I think this page is not much important and it is not necessary, but finally I decided to introduce an author of this website.

           I was born on 23rd of January 1966 in Prerov, Czech Republic. In 1985 I completed studies at the high school in Opava and in 1990 I graduated at the University in Brno, electronic engineering. I have lots of interests and activities like cycling, jogging, listening to music, I like movies, particularly science fiction, I interested in entomology, photography, nature and I spend much time with gardening. Of course, my job takes the most of my time. I am an army officer in the rank of full colonel.

           All this has nothing to do with my next great hobby, which is a computer flying, graphics and IT generally.

           When I attended elementary school, I wanted to be a chemical analyst and I dreamed about to be famous like Louis Pasteur. Unfortunately there was not a suitable school then, so I tried general secondary education. By chance I enrolled an electronics club, made my first transistor radio, a music amplifier, a digital tachometer for a car... and it gave me a new direction of my next future. Although, I am still good at chemistry.

           First time I met with the computer at the University during the first semester in 1985. It was a huge mainframe computer EC-1040, which took few rooms. I wrote some simple programs in FORTRAN as my credit works. I have to laugh when I remembered punched cards. The programs were full of my mistakes... and a computer operator was not much glad. Anyway I passed. Then I started to learn programming in BASIC on the 8 bit originally Czechoslovak computer PMD 85 (by the way - there is an emulator of the computer). It was the computer with only black and white graphics, but I felt it good enough for learning simple programming. Unfortunately the computer easily overheated and then it was unstable. In addition, saving programs on cassette tape was unreliable. So, in 1986 I bought my first own computer - the legendary ZX Spectrum and an external data tape recorder, both very reliable. In some time I was quite good in programming.

           I wrote some programs for my fun, like for example a simple game called Bombarder, in BASIC and I used a machine code for some time critical subroutines. But I needed programming skills for my studying purpose as well. I remember that I was able to do my coursework during one long hot night... The others did the same hardly during few weeks. Although, programming of a suitcase computer TESM 80-03A, which could control an electric motor or a speaker,  was not much entertaining for me (in 1987).

A mainframe computer EC-1040 (left), a personal computer PMD 85 (right)

My first own computer ZX Spectrum, it still looks like new (left), a suitcase computer TESM 80-03A (right)

           My master thesis was a computer simulations of data signals with using Barker sequences in a communication channel. At the beginning I had to use 16 bit personal computer METRA M3T 320 with a built-in cassette tape recorder and an external 8-inch floppy disk drive. The computer was very slow for this task in BASIC, the floppy disk drive broke down,  the tape recorder was unreliable. Fortunately, I got permission to do the simulations on my own ZX Spectrum, and with using a machine code I achieved quite good result. All my next computers were PC's, from IBM PC XT to the current powerful PC.

 METRA M3T 320

           My first flight simulation programs were Psion's Flight Simulation, Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot and Tomahawk on my ZX Spectrum in 1986. Although, my really first flight simulation program was DID's F-29 Retaliator only in 1991 (two years after its release) on IBM PC XT. I was amazed! I tried also Microsoft's Flight Simulator 4.0, but it was too complicated and not much entertaining for me at that time... I fell in love with computer flying. My favourite programs were next DID's simulators TFX, EF2000 (Super EF2000), F-22 ADF and F-22 TAW. I guess I spent thousands of flying hours with them.

Psion's Flight Simulation - landing on runway (left), Digital Integration's Tomahawk - something like hills (right) on my ZX Spectrum

F-29 Retaliator (left) and Tactical Fighter Experiment (right)

EF2000 (left) and F-22 ADF (right)

 Super EF2000

My original boxes still smell and look like new - it brings back many memories

The introduction screens of F-22ADF and TAW

           Since 1999 I started testing all the flight simulation programs that I met. The worth remembering are Red Baron, Falcon 3.0/4.0, Su-27, Lock On, IL-2 Sturmovik/Forgotten Battles, Flanker 2.0/2.5. I think I have few hundreds of professional or amateur simulation programs. I even personally made some plane conversions and new graphics for X-Plane 6.

 My conversion of TU-154 (originally by Julik Tarkhanov)  to X-Plane 6 with new instrument panels and a new night livery

           Then I came back to the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. It was actually MS Flight Simulator 98 and just released Flight Simulator 2000. I was amazed again! I fell in love with computer flying again, for this time in civil flying without air combats. Later in 2003 I started my research of subLOGIC's - Microsoft's flight simulation products back to its beginnings. In 2005 I launched this website and later I made such demanding task, which was Microsoft Flight Simulator History Movie. I guess I can run almost all old Flight Simulators on current computers with using emulators, even on my iPAD (MS DOS resistant hardware).

The Microsoft Flight Simulator history movie

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 with the iDOS2 emulator on my iPAD (left) and my real i286 with MS Flight Simulator 2.12 (right)

The oldest, the rarest parts of the history - subLOGIC's and Microsoft's first Flight Simulators in my collection

           Well, enjoy this website! Your Star Trek commander Josef Havlik :)

Your webmaster among the Star Trek Enterprise crew (a photomontage, 2013)

© 2005 - 2021 Josef  Havlík