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Never Heard This Before...

Moses03

Moses03

Jr. Admin
Staff member
...about FS9. Interesting.

"Santos Dumont was a fascinating figure. When we (Microsoft) shipped the "Century of Flight" edition of Flight Simulator, we weren't allowed to sell it in Brazil until the local distributor added some stickers to the box celebrating Dumont and shrink wrapped a CD with a version of his 14-bis that could be flown in the sim."

Found the post here:
http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?3579-Flight-before-wrights/page2
 
That 14-bis was available as a download from the MS FS9 website years ago. Don't know if it still is or not.

Did a little digging around. Couldn't find the offical MS FS9 website, which wasn't a major surprise.

But a little google fu turned up a file name over at FlightSim that's supposed to be the original Brazil only "default" aircraft :

14bis.zip

And a quick search there came up with this

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=34607421
 
Before he built airplanes Santos Dumont built airships. Though he was Brazilian by nationality, he was a rich ex-pat living in France, where he did his aviating as one of his major means of dissipating his daddy's fortune. He was known for gallivanting around Paris in a small dirigible that he'd park outside the nightclubs he frequented. This was not widely appreciated in those days of horse-drawn carriages! He was reputed to be more than a little bit nuts. A while back I bought a copy of a Santos Dumont biography titled "Wings of Madness." I look forward to reading it, but like so many books I look forward to reading, it sits in a stack of books I haven't found time to read yet.

I never heard the story of FS9 in Brazil, but I have that 14-bis, and I noticed that the release date is in the summer of 2003, so it must have been one of the very first FS9 add-ons. That would fit right in with the story.
 
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