First I started in Warbirds in 1997 at two dollars an hour to play online! I can't remeber my first handle but after a year I was Hackl_ I dabbled a bit in Aces High but not much online. I flew Warbirds until 2000 and I had a good time with it. After that I got into Janes WWII Fighters witch I liked especially it's awesome engine sounds. The only problem was no one seemed to want to fly any missions, just merging dogfights. Then one day in 2000 I say an IL-2 screenshot online of a 109 F2 starting up. I was in love!!! I preordered it from Bluebyte but then something went wrong with that company so then I just went to town and ordered it at the EB.
The demo for IL-2 came out in August 2001. What fun times. A guy named Stigler formed 9./JG52 and I joined up for about a month until I got to know one guy who drove me crazy. I think I've joined about five squads but I can't stand being told what to do. I flew in the D.I.D witch was an online war in old IL-2. You had to email in a mission log report after each mission telling exactly what happened during your flight. I guess nothing was automatically recorded or kept on file. Then after reading all of the reports the administration would tell who had what city and so on because there are no frontline markers in old IL-2. That's dedication
...I think that's how it worked. On busy days I can remember Forgotten Battles would have 1000 players on the Hyperlobby. I'm pretty sure things are going to be busy again with Cliffs Of Dover.
Over the years I went from Hackl_ to Hackl to 9./JG52_Hackl to JG77_Hackl to JG54_Hackl to 10./JG4_Richard to 10./JG3_Richard to II./JG27_Rich witch is mine and I'll stick with it.