but Clyde sustained, he kept his cool and we got there at the end. Ask if you do not know, the “old” pilots have a wealth of knowledge and experience. 
Less than a week after I got my system up and running I’ve been invited to join in the 1st on-line session. Scary at first and not knowing what to expect as I am not a proficient pilot yet, I was soon set at ease by the team (Ken, Richard and Clyde) and I thoroughly enjoyed the flight with the Sepecat Jaguar from Caltishall to Bodo for the 6 weeks Northern Shield Exercise. Getting to grips with the Jaguar was quite easy after Richard explain the cockpit modifications he introduced.
Following my experience thus far I would recommend anybody to come join in the fun
. If I can do it, anybody can do it. I can’t wait for next week and I assume there will be a whole bunch of new challenges.
Back to basics. I assume my experiences thus far is nothing out of the ordinary and can hopefully be of some help to some new starters.
First things 1st. Work your way through the web RAF Air UK site and forum. There are valuable information available. Points of specific interest to me were;
• Things you need to get going (http://www.rafairuk.co.uk/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=3)
• Documents, scenery and aircraft available for download (http://www.rafairuk.co.uk/index.php/downloads)
• Setting up FS Acars was straight forward and the instruction under the discussion “Things You Need” is simple and spelled out in layman’s terms. Getting FS Acars up and running was not without it’s problems. Things I’ve struggled with:
- My 1st problem was that I was not able to start-up FS Acars and get the main screen I was able to resolve that by installing SFUIPC.
- Not the end yet, the next problem cropped up shortly afterwards when I was not able to submit the PIREP automatically once the flight has completed. I ventured down various avenues, uninstalled and re-installed FS Acars but it was all to no avail. I eventually reverted away from whet is stipulated in the installation procedures and not change the properties of FSAacars.exe to run it as an administrator I do not know whether this was something to do with Windows 7 or my setup but that sorted the issue and what a pleasure to be able to submit the PIREP automatically after a flight.’
• FS Navigator(F9) presented some problems in that I was not able to join on during my 1st multi-player session. This prevented me from seeing the other pilots on the map display as the mission progressed. Through trial and error I eventually ended up opening a port on my router which seemingly resolved the issue (Still to be confirmed but it worked with another multiplayer session). The port I had to open was UDP 23432
• Not the end yet. Next up the MS Navigator 20 flight trial period ran out. MS Navigator is no longer supported and is now freeware. Some Googling came up with results. I found a website (http://www.keygenguru.com/serial/fsnavigator.html) that was able to provide me with a key (which I assume will be the same for all installations). The key details were as follows:
- Contest Winner
- 9BHMG9N
- 04/01/2003
I will be adding further details of my trials and tribulations as I progress through the “ranks”.