A project like this requires a lot of one's personal life. Sacrifices must be made to evolve these projects to the level required today by simmers.
This project has approximately 2000 hours invested by team members and many more by beta testers. This effort is a culmination of love of the hobby, enthusiasm for anything flight related, and friendships that last longer than a version of FS2002.
My wife, Joanna, is an enthusiastic supporter of my hobby, and acts as webmaster for the website. I could not offer this freeware if not for her wholesome support.
Scott Thomas is a great guy and friend. His enthusiasm and work output is super. He produced 8 panels for this project before the 1st release. Now, I gotta hump to catch up. lol Thanks also to Nick Pike who has been instrumental in getting gauges to work as we wanted.
Andre Folkers invested many hours learning the layering process in PSP for the textures. Joao Paz of the Dash 7 project helped with sharing his basic techniques. Thank you Joao. Andre continues to use his artistic talents to deliver awesome detail and textures.
Pops, Plays7, and Paul have been super alpha team members flying the wings off this commander (and the Dash 7 before) almost nightly since November. Thank you guys for all your efforts and nightly MP sessions.
Brian Cook who did the special effects for the Dash 7 has been ill for several months so the effects planned for the AC520 have been put on hold. We miss you Brian, get well soon, and I look forward to your return.
Jim Metzer, Keith Cloudcraft, Barry Collman, and Chris Haag went beyond the call of duty to provide copies of original factory drawings, technical specs, original pictures, and more for development support. They and other members of the Twin Commander Flight Group like Barry Hancock, Jim Crunkleton and Milt Concannon were there whenever we needed with what we needed. This project would have certainly been different without their critical help and support.
It seems we all need help to get through the many learning curves involved in these projects. I wish to thank Ron Freimuth, Jerry Beckwith, Ian Kerr, and Herve Hors who helped me through some difficult flight dynamics questions, Rabbijah Guder who wrote "The Hitchhikers Guide to Airfiles", William Roth who wrote AirEd, Tom Goodrick who wrote "Flight Dynamics for Microsoft Simulator" and the many folks on the AVHISTORY forum, the AVSIM Design forum, and FFDS Forum who helped prod intellect out of this brain. :-)
There are also many friends who frequent the forums who provide the feedback and pep rallying that fuels and energizes these projects to the end.
And, to all of you who download and read this, thank you for being understanding of complex projects and technologies involved to do these projects. There are many things that could be better or different, but in the heat of the project one can only manage so much. Eventually, you must just release it. I have tried to exercise test teams all along the way so the product would be error free for you. I hope if anything is missed that you can correct it or live with the shortcomings.
