable consensus over winning a point. Let's all get on the same side of the table here and come up with answers, rather than going round and round in pointless arguments. This is a single-level group. No one's opinion has any more validity than anyone else's here. Whatever else we've been in the past, here we're all just fellow fliers, trying to have fun together. Whatever skills and knowledge that we've acquired throughout our lives only matter to the degree that we lay them on the table and use them to help our brothers-in-wings here. Leadership is a service here, not a position of privilege, and shall be undertaken only with the intent of improving our fellow fliers' enjoyment of the group. When something offends us, let's take 5 or even wait a day or two and make our response a considered Action, rather than a brute Reaction. As I used to tell my clients, "The one who unconsciously Reacts rather than consciously Acts. loses." Save Reacting for when you're on final into KCGX, past decision height, and that nice, 30-knot headwind suddenly drops to 0. We all have different skill and knowledge sets. Never ridicule a question, just because it seems too basic. Let's put ourselves in the other person's shoes, lace them up, and go for a nice, long walk. A lot of us are prideful people. Many of us have done a lot over our lifetimes. When we find ourselves with a group of other similarly-accomplished individuals, who are all talking about something we don't understand, we tend to not ask the million-and-one questions we have because we don't want to seem dumb. When we finally do screw up the courage to ask something, the worst thing that can happen is that someone laughs at us for it. All that does is confirm our feelings of inadequacy. When will we ask them another question? Never. When will we feel safe and confident around that someone or enjoy spending time with them? After we ask another question and receive a decent, honest response from them. English is the language for our interactions. We all have different levels of it. Even those of us who are native English speakers have vast national/regional/cultural differences in how we express ourselves. Let's not assume that a question or comment is understood by all - in fact, a more valid assumption is that at least one person here will not understand what we've said in the way that we intended it to come out. Ask. Clarify. Above all, let's be patient with each other. Any proposal for a route, Challenge, Fly-In, or any other activity that will require Club members to take action, is a commitment on the part of the proposer to both participate in the activity and to administer it. In other words, if it's your baby, you change the diapers. You may enlist help from other Club members, but this is strictly voluntary.

