I am now retired from "work" but I have various interests outside of Air Combat Sims, and these did include flying, building and flying radio controlled models of fairly large size, scale mostly, including helicopters, and computing. The computing part included producing newsletters and publishing the local Flying Club magazines, and also answered queries from other air-warriors on how to get it all to work (but that is defunct now as the multi-player host of Air Warrior was bought out and closed by EA) Oh, and I did sell and build Computers at work too, as part of our product range - mostly specialist stuff to do with microscope imaging.

I started in Air Warrior what seems many years ago (around late 1989-90), I even had the EGA version at one time, though I didn't like it too much, dumped it for a time, and re-started again with DOS version 1.13 SVGA. playing through v 1.14 up to Dos AW version 1.2. I suppose that qualifies me as an old Vet, or perhaps a boring old fart. I have enjoyed it as an immensely satisfying relaxation and a way of forgetting work, and in latter years, I was involved as the last Air Warrior "Sysop" on the UK Dos Host in London, England hosted by the old On-line.co BBS, until it's closure when the Windows versions began. At that time, before the Dos hosts were closed and at the height of popularity around the late 80's and early 90's, we had some magnificent squads, and many battles were fought to the death on the old UK host, and I am glad to say there are still a few of the old 'vets' still around now still flying in the current crop of on-line multi-player Air Combat Simulators.

I may not be as spritely as some younger flyers, the old reflexes are definitely gone, but I still enjoyed the rush of adrenalin that flying in Aces High generates. I was privileged to lead some excellent flyers in the Krait Squadron for over seven years, continuing it's history from the old UK DOS Host into Air Warrior III on the Kesmai server, via a short spell in Air Warrior AW4W game now called "Classic" on the AOL Host, right up till March 99 when I decided to "retire" as active C.O. and pass that chore on to someone "slightly" younger. I was involved in many squad activities, but also had another "job" in Air Warrior as a staff member [AWAR] in the Game Assistant program, eventually as one of the two Head Game Operators which kept me busy enough until Air Warrior closed. This enabled me to encourage and help players first joining to participate in our community which was like no other as Air Warrior was the forerunner of the large multi-player on-line communities engaged in graphical interface games. Air Warrior is now unfortunately gone (except for single head to head combat) as the multi-player host was closed down by Electronic Arts who bought it from the parent company who owned Kesmai Studios (aka Gamestorm), but I did participate in the general flying on Aces High just as another player and just for occasional fun, without any of the previous responsibilities that I had, and a good job too, being retired, time seems to go too quickly.