by TruNorthSim » Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:18 am
Hello,
I downloaded this aircraft today, and it's very good despite it's shortcomings. During my first "walk around", I noticed the front wheel hovers a few inches above the pavement. All of the lights work, and they have nice, bright effects. The strobes need to be moved outwards just a bit, animations look great except the flaps that move instantaneous instead of slowly moving into position. There is one main door, and one cargo door. The cargo compartment has no textures inside. The textures on the outside aren't the worst I've seen, but they could be better.
The front wheel contact point can be corrected, as I've done on the A318 from Posky. It had the same issue. The strobes/lights location are simple fixes. The time on the flaps can also be adjusted, and I would probably use the numbers from another aircraft as reference. I have a member of my group that is outstanding at making liveries, and I've already run the idea by him.
Once inside the aircraft, the main door isn't sealed completely, and you can see the gap when looking up at it from the inside. There is no simple fix for this except reworking the model. Most of the dash is a collection of 2d gauges mounted on a mostly flat surface, so adding your own gauges shouldn't be too much of an issue. Most of the buttons are interactive and have good click areas. The pilot yoke is a smoke transparent, which assists in seeing the lower part of the dash. I would have opted for the classic click and remove yoke, but this seems original. There are no textures on the floor, doors, seats, and roof. Just flat color. The pilot also has no texture except his face and hair.
The aircraft starts up easily and has a nice kick to it. The rollover and startup sound is very good. It taxis ok, but the turn radius seems a bit wide. The front tire seems to turn very smoothly, but not far enough for my taste. I really like the stance of this aircraft! The rear wheels have a very nice shape, but the textures are poor.
I moved the aircraft to KVBT Bentonville, AR for the flight test. During takeoff, it didn't seem to get up to speed as fast as I expected it to. Rotation was about 180 knots with no flaps. The aircraft controls felt very heavy! Climb out was as expected of a small aircraft, but I was able to maintain a bit more positive vertical speed than I expected after feeling the weight of the controls. Once again, the aircraft sounded very good! During gear up, the gear came up very smoothly, and the right rear landing gear hesitated, coming up a bit late, which was nice touch.
The gauges seemed to update as expected. I did, however, notice the airspeed gauge seemed to hang a bit. I completed a traffic pattern and landed without any issues with full flaps. I had bit of fun with this one, so I didn't document my approach or touchdown speed.
Overall, I highly recommend this freeware! I am definitely willing to rewrite the aircraft.cfg, fixing the contact points, adjusting the lights, and fixing the flap rotation speed, and the panel.cfg, adding, at least, the GPS500. I don't think the .air file needs to be touched. I think the aircraft was intended to feel this way, so I'd like to leave it as is. I hope that my go to texture guy gets interested in this one!
I appreciate you reading my "review" of this aircraft. I just saw you guys talking about it and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents! I'd like to know your opinions as well, as this is a nice freeware and deserves some attention.
