Dedalos,
I used to get paid to play AW to support sound card questions as a phone tech in the early 90's. Media Vision from it's Thunder Board on until they closed their doors and became Aureal Semiconductor. Back in those days when Paul Jain was the CEO and got in trouble. I put my time in with AW then again here with AH since 2002. Knowing all this historical gunsight data simply happened along the years of the two games. Now days I have the time and the money for many usless things that you would equate makes me useless. But, I do have the time during the day and other odd hours as you see because I made some very good decisions along the last 40 years. Then not everyone has to work 9-5 anymore in these so modern times to take care of their familes. Thinking about retiring to the Rumford area near the White Mountains in Maine. That would be a realy useless thing I guess...
No the nice pakistani man did not show me how to fire the guns in the Taylorcraft Austor IV. The British never found a need to mount more than a very pistol in the cabin since it was for liason and observation. In the pakistani Auster IV they only had a small wooden stool like contraption for the third person in the back where I sat most of the time as my father took flying lessons. In 63 the Peshawar flying club had 3 of them. Two for flying and one for spare parts. I did get to sit in a spitfire outside of Dunstable Downs in southern Bedfordshire once in 1960. I pressed the button on the control stick's ring and made my own version of Piu-Piu-Piu.....kinda like a gerbil with the walkin ferts.
The past is so useless, all that knowlege and experience laying around unused cluttering up things and putting everyone to sleep. Just gets all in the way here in the present for whats important to todays folks. Whatever that is?? Cloths have changed a bit and technology but, most folks still can't realy say whats important. They just seem to be stuck in the same loop then as now that what others think or say is irrelevant, useless and not important. Isn't repeating the same thing over and over again the clynical definition of insanity or some such variation on that theme??