The
October
06,002
Air Mail Division News
Welcome to new pilot bgam003 G. “Leo” do Nascimento
The BGA Airmail Division is off to a good start! Soon we
will have another plane repainted for use, the Tiger Moth of John
Woodside. You can get the plane at
flightsim.com and download the new textures from our hangar page in about a
week.
Capt.Ray is working on AI traffic for Nicholasville, he has
some already done that we have tested, he has the KNVL airport in the ATC
already also. It is rather nice to have plane traffic and ATC also at our home
base. He has some new buildings (they
look old) and he is also in the process of revamping local airports so they
appear as they would have in the 30's and 40's.
Air Mail Division pilots flew
40.01 hours and Visitors flew 12.16 hours in September.
Alaska Division News
Welcome to new pilots bgak023 Michael Hubschman and bgak024 Jeff Ouimet.
Congratulations to Tony Brown bgak014 on his promotion to Captain!
Congratulation to David Bowen bgak017 on his promotion to Senior Captain!
In September Alaska Division pilots flew 97.80 hours and visitors flew 11.24 hours
The
Australian Division welcomed a new pilot in September - Ian Thatcher who comes to
us with a wealth of aviation experience behind him from 22 years service with
the RAAF. Ian is also an avid FS2002 scenery creator
and has his own scenery site where he has been busy mapping the airports of a
few Australian states. Ian has created some bush airstrips
for Tasmania along with other regional airports and his efforts have opened up
the potential for some great bush pilot experiences.
All
you (bush) pilots should take a look at Ian's site at http://www.devtas.net/tassie_airports.htm and
after downloading his scenery files take a few trips around Tasmania
through some very rugged country and some absolutely great scenery.
As
a results of Ian's efforts it is planned to introduce bush pilot flights into
the Australian Division in the near future.
We
have 4 pilots who entered the Catalina Jaunt with 3 finishing to date and every
last one of them enjoyed the experience and working with "real"
weather made the Jaunt a real challenge at times. Our
congratulations to all who were involved in this event with a special mention
to Bill Von Sennet and Rob Finn both of who have invested many many hours in
making this event the success it has been.
Brian
September
has been an exciting month for Bluegrass and we are well on our way to
establsihing a great name in the Flightsim community for the quality of our
aircraft, scenery and adventures. This means that you can all
stand up and take a bow because without people like you spreading the word we
would be lost for some of our greatest publicity.
Things
are starting to move in the Air Mail Division and work is currently underway to
expand the routes to include the air mail runs previously flown within
Australia. This will involve the creation of additional
scenery for many of the airports omitted from FS but it is hoped that there may
be a few flights up before the end of this month.
The
Catalina Jaunt has been a resounding success and although the entries were
small in number they were big in the quality of pilot who joined us for this
great adventure. The event, even though over, is still
attracting entries which should give some indication of just how widely this
sort of flight package is accepted and looked for. The whole
of the Jaunt team deserve our sincere thanks for a wonderful job well done.
Hang
onto your seats guys ...... the Jaunt may be over but the adventures haven't
finished. Work is already well advanced on our next surprise
offering which should happen in early February and planning is already underway
for an event to be held in about May next year.
There
appears to be a small but increasing interest in members wanting to fly online
and one member has even asked for regular online fly-ins to be
held. Online flying can be great fun especially when
you can see and talk to your mates while you are in the air.
Personally, I do a lot of online flying and really enjoy the experience of
talking to other pilots and air traffic controllers. It
is a whole new world when you have someone out there telling you when to turn,
when to speed up or slow down and everything else that happens in a controlled
environment.
I
would like to hear from all pilots interested in participating in some form of
online flying with the object of organising a regular fly-in rotating around
each of our Divisions in turn. If you are interested in this,
please send me an email at gizmo@bigpond.net.au
and letting me know what your preferences are, type of aircraft you would like
to use etc.
That's
it for another month folks. Have a great month flying
Bluegrass and remember what Capt. Paul D Lever said: "You
know you've landed with your gear up when it takes full throttle to taxi".
Brian
Not much
happening here. Most of the Northern
Division hours were generated by a pilot flying in “The Catalina Jaunt”
Welcome to new pilots bgas016 R. “Hoot” Hooten, bgas017 Steve Huxter, bgas018 Steve Park, bgas019 Simon Brooks, bgas020 Greg Hatfield and bgas021 Mattias Udd.
