Alpo's Story
Where to begin?? I've always had a love for WWII history. I remember walking into the library across from my grandmother's house and the librarian pulling down a copy of "The Flying Tigers". It was a non-fictional account of the groups exploits and with that single book, the hook was set. I was soon reading about D-Day, Guadalcanal, the Battle of the Bulge, etc., but the favorite books always seemed to revolve around air combat and the planes involved.
As I got older, I went through the model building phase most kids experience. No cars for this kid though, if it wasn't WWII, I wasn't interested in putting it together. My pride and joy was the 1/48 scale B17G which took me a little over six months to complete. There was an unbelievable amount of detail on the interior of that thing that only my parent and I knew was there as you couldn't see it from any of the windows.
Time passed, flying was forgotten for the most part except for the huge amount of cash I could drop into any flight sim game at the area arcades. Upon graduation from Purdue University, I got my career job in 1989 at Lafayette Venetian Blind as a Cobol programmer (yes... there are more of us out there than you realize). Our sales force had laptop computers, some were even 286s!! As it turned out, one of the reps was having difficulty with his machine and it was in for repair. Scanning the hard drive I found "Aces of the Pacific" (DOS version of course). Holy crap! You can play games like this on a computer?? I'd played dungeon type stuff but never air combat! Needless to say, I copied the program (it fit nicely on a 1.44MB floppy) and some late nights were spent at the office flaming Zeke with reckless abandon using the arrow keys for a stick and a space bar firing button.
When we moved closer to my office (our current home) in 1996. There, I was finally able to purchase my first computer, aside from the TI99-4A with the add-on 32MB memory, dual cassette decks, and the single sided / single density 5-1/4" floppy I used in school. This sucker was a Packard Bell Pentium 120Mhz speed demon and I now had a connection to the internet so the foundation was laid.
Months past and I never even thought about gaming on the computer until one day in a store I saw a copy of Computer Gaming World. On the cover was a B17 and the headline read something along the lines of "Inside we review the big three combat sims". I immediately bought it, not having a clue about what was available. The article talked about Warbirds, Confirmed Kill, and Air Warrior. Each had a website so I downloaded Warbirds first. Whoa, this was cool, except for one detail... I couldn't get launched. After several tries of reading help files, I finally was airborne... what do I do now? There weren't any enemy planes... nothing! Well that kind of sucked. So, I went to Confirmed Kill... oops, not going to release until a later day. Guess that leaves Air Warrior... downloaded. Wow!! Cool missions with AI enemy planes and everything! Ok, so the AI wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed but it beat everything else I had seen to this point. One point of interest I'd like to make on Air Warrior, Jeff Hanna (Art Director on AW) is a fellow Purdue Boilermaker!
It was several weeks before I had the 'nads to go online and face REAL people. I started in the Relaxed Realism arenas as I couldn't keep from losing control as I was too heavy handed with the stick. I'm guessing it took a few days before I was able to get my first kill... I sucked THAT bad. The Dogz of War and I always seem to get tangled up so I settled on the call sign of Alpo (yes... after the dog food) as I usually was on the losing end of the engagements.
After a few weeks I was approached online and asked to join a squadron. I jumped at the chance... someone had noticed my ability!! Well, either that or they were just trying to get warm bodies, I'm not quite sure. Anyway, I was now in a squadron... with no missions... no wingmen... no communication. For some reason, it just didn't fit the picture I had envisioned. One day, while flying a B17 and having very little success at level bombing, a guy named Raven came along for a ride as a gunner/observer. In that one flight, he taught me more than I could learn in a week of struggling at this stuff. He explained he was in command of a squadron called the SkyKnights. They had weekly squad nights, and when anyone was online they would usually fly together. There were newletters that went out to members, etc. THIS was what a squadron was supposed to be! He told of the squad's founder, KenSr (see SkyKnight History), and asked if I was interested after hearing all of this. Well, as you might have guessed, the rest is history.
Since those early days in Air Warrior, I've commanded several versions of the squad, hence the SKFG (SkyKnight Fighter Group) which still appears in my callsign. I look forward to the day when HiTech's programmers will allow for a name change without forfeiture of the perk points I can't figure out how to spend!
Those of you who've known me for a while have come to realize that our family are Disney nuts. We often migrate south a couple of times a year. These vacations are food for our souls and mind which even our now teenagers have come to live for after more than twenty five visits. If it weren't for ownership in the Disney Vacation Club, I would probably still be cashing in my vacation weeks for money.
Denny (aka. SKPappy) and I have a similar affliction... the love of the bright light cities. While he heads to the east coast's Atlantic City, my wife Dawn and I head to Las Vegas (generally with my parents) about every other year.
When all of this other stuff isn't keeping me busy enough, my son and daughter (Brian and Amanda) are running us ragged with sporting events. Brian is an offensive tackle on the football team at Harrison High School, throwing shot put and discus in the spring. Amanda keeps us going even more with gymnastics all year and now she's started in with other sports at the junior high level. It's no wonder I come online to fly... I need to KILL someone!!
