And no I don't mean in an obsessive, Midway-esque way, but who were some of the guys that you first began to notice as good pilots and wanted to learn from when you began flying (whether in AW, WB, or AH)?
I vividly remember the first person I ever encountered in-game was Greebo, but that literally being my first sortie I had no idea who he was in the community or the skilled flyer he was. On topic, the very first pilots that I respected and wanted to emulate were WingZero, busa01, and nozman00. I had a fascination with someone who remained dedicated to one particular airframe, and each of them exhibited that to a certain degree of success with busa and WZ in the Niki, and nozman in the Ki-84. With all of them being Bishops I would often ride along with them and get to see first person how they fought. Looking back at some of their statistics, they definitely don't stand out as exceptional flyers, but in my first few months, they were who I wanted to fly as well as one day.
This little thought all arose today, when I was thinking out of the blue who that Ki-84 pilot was I used to fly with a bunch. I remembered busa and WingZero in the Niki, but couldn't for the life of me think of the Hayabusa pilot. After a quick search of the stats though I quickly found nozman00, and it seemed like a blast from the past just seeing that name. It seems like just yesterday I was upping a Ki-84 and trying to be the samurai of the sky back when I started at age 12.