Where the hell has the last week gone? Seriously. You look away for a few seconds and several day have passed.
Of course I wasn’t “doing nothing” during those days, but then if I even began to explain, you might fall asleep where you’re standing. I’ll have to a go, and apologise in advance if you hurt yourself.
The Boeing 777-300ER arrived in the fight simulator last weekend. If you’ve never seen a 777, they’re something of a giant - the circumference of each of their engines is bigger than the circumference of a 737, or A320 (your typical short-haul holiday jet).
I learned how to operate the 777 some time ago, so set off on a late night live-stream - and setup artificially intelligent air traffic services to talk to me en-route (yes, that’s a thing - it’s both impressive, and intimidating at the same time). During the flight one of the team leads that built the simulated 777, and one of the team leads that built the AI system joined the stream. No pressure then. Suffice to say I landed the pretend aeroplane in one piece, and then collapsed in a corner (or rather, went and cut the lawn).
Fast forward a couple of days, and another new aircraft arrived in the flight simulator mid week - called the “Beechcraft Starship”. It was designed in the early 1980s in a collaboration between Beechcraft, and Burt Rutan - the guy who became famous for designing “Voyager” - the plane that flew around the world. Starship was going to be a huge step forwards - and was a huge step forwards - but nobody was brave enough to buy it, so only 50 were ever made - of which 6 are still airworthy world-wide.
So… the Starship arrived in the Simulator. I finished work that day, downloaded it, and started to figure out how to operate it. Half-way through the first test flight - while broadcasting live on YouTube - my other half called because she couldn’t plug her computer into a projector at a training evening for an upcoming summer camp in town. I therefore went straight under the bus, stopped the broadcast, and ran across town with a replacement laptop that would work. By the time I got there another laptop had been found.
At midnight that night I re-appeared online, having learned every corner of the avionics and navigation system of the new aircraft, and set off across the US (because it was still daylight there), showing the online audience how to avoid putting the plane into the ground. I must have done something right, because the lead developer of the aircraft emailed me the next morning.
This weekend an embargo was lifted on some AI technology I’ve known about for some time - and that I had been given early access to. Not only can you now simulate flying your own plane - you can also see other aircraft in the sky flying their own routes, and you can hear them on the radio, talk to air traffic services, and be sequenced in among them. It was slightly unnerving taxiing out at Gatwick, following a pretend pilot, and listening to the to and from of his conversation with ground control while making our way out to the runway.
Fast forward another few hours, and I found myself broadcasting again on YouTube, after discovering that the mighty Airbus A380 was now available for the simulator. If you’ve visited an international airport in recent years you’ve probably seen the gargantuan A380s lumbering past - they’re the ones with two decks of seating.
This is going to sound like deja vu - I learned how to operate and navigate the A380 some time ago.
So… I fired the A380 up last night, and set out to demonstrate it to the online audience once more - taking off from a virtual recreation of Toulouse at about 10:30pm and landing at Gatwick a little before midnight.
Today - while “taking a break from it all”, I somehow found myself not taking a break from it at all - and resurrected the tour facility within the virtual airline I setup a couple of years ago. Yes, I run a virtual airline too. I setup tours for people to fly around England, France, Italy, Germany, Norway, and Spain.
Oh - and I built a forum too. I forgot about that.
This evening I’m watching rubbish on the internet, writing this, and wondering about making a coffee.
I need to run in the morning before work.
I don’t really have any sort of big message to relate about any of the above - just that when people find out I’m making money at a side hustle on YouTube, I don’t think they have any inkling of how much hard work it is - or how much time it takes. It started out as “flying pretend aeroplanes”, but it’s rapidly turned into not only flying them correctly, but also planning properly, communicating properly, and demonstrating properly. It’s a lot. And I kind of love it - even when I’m mentally exhausted.
It’s also a slippery slope. Knowing you can make money through doing something means you always know you can make more by doing more of it - and it’s all too easy to lose yourself.
What did Jack Nicholson type on the typewriter in The Shining? “Too much work and not enough play makes Jack a dull boy”…
Mercifully, a group of neighbours came together this weekend to say farewell to a family that is immigrating to the US. It was a wonderful excuse to step away from the computer, away from the pretend aeroplanes, and remind myself that I have friends - and that I really need to spend more time with them.
Writing too. Writing this, this evening, has reminded me how much I love writing. I should do it more - even if it’s not about much. Norah Ephron had words to say about that, didn’t she.