New Standard D-25

[Kodiak]

I know I'm behind the curve by about 10 years, lol, but for those of you who like planes like the Curtis Jenny and don't know about the Golden Age Simulations New Standard D-25 you might give it a try. Its a 5 place open cockpit barnstorming style biplane. Its one of the GAS freeware products for FS9 (payware for FSX) and its every bit as nice as any of the GAS payware planes. I just stumbled onto it the other day and have been having a blast with it. Its by far the nicest of their freeware planes and it comes with two excellent liveries of planes that are still flying today.

Just an FYI!

Bill

[Naismith]

It is good to be reminded of the oldies but goodies. Their authors spent hours developing them and deserve to have them resurface now and again.

[Mick]

You may be behind the curve on FS and GW, but I'm on the flip side of that. I didn't do anything in the hobby for two years or more except to follow this forum, and download stuff to look at later. Now it's later and I've spent the past year trying to catch up, getting GW, my classic-age sim "FS1954 - A Half Century of Flight," and my Jet Age installation set up on my current confuter. I'm finding many planes and sceneries that I downloaded but never installed or even looked at during my hiatus, so I have a lot of catching up to do, too.

Now that you have the New Standard, do you have Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome to fly it at? Joe Binka's ORA scenery is a masterpiece, and it's a great place to fly the old planes.

Besides the airfield, check out the ORA AI+ Package, a multi-author, multi-national project that populated Old Rhinebeck with AI versions of dozens of the old planes in authentic ORA liveries (thta can also be used as repaints for the flyable versions of those planes.) There's even a tank you can drive around the airport, blasting the prop buildings just like they have at the real ORA airshows.

You can get the airfield here, at AvSim:

http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=77450

We didn't put the AI Plus package on Avsim (it's a long story, and not a very interesting one) but it's at FlightSim:

Pt.1: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....ight&fid=98341

Pt.2: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....ight&fid=98342

Pt.3: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....ight&fid=98343

Since it was publeshed there have been many updates and enhancements, so once you have the basics it's worth a moment to search FlightSim's FS2004 All Files section for "Rhinebeck" and check out what comes up:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....rchid=34320653

All the basics and most of the additions are here in the SOH library too, but I've never had a much luck finding anything in the library here.

Enjoy!

[Kodiak]

Thanks, Mick. No I didn't have ORA, but I'll be getting it now.

I think half the fun of FS9 is modding it up, so I'll be looking forward to adding the ORA scenery. With trying to work on the runway lights plus a bunch of add-on scenery I've accumulated that I need to install I've got enough FS9 projects to keep me busy for a while!

Cheers!

Bill

[Mick]

I know that busy feeling! I'm in the middle of re-creating two worlds of FS on a no longer new confuter after a two year hiatus from the hobby (Golden Wings for the 1903 to 1945 period, "FS1954 - A Half Century of Flight" for the late 1940s and the 1950s, and adding a new one, "FS Jet Age" for the early sixties through whenever (maybe the early 1970s - I'm not all that interested in what happened in aviation much after the sixties.)

I'm making good progress due to the severe winter were having here in the Northeast. When it's too cold to go out and play, I get a lot done in FS. But I'm about to be distracted by Shessi's modification of the AlphaSims PBY into the early Golden Age versions. Lots of paint to spray there!

Like you, I love the tinkering. Even before my hiatus I spent much more time fiddling with the sims and with airplanes and scenery than I ever spent flying. I've been in the hobby for something like thirteen years now and I've still done very little flying. Lots of painting and lots of working on the sims. For me, and some of the others here, it's like model railroading. I've known model railroaders who spent pretty much all their hobby time working on their layouts, and building and painting rolling stock, and hardly ever sat back and ran their trains. That's me- always working on my layouts or fiddling with the planes, and almost never doing any flying.

My big hope is that by spring I'll have enough work done on my three layouts that I can finally spend some time flying the airplanes I've spent so many hours painting into, out of and over the scenery I've spent so much time setting up.

I know I'll never be finished working on my "layouts" (and neither will you!) but I hope to strike a better balance between working on them and playing with them.

A couple asides on Old Rhinebeck Airdrome. If you haven't been to the real ORA, your first reaction to Joe's scenery might be that it doesn't look real; it looks like the buildings are all stage props. Well, it IS all stage props, and the real ORA looks just like Joe's scenery! You can check it out here: http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/

The airfield looks like a stage because it is one, for the weekend air shows, but the planes are authentic. Many are originals, and the replicas are very authentic looking.

I have ORA in all three sims, but it doesn't really "belong" in two of them. It fits right into Golden Wings because of all the old planes, but there was no Old Rhinebeck Airdrome in those days. It doesn't really fit into "FS1954 either, for the same reason, but I put it there anyway. It really only fits authentically into my "FS Jet Age" because the field didn't open until 1962, and was a while after that before it looked like it does today. But Old Rhinebeck is timeless, and I like it in any virtual time period.

[Kodiak]

I have ORA in all three sims, but it doesn't really "belong" in two of them. It fits right into Golden Wings because of all the old planes, but there was no Old Rhinebeck Airdrome in those days. It doesn't really fit into "FS1954 either, for the same reason, but I put it there anyway. It really only fits authentically into my "FS Jet Age" because the field didn't open until 1962, and was a while after that before it looked like it does today. But Old Rhinebeck is timeless, and I like it in any virtual time period.

Thanks for the tip on Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, Mick! I just added the base pack today in my Golden Wings install.

Yeah, it doesn't belong there, but where better to put it Its just like the Antique Airfield (IA27) mod, which was actually established in 1970 but looks like the 1930's.

Now to poke around and see what else is out there to add to it. I've gotten Instant Scenery figured out a little bit, so first thing is to add some old cars and trucks from the 1930's (and maybe a vintage gas pump or fuel truck) and then will hit Flightsim.com and Avsim.

Thanks!

Bill