Two Years Old...

November 28th, 2001.  Today this website is two years old.  Compared to other sites, and among them many Flight Simulator sites, that is not that big of a deal.  But when you consider that there has been a consistent flow of Mirage related aircraft, panels, and scenery for two years now, I think that that is a pretty big deal.  I'm certainly smiling.

But all I do is gather it in one place for other Mirage fans to enjoy.  The real folks doing the work are the aircraft, panel, sound, and scenery (did I forget anyone?) designers out there.    I think some name-dropping is in order but just for a little background, how about some statistics first?

Just over 100 aircraft.  That makes figuring out percentages easy.  25 percent of the aircraft available at this site are derivatives of the Mirage (and in some cases that's even being stretched -- sorry, I just like them all).  That includes the Atlas/Denel Cheetah, the IAI Nesher and Kfir, several Dassault Etendard (that's the stretching part), and a couple Mirage IVs.  Take out the eight Rafale (are there even eight real ones yet?) and that leaves 67 pure Mirage aircraft available for download.  And they're getting better with each new release.  That's great news.

As a Thank You I could list a few dozen names but I did that last year.  Instead I'll just drop a few names of some new folks who have given us some pretty significant new aircraft, panels, and scenery, in this last year.  So in no particular order:

• Kirk Olsson for his new FS2000 Mirage F1 (your FS98 version is still great Jason).  This led to some great repaints and CFS2 packages by Y-Raymond, Rob "cfsarea51", and Chris Coarse.
• Oxyd for his outstanding Mirage 2000 and Rafale M.  These lead to a repaint by Justin Lamb and a CFS2 weapons package by Sonny.  Thanks also to Oxyd for a great set of sound files, panels, and even the source files, for these two new aircraft.
• Christophe Rosenmann for his new Rafale made specifically for CFS2.
• The design team at Alpha Simulations; Chris Lampard, Michael Davies, and Colin Norwood for their half dozen new Mirage aircraft over the past year.  And not to forget Phil Perrott, for his leadership and great instrument panels to go along with them.
• Denis da Silva Oliveira for his new Mirage 2000 panel and numerous repaints of Mirage IIIs and Mirage 2000s.
• Olivier Bochu, Alexandre Cadel, Matthias Hinze, Philippe Jacquot, and Fabien Prevost for their great scenery projects covering locations around the world where Mirage aircraft operate.  Raimondo Tabure for his terrain mesh scenery of France and the island of Corsica, and Joel Maillot for his great rendition of the French nuclear carrier Charles de Gaulle for CFS2.
• That turned into a long list after all.  I hope I didn't overlook anyone.  If I did, you have my apologies.  Please

And of course a Thank You to www.flightsimmers.net for provided the free hosting of this website.

So what's on the horizon?

Several really nice aircraft, that's what.  For starters, Jason Ashworth of South Africa is very near completion of his Mirage IIICZ.  I've been lucky enough to be able to view and fly this one around for a while now and it is going to be a real gem.  He has also been working on a IIIEZ version with a sizable weapons load for CFS2.

From England, Colin Norwood has been working on a couple of more Mirage for Alpha Simulations.  One will be a Mirage IIIB.  I've been assisting Colin on this one by doing the texture painting.  It really captures the curves of the two-seater version.  This will be followed closely by a Mirage 5 based on the same airframe as the Mirage IIIC (but with all the necessary changes).  Jens-Ole Kjølberg of Norway is painting it.  And maybe Kirk Olsson will make good on his comment to me about rebuilding his Mirage F1.  You just never know.

I've got a feeling this next year will be a great one.  So make a bookmark and be sure and stop by again.

Header photograph of Swiss AF Mirage IIIS (Waddington RAF, 1994) Copyright Paul Nann.
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