Finnish computer games magazine PC Gamer published in its latest issue a fine 4 page article about the Finnish online pilots and net pilots.
As you can see the article is finely decorated with WarBirds screenshots, EMC (see Lapwin?) banners and so on. The main picture in first page is a tweak of My's Finnish 109G skin combined into a cool screenshot filled with smoking B-17s from a scenario lite.
"Those splendid men in their flying machines"
"Virtual pilots are new age aviation hobbyists, who respect old traditions and create new ones"
Article tells about flying online in different simulations, and goes into detail about the historical scenarios - especially EMCs, the historical background and how the Finnish pilots are deep into history and interaction with the WW2 veterans.
"To them the air war must be 'up close and personal' (*that was in english in the article ;-), which means who must meet the enemy fairly and close. Kauppinen summaries it up "an airplane has a propeller in front."
"You might think that moments spent in a airplane during the war wouldn't have been some of the best times in your life. 'For some they were, for some not. They (veterans) have told about the same adrenaline rush, that we feel.
The most important thing was, that it was flying. They wanted to fly. That war came and they had to fight with the neighbours was very sorry, and they wouldn't have wanted to do so. But they had. But at least if you had to do it, the good thing was that you could fly.
One of the veterans told, that the idea was to fly fully - and you got to fly with the hottest things there was. It just also meant, that you had to get the neighbour down. Main thing was to shoot down the plane, and it was a good thing if the pilot managed to jump into his parachute."
You can find full size shots of this article from
http://www.compart.fi/icebreakers/press/ . Scroll down to the lower part of the page.
