I just picked up the Carenado King Air C90Gtx for MSFS2020 and I am very surprised at the poor performance of the C90 compared to the 350I.
Is the King Air C90 that much slower than the 350I in real life?
Same engines on both I would think they would have similar performance. I can only get 195 knot indicated Air speed out of the C90 and 240ish from the 350I.
From what I’m seeing through some not-very-thorough research, the C90 has a cruising speed of 217 kts and a max speed of 223 kts. The 350 has 310/312, respectively.
Without knowing your flying conditions, it’s hard to make a definitive statement, but the numbers don’t seem too far off.
I believe this is more or less structural thing. C90 at FL250 has a speed limitation at about 180-185 indicated. 350 keeps 200-205 on FL240 and there are no “barber” red-white stripe on a speed indicator (glass cockpit). Their shaft horsepower is different as well - 500 something against 1000 something.
While the 350i weighs about 3,000lbs more empty, it also has nearly twice the power compared to the C90GTX.
It would seem that Carenado is using the C90 BRAVO model / engines and NOT the two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-135A turboprop engines with 550 shp each to provide a range of 1,152 nm.
Nope it is 20% too slow and burns 50% more fuel:
First, they don’t use the same engines, the KA C90GTX has 750 HP per engine, not 550 as mentioned earlier. The King Air 350 has 1050 HP per engine. That said, these are aircraft with completely different purposes, it’s like comparing a Citation CJ1 with a CJ4, everything changes, weight, speed, performance, range, and even the type of operation each aircraft is designed for.
Tips: Every Carenado aircraft is very poor in terms of simulation quality, and I say that because I’ve owned several of their models since the FSX, XP, and MSFS days.
If you want a very good and well simulated King Air, currently the only solid option is the Black Square add-on.
Where did you got the information from that the C90GTx produces 750 SHP per engine? From what I can find and have seen, the GTi and GTx both share the same PT6A-135A flat rated at 550 SHP.
You can even retrofit the older GTi into a GTx with no change to the engine. Sounds strange without any modification to vertical stabilizer, rudder etc. to handle the extra yaw in case of an engine out, the GTi is already a handful.
Maybe you are confused with the engine thermodynamic rating, technically the PT-6A-135A could produce 750 SHP, but it doesn’t produce that installed in any C90. The engines are flat rated to 550 SHP.
In any case, the performance is far off. A quick test I did a while ago at 6000 ft, ISA conditions:
I get 1485 ft/lbs of torque (not too far off) but fuel flow 520 lbs / engine which is far more than should be. Speed 183 kts is about 40 kts slow. Fuel flow roughly 50% too high and speed 20% too slow, so the combination of these 2 results in far less range.
I haven’t seen the C90 in any release notes so I assume this is still the case.
