Earlgrey

As anyone who has used PPjoy will testify it is a neat piece of software developed by
Deon van der Westhuysen

PPJoy was designed for joysticks connected to the parallel port but it also supports other devices via the virtual joystick interface.

So why am I telling you this as if you have used or are using PPjoy you will know all about this?

Deon has spent months developing PPjoy and thousand of people around the globe are using it day after day.

But he has now decided to stop supporting it as for all of his hard work he has received a few postcards,a couple of small donations and thank you emails have been very few indeed.

When I first got my first rc helicopter in January 2006 I decided to download and install FMS along with PPjoy to enable my transmitter to work with the FMS flight simulator, but as I have a laptop I didn’t have the necessary port connection so I learnt to fly my rc helicopter without it.

When I heard about Deon decision to stop supporting PPjoy I emailed him and told him that even though I do not use PPjoy I thanked him for creating it, his reply was very sad to read.

So please could you do Deon a favour and at least send him a postcard of your hometown or better still a small donation just to say thank you.
His contact details are:-

Deon van der Westhuysen
6 Keurboom Crescent
Plattekloof
7500
Republic of South Africa

Email:-
ppjoy@inbox.lv

Below is his web site:-

http://www.geocities.com/deonvdw/Docs/PPJoyMain.htm

Thank you very much.

Or you can just email him with a thank you letter, please do not ask him for support as he will not reply and I don’t blame him at all.

Today the 18/1/07 is almost a year to the day that because of a rapid deterioration of my health I was confined to the house, that’s not to say that previously I was active, but at least I could potter around in my shed, making Tudor Dolls Houses, which had been my main hobby for 12 years.

Then I found myself collapsing without any warnings at all, this was all because of a stroke that I had in 2005, which left me with zero energy and serious heart and kidney disease, luckily I got a slight interest in Helicopters when my son asked me to repair a RC aeroplane that he had, I casually mentioned to him that a RC helicopter would be better as unlike a helicopter a RC airplane has to be all or nothing, whereas with a RC helicopter you can at least keep it within a confined area!

My son, then without me knowing anything about it until the last minute bought me a Syma 2 channel Helicopter from China, I was really looking forward to it as sitting around doing nothing has never been a part of my life, when I finally got it as usual excitement kicked in and within 5 minutes of receiving it, I had lost it it to the sky gods, never to be seen again.

Well to say I was devastated was an understatement as this was a present for my wedding anniversary from my son, I lost sleep over it and it did my health no good at all.

To my surprise my son bought me a second one but this time I killed the excitement before it had a chance to kill my second Helicopter, and I learnt to use it in minutes (no excitement allowed) and to this day I still have it and will never part with it.

My son then got an interest in RC helicopters, and bought a 2nd hand Walkera 4, from E-Bay, the only problem was he didn’t know what model it was and I was none the wiser, he tried it but felt intimidated by it so he gave it to me. I then posted a picture of it on another forum with a simple question “What is the make of this helicopter”, and all I got back was a flood of written abuse, but not one of them had told me what it was, I felt hurt, cheated and above all determined never to go back to that forum, I then came across Heliguy.com and before joining the forums, I sent Joel a picture of the Walkera 4 in the vague hope that he would reply and tell me what it was, in my sheer frustration to get an answer I had forgotten to resize the picture suitable for email so poor Joel got a 2.8mb picture of what had by now became known as “Helicopter X”.

Joel replied within a minute, and told me all about it, and put my mind at rest, so I joined the forums with one aim, to repay Joel and to make sure that no one else goes through what I went through - the rest is history.

As for the Walkera 4 it turned out that the E-Bayer who sold it, had crashed it and damaged a servo, which I quickly replaced with a Tower pro 90 and its been fine ever since.

Thanks for reading.

Joe