Dear visitor, welcome to my FLY showcase!

This showcase features stories, presentations, photos and videos spanning more than fifty years of my experience in the world of flying.

I was originally trained in 1960 to be a civilian pilot at the Dutch Government Flying School, but fate played me a different card. Instead of leading the more or less regulated life as an airline pilot I continued in the military, flying light aircraft and helicopters until my flying days came to an abrupt end in 1967.

Having briefly dabbled in the commercial world I re-entered the world of flying as operations inspector at Schiphol Airport. I spent more than 13 years in that capacity, in the meantime reading business economics at the Erasumus University at Rotterdam following up with concurrent training and consultancy activities. In 1984 I decided to leave Schiphol to concentrate on the emerging field of database marketing. The ensuing "One to One Marketing" firm exists to this day.

I have been giving the chance to look at life from many different angles. Although not having provided me with lavish material wealth, my journey through life has opened many windows through which to view the world and its inhabitants, wondering about the incredible fact of our existence. I am truly grateful for my ticket to ride. And the ride continues...

Flying has always fascinated me. Not in the way of an all-pervasive passion, but rather as a deeply felt sense of wonder that comes over you when breaking loose of gravity's shackles and being left to rely only on oneself for a few hours. Flying alone "between layers", enclosed by cloud layers with good visibilty except for ground or sky has brought me closer to experiencing infinity than anything else. Many pilots are romantics at heart and know the feeling. I prize myself on having had the chance to these and other 'encounters of the fourth kind'. I can still relate to it when sitting at my PC and traveling virtually around the world in a Flight Simulator.

Flight simulators have intrigued me as much as flying itself. The fact that man can build a representation of reality and subsequently physically enter it boggles the mind - and yet we accept it as normal as can be. Simulators have fascinated me from the moment I started flying, and during my studying years at Rotterdam I could transpose it to mathematical and statistical model building. After obtaining my degree I was able to apply the concept to the commercial business world. Close to a hundred businesses have benefited from the ways my co=workers and I have shown them how to look after their customers using appropriate models.

And looking at the world now I see people using remote communications devices while moving about in their virtual cocoons. Of course the same holds true for me as well. I build systems and web sites to enable non-physical communication within and without communities. This showcase is a case in point...

As for myself I still view the existence we find ourselves in with something close to astonishment, aptly illustrated bij my avatar shown below: Carl Frederickson starring in the 2009 Pixar animated movie Up! (highly recommended).

Have fun!

Hans Muller Sr (aka JC4Real)