Welcome to El Tico Network Flight Simulation!!!

My Journey into Flight Simulation began back in 1997 when I had just arrived from Costa Rica into the USA. I came across a video game title called Silent Thunder: A-10 Tank Killer II which was made by Sierra Entertainment (now Activision Publishing, Inc), great developer that came up with titles like Phantasmagoria, and SWAT 4. And it was somewhere in between making an evasive maneuver to avoid getting hit by a SAM at a hostile airport, and shooting down a MIG with a Sidewinder for flying outside my flight zone that I was hooked into Flight Simulation!!!

When I found Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 (v6.1),  I did treat it like a video game, but there is a limit on how many times you can fly through the Eiffel Tower (Paris France), or under the Golden Gate Bridge (California USA), and since there is nothing to shoot at, it got boring rather quickly.

Around that time Novalogic was coming strong with a series of products ranging from FPS (First Person Shooters) as Delta Force to Tank Simulators like Armored Fist, but they also had a line of Flight Simulators that featured the Comanche Helicopter (RAH-66) and a variety of aircraft, the F-16 Falcon, MIG-29 Fulcrum, and the F-22 Lightning/Raptor. The strongest selling point for me was that players could use a service called NovaWorld to play all their titles on the same multiplayer server. I spent a good amount of time on NovaWorld until FS9 came about.

When Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) came into the market I did give it a try. The feature that I liked the most was that the aircraft would fall apart when crashing against buildings, other aircraft, or the ground. By this time I had become tired of the whole dogfighting and combating and was looking to Flight Simulation in a more serious manner to learn what flying was all about, and so with every take off and landing I tried not to brake the aircraft into pieces.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X was released in 2006 and it was my simulator of choice for years. During this time I did learn a great deal of information about an aircraft aerodynamics and the forces that are always at work when an airplane is in the air (Thrust, Drag, Lift, Weight), the effects of weather conditions on engine performance,  the instruments purpose and how to read the information provided, the concept that when you fly at 10000ft doesn't really mean that you are 10000ft from the ground, the concept of how a headwind / tailwind will affects the aircraft airspeed and its relation to groundspeed. To many to mention, all I can say is that it has been a very rewarding journey!!!

Microsoft abandoned the Flight Simulation endeavor in 2009 with the closure of the ACE's Studios. In 2012 Microsoft made one last attempt called Microsoft Flight but it fell flat because its arcade feeling to it, and regarded by the Flight Simulation Comunity as no more than a water down version of the great simulator they had once created. But to the rejoice of the Flight Simulation Community Lockheed Martin (yes the same Lockheed Martin that developed the F-22 Raptor) acquired all the rights over the code for Microsoft ESP (a version of Microsoft Flight Simulator X but for commercial purposes) and continued the development of it, releasing in 2010 a new Flight Simulator called Prepar3D. I'm now exclusively using Prepar3D v3 for my Flight Simulation endeavors, that is until I can get all my "Core Add-On's Installed into Prepar3D v4, but also like to keep an active copy of my previous Simulators to run Add-ons that I chose to keep separated,  like in the case of TacPack from VRS, and others that due to compatibility restrictions will not run on the modern Simulators, like in the case of Leonardo SH MD-81 Add-on.

My final goal with this website is to increase the level of enjoyment that my fellow Simmers get out of their Simulators by providing (to the best of my knowledge) tips, tools, and also fixes to the default scenery. As a habit when I land at an airport I look for discrepancies between the scenery and the real life counterpart. It could be that the airport is in the wrong place or that the Radio or Navigation Frequencies are wrong, in those situations I use a tool called ADE (Airport Design Editor) and fix them. In time I will provide a way to make requests to fix an airport, depending where I'm in the world at that particular time I will make the trip and land there to fix it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this welcome page, in time this section will get updated and more tabs added as I grow content, remember that Flight Simulation is my hobby not website development. See you In the Virtual Skies some time!!!