Welcome Aboard!
Hi there—I’m Jerry, checking in from Central Texas. I’ve been immersed in the world of computer-based flight simulators for over 40 years, starting out on the good old Commodore 64 back in the mid-’80s. These days, I fly with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and look forward to making the leap to MSFS 2024 when the time is right.
I launched this blog in September 2010 to document my journey through the ever-evolving world of flight simulation. What you’ll find here is a mix of personal experiences, lessons learned, the occasional frustration, and plenty of tips and tricks. I write as an independent voice, sharing what I’ve discovered with anyone who’s interested. As always, your mileage may vary.
Thanks for stopping by—and I hope you’ll stick around.
—Jerry
Did you ever get the Eaton Fuller shifter? If so do you plan on writing a review. I’m considering preordering one.
Hi Bob,
Not yet. The Kickstarter orders are shipping and many have received their shifter. As soon as I receive it, I plan to install it, use it and will write about it. So stay tuned…
Jerry
Thanks for the review on the Eaton Fuller shifter. I just placed a preorder for the shifter with the Jakebrake upgrade for the Fanatec ClubSport shifter. Glad to see CSIO was thinking about Fanatec users as well as Thrustmaster and Logitech
Hi Jerry, I hope you are having a wonderful day. I have a couple of questions that I hope you can help me with. I have just begun to setup the Lone Star map on FS17 along with the Seasons Mod that I downloaded. This is my first time using Seasons Mod, so I’m still learning. Mostly from your videos. Thank you for those, I really appreciate the content. Currently I am on game day 1 setting up the map. Question 1 is how do I get straw to use for bedding for my cows and pigs? I can’t find where to change that in the gamesave xml file. The second question is, I’m not sure how long setup will take with my limited time I have to do it. So, if it takes me multiple game days to setup the farm how do I get back to day 1 early spring after setup? Do I just fast forward through the year or what?
Thank you again for all of your help
Hi David,
Thank you for the comment and the questions and thank you very much for watching my videos. I’ll try to help you best I can.
On Pine Cove it was relatively easy to get straw, grass, hay, silage etc. in the very early days as Stevie created the farm silos to basically hold all these items in addition to the main crops. But on other maps this may not always be the case. The easiest method for you to get straw, hay and silage for your animals in the early days is the “Buy Bales” mod. You’ll find the link to this on my mod spreadsheet. With this mod, you can purchase round or square bales of hay and straw and round bales of hay, straw and silage. Unfortunately, the buy bales mod doesn’t allow you to buy bales of grass, so you’ll need to wait a bit for your grass to grow. On Lone Star, I was able to mow enough grass around the fields on the second game day to get enough grass to boost my dairy cows to 100%.
To my knowledge, there is no such thing as going back in time. For Lone Star it took me about 8 hours to get things the way I wanted them before I recorded my first episode. You’ll find that with the Seasons mod, about the only thing you can plant on day one is grass. The soil temperature will be too cold to plant much of anything else, so do all your setup (make sure you change your time speed down to 1) and the time that passes is in the past. It shouldn’t take you multiple game days to do your setup if you have your speed set to 1. Unless I am misunderstanding the question, you shouldn’t need to fast forward the entire year just to start playing.
I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes.
Jerry
Thanks for the information. I didn’t know about the buy bales mod. I will reference your spreadsheet and get that. I don’t know if it has happened to you or not, but while setting up the map I did have time set to 1. I looked up and the next thing I know it’s on 15 and it getting dark. Maybe I just fat fingered the 8 key instead of the 9 while opening the map view. Thank you for the information. I look forward to the next video. Have a great day.
Thank you,
David
Good afternoon Jerry. To your knowledge, has course play been released for public use or is it still in development? The reason I ask is that I just saw it as a featured mod available for download on modland.net.
Hi David,
Courseplay remains in beta and most likely the version available on modland was not uploaded by anyone associated with the CP dev team. CP is of course available via their github page, but it is still very much in beta. If you are wanting to try out CP, the link to the github site is on my mod spreadsheet.
Jerry
Hi Jerry. I have just watched all of your Courseplay tutorials and wanted to say a big thank you. I have used it in FS15 and now in FS17 and your videos have highlighted everything I have been doing WRONG!! It was great to see just what can be done with such a great tool. I use a map manager and noted that Courseplay stores every course in one folder, so I have to create sub-folders with the map name, then further subfolders as you describe to keep the courseplay manager tidy. When will courseplay allow course renaming I wonder- that would be really helpful?
Can I also ask, do you incorporate every mod on your spreadsheet on each map or just those that you find necessary to support or enhance particular maps? I ask as I am using a fairly high spec gaming laptop which may struggle with every mod!
I have subscribed to your YouTube channel and will watch some of your ‘let’s play’ videos. Again, thanks for your engaging, clear and concise videos.
Hi Peter,
Thank you for the comment. You are very welcome, I truly enjoy helping others and pleased to know the videos have helped. Regarding the mods, I don’t use every mod on every map. I enjoy playing UK and US based maps and typically have different mods for each type of map. In addition, also have different mods based on map/field sizes. Thanks again for stopping by. If there is anything else I can help with, let me know.
Jerry