I’d say about 95% of my flying the last 3-4 months has been the CJ4 Working Title…I’ve hit every US state, and flown around the world a couple of times, and just finished a tour of South America capital cities, so looking to change it up a bit. The CJ4 WT is a delight to fly, but I sure wish the CJ4 had Garmin x000 avionics like much of the FS fleet.
I only have FS2020 Standard, which does not include the Longitude. Is it worth an upgrade to get the Longitude? How buggy/stable is that compared to the CJ4 WT? And how much of a learning curve is it to go from Collins ProLine to Garmin 4000?
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You can learn the G3000 from flying the TBM. The Longitude has the exact same FMS, it just has two extra Touch Controllers on PIC and COP side dedicated to the PFD screens.
The CJ4 is well ahead of the Longitude VNAV wise, as well as having less of a chance of the infamous U-Turn bug on loading approaches. It is a fun rocket to fly though, and nothing beats trying to max the range out - like from Teterboro NJ to CDG in Paris (which in real life was one of the premier trips Cessna did to generate press when it was first introduced). And once you’ve flown a jet with Autothrottle, you will be missing it every time you fly anything else. I ponied up for the Premium Deluxe when the sim first came out, mostly just to get the SR-22, but I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Longitude.
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Do you have the Dakfly improvement mod installed, or are you just flying the stock Asobo model?
Dakfly is a must. Don’t fly without it.
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I fly both. I enjoy the CJ4 more but it doesn’t have the range of the Longitude.
I am also flying worldwide, trying to have a landing in every country of the world. I use various long and short-range aircraft, mostly the C208B and Kodiak for shorter-range flights. CJ4 is a good country hopper but the Longitude is needed to get to some of those remote island countries in the middle of the oceans.
The CJ4 avionics suite is so much better for navigation. The big points are Simbrief integration at a button push and a working VNAV. I also like the way I can control performance aspects, it will calculate landing speeds.
The Longitude still needs much more manual flight programming, I think the interface is a bit clunky, and although it has advisory, VNAV still requires management on decent.
The Longitude does have an autothrottle which is a big plus for climb out and cruise but I usually turn it off and manage the throttles by hand when in terminal air space.
Thanks for the inputs thus far. @CasualClick , funny you mentioned that, as I was flying the TBM around when you posted yesterday. Good to know of the similarity between its FMS and the Longitude if I decide to upgrade.
I guess I’ve been spoiled by the VNAV capability of the CJ4 WT… I don’t have to do much thinking at all. Just make sure I hit VNAV and lower my altitude setting prior to hitting the green TOD marker on the map…I usually I set the altitude to about 1000 feet above runway and let VNAV do the rest.
For other aircraft, I assume that I need to calculate my time and rate of descent for each altitude restriction as I descend? No green TOD donut? (I"ll have to find some posts here or Youtubes)
@LosekeClaus I think it’s possible to get to almost everything in the world via the CJ4, unless there’s something in the middle of the Pacific that’s not (legally) reachable?
@SteveKane - one tool you can use on the G3000/G5000 is the Altitude Arc setting. When you use AP and VS to manage a descent, It shows you a cyan “banana” curve that projects when you will hit that target altitude based on current descent rate and speed. You can use that once you’re on Approach (Transition, IAF, FACF, FAF), adjusting your descent rate and speeds to place that arc right before the Waypoint so you’re at target altitude before passing the fix.
Sadly, the G3X doesn’t have this - it’s the least developed of all the full-screen Garmins (as opposed to the smaller 430/530 Navigation Units). The NXi of course has fully coupled VNAV for Approaches.
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I like the Longitude, one of my top 4 aircraft in the sim. If you like the TBM you will like the Longitude, flying with synthetic terrain is very comfortable compared with the CJ4 for me.
But as all premium and deluxe aircraft it got only a very little attention from microsobo and because it is locked the options for modding are very limited. So for serius training the CJ4 is first, for relaxed flying the Longitude.
Still dreaming of an third party top class business jet from Gulfstream, Bombardier or Dassault.
Yep, anything is reachable if you hit that mid-air tanker on the way over. I flew from South America to FHSH (St. Helena) last Saturday in the CJ4 and just barely had enough fuel.
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So I did go ahead and got the FS2020 upgrade that gives me the Longitude, and took it for a couple of test flights yesterday. Very nice plane! I’d flown the TBM around quite a bit with the G3000 Working Title, so I was pretty familiar with that part. Having the Auto Throttle is something new I’ll have to get used to.
I do miss having the altitude restrictions get populated for approaches like the CJ4, but I did watch a video that explains how to easily do the Advisory VNAV descents. Basically plug in the first and last altitudes in a descent, and the system interpolates the intermediate altitudes…close enough for me.
Below is my initial Vertical Guidance plan for autopiloting this thing (mostly ignoring SIDs on climb), which is more or less based on my CJ4 experience. What other procedures do you personally use?
-Set ceiling altitude before takeoff. Don’t hit any other AP switches.
-Take off, get a 10% climb rate, turn autopilot on to hold pitch and roll.
-Wait until I get a decent airspeed, hit FLC, which should then be set to the current airspeed.
-Modify the FLC to about 240 knots, climb up to cruise altitude.
-When I hit cruise altitude, turn on autothrottle, and set a reasonable speed (right below redline of course 
)
-Turn on advisory VNAV to know when to descend.
-Before descent time, set altitude to near the lowest alt restriction above runway, hit VS but leave at 0.
-when it’s time to descent, set VS to the recommended value, and drop the A/T speed a bit.
-keep watching the VNAV bug to the left of the altitude strip, keep adjusting VS as needed. Having autothrottle keeping constant speed should make this much easier, right?
-Take er down and land.
I sure hope we soon get the true VNAV capability found in the CJ4, but this does make it a little more interesting and interactive, so not complaining too much.
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