Aviation has been a common thread throughout my life – from the giant red encyclopedia that was ever present in our house, to the balsa Tiger Moth my Dad made at the kitchen table when we were small (the smell of dope still brings that memory back), and my brother building countless plastic model kits from the local toy shop.
I still have the encyclopaedia. It’s in a sorry state, but I have never quite been able to part with it. I just pulled it from the shelf – it was published in 1977.
My own involvement in aviation took a lot longer to materialise, coinciding with the arrival of 16 bit computers, and a game called “Sublogic Flight Simulator” in the late 1980s. It was basic. Filled wireframe graphics, and a cursory representation of the world and your aircraft within it.
Over the years that followed, I played around with the various aviation video games that followed – “simulating” everything from gliders, to stunt-planes, jumbo jets, and all manner of military aircraft.
And then children came along.
When children entered our lives, spending any money on ourselves, or anything we were interested in became something of an afterthought. For the better part of a decade we came last on every list – and the computer I had access to at home became affectionately known as “Trigger’s Broom” (a long story).
And then – about five years ago – my Dad upgraded his computer, and asked if I might like his old one. It’s worth noting that he was upgrading because after retiring a few years previously, he too had become interested in flight simulator video games – and had joined a group that met up online to “fly” together. When we visited for holidays, we would crack jokes about the radio telephony language we heard from my Dad’s room while taking part in events with his friends.
So yes – I inherited my Dad’s old computer – which was quite capable of running a flight simulator. And it became the start of an enormously steep slippery slope. While trying to learn the ropes and play catch up with a decade’s worth of flight simulation video game development, I ended up acquiring a pretty complicated aeroplane – a faithful recreation of the Boeing 737 – where most of the simulated systems within the cockpit worked just like the real thing.
Given the nature of my work – I’m a software developer in the real world – I took to the complexity of 150 ton airliners like a duck to water – learning how to operate them, navigate around the sky with them, and most importantly programme them. Within weeks I was being asked if I could record an instructional video to help the various members of my Dad’s group.
I had only ever recorded my computer screen once before – for a demonstration at work – so that was something of a learning curve too. I uploaded the resulting video to YouTube (because it was free), and didn’t think much more about it. Within days the video started getting likes and comments – so I recorded another one – and another. It became somewhat addictive – sharing knowledge about whatever I was learning on a given week with the internet community.
After several months of uploading videos, YouTube informed me one day that I had enough followers to “monetise”. This apparently meant that I made a cut of the advertising revenue from the adverts that YouTube injects in the middle of videos.
I was quite excited about this new development. My other half rolled her eyes, and laughed when the first month’s very small payment arrived. She wasn’t laughing a few months later when it became obvious we would have to declare everything properly to the tax man. Thankfully she was a chartered accountant in a previous life, so started doing my books for me.
And so the last few years have progressed – more subscribers – more money – more tax declared. The little YouTube channel that could is slowly grinding towards 50,000 subscribers. Its associated blog has over two thousand email subscribers. It’s all a bit mad really.
And so we come to the title of the post – being careful what you wish for.
While out for dinner with some co-workers a few months back, somebody asked how the whole YouTube thing was going. I was brutally honest – explaining that while any of them had watched any TV shows or movies for the last few months – I had not. On most evenings and weekends – the moment I finish work, and get through dinner and washing up – I sit down to start creating more content for the channel – often until the early hours.
It has become a second job. A difficult second job, that’s sometimes draining, and sometimes intimidating.
As time has gone on, I’ve learned more about aviation, and more has become expected of me. I’m now not only trying to operate and fly all manner of aircraft – to share with the community – but also interacting with air traffic controllers, planning routes, getting clearances, and so on. I’m also writing guides to various aircraft – detailing how to get them up and running.
None of this was planned.
The simulators have become accurate enough that real-world pilots have emailed me privately – thanking me for refreshers on the various avionics systems. They also share the most wonderful stories with me about the various aircraft they have flown. They are invariably surprised to learn that I am not, and have never been either a private or professional pilot.
Before anybody asks, I have no plans to fly a real-world aircraft, other than perhaps to validate that I can. I already proved it years ago – going for a flight with a neighbour who was trying to get his hours up. I helped fund a flight, and he couldn’t quite believe how good I was, given no lessons. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the real thing was exactly the same as the simulator.
The funny thing? Although sometimes stressful, and sometimes daunting, I still love flight – everything about it – from getting into new aircraft for the first time, to finding my around their cockpit, getting their systems and engines up and running, to taking them for first flights and beyond.
There’s something about flying in the worst conditions – when you can’t see where you’re going – navigating via instruments – trusting in everything you know to get you safely to a destination. There’s also something about recovering from failures – when things start to go south, and you’re forced to think laterally as quickly as possible.
Perhaps the most important lesson learned while sharing content with such a wide and diverse audience is that failure is a part of the process. I never edit, and I never re-do. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong. Every failure is a learning opportunity – something to improve on next time. Sometimes you need an incredibly thick skin.
Anyway.
There you go.
My favourite (read: only) hobby – pretending to fly all manner of aircraft all over the world, and sharing it with the world via a YouTube channel, while making enough pocket money for it to become a problem.