Good afternoon forum,
As the title suggests, looking to see what the general consensus is on a good multi engine prop plane to learn on?
I used the 152 to learn the basics and get a start on VFR and IFR, working on the 172 to get into learning Autopilot. The next step is to introduce multi engine.
Can be stock ASOBO, Freeware / Payware.
Thanks in advance.
Baron if you have premium
or DA62 with mod
Diamond DA62X would be my vote. Improvement mod for the stock DA62.
I also hear good things about Carenadoâs Seneca/Seminole but havenât tried them.
My vote is the DA62, itâs a nice easy to fly plane with moderate approach speeds. You might want to blend your 172 time into a complex single before going to a twin, you have a couple of things to think about in a twin that you donât in a 152/172 like gear and prop management along with overall better performance that will make things happen a little faster than youâre used to (climb, cruise, approach speed, etc.) Not necessary but it might help.
When I did my IRL flight training, I went from 172 to a Beechcraft Duchess (awful plane) so you donât need to, but I remember thinking I was getting hit with a bunch of new stuff all at once. If youâre not practicing things like engine failures etc., less necessary, just be prepared that the runway gets a whole lot closer a whole lot faster, at the very minimum I would practice your 172 approaches with less flaps to increase your approach speed.
I can recommend the BBS BN2 Islander. Itâs very forgiving.
For payware Iâd say the Islander or the junkers
For the mod Iâd say Shrike commander 500
For default Iâd say for piston the Diamond 62 with the mod or if your looking to go more advanced with the twin category try the Cessna Citation CJ4 with the improvement mod itâs really awesome
Hm⊠before grabbing the Islander, I suggest to wait for Aerosoftâs Twin Otter.
It will be released soon and offer much more Advanced systems.
I at least for now I still like the Carenado Piper PA-44. But Iâm done buying any more Carenado products after the Mooney fiasco. The PA-44 is still my top pick for a piston twin with the DA-62 a close second and the Baron a distant third.
The prop and fuel on the DA-62 are all FADEC controlled so you donât have to worry about that. But if your looking to learn twins maybe you wan to manage those aspects yourself?
In the last dev video there was talk about not tying .cfg files to DRM and Working Title improving some of the Premium/Deluxe aircraft so there is hope for the Baron yet.
A2A was going to make the Aerostar 600 and I believe that would have been âTheâ piston twin for MSFS. But they had to do a gear up landing on the aircraft that was serving as the basis of the MSFS product and so the A2A Aerostar 600 has been put on indefinite hold.
This was a long way to say there is no really good GA piston twin in MSFS IMHO.
Until this thread I though the BN2 Islander was a turboprop. I may have to look at it again.
Iâve been having the best time learning on the Carenado PA-44 Seminole. It does have some bugs, but is all around a great plane to learn basic IFR/ILS with steam gauges, basic autopilot and the 530 mod. The DA-62X mod is great, but that is a more modern plane. Really depends on what suits you in terms of avionics. Iâm waiting on the MilViz 310R that may be out by end of year. Hoping for sooner. That will be close to or study level. Itâs my definite next purchase.
I forgot the Diamond was FADEC, Iâve only flown it a couple times, spend most of my time in jets and turboprops.
If by learning multi engine you mean doing similar things like what you do on the 172, just moving a bit faster in a slightly larger plane that has two engines, I think the Baron fits the bill. It has the traditional throttle/prop/mixture lever setup for twins. I fly it quite a bit and find it quite acceptable in its unmodded form when it comes to realistic implementation, but opinions vary.
The DA62 is also nice but it does need the mod to have the ECU implemented; by default the engine handling is completely unrealistic so that is not much fun to learn on (I have not used the mod so I cannot comment on it).
If you also want it to be different, i.e. not another G1000 plane, the third party offerings mentioned in this thread come into play (I have not flown them).
If by learning multi engine you mean doing what you would do in a real life multi engine rating it gets a bit more difficult, I donât know if asymmetric flight is well modeled in any MSFS aircraft at the moment. Someone jokingly told me it is weird they call it multi engine training since it is mostly done with only one engine operating anywayâŠ
It is piston⊠the same engine from Cessna 182, just two of them. There is a turboprop version of the islander though.
I fly the Da62 (with improvement mod) a lot because itâs a good plane to get into small outback strips in Africa with - for OnAir company.
But the Beechcraft Baron is a more interesting option for learning twin props because you have more to manage. Even with the improvement mod the Da62 is pretty simple to fly and there isnât any ârealâ prop and engine management required.
A single engine complex should be your next natural step from a single engine simple vs multi-engine.
Of course, feel free to do whatever you wish. My own personal transition was:
C152 - Started super simple
C172 (both steam and G1000) - Allowed me to use more functional avionics and AP and have slightly better performance.
Carenado C182 - Kept me in a familiar style airframe with familiar controls and layout, but introduced the complex engine with prop RPM control
Bonanza - Higher performance and introduced the landing gear into the mix
Baron - the next natural step up, as while itâs a very different plane, in terms of operation, itâs basically a multi-engine Bonanza
I flew other planes in this time as well, with the Carenado Mooney becoming one of my favourites, but when I was sitting down and REALLY wanting to learn proper operation of the aircraft, I stuck with the list above.
A lot will recommend the DA 62 (with the mod - the stock is kind of awful). And itâs a really awesome plane and I like it a lot. But since itâs FADEC controlled, you wonât really get a feel for complex engines. I see more value in learning to use complex engines as the next step as this is a skill required in most other GA piston planes. But thatâs just meâŠ
100% with you on this, the Baron is a perfect aircraft in my opinion 
been doing, for the last couple of weeks with NeoFly, short flights on grass runways with the Baron in the Austrian Alps.
With the NXI and the visual approaches, its been a real blast 
Just Flightâs Pipers are a good progression - Warrior to Arrow III to Turbo Arrow, then onto things like BN2 Islander or Carenadoâs Seminole. Then Seneca.
Thanks everyone for the feedback! A ton of good information.
@Crunchmeister71 thanks for the breakdown! That makes allot of sense and I wasnât even sure what FADEC was so had to research and yea seems like it takes some of the elements out of the mix that I would like to learn.
Just bought the Carenado 182 
Itâs a nice plane. I feel they sort of botched its ground handling (too bouncy / tippy) a couple of updates back. It wasnât like that before. But outside of that, itâs really an awesome plane. Itâs a bigger, faster version of the 172 with a cruise speed of 145 ktas. And since itâs a turbocharged engine, you donât lose engine power as you climb to high altitudes. And youâll need that power if you plan on taking it up to its max cruise altitude of 18000 feet!
But it will teach you to use a complex engine. At that point, youâll have the basics in place to move on to pretty much any single engine piston plane or take the next step to multi-engine.
Makes complete sense to me.
Just messing around with it on the ground to check it out. Looks impressive! Grabbing the checklist mod now.