simMarket: BLUEMESH - AMPHIBIOUS ULTRA LIGHT AIRCRAFT - SKYWAVES MSFS
This looks interesting. I am downloading this now. It seems like this might be the first aircraft where it is truly amphibious - you can taxi from dry land into water and take off from there. Screenshots and review on the way!
Yep - I saw this on the website earlier on. Quirky. I can see some people having a lot of fun with it.
Looking forward to your opinion Jeremy. The screenshots look very, very good, and if it flies nice, for 8 EUR that’s a hell of a bargain.
This is an interesting one… On one hand, I am able to do what I wanted here - taxi from ground to water and back. On the other hand, this thing is a pain.
No brakes of any kind - this makes ground handling VERY difficult. You better take it SLOW, because this thing has a nasty tendency to lean to the side and overturn, which will end things quickly for you. The other thing is - holding short of ANYTHING is impossible because you can’t stop it, even if it’s slow. It takes an incredible amount of time to bleed off speed - on the ground OR in the air.
In the air, you are at the mercy of the wind. Aileron input is useless - it makes the aircraft tilt, but not really go in any particular direction. Your best bet is to use the rudder to control and steer it - this is Bleriot territory hard.
You can cruise with throttle at 0 for MINUTES - it doesn’t bleed off airspeed easily, so it’s hard to set it down on water - it just wants to fly. Once you are in the water, activating water rudder does a lot of what it does on the ground - tilt easily at higher speeds. You will end up capsizing with a crash of “You crashed into water”… It’s just very difficult to control this thing in any sort of precise manner.
Landing on solid ground - again, good luck. You won’t bleed off speed quickly and with such limited ability of lining up with any kind of runway, you are again at the mercy of the wind.
When you start cold and dark, the aircraft rolls right away. Remember, no brakes. So if there is a building in front of you, you die. The way to deal with it is use the rudder right away to turn it and it will come to a stop.
Texture quality and modeling are passable. Looks pretty decent, nothing that distracts you. Instruments are pretty hard to see unless you are zoomed into them. You won’t be using them much. This is strictly VFR and you can estimate your speed pretty well as is.
Biggest issue for me is power management and ground handling. I get that it’s a soaring kinda thing, but it just travels WAY too far on zero throttle. You feel weightless. And I can’t imagine that the real one has zero ability to stop. Ground handling is slow and painful here…
Is it worth the money? It’s $10! Yes, it is. But I can’t see myself flying it often because it’s a pain to fly and control and if I want a novelty stroll around my beloved Vieques with some beach stops, it’s there for me. But again, good luck with GETTING it to that specific beach. And once you are there, the beach is pretty small - remember, you can’t brake, and can’t steer at higher speeds cause you will tilt over and die. So… limited usability. If anyone has any questions, I am happy to answer.
Fast and quality review as always, @BostonJeremy77!
It sounds very annoying but also very different - which to me is a good thing. Maybe I’ll wait and see if the devs iron out the kinks in this…
It’s probably going to find success with the more casual MP streamers - I can see all kind of Keystone Kops shenanigans with this one.
I’d love to see this improved a bit. It’s already worth the money, but whenever I set out on anything, I always have to think about what aircraft I want to fly and why. For most low and slow flying seaplane scenarios right now I’d choose the Bush League Legends’ X-Cub Float version over this BUT the ability of this one to taxi from water and back is huge. If the power/brake issues are addressed, as well as some control adjustments, I could see this one taking over. It will be very curious when the PowerSolo 103 from VGP releases the float version. That also has a potential to become a go-to.
Nice review, i think i will hold off on it just yet, and wait til its matured a bit.
The part about it not bleeding off speed seems way off to me. I mean… look at it, its a dingy with wings!
Not to compare sims here, but i did have the same Polaris ultralight in xplane, by Vskylabs. With throttle to idle that thing would come down in a hurry, and always had to have plenty of throttle while landing. It just seems to me this is more in line with what you would expect from something like this.
