Carenado Piper PA-44 Seminole

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61

Carenado seems be doing good in my world with the planes they have. I like the glass display but this is nice to have a classic cockpit in a twin. I flew this one in P3D and it did very well. I am hoping they release the king air 350 which I use in P3D because the FMC works great there. I will probably get this aircraft anyway to have another twin.

I use spadnext and what Carenado does is add custom actions. For example, on my King Air in P3D In SpadNext I use the 350 set master battery and set the parameter to 1. There are lots of 350, 505, so on actions to configure buttons just about everything. So be interesting to see how that works in msfs. One big advantage of SpadNext is a profile can be setup for each aircraft and when the aircraft is loaded SpadNext switches to that profile.

Anyway. I plan to get the new plane and take her up on the first flight

62

EGT was not working for mešŸ˜…

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So far, so good!

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Twice the fun I had with the M20R.

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Any word on FPS compared to the default G1000 glass cockpits, like say the Bonanza?

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No issues with the autopilot here. Works like a charm. Did four flights using it.

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Just had my first flight with it, from EGSC to EGKB. It handles really nicely, very smooth. Some float on landing, but I just need to lower my speed over the threshold.

AP worked nicely, no excessive turn rates, no lateral or vertical oscillation.

When hitting ALT it did that familiar jerk up/down which I think is something that crept in with the last two patches, and affects other aircraft as well.

NAV1 drives the main CDI, NAV2 the lower left one, which I used to follow the ILS down manually.

I had the same issues with the views, which is totally personal preference. Left, forward left, and read left are okay, as is right But the forward right, and rear right are not so useful, and end up giving you different views of the entire panel. Iā€™ll probably manually fix these so that forward right is similar to forward left, and rear right as a zoomed view of the 530.

It was also very easy to trim out, both at cruise, and on final.

I noticed it has feathering props, but didnā€™t mess around with this too much, but I did noticed that if they are fully feathered, and you advance one forward, it doesnā€™t seem to be a smooth transition, and at some point this suddenly translates to a large burst of acceleration which when parked leads to the aircraft lurching forward to the opposite side you de-feathered.

I would definitely recommend this aircraft.

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68

another little off topic here, but how hard would it be to a ā€œcreate your own avionics suiteā€ for any plane? that would be killer!

@GiMeDaCash I didnā€™t take it as being negative at all, everyone has their preference. No biggie. I was a little worried about that too but in reverse (I donā€™t routinely fly twin engines) and already having the beechcraft I didnā€™t know how much different this would be. I like small airports, not ā€œbush airportsā€ per se but the little local grass strips and county airports around my home. Itā€™s a little faster than the 172 I ussually fly (130kts vs 110 kts) and weā€™ll see how precise I can get it to land once Iā€™m proficient-ish. Iā€™m floating it alot on the runway so far trying to find what speeds it likes, but once I do get it down, it stops quickly enough. Might just be a good hopper when I get the hang of it.

@SchwabenAlex @schnitzelinho90 I donā€™t monitor frame rate so I canā€™t comment on that but I have noticed in the interior view it sometimes does the ā€œchopā€ where it freezes for only a split second. but itā€™s occasional. nothing I canā€™t live with. I did not notice anything on the exterior views. (i7-9700 16g ram, 2060)

@FlyingFinus I did find some of the smaller block gauges were hard to read sometimes also. the ā€œremove before flightā€ banners and some of those type of details are low res, can confirm.

All in all though, Iā€™m still happy with my purchase!

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You would be comparing apples and oranges as the PA44 uses analog gauges, not glass. It runs quite nicely though.

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Iā€™ll more than likely end up getting it. I like dual prop planes. The DA62 and Baron have been fun, but I want something new. And this seems like the ticket. Iā€™ve gotten plenty of air time with the last 2 Carenado planes. I really love both. I hope this one is as good.

Iā€™ve been sorely missing the Mooney since 2 patches ago. They may say that it doesnā€™t cause crashes now unless you click cockpit stuff, but Iā€™ve had 3 CTDs since last patch when it was ā€œworking againā€, all 3 in the Mooney, and not once was I clicking the cockpit when it happened. Looking forward to the fix for it.

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71

It would be comparing one FPS value both parties have access to (the one from G1000 planes) to another value only one party has access to (the Seminole). The percentage difference of the two I could use to extrapolate how the plane would run on my system.

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Carenado mentioned in their pa44 release note on Facebook that version 1.2 for the mooney is submitted to the marketplace. Update could happen any time now. My take is when the USA update releases next week!

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Yeah, I saw that earlier today on FB. Thatā€™s the fix Iā€™m looking forward to. I miss flying my Mooney.

Thanks for the info anyway though.

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Agreed, but I do like the Mooney. Twins block the view, either way sounds like itā€™s good quality. Iā€™m with you on the historical planes or larger twin engines. A twin Otter or something fun and unusual will be my next purchase.

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75

Yeah I like the Mooney too. Ever sins FS2000 I like flying it. But at least it is a little different from all the other one-mots. Rarer, smaller and faster and more manoeuverable than a Bonanza and even has speed brakes.

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76

Carenado really need to focus on sounds more

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I noticed this. During cruise I was watching this, and was optimising for altitude. It was working fine then. Later on, while descending on final, I noticed the EGT needles were at the bottom. I adjusted the mixture but they didnā€™t move at all. Perhaps it was because I was throttled back, but Iā€™ll keep a closer eye on this later on this evening.

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All systems seem ok to me on my first flight around San Juan PR this afternoon. But I canā€™t seem to do cold and dark, as I cannot get to the fuel tank cutoffs with the seat belt in the way. Is there a way to unlock the seat belt?? Anyone have this problem? Otherwise flies just great for me!!

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I have seen the same issue you reported with the autopilot but I found a workaround.

With this autopilot, when you turn it off, it seems to leave the NAV and ALT settings in the autopilot enabled. Then when you turn it back on again, it goes instantly crazy trying to dial in your old settings (I guess).

My workaround is to make sure that if Iā€™ve turned off autopilot, I also turn off NAV and ALT before I turn on the AP again. Just flew this plane for a couple hours and finally figured out what was causing the AP issue. As long as NAV and ALT were not turned on when I enabled the AP, then it was smooth.

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One of the built-in quick views will look straight down at those switches between the seats. I canā€™t remember which one, but it the view that typically zooms in on the main guagesā€¦ Kind of goofy that it looks down between the seats, but I was able to do a cold / dark start using that view.

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Iā€™m quite interested in this plane having been up in one as a passenger a few times.

But I think Iā€™ll wait until after the update 7 planned for the 24th as the last Carenado airplane (the Mooney) was broken after the last patch and is still not fixed.

I donā€™t want to spend Ā£30 just to find itā€™s useless after Tuesdayā€™s update.

Will wait and see how that goes first.

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