This is where it gets to be fun!

To fly this download you must choose at least one set of
flight files from ONE of the sub folders inside the Flight
Files folder.

(if there does happen to be a set there already, it's
because that's the one I was testing before packing the
plane for upload, and I probably forgot to take it out
again!)

This is how we got to this really rather interesting state
of affairs:

This is the first plane I ever made. During the making of
the model things went along pretty well, however towards the
end of the process, several slightly un-anticipated things
happened. Not that things were not going right at this
point, it was more that they went rather different from my
rather limited set of considered possibilities.

Among other things, I got extra advice in the Flight model
area. Now bear in mind I'm just a points and polygons
jockey, and I don't have a clue really when it comes to
Flight Model stuff.

So, I got an initial flight model from god knows what plane,
(it just had the right number of everything and that seemed
a good place to start from), probably the default Cessna,
but I really don't know for sure, since I have been asleep a
few times since then. I then got Tony to give it a look
over, since I was pretty clueless about it all. (And I still
am mostly!)

He came back with a model I could fly and I therefore gave
it no other thought whatever, I was just grateful that I
could now fly it fairly consistently. And it had stopped
doing most of the peculiar things I had managed to get it to
do! Just don't ask, as you really don't want to know about
those! ;O)

About November 2002, or just later, I was chatting with a
few other people who had unwittingly agreed to have the
Nipper inflicted upon them. Of those, one or two really
pushed their luck, and offered to have a look over the
flight files. ;O)

I am now glad they did that; in the ensuing e-mail tidal
wave that this generated, I was soon awash with all sorts of
info I had no real understanding of, but nonetheless I soon
realised that these people all had their own set of ideas
about how it should be! What made it trickier (for want of a
better word) was that they all had reasons, and they all
made sense, even while being slightly in conflict with each
other here and there!

The thing is that I still don't _know_ if any of these is
truly spot on the money, I suppose until a real nipper pilot
let's us know, we'll just have to guess or, like me, just
wonder. I'm pretty sure none of them is very far out though,
which was both my biggest joy & dilemma!

OK, so there's Tony Gondola's present files, and there's
pilot's notes to go with it.

I fly this when I want the challenge of doing it by the
book, and I'm not sight seeing, since for me (I'm not the
world's hottest pilot by quite a long mark), the work rate
is pretty high. The reward is to get it to do things, and
know that you probably did it right or it would not have let
you get to your goal! Tony has a wealth of design
experience, and is responsible for, among other things,
Digital_Flight web site and forum
http://www.digital-flight.com/ . You really should go take a
look at that, you wont meet a more diverse range of pilots
virtual or otherwise. They are like family, not always easy
on you for the sake of it, but what a bunch of people!

Then there's John 'tiger' Woodside's tweaked version which
sprang from Tony's original set. These are a bit more
placid, possibly easier to fly, and still a lot of fun.
Enough that I felt you had to have the option to try the
plane this way. John also makes some seriously decent Tiger
Moths, and you really should go try one! His site is at
http://fsaviation.net

OK, there's also one that Kevin Smith, a good mate of mine
has helped out with by tweaking in the general direction of
what I see as a fun plane which you can just leap in and
fly, without giving it too much thought. I use this a lot
for sight seeing with VisualFlight GM Photo scenery. Now
this FM is not supposed to be seriously accurate per se,
however you'd be crazy to just dismiss it out of hand for
that. Kevin (bless him) designed and built his own plane
(twice!?). People have flown that, and they are still very
much alive and breathing. It was a very small plane, and so
it has a lot in common with the Nipper. Kevin also has a
wealth of experience of flying a tiny home built type plane.
Since most nippers around are (by now) all home(re)built,
this seemed pretty relevant, to me at least! Now correct me
if you know otherwise, but I don't think there are too many
people around with direct real world experience like that
who can also get results when wrangling with a set of flight
files!

Anyway, since the one you just downloaded is now yours to
fly, then you fly it with which ever file set you like the
best! You have to pick one to get started with though. Just
copy the .air and .cfg from ONE of the folders, and you're
all set.

If you got a flight file set of your own for it, well upload
it to AVSim, let's all take a look! Drop me a line to tell
me you upped a new FM for it, I'd be interested to see new
ones.

BTW, you may not upload it (any of the content in the
original zip file) anywhere, period, you can't pay for it
either, and if you did, drop me a line - I'd really like to
know about that. nipperj@rotodyne.co.uk