I would try asking in the Flight Simulation forum section to get quick help, but it might be your graphics or audio drivers causing the crash. Does it crash at the same spot in the software every time?

Great topic! Time for a flashback…

My first encounter with computer flight sims was when I borrowed a Commodore 128 from a friend. With the computer came a game called Ace of Aces.

In 1989 I got my first own computer (briefly owned a VIC-20 in the 80s but I won’t count that!) – a used Amiga 500 – and shortly thereafter I was flying F/A-18 Interceptor (remember that horrid code wheel?) and Sub Logic Flight Simulator II (it’s been patched a few times since then, the current version is ‘FS9’ 😉 ). F/A-18 Interceptor is still a decent simulator, I think, a bit hard to define but it has something no other computer sim has.

Over the years, names such as Fighter Bomber, Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain, B-17 Flying Fortress, Gunship, Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat and last but not least Thalion’s Airbus A320 simulator in which I gathered several hundred hours flying across Europe. Meanwhile, I dreamt about the new Tornado fighter bomber sim, but my computer wasn’t powerful enough for it.

Apparently the old A320 sim is still being updated by Mr Rainer Bopf… graphics are a tad better than on the Amiga, it seems, but not much!

In 1995, I retired the Amiga and converted to the PC world, mainly to be able to use Flight Simulator 4. During a visit to London that year, I bought FS5.1 together with some add-on sceneries and a “strategies” book which actually lived until last month when I threw it away.

After FS5 came FS95, FS98, FS2000, FS2002 and finally FS2004. For a few years (FS5-FS2000) I did some repaints, mostly of Scandinavian carriers. I think I have 500 hours or so in Microsoft’s simulators, but got tired of the constant fighting in the FS forum community where designer groups with ‘CEOs’ in charge split up one day and got together again the next, of huge egos, and last but not least the poor stability of the software.

Got to keep review copies of FS2002 and FS2004 after I’d written reviews of them for a Swedish computer magazine. I seldom use FS2004 but sometimes it’s nice to start up and look at the great visuals. I’ve been away from the FS hobby for several years now might take it up again now with the Captain Sim 707 soon coming…

Another reason I quit computer sims is that I work with real ones every day.

Maybe one should download an Amiga emulator and go back…

I’m not sure if they are key assigned by default, if not you could always go into the FS2004 settings and assign them yourself.

You want to assign the wing fold and tail hook functions for the doors and stairs (or other features programmed by the aircraft designer) to work.

Good luck!

Anyone got a photo of the Air Zimbabwe 707 which made a very, very low flyby at an airshow in South Africa some years ago?

Ah Sonnenflieger, a man after my own heart! 😉 T’was a magnificent show, and in some respects better than Coventry given that they had more DC-3s flying and they also had one or two nice geriatric jets like the DC-8 and 707. If your Electra picture was taken on the Sunday, we must have been stood pretty close together as I have a very similar picture. All being well, I’ll be there again next year if they hold the show again – well worth the trip from the UK (BA ERJ-145 from BHX).
Andy

It was indeed taken on Sunday, but from the spectators’ terrace on the terminal as I was waiting to take a Canadair flight back to Stockholm. If you were there, we were probably very close!

It was a great show, much better than I could ever anticipate, and I’ll be there next year as well!