I worry about Nemeth’s history of poor support, but I broke down and bought it today since there are very few ultralight (US part 103) options for the sim.
It looks good, and I enjoy flying it. Pitch response seems right. I’m a SEL pilot with no real experience in part 103 UL aircraft so can’t say for sure. Roll rate seems very low. The ailerons move quickly to the stops, but the wing responds sluggishly. This could be correct, but doesn’t match the videos I’ve watched.
Climb performance is dismal. My research suggests that with a Hirth 33 or similar engine, climb rate should be about 600 fpm at 80% power. I’m frequently lucky to get 200 fpm at full power. Best climb seems to be about 35 kts, which seems a bit low, but, again, I don’t know.
The EGT meter doesn’t respond realistically, and it’s basically the only way to judge throttle settings, so you can’t really judge throttle settings.
I have no problem with the sound. Not very realistic, but not bothersome to me.
It’s fun to fly, and wonderful for sightseeing, but the climb rate bothers me. I can live with the slow roll rate. But I’ve almost killed myself a couple of times trying to climb to clear trees after low level flight at full speed. Pull the nose up and the speed drops like crazy.
Stall behavior is strange, but I didn’t really expect fidelity at the edges of the envelope from Nemeth.
I like it but I do not hear any bounce noise or sound, and I think that the throttle lever is reversed, it should give power moving forward, am I the only one with this issue?
I believe he’s referring to the original negative review linked in the second response above. Now it just links to the developer’s site. And the review was indeed unflattering.
I made a video (1440p) illustrating firstly the unusual behaviour of throttle action followed by slip indicator in a left and right slip and then a demonstration of position of flap lever - followed by a few minutes flying around Gold Coast QLD to illustrate the in cockpit view with TrackIr, VR would be similar
Also with regard to the sinking into the ground I think it is related to the “invisible retractable gear” .
Example - if you spawn near a random POI the gear visually is fixed and hence down but sim thinks it is “retracted” and trying to land afterwards will have one of two effects:
if crash detection is on, it will crash on landing as even though visually the gear is fixed and down the sim thinks it is up
if you have crash detection “off” or are in dev mode which turns it off by default, the plane will belly in and come to a quick sudden stop with the wheels partially under the ground and probably get stuck
Pretty sure, as i posted above, this is a side effect of the retractable gear bug (it does not have RG in real life or visually in game - but the sim thinks it does) .
If you land with crash detection off and the sim thinks you have “gear up” it behaves the way you describe.
It may just be a simple config file change to fix that. I might look into it.
Odd. If master switch. Alternator Switch and Secondary Bus are all turned on it should light up.
Not that an ADF is a lot of use without knowing the frequency and map location of local NDBs. You really need a Sectional Chart or something. ADF are very old school.
I agree it is a touch pricey. Among other things the slip indicator and throttle work backwards, you need to lower your gear before landing even though it is fixed, and some documentation would also be nice.
Nemeth Design do have a web site if you google them.
My ADF works, I am just too lazy to download sectionals and find local NDBs so I ignore it and use the VFR GPS pop up in game. I am more bothered by the backwards slip ball and having to remember to lower the gear before landing even though visually it has fixed gear that does not raise and lower.
But you are correct if it has an ADF it should work.
Keep in mind, Nemeth only ever published ONE update for this product since releasing it several months ago. This is despite a lot of these requests on their social media (including mine - have everything start as OFF in cold and dark and with Parking Brake enabled to prevent a crazy roll).
Yeah oddly, some quality addons like the Piaggo P149 and the fiat G91 are struggling to gt marketplace approval (though hopefully soon) and some more ordinary stuff like the Aerolite 103 and the Kitfox get approved straight away. Go figure.
Ironically most of the issues with this thing are probably easily fixed, the slip and throttle are backwards, it spawns rolling, the sim thinks it has RG so you either crash on landing with gear up or belly flop and sink into the ground depending on your crash settings and it has no ground roll . Heaps of small things that are quick fixes if they could be bothered
But keep in mind that P.149 was released AFTER Aerolite 103. This thing is quite a few months old and only NOW got into the Marketplace. That being said, I don’t care about the Marketplace. I avoid it like the plague nowadays unless I have to. I’d rather buy direct or from SimMarket. Updates are almost instantly available.
Yeah I bought the Bleriot XI direct from Wing42 and the Jabiru direct from Iris. Going to pick up the Cri Cri and Fiat G91 direct from AT Simulations as well.
I bought this on the marketplace because I did not really care, it had bad reviews but I needed something with good downwards views and a reasonable visual model for making scenery videos. Despite all it’s faults the 103 visually DOES look good
I have the Bleriot which is a wondrous thing with an OK downward view - but even the gnome variant is a full time job just keeping it airborne, the Anzani powered one is worse.
The Power-solo Ultralight was another option and by all accounts flies better than the 103 but visually the textures are a bit basic, though he seems to be improving it day by day - I gather he is learning as he goes.
