Well, my whole family has an aviation background, so I have always been fascinated with flight and flightsims. I flew my share of offline sims, but never tried anything online.
One night, many, many years ago, I saw a little piece on a TV show about an multiplayer flight sim and how they got all the old WW2 vets together to try it out. It got me hooked. Can't remember what it was, but it might have been Air Warrior. However, I still did not have an outlet to pursue it.
In 1999, my son David was born. I was fortunate enough to have a lot of time off so, with my wife's approval, I bought a brand new 500 MHz eMachine (woo hoo). As I began exploring, I happened across the Warbirds site. The download was free, so I started playing it. I sucked, but I had such a good time that I decided to go live and fly online. I died, and died, and then died some more, but I had a blast.
During my time with Warbirds I hooked up with the Screaming Death Squadron. They specialized in JABO and base closer. While I had come into the game wanting to be a fighter jock, I soon fell in love with the JABO and strike roll. I can't remember how many hours I flew with LB, rebel, slpsht and cuda (I think that was his handle), but it was a blast. I still sucked when it ended, but I was spending less time killing myself (doing stoooopid stuff) and more time getting killed by the bad guys.
Ultimately, I had more desire than I had money to fly. That combined with other demands that were being placed on my life caused me to have to leave Warbirds. However, right at the end, I spent some time testing out a new online flight sim that everyone was talking about. It was a free download and free to beta test. It didn't have many planes at the time, but I figured it was worth a shot. That was my first introduction to Aces High. That was in early 2000.
I had to leave all the online stuff for some time. Various financial considerations and all that.
In late 2002 a colleage of mine (who didn't even fly sims, but knew I liked them) turned me on to Fighter Ace. I ordered the CD to get the 90 days free. Once again, I loved it. Powered with my AMD 1700+ PC and DSL it was a much more enjoyable experience. I would spend hours online flying, kill, dying. However, I never found a squad I really wanted to hook up with. Because of that I closed out my account in 2003.
During the summer I won a free month on Warbirds during one of their free weekends. It was like old times, but, of course, a lot of the old faces were missing and, having a different handle, most people didn't remember me. Oh well, it was great. However, much as I wanted it to be, at the end of the free month there was just not enough there to make me want to stay. The numbers were way down. There squads didn't seem as welcoming and there was just way to much silly stuff (like these two guys that were fighting in the arena so when I tried to help the friendly, he kept coming after me for the next half hour until I logged). Anyway, I let the free period run out and have not played Warbirds online since.
Well, early this year the itch got me again. I had just built a brand new PC and broke out my fighter and flight sims again to get my fix. It was great for a while, but it just didn't cut it. I went through the rollodex in my head of the online flight sims and decided (after monitoring all the various boards) that since I had not tried the current version of Aces High and since they were showing the greatest numbers on at any time, I would give them a try. I downloaded the game, fly it offline for a bit and when I coulding stand it any more...went to my wife to beg her to let me pay for a subscription...lol. Being the sweet woman she is, she consented.
I set everything up, logged on for the first time, and with few exceptions I have been going strong ever since. I fly exclusively for Knightopia in the MA and probably will until I leave or they permenantly do away with the Knights.
After being on flying lone wolf for about 2 weeks, I was asked by JAMX if I wanted to join the Nasty Dead Men. They had a two week evaluation time (for me and for them) so I figured I would give it a shot. They are a great group of guys and I have learned an awful lot with them during squad and training nights. KODA is the CO and I have move from peon (lol) to XO.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin to it.
I really enjoy AH. It has some bugs and its share of whiners, dweebs, prima donas and like, but it is a good experience and there are a lot of good people on here. My recent experience during my sons disappearance proved that. Not many people know this but I posted the information about my son disappearing on the AH board here because I knew there were all sorts of people from all walks of life that would be will to help. That is the confidence I have it you guys (and gals).
Well, hope I didn't put you all to sleep.
Be seeing you in the virtual skies of AH!
