The Westozy's visit to England

[Matt Olieman]

Absolutely a fabulous story Gwyn and am happy to hear of your wonderful experience. I envy you. Good luck on the rest of your trip.

Matt Olieman

[Westozy]

Hi all,
On Friday we travelled to the city of my birth Halifax to catch up with my own relatives. I didn't know that I had so many, my Uncle arranged for them all to gather at a pub and we had a great time. I had to learn the Yorkshire custom of "suppin' pints of John Smiths". The English beer is not fizzy like our aussie lager and 6 pints later I was the king of the Karaoke microphone! Leonie doesn't remember much of the night after my cousins kept topping up her vodka and coke. I can't wait to show her the video of her performance hehe!
On Monday we trekked to the city of York to meet Leo Bodnar. Leo had very kindly travelled quite a way south out of his way to meet us, he had taken a day off his very busy schedule. We met at the appointed time at York Minster which is a towering cathedral no doubt many centuries old. Leo greeted us both very warmly and the three of us wandered the streets of York until we found a Cafe with an available table, York was buzzing with tourists and it was packed. We ordered a light lunch and then spent the next 90 minutes discussing Leo's thriving business and the future development of Aerosim Solutions' plug'n'play throttle quadrants!!! More on this successful business agreement later!
I gathered very quickly that whilst Leo does have an interest in flight simulators, cockpit builders are a drop in the ocean for him. I won't divulge details of his current projects as requested, but it is obvious to me that he is destined for great things. He said he gets over 20,000 emails per year so you can imagine it is physically impossible for him to answer them all. We as cockpit builders are very fortunate that he checks out our forums and answers the odd question here and there. One thing I did get across I think was the phenomenal growth of our hobby and the number of people now taking it up.
Leo is obviously a very intelligent electronics/software engineer and also a very smart businesman yet he is extremely humble and an absolute gentleman. It was a pleasure and an honour to meet him in person and I am delighted to have secured a sound business relationship with a new friend!


Cheers, Gwyn
www.aerosimsolutions.com.au

[drum4no1]

Its really awesome to put faces to the names and get to see the pictures of you together. In hobbies like this with people spread across the globe, you get familiar with names and user names but its a real treat to see the people together and getting to know each other personally. As time goes by I feel less "geeky" about my hobby as I read the stories here...

[No Longer Active]

Wow 20,000 emails per year that's nearly 55 per day, you miss one day where you don't check emails and all of a sudden you have another 110 to check and so on.....the poor guy having us banging on about how to wire a button (that's the last of his worries). At last a picture of the world famous Leo Bodnar, great to see a pic of the legend! Top stuff Gwyn....and Leo!

[Westozy]

Hi guys,
Tomorrow the UK visit ends and we will be trekking back to Australia. The trip has been fantastic and I am certain I will be repeating it in the not too distant future. Whilst it is sad that the holiday draws to a close Leonie and I have had some great news. We put an offer on a much bigger house before we left Australia and the deal has gone through, we will be moving soon. The new place has a 6m x 5m powered workshop and I just can't wait to start arranging it. There will be room for the much wanted second CNC machine and the planned expansion of Aerosim Solutions can begin at last. I've already got the beer fridge, a flat screen TV, air conditioner and a stereo system. My simulator will be going in there aswell and I will be able to commence the rebuild, I'm so looking forward to that job!
Cheers, Gwyn
PS Some pics of the tour coming soon after we get home!!

[Westozy]

Here is a couple of pics from my travels meeting my heroes!!!


Ian Sissons on the right with the 'Westozy', apparantly I am the furthest travelled visitor to his fantastic simulator!


This is Joe Lavery who writes for PC Pilot, I hand delivered a throttle base to Joe, that's $4,000 postage Joe!

Two great evenings with these guys and their sims, I'll be back to both for sure.
Cheers Gwyn

[Matt Olieman]

Gwyn thanks for your excellent reporting of your travels. I've enjoyed your reports of your events. I envy your venture. Thank You!!!

Matt Olieman

[Neil Hewitt]

Oh, good, so now the spammers are just copying and pasting from my posts for their 'convincing' text. The text above is from my earlier reply to this thread.

Mods, methinks 'davidwilsoon' needs to be banned.