FS2004 Fleet Download

<p>Thanks guys,

I&rsquo;m afraid this social distancing has caught up with me. A great multiplayer flight today with other pilots on our Caribbean Tour Multiplayer Flight, and a few glasses of Willamette Valley Pino Noir got me over the hump.

Thanks to SOP Mgr. Larry, and pilots Oswald, Jim and Smitty for joining in the group today, and Bill on the other days we flew these multiplayer flights. </p>
<p>
We will likely have two more flights to complete this tour. So hope to see some new pilots earn the Caribbean Tour Multiplayer Icon for their awards page before it&rsquo;s no longer possible.

Also, thanks to Mike D., our V.P. Doing extra duty covering open hub manager positions, and Paul who is managing the very busy MSP hub. Of course, thanks to our wonderful active pilots who keep things going here at St. Paul Airlines. It&rsquo;s great fun flying with you, and I hope to meet more of you on our remaining multiplayer flights.</p>

Pilots,

As I indicated in my initial response to this post, and as Larry points out in further detail, it simply comes down to what is practical given the changes that have occurred in flight simulation over the years since St. Paul Airlines began, and moreover - since I took over responsibility for maintaining the site, the backups and the storage of the backup data which is now of a size no longer supported by our internet provider.

There will likely be more changes in the near future as the new versions of simulators come out (P3dv5 and FS2020). The decision to no longer support the FS2004 files as simply a practical decision balancing what we can support with what pilots primarily used and what the primary mission of our virtual airline was.

Regarding the FS2004 aircraft files...these are readily available at other sites primarily designed to offer aircraft downloads as freeware (although not in SPA repaints). We no longer have had a fleet manager capable of designing repaints for aircraft or maintaining the fleet we had. St. Paul Airlines is primarily a virtual airline site and not a free simware provider. While I have taken on the responsibility of providing an ACARS program that is FSX P3D FlightGear and, to some extent, XPlane compatible. Just keeping the site functional and the ACARS program working for these various simulators takes a lot of time and effort.

With all the changes and additions of simulators, the management team will be deciding whether we will continue to offer any aircraft downloads in the future. After all, why should FSX/P3D have planes and not FlightGear, XPlane? What about P3d versions 3,4 and now 5? What about FS2020? The list is becoming impossible to support everything for everyone.

That said, trying to maintain, backup and store antiquated FS2004 aircraft that are widely available on other websites dedicated to providing that service was an unnecessary duplication of effort and time investment that I could better spend in other areas of support at St. Paul Airlines. While this may be inconvenient for some pilots who still use FS2004 and want everything available for them at a one-stop-shop, I apologize for that. However, I have to make decisions based on what is in the best interest of the majority of pilots here at St. Paul Airlines given the time I have to support, maintain, update, backup and store almost 6 gigs of redundant backup data.

I don't think I can offer anything more regarding this issue, so I hope this will suffice as my final comment on this thread.

Happy flying,

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, May 01, 2020 - 09:18 PM</em><!-- end editby -->