Longest Intro... Ever

Most airline pilots, if they somehow were misdirected here will probably hurl some verbal abuse at their screen wanting to strangle that kid, who can't get something as easy as "pilot not flying" right. Well dear stranger, you'll have to work that out yourself and to assist you in that, I shall write this slightly oversized introduction post.

Some things about me. I'm from Germany and as a Freelance IT Consultant I have a job that for most people is so boring, that I'm not going to say much about it here for fear of my first reader becoming my first victim as well by boredom to death.

I've always been crazy about planes and air travel, until I flew the first time. I was working for Volkswagen at the time and I was destined to board a charter flight in a Beech 1900D. To say it was bad would be a gross understatement, it was terrible. I learned the hard way, that I

a) seem to be more than slightly claustrophobic, so the Beech 1900 isn't the best place to be in. I'd probably just stopped trying and died, had that been a Fairchild Metro.

b) seem not to react well to height changes, which an aircraft sort of does. It might explain why I never was too fond of Ferris Wheels as a kid.

Long story short - I was scared to death and had the nice prospect of the return flight the very same day.

That did scratch my aviation itch in a damn hurry, NOT. Although I knew at that point, that I made a lousy passenger, I continued to try to learn everything about aviation. Give or take a month, a year and 3 more roundtrips on the Beech 1900 later I could name all the metal that all the european carriers had in their fleet, I knew what NDB approaches were and whatnot. Upping the game by doling out obscene amounts of cash for Microsofts Flight Simulator 2004, bazillions of payware planes, yoke and rudder controls - the lot.

Hoping that this would get rid of my panic in the air I showed up at Berlin-Tegel airport for a flight to Moscow Domodedovo and from there on to Omsk in Siberia. Our steed was a trusty ol' 737-300 operated by a company called Dba, long since swallowed by Air Berlin. It was a little better than on the Beech, but the basic terror and gallons of ice cold sweat in my palms remained again with the nice outlook of yet another flight the same day. This time the vehicle of choice was a Tupolev TU-154M operated by Siberia Airlines (now S7 Airlines). That was in fact the least scary ride I ever had, although with least meaning, I only twice mentally wrote my last will. It is a great plane, the sound of those 3 Soloviev engines is a great synphony.

I had quite a few rides as a passengers, but never ever was I even the slightest bit comfortable within a pressurized metal tube. So I decided to live through the terror if I actually have to fly, but limit it to the absolute unavoidable minimum, if for nothing else, I don't want to scare or unsettle other passengers by having that "I'm gonna die"-Look on my face.

So I decided to get my aviation fix from Microsoft. Hundreds of hours spent in the virtual skies. That's what this blog is about and hopefully the title makes some sense now :-)

That was the opener, more to follow soon. Meanwhile you can check out the 4 Blogs on the right to see, who the people are that gave me the idea to start a blog. Especially Aviatrix' blog is an absolutely brilliant read.

Cheers, and keep the takeoff-landing ratio at 1:1