About Me - My Biography

My name is Christopher Dittmar. I started this site because of a very unique tie in flight simulation and how it changed my life.

I graduated high school in 1994, going straight into the Army as a 14J10 - Air Defense Tactical Operations Center Operator. My job was to track enemy aircraft and give intelligence on their movements so that the Air Defense Artillery could shoot them down. Ironically enough, and morbid as this may sound, this was my first true fixation with fixed wing aircraft. While in high school, I had a dream of being a helicopter pilot in the military, but my ASVAB score was not high enough, thus the 14J position.

After the Army, I ended up not pursuing aviation despite my enthusiasm for aircraft. I ended up instead becoming an EMT and Executive protection Agent (basically a VIP bodyguard for high profile individuals). This opened doors for various security jobs which were memorable, my favorite being the supervisor of security at Lord of the Dance at the Colorado Springs World Arena in 1997. I had never heard of "river dancing" but after that show I was completely hooked. Michael Flatley was a friendly individual and everyone else on the show was absolutely wonderful. I will never forget that night.

Eventually I ended up in Denver, still performing as an EMT and Security Professional. I started consulting for various security agencies during that time, and on the side I started a hobby as a PC Gamer. I loved building computers, as you can tell from my image below, and I was always striving to build the ultimate gaming machine, even though technology was improving faster than I could afford to keep up.

In 2001, I beat the last of the games I had currently owned. I started looking through my desk for any games I may have missed and all that was left was a copy of Microsoft's Flight Simulator. Now this is where I get confused, as either Wikipedia is wrong or I am losing my mind. It was FS2002, which I got a copy of as a demo with a graphics card I purchased over that summer. Wikipedia says it was not released until October, 2001. **shrug** Ah well. Maybe I am losing my mind. Anyway, I remember already having a CH Yoke and Pedals, and being addicted to FS2002 in no time flat. My inspiration for flight had returned, and I immediately became an addicted armchair pilot.

I remember being in the middle of a long haul flight when I received a call from my mother on the morning of September 11. She told me to turn on the news as something crazy was happening. I am the type to admittedly not hold too much interest in world events, but when she told me that it had to do with airliners crashing, I jumped out of my seat and flipped on the news. I was shocked and found myself glued to the TV, watching live as the towers met their demise. I bid you all rest in peace, souls of that tragedy.

Despite these events, I was not deterred from my interest in flight. I kept flying in FS right into 2002, when I moved back to my hometown of Pueblo, CO. One day I was at KPUB drooling over GA aircraft when I aimlessly wondered into Flower Aviation. I am not sure what prompted me, but I ended up asking the receptionist about learning to fly. I was introduced to an instructor who, for 45 bucks, took me for an introductory ride in a Cessna 150F. It was a life changing experience, and I immediately grew addicted to the real world aspect of flying. I signed up to learn to fly with him.

Unfortunately, this instructor had a short temper, and after only 4 hours of flying, I quit. I blamed myself, thinking I was doing something seriously wrong. I figured maybe I was just a bad pilot, so I decided to stick to flight simulation and not pursue real flight. In 2005, I decided to go to Pueblo Community College to pursue a career in Graphic Design. By now, I had FS2004 and was a repaint artist for various third party add-ons. I wanted to go professional with graphic design and photography, being inspired not only by FS paint design, but airliners.net photography as well. I attended for a 2 semesters, and then word caught my ear that the president of the college, Mike Davis, was a GA pilot and was negotiating with the FAA and Steel City Aviation to start a flight program at the college. I was hopping excited and immediately went to an advisor to find out more information.

I was extremely excited to find out that I would become the first official student to sign up for this program (at least as far as the advisor told me. I heard rumors later that I was not officially the first, but I don't know). I was still worried about my prior, failed experience with my first flight instructor, but decided to try to give it a second chance.

This time seemed different. I found that my new instructor, Matt, was awesome and patient. I took to the air quickly, this time rotating between a Cessna 150F and a Cessna 172M, depending on which was available at the time. Only a few flights were in the 150F, as I liked the 172 better and so they tried their best to keep me in her. I ended up in a discussion with Matt and the FBO owners, Christy and Derik, and mentioned the issues I had with my first flight instructor. Apparently he has a reputation around there, because once I mentioned his name, they quickly informed me that many students had the same issue with him, and that it was not me personally.

I logged 40+ hours before I started noticing problems with the aviation program there. Students in the Pueblo area just wanted to fly, so they got their PPLs then dropped the program. With such low enrollment, classes at the higher commercial levels started getting cancelled. In order to maintain financial aid as a full time student, I found myself double majoring back in graphic design. However, after being at PCC for 5 semesters and only 2 of those being in aviation due to cancelled classes, I started researching other options. By now I was in a serious relationship with Cherish (who is now my wife) and she encouraged me to move to Greeley to attend Aims Community College, which already had an established flight program with high enrollment, a full motion B1900D simulator and an organized training program.

During the time I was at PCC, I also ended up doing an FS9 review of the Ariane series of aircraft. During my coordination with the developer, it became apparent that they were in need of a support forum, but was so busy with product development that the forum was on a back burner. I stepped up and volunteered my time and web space to make this happen for Ariane, and it has become a great success so far. As a consequence, I have received criticism that my affiliation with Ariane would make my reviews Biased toward their products. However, I use an objective grading system and checklist, and am fair to all developers. Everyone gets graded fairly and equally by category, not affiliation. Fortunately, those I coordinate with have begun to understand this and have found my reviews to be fair so far.

I am now a full time student at AIMS, and with 60 hours logged I am about to take my checkride for PPL. I married Cherish on Halloween last year (2008) and she is showing an interest in learning how to fly as well. We plan to combine graphic design with aviation to hopefully go into aerial photography.

I now use FSX exclusively, and have re-launched this site to focus on students like myself who use FS as a training tool for practicing real world flight. Since Flight Simulator inspired my aviation career, and is now a secondary tool for me to maintain skills, I wanted to share the inspiration with you, the reader, to get the best out of this wonderful tool. To some, FS is a game. To me, it's almost a second life. Fortunately, I have an understanding wife who understands my addiction to flight (that lucky woman got to take her introductory flight in a Maule! and then the instructor took her up in a Bi-Plane! is she lucky or what?).

I am now working almost full time to get the first series of reviews published for this site. All reviews are written, and then sent to the developer for review. This gives them the chance to correct me on any mistakes I may have made during the review process, making final scores and judgment as fair as possible. Flight1's method of reviews actually inspired me to use this method, and I find it the safest way to publish a review without flaming, ridicule or misunderstandings between readers, developers and myself.

Cherish on the left, me on the right (I know, obvious, right?). The computer on the left is the graphic design machine i built for her to do art. She currently runs Vista Ultimate x64. The two monitores on the left of my desk are hooked to the simulation machine. It runs Vista Ultimate x64. The monitor on the right is hooked to an old Dell box running XP x86 (32 bit). My laptop is a Sony Vaio running Vista Ultimate x86 (32 Bit). The simulation machine is the one sitting on top to the right.

Chronology of This Site

• January, 2009 - Site launched. I found time in my busy flight school, graphic design and work schedule to re-launch this site for FSX only. I immediately started coordinating with top developers such as Ariane, Flight1, Captain Sim and Majestic Software to start reviewing aircraft.
• March 23, 2009 - The first review goes live: The Flight1 Cessna 172R