Thank you Squadron Leader
Blackdog i am honoured to have your advice and help, I can see from your posts that you are a seasoned and very kind veteran of this sim...and that is a huge help to a new candidate pilot (which is what they called us in the Luftwaffe back in the way back) when we showed up from basic, newborn and innocent and very vulnerable.
As you noted I am doing my homework and working thru just about any thread I can find ...and i did get that excellent check list set, amazing resource that is. I also have the manual on my desktop and have studied the game files and formats....and done the initial install, and reviewed the controls, many of which I have no clue about such as the vehicle controls which I understand are not activated yet.
I must say I am very impressed by the detail of this sim, it appears to be one of the most accurate and complete of any that I am aware of so far, and I am going to give it my all to learn and study and work thru. I have a long long way to go for I have studied the air wars for many years but never in such detail as to hands on flying, but I think it will be an excellent and formative experience for me and one that as a historian I will greatly appreciate in the long run tho in the short run I forsee a lot of hard landings and challenging missions.
I had family who flew in the Luftwaffe in the war and I grew up reading about the service and stories from that now long past era....and I have hoped thru the sims to have a chance to experience just a bit of what they faced and what was the course of their missions. I have the greatest admiration and respect for the men of all sides in the WWII who flew, and served, and believe that we can honour them a bit ourselves by studying and experiencing these sims.
thanks again for your kind help, and I will start ground school now and hopefully get in the air before too long.
I am not happy about the Steam aspect of things, I am old school about computer CGI programs and like to have things in my own hands, so I ordered the disks but I understand the helpfulness of Steam and I understand we need to download and activate online....which is what I don't like but i understand. I hope we can somehow save the patches ourselves but I wont worry about that for now..I prefer to keep libraries of patches for the games that I study, for i have been studying and researching CGI games for years, I got interested in them as I am a professional Artist and began to do 3D work in my own work and moved into game study to help understand..also I love and enjoy history of all kinds and so all of that brought me here.
thanks again sir, and I do appreciate the welcome in and the great help.