The Southern Division is the host for the Catalina Jaunt and so far six of our pilots are participating
In September, the Southern Division pilots flew 312.91 hours and visitors (not counting the Catalina Jaunt) flew 18.7 hours.
Congratulations to “Hoot” Hooten and Steve Park who have been promoted to First Officer!
The last I checked there were 32 pilots registered and so far they have flown 680.59 hours!
Eight pilots have completed the journey, and another five pilots are at least as far as Trinidad.
Its not too late to start! I would encourage everyone to give it a try. I personally found the section from Miami to Trinidad the most interesting. I plan on finishing and am currently at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
All Pilots are reminded that the Mail flights in this division also belong to the Air mail division so you can get credit in both.
FS98 Hanger
New Stinson SR-5E has been repainted for the Air Mail flights and should be available soon for download.
Currently repainting a Curtis Condor N- BGAC in the New BGA livery White top, Light Blue Below with a Darker Blue Stripe Between, White on rest of plane and the New Logos.
Possible other aircraft for this treatment:
Curtis Jenny and Carrier Pigeon
DH-4B
All 3 for mail Division.
1947 Antonov An-2 (Just anoher nice Bi-plane).
Any other suggestion of aircraft from the Early period that can be easily repainted email me please.
From the C.E.O.
This has been a banner month for us. Our web-site is averaging 126 visitors a day. Our visitors come from all over the world. Countries that represent more than 1 visitor a day are: Australia 5%, United Kingdom 2%, Netherlands 3%, Canada 3%, Brazil, France, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Japan and Portugal all with 1%. All together visitors from 54 countries surfed on our web-site in September.
We have 9 new pilots, and 1 more so far in October. A recent change has been the globalization of our pilot roster. While the United States is home to most of our pilots, we have added several from Australia in the last year. Over the past month or so we have new pilots from other countries such as France, Finland, Portugal and Brazil. (I’m sure I left someone out, sorry) The point is we are becoming known throughout the flightsim community. There has been talk of on-line flying. With pilots spread across the world, one of the difficulties is deciding on a time to fly. I used to think it was difficult co-ordinating times with pilots in Alaska and the East Coast of the U.S., but when you add the time zones in Europe and Australia it is just about impossible for everyone to be flying at the same time. This is a project that is looking for a volunteer. If we are going to get into Bluegrass fly-ins we need a on-line coordinator. Any volunteers? Email Brian Wilson.
We are indebted to a large number of people for our success. Brian Wilson was a driving force behind the Catalina Jaunt, and he and Rob Finn are the key people in the “Special Events” group we seem to have formed. Coleman Green continues to be a major contributor in scenery design. He is responsible for the KLEX Lexington Ky field, and his recreation of the PanAm Dinner Key terminal and LaGaurdia Marine terminal are just two examples of his skill at creating scenery objects. Ray Yarnell also is a contributor in the scenery area. There are many talented individuals from outside of Bluegrass Airlines who have been very kind to share their talents. Check out the hangar page and look at the names of all the aircraft designers who have let us repaint their aircraft in our colors. It would be a good idea to drop an email to the designer of your favorite aircraft expressing your appreciation.
Check out the Master Roster for a list of all of our pilots and the hours they have flown. The total for Bluegrass Airlines pilots in September was 912.88 hours.
I would like for more communications to be established between the pilots. After all, we are essentially a community sharing a common activity. Toward this end we have a pilots forum, but it seems to have little activity. Please check it out and join in.
You can click on the link below and make it a favorite (or bookmark).
http://disc.server.com/Indices/174981.html
To avoid the spread of viruses here is a tip I picked up from a New Zealand web-site.
Put a contact in your email list with the name !0000 and no email address.
It will always be sorted to the top of the list and any virus that tries to email everyone on your list will be stopped with a “no address error”
To avoid getting a virus in the first place, we should all have a virus checker with up to date definitions. Norton works for me, but there is also a free one at www.grisoft.com
Another free program at www.mailwasher.net helps you control the junk mail situation.
That’s all for this month, gotta get my Catalina from Rio de Janeiro down to Buenos Aires.
Take care,
Capt’n Bill
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