...... [After the event] ......
It went very verywell!
One of the expected scouts got sick and couldn't come, but I had 4 well-behaved Boy Scouts and 3 adult leaders in my lab for 2 hours last Wednesday. I was extremely impressed with these young gentlemen. They all arrived on time. They were well groomed, well-behaved, and polite, with no cussing, whining, or criticizing all evening.
I had previously advertised the training available at
http://TechVideoReview.com/FlightSimMovies, by email thru their leaders, and they all knew that they would be issued a brief written test, to see if they had done their preparatory homework, before they would be allowed to fire guns in the simulator. All of the boys passed the 16-question exam with scores of 80% or higher. Even the adult leaders (some of whom had not gone to the web site for training) took the exam (but they didn't score as well, so they had to get a bit of additional instruction. I had set up a "briefing/training room" with a few of the movies from the web site on a big-screen projector).
I had 6 PCs set up with identical flight sim controls, all internetworked via WiFi. 5 were running PcLinuxOs, and the sixth was running Windows XP. With so many machines and so many newbies around, I had anticipated many problems, but had none. No disconnects. No reboots. No sessions lost. No need even to restart the "Practice Mission" that I had written, which allowed all 6 participants to fly with and against groups of drones in my historically-based "Solomon Islands" terrain. All of them had headsets and microphones, and we recorded the entire event on guncamera films from the perspective of all 6 machines. The recorded audio banter isn't very good; I hadn't coached them at all in radio discipline, and they had no clue about keeping messages brief and speaking with clarity. If I ever do this again, I'll include training on that subject. About halfway through the event we all lost AH voice. I had a rather small Linux machine acting as host, and I think there is some kind of a small memory leak in its Windows emulation which eventually overwhelmed AH voice. Everything else continued to work perfectly, however, and inasmuch as the boys weren't really effective with AH voice banter, they just switched to text messages for those infrequent events when they needed to communicate outside the rooms in which they were sitting.
I think it helped to have them all start out on the same team versus the drones, and it generated the kind of "teamwork" feelings that the Boy Scouts like to engender. Later on in the evening some of the adult leaders split off onto the opposing team, and that added an increased level of excitement that also went well.
All of the newbies hit the air with enough skill to immediately select and arm an aircraft, wait while "Auto Takeoff" got them off the ground, and then gently work the joystick for basic flight maneuvers. They had already been introduced to the "View System" so they knew how to look around. I had left "External Views" enabled on the server host, and I think that helped them a lot, as I saw that several of them preferred external views at first, until they got into combat (which pretty much forced them into the cockpit to use the gunsight).
By the time the evening was over, most of them had experienced several victories against drones, and 2 or 3 of them had victories versus one or more live opponents.
After about 90 minutes of flight, we retired to the kitchen for cookies, punch, and de-briefing. There were a few questions regarding how to obtain AH software (one father/son pair had already downloaded and installed it on their home PC), how much to pay for a joystick, etc. One family asked if the system was available for a Macintosh PC, and I told them "no" until I found out that they are equipped for dual-boot situations that include Windows XP.
Since the event, I've been approached by the Scoutmaster and one other adult leader with interest for additional events. All of the boys are scheduled, with 2 other scouting groups in the area, to go to the big "Wings over Houston" airshow on 31Oct2009, and then they're meeting with merit badge counsellors to try to qualify for the BSA's "Aviation" merit badge. I think I'm going to get the chance to do this with other Boy Scouts in the area.
I had a lot of fun, and I recommend this for recruiting into AH. I think several new people may eventually join us in the unfriendly skies as a result of this great evening. Eventually I'll post a couple of photos (and maybe a brief video clip) on the web site.
-Peabody-
