About

I originally had a low-end iMac and I was (and still am) an avid Roblox player. This combined with my aviation passion led to my frequenting of Roblox flight simulators such as Flightline, Aeronautica, or Pilot Training Flight Simulator, all of which have a well organized realistic roleplay community for "professional" flying with others within Roblox's game engine. I began my interaction with Flightline's virtual air traffic simulation community towards the end of the summer of 2020 where it kicked off my potential for real aviation knowledge: learning how to read and use charts, communicate correctly and effectively, and operate an aircraft (within the quite limited simulator) safely.

Even before this, I had Infinite Flight on my iPad, the highest quality and most active mobile flight simulator with a large community for its time. This was probably 2017–2018-ish. That was my frequent flight simulator where I got most of my understanding of flight planning and radio communication. The previous paragraph discussed what followed my time after Infinite Flight, but I choose to mention Infinite Flight afterward because it is less related to communities I've actually chatted with and on a separate device. It seems less significant than the communities I was in, such as Flightline's.

Then I took a long break from aviation, discovering a touge racing game with Japanese sport cars, introducing a whole new chapter of my life and my hobbies. This ended up lasting for around 2–3 years until September 2023 when I recovered the flight simulator X-Plane 11 that I had on Steam. Reminiscing my old flight simulator passion, I began with quick flights across New England with the default Laminar Research Boeing 737-800, enjoying being back in the sky and working back up my old skills. Soon I decided to take it a step further. I had always wanted to experience the Airbus A320-200, so I settled with the Flight Factor A320 Ultimate. Just before rediscovering X-Plane 11, I had made a virtual airline in Roblox's Aeronautica flight simcade named "Aeronautica US Airways." This was intended for ingame pilots wishing to be involved with an airline non comittaly, allowing free time for others, especially including myself who needs it. Just a month after this was when I made the switch to X-Plane 11, but I still casually run the airline.

Even since the beginning when I only had Roblox and Infinite Flight, I always dreamed of one day getting to be a part of VATSIM, the number one international online aviation network. That got put on the backburner once I found a love for automobiles, but it never became irrelevant. As stated previously, once I picked up X-Plane 11, I began taking flights around New England, and after getting the A320, around the United States. Having sufficiently learned the A320, I decided I had the potential to fly in the VATSIM network. So starting around November 2023, for the next few months I started to learn flying the Flight Factor Airbus A320-200 Ultimate, understanding charts, planning, and procedures with Simbrief, and connecting to VATSIM in observer mode to become familiar with traffic and communication.

Mid-December is when I got Volanta, and began to make it the place where I store my flight logs and a home base for all my flight-related needs. I began with uploading all the A320 liveries and registrations I have to my fleet and flying them into my home base, General Edward Logan International (KBOS), from the Airbus manufacturing facility in Mobile, Alabama. In late January 2024, I finally made my first flight on VATSIM, US Airways flight 617 from Boston (Logan/KBOS) to Newark (Liberty/KEWR).

I use X-Plane 11, version 11.55, by Laminar Research. I do not use X-Plane 12 because I am content with X-Plane 11, and I honestly do not think my Mac can handle the sheer power of the graphics and 3D rendering in the newer, more up-to-date version. X-Plane 11 is still easily moddable, and the graphics are acceptible, and much better than FSX, which was the current Microsoft product at the time I got X-Plane. Since Microsoft's upgrade to MFS2020, I have no longer owned what was once arguably the best flight simulator, and Laminar Research's upgrade to X-Plane 12 means that support for X-Plane 11 will likely be dropped. However X-Plane 11's extensive modding community allows for upgrades, such as high quality freeware, that make keeping X-Plane 11 still worth it. However, I would encourage going for the newer version if buying X-Plane currently.

As mentioned previously, I use the A320 Ultimate addon for X-Plane 11 by Flight Factor. It is an Airbus A320-200 with sharklets, CFM engines, and a small business/first class with a large economy class as default, with the modding community creating additional addons changing engine types, winglets, materials, impressive liveries, and more. The only downside and complaints I have heard concerning the Flight Factor A320 Ultimate is that it demands a lot of framerates compared to other A320 addons on the market such as the Toliss Airbus series. From my experience flying so far, this is a bit of a concern, especially since the VATSIM client for X-Plane gives a network disconnect warning when below 20 fps. This is especially troublesome when flying approaches or landing, as it demands much focus on controlling the aircraft, and moving your camera to the external view and pointing it towards the sky to reduce the amount of objects and effects your computer needs to render so you do not get disconnected is not only incredibly common over large cities, but also very dangerous seconds from touchdown, which I admit to having to do more than once. However, when appropriately managing your graphics settings, the insanely accurate physics model and in-depth features make it worth flying cross-country with in my opinion.

School demands so much time from me, so I barely have the time to fly. When I do, its usually a long break or a weekend with little homework. I could be as active as flying daily or once a month. I want to get my hours up, but I have to balance my time and maintain a healthy lifestyle while also keeping some free time for friends or other recreation. This may the excuse you are looking for when you wonder why flight logs have some flights hours apart and others weeks or months.