I have deliberately managed to build quite a lot of AvGeekHangar without putting myself front and centre, that’s not an accident.
I’m quite a private person and much happier working away behind the scenes. But apparently you can’t create something called AvGeekHangar, fill it with other people’s stories and then completely avoid introducing yourself.
I’ve been flight simming for around 30 years, although my setup for most of those years looked absolutely nothing like it does today.
For a very long time I was perfectly happy with a keyboard, mouse and my Microsoft SideWinder Precision 2.
And I loved that joystick.
I didn’t want panels. I didn’t want switches. I certainly didn’t need a cockpit.
If I’m completely honest, I think there was probably a time when I’d have felt slightly ridiculous sitting at my PC physically pushing buttons and flicking switches just to operate something I could click with a mouse.
Then Microsoft Flight Simulator arrived, and things started going wrong.
When Thrustmaster launched the TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition, I bought one.
It was finally time to retire the SideWinder – a genuinely sad day after many years of faithful service – but we had to move with the times.
I loved the TCA, and obviously, if you’ve got the Airbus sidestick, having the matching throttle quadrant makes sense, so I bought that.
Then came the quadrant add-on – You can probably see where this is going.
One piece of hardware became another, and suddenly the person who had absolutely no interest in building a cockpit was looking at flight-sim panels, displays and controls and thinking: Well, that would be quite good…
There’s another slight problem with deciding to build an Airbus setup.
At some point, you actually have to learn how to fly the thing properly.
I’m not particularly technical. I’ve never pretended to be. A huge amount of what I’ve learned about flight simulation hardware and building my setup has come from doing what thousands of other simmers do – searching Google, watching YouTube videos, getting things wrong and eventually working out why.
That’s how I came across EasyJetSimPilot.
I started watching Gavin’s videos and decided that if I was going to do this, I’d build my setup around the Airbus and learn properly – starting with getting the aircraft from cold and dark rather than spawning on the runway and hoping for the best.
Years later, it’s slightly surreal that Gavin is now part of AvGeekHangar.
Today my flight-sim setup has effectively taken over its own dedicated space.
The keyboard, mouse and one joystick have been replaced by a cockpit containing hardware from a number of manufacturers, including WingFlex and WINCTRL, with considerably more buttons, switches and displays than the version of me from years ago would ever have admitted were necessary, and I love it.
These days I fly almost exclusively with the Fenix Airbus range. For me, they’re currently the best study-level Airbus aircraft available, and they work brilliantly with the way I’ve built my hardware setup.
But I’m still not particularly interested in becoming a technical hardware reviewer.
Instead, over the coming weeks I’m going to show you around my own setup here on AvGeekHangar – what I’ve bought, why I bought it, what I actually use, what I like and perhaps what I’d do differently.
It’ll be from the perspective of a normal simmer rather than an engineer.
I can’t tell you the resistance of a switch or explain what’s happening on a circuit board.
I can tell you whether I enjoy using it, and perhaps that’s useful too.
There’s plenty elsewhere on the site about why we created AvGeekHangar and what we’re trying to build, so I’m not going to repeat all of that here.
The shorter version is that after around three decades in this hobby, I wanted to create something that brings more of it together and gives the people, projects and communities behind flight simulation somewhere to be discovered.
I’m incredibly fortunate that a number of people I originally discovered through this hobby are now helping me build it.
I’ll continue to spend most of my time behind the scenes.
But every now and again, I’ll come out of hiding and tell you what’s happening in my own little corner of the Hangar.
Starting with that cockpit.
And to think I used to believe a joystick was all I needed!
Michael
Founder, AvGeekHangar