2023 Route 66 Aerial Rally Official Sponsor Suc-A-Lux Vacuums “It they don’t suc, it really blows." The 2023 inaugural rally will take place starting November 1st. The official end will be no later than November 30th or upon completion of the route by all contestants if sooner. The rally is open to any flight simulation platform, with emphasis towards legacy versions of MSFS (FS98, FS2004, FSX). The primary focus is to showcase the aircraft and scenery of these legacy programs. However, all others are also welcome to participate (MSFS2020, X-Plane, etc.). This rally will follow the historic US Route 66 from Lansing Illinois to Santa Monica California. Participants will fly 1646 miles, visit 11 airports, traverse 7 States, cross 3 time-zones, all while vying for the coveted Suc-A-Lux Trophy. Route 1. Lansing Municipal IL (KIGQ) CTAF 122.7 Rwy. 9/27 18/38 Elev. 620 2. Zelmer Memorial IL (5K1) CTAF 122.9 Rwy. 18/36 Elev. 663 3. Jones Lebanon MO (KLBO) CTAF 122.8 Rwy. 18/36 Elev. 1321 4. Claremore Regional OK (KGCM) CTAF 122.7 Rwy. 17/35 Elev. 733 5. Cordell Municipal OK (F36) CTAF 122.9 Rwy. 17/35 4/22 Elev. 1589 6. Tradewind TX (KTDW) CTAF 122.8 Rwy. 17/35 5/23 Elev. 3649 7. Moriarity NM (0E0) CTAF 122.9 Rwy. 8/26 Elev. 6199 8. Gallup Municipal NM (KGUP) CTAF 122.95 Rwy. 6/24 Elev. 6472 9. Flagstaff Pulliam AZ (KFLG) Tower 134.55 Rwy. 3/21 Elev. 7014 10.Needles CA (KEED) CTAF 123.0 Rwy. 11/29 2/20 Elev. 983 11.Santa Monica Municipal CA (KSMO) Tower 120.1 Rwy. 3/21 Elev. 177 Aircraft Any general aviation and light commercial aircraft from the 1930’s through the 1960’s are welcome to participate. We are attempting to recreate the feeling of the golden age of General Aviation. J-2 Talor Craft through DC-3 or Boeing 247, there is an amazing number of wonderful classics we look forward to participating in this rally. In addition to the “as delivered” and “off the shelf” paint schemes that are always a pleasure to see, we encourage custom repaints, with various colors and personal or rally sponsor logos. Weather/Winds You decide the time of day/night, the weather, and winds for your flight. Entrant Requirements 1) Select and appropriate aircraft. 2) Determine your weather/winds/time of day. 3) Develop flight planning for the route with your planned route times. 4) Submit an on the ground (grass, runway, ramp) photo of your entry aircraft (engine off). 5) Submit a copy of your flight planning. On the days you are flying: 6) Route time for each leg begins when you roll for take-off, and ends at a full stop on landing. If you are not stopping at any airport, you must still overfly that field. Record the time when directly over the field as the end time of one leg and the start time of the next. 7) Take lots of screenshots from taxi to takeoff, enroute, landing and parked for a fuel stop. Poetic license is valued as we all “enhance” our flight with stories and antidotes, sea-stories, and exaggerations. Have fun as your adventure develops. Scoring will be done in a simple and fair manner. Record your route time for each leg/segment. Note the difference in minutes between your planned flight time and your actual time. Minutes ahead or behind planned are considered the same, difference from your planned time. Add together your ten leg time differences. The entrant with the least amount of time from planned will be the “winner.” 9) HAVE FUN!!! This is all being done on the honor system. So whatever you state was your times, that's what counts. Navigational Assistance 1) GPS direct route to visually assist along your route. 2) Time compression along your route, if time recorded is the same as without time compression. 3) Autopilot for wing leveler and altitude hold. In keeping with this period of aircraft autopilot for routing. 4) Try to use navigational equipment as close as possible to the time period, no FMS, glass cockpits, GPS only, etc. If you are going to use ground based navigational stations, please use VOR and NDB/ADF only. Share your experiences As your flight progresses, share occasional pictures and stories on the Route 66 Air Rally thread on FlightSim. Share the fun!!! Example Picture/Flight Plan Submittal Here is the proposed entrant aircraft and flight planning for PhrogPhlyer, who will be utilizing FSX and a custom rally paint scheme. We ask that each entrant submit something similar.

The title says it all, anyone still running this dinosaur? Just wondering if i'm not alone.:) Sent via 2 tin cans & a string (My pc)

I was lucky (I think) enough to pick this bundle up at a car boot sale recently, all discs present and correct, no scratches, so I know they should work in terms of reading the data. FS2002 seemed to install without any problems, and once I'd tweaked the graphics settings (I have a relatively powerful gaming PC) it looked pretty decent and very playable, however when I attempted to install any of the VFR scenery add-ons they threw up errors, no amount of compatibility or administrator settings would allow them to run. I managed to install them without any trouble at all in a VirtualBox emulated Windows XP, however that doesn't have very good 3D hardware emulation so fs2002 always just runs in safe mode, so I wasn't able to get the benefit of the added scenery (although it still ran at a very slick framerate). I had thought that perhaps I could copy the installation from my emulated XP over to my Windows 7 installation folder, however I didn't really notice much or any improvement in ground texture or mesh after doing so. Is there any way to confirm whether or not fs2002 has actually picked up the new textures and meshes, and is actively using them? Would anyone happen to know which files I should need to copy across and if there are any registry tweaks or in-game configurations I need to change or check? Maybe the scenery.cfg file or something like that? Really would like to get this game running with the add-on scenery on my Windows 7 PC, so thank you for any help you can give. Also with this bundle was fs98, I had read / saw on youtube that fs98 and fs2002 are unstable (it has randomly crashed on me a few times, I had just put that down to me messing around and it being run on Windows 7). Is fs98 worth bothering with? Is fs2004 a vast improvement over fs2002?

My FS2002 cdroms are old, and my new laptop doesn't have an optical drive. I'd like to copy my cdroms to a hdd and install from the hdd. Is this possible? I'd also like to do this with my old FSX deluxe DVD's as well.

Been reading this forum's old posts for when FS2002 first came out. It's a neat trick. Just pretend now is 2001. Phil Herds posts are very good. Will link a few here. (As I have FS2002 in it's box, pristine, it's as if I've just arrived home from the shop, excited, just installed it and enjoying this amazing new sim!)