Carenado or SibWings

[EJW]

I'm thinking about buying either the Carenado Beechcraft T-34 Mentor or the SibWings Cessna Bird Dog. Both aircraft look great...but is one better than the other?

[olderndirt]

Depends what your flight preferences are.

[EJW]

Thanks...I must say the Carenado T-34 seems more like my kind of aircraft.

[olderndirt]

While looking at Carenado, take a gander at their c185 'bush' package - an excellent plane with multiple options and the price is right.

[pfevrier]

I do not have the Mentor, but I own the Bird Dog.
The Bird Dog is a great little aircraft for low and slow GA flights. If you're planning on doing some aerobatics, look elsewhere =) The VC is perfect, the model is beautiful. However it does have its quirks. I would strongly advise you to head over the sibwings' support forum. The Bird Dog seems to be suffering from instability with Vista (I do own Vista, this sucks), there are some graphics bugs here and there (minor and can be easily overlooked), some instruments do not work and the flight behavior needs some work. Sibwings is saying a patch is in the works, but it's been a while... Tech support is so-so. If you shoot them an email it's okay, but if you're going through the forum it may take a while till you get a response...
Check out Sibwings' Saphir X though, it looks awesome, seems more stable, and already has a patch out 
Hope this helps.

[EJW]

Thanks for your help. I think I'm going to go for the SibWings Bird Dog. A pal of mine has the T-34...so I'll get a chance to fly that when I go to his.
Thanks for your help!

[Bruce448]

I have both and regret the Carenado, there's only a couple of paints for the Sibwings,

have a look at the alphasim T-34c Turbo Mentor (the cockpit steams up and you can even burst the tires on landing if you brake hard).
http://www.alphasim3.com/store/product_info.php?currency=GBP&cPath=23&products_id=258

Bruce