Interesting topic and great stories. I played AH2 for six months and have been out of this game for a year or so. I miss it. I would like to say that it is just a game, but for me it is also an opportunity to feel some excitement of combat without the real life horror. I have always taken great interest in air combat tactics and this game is basically the only affordable way of experiencing it. I researched 1/12 scale radio controlled model airplane air combat, but that has little tactics involved. When I played online I did not imagined myself sitting in a real plane although I sometimes made flights after some movie or book. For example after watching "Dambusters" I took a formation of Lancs for a two hour NOE flight to enemy HQ and back. That was the only flight I made that day. Due to my patience I was best in bombers and GVs. To my surprise I really sucked in fighters, but I did not take this game serious enough to go to a DA or training arena.
In a real life I am a low hour commercial pilot, so I should get enough flying, but it is not like that. I have to fly where other people tell me to, follow the flight plan, be efficient and so on. It is a great job, but it misses some things that I have to find elsewhere.
I occasionally read this forum, check the number of online players and play in offline mode. Thus I am pretty sure I will return some day. The first thing I am going to do is take a Typhoon to a horde and make high speed passes and pulverize everything that is unlucky enough to get in the way.
![Evil :t](http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/twisted.gif)
Compared to some FPS games you actually have to think in AH2 and that is great. FPS seems to be all about good reaction speed and mashing buttons.