SKPappy's Story
1976- Got my first computer Tandy Model 1, 4kb mem and cassette recorder for a drive. All programs came on cassettes. I am still amazed with what we could do with such a small computer. There was a program called Sub-Logic Flight sim. All it was, was 2 parallel lines and some instruments across the bottom of the black and white monitor. You could take off and fly some distance then turn around and land using the instruments. all commands were keyboard, the mouse hadn't been invented yet.
1993- Mosaic Internet in a Box came out. It was written by the same guy who later produced Netscape. Wow equipped with a Tandy Model 4 128mem and 2 80kb floppy drives and a 1200 baud modem I could now go from looking for 800 numbers to connect to BBS's to the Internet. The internet didn't look or act like the internet of today. You would Telnet into sites and you could use worm holes with names like Archie, Veronica, Jughead, the guy who started liked Archie Comic books and name the holes from that comic book. By the way Mosaic cost $100.00.
1987-1988- I had my first real taste of Flight sims. AW had come to dial up, and I lived near a General Electric plant that had a local number to access AW. The connect for me was $1.80 per hour of flying. (Oh man what a phone bill I had) AW looked like the later versions, except you could climb a B17 to 10,000 feet and see the whole arena. I have always flown for Cland. I didn't know most of the fighter pilots and flew alone. I would climb to 10k and fly up the east side of the map turn left at the top and bomb Aland. There were the three countries A,B, and Cland. There was and Atoll in the middle of the map and that is where most of the fights took place. It was a blast and beat the heck out of block graphics. I only flew this for about 7 or 8 months. Loved it but the cost was just too high.
1993- I had moved to a Tandy 386 with real CGA graphics and a 14k modem, 10mb hard drive and 256kb memory. I don't know how but I missed AWII all together. But I did get in on the AW3D in the first week it was open to Beta testing. Since I flew B17's I soon met KenJr and was taken into the SkyKnights that first week. Them names I remember are Prof, Mutt, Alpo, Mia, and of course KenJr. There were more SK's but for the life of me I can't remember their names. Flight sims had come of age. We could carry 5 gunners and we all had a blast, taking off from Hal and hitting Ewa. The flight path took us through a valley which we named Mia Valley, because the enemy knew we were coming and was always waiting for us there. In that first year I got the XO spot, and then stuff hit the fan. KenJr had been telling everybody that he owned a real B17 (which he didn't) on of the history buffs called his hand and he would become history in a few short months. I took over the CO's spot. Our SkyKnight squad grew to over 40 strong and we split into 2 SK squads Bombers and Fighter I ran the Bombers and Alpo ran the fighters. During that time I also met other pilots like Stilleto, Murph and the infamous ACCS Colt. I finally turned the Squad over to Seadog after many years of serving as CO of the SkyKnights. Some of us have flown as SkyKnights for 11 years or more. I look to many more years of the SkyKnights filling the air with Bombers.
SKPappy (aka SKDenny)