That’s exactly my thoughts too.
Good news: I heard from Jimmy from BlueMesh and he will be incorporating some changes to be released tomorrow! This will include brakes! This should make it much better, so I am looking forward to the updated version and will post my thoughts once I take it for a spin!
A story! - I was training on ultralights a number of years ago, and the one I mostly flew had no brakes. When taxying off the runway there was a hill down to the hangar. Used to scare the heck out of me as I accelerated, throttle idle, to the building. Never got used to that. Sometimes a 90 degree turn saved the day. And in flight… if you cut power you better have a field in mind right under your nose. It had the glide characteristics of a brick. It was a FlightStar for those who are curious.
That’s a pretty cool story, man! I don’t know why anyone would build an aircraft with no brakes. I mean, bicycles have brakes. 
My feelings exactly. I had trained on GA before, and this made no sense to me.
Finally, a way to get to those “less-than-legal” fishing spots. I’ll keep an eye on this one. The fact they’re updating today with brakes is a good sign.
I just downloaded the update. I have a work meeting for an hour or so and will then test it. Will report back here what I find.
Just did about 5 flights with this. Good and bad news.
Good news:
Ground control and handling have improved significantly now that there are brakes. It’s now easy to taxi with this thing and get it to where you want it to go without tipping over.
Aileron input in the air seems to have more of an impact now. It still feels DRIFTY (though there was 15 knot wind in Vieques as I was flying), but with a combination of rudder and aileron input, it’s more controllable now.
Bad news:
When starting from Cold and Dark, Master Battery no longer powers up radio comms, so it’s impossible to communicate with ATC. This was not an issue prior to the update and should be fixed rather simply.
It still takes a LONG time to drift in the air with throttle on zero. It doesn’t come down easy at all.
It feels much more prone to tipping over in water. I now have to supply substantial aileron input to reduce tilting of the aircraft to the side.
Possibly the biggest downside is that in none of the 5 attempts I did I was able to taxi from water to land. The gear doesn’t extend when you are in deep water, but DOES when you come close to the shore. That seems to be in line with what it needs to do. I am not sure HOW it differentiates whether it’s “close to shore” or not. Water depth? Is that even simulated/modeled in MSFS? But whenever I extend the gear and approach the shore, it now just washes up on it as if the gear is NOT extended. Somehow this was not what I experienced before the update and was a big reason this aircraft stood out to me, but now I am wondering if that was a fluke and just an one-off (or two-off)… One time I think I had enough airspeed for it to become airborne, and because the gear was extended, whenever it touched on water RIGHT by the shore, I just got the “you crashed into water” message.
I am now starting to realize that we need an airspeed indicator in the cockpit. I am never sure when to rotate - the aircraft just sort of tilts to the side slightly and that’s the only way I know it’s “ready to fly”… Some kind of documentation would be helpful as to Vr speed coupled with an airspeed indicator for the cockpit…
So… in other words, it fixed ground handling and some air handling characteristics but seems to have broken a few other things in the process and the excessive floating when on zero power wasn’t fixed.
This needs a little more love for it to be truly enjoyable, in my eyes.
I am sorry that I don’t have a “warm and fuzzy” about this one yet.
Just got an e-mail with some valuable feedback from Jimmy at BlueMesh. As I don’t think it contains anything anyone would want to keep confidential, I feel comfortable posting his communication regarding the things I highlighted. I responded that I agree with the realism aspect and don’t think that many of the deficiencies I pointed out apply any longer. If it has no radio, let’s keep it with no radio. If it has no airspeed indicator, don’t add one. If it’s truly drifty and hard to fly, let’s keep it this way. Below is his response. I very much enjoy that he has been responsive and engaging with me on this aircraft. I do think it’s a good value. Unfortunately, a lot of issues stem from MS/Asobo’s current implementation of water physics, so they are limited on what can be done. I understand that.
Re, for the
“drifty” effect it’s completly normal, that’s the real effect.
There is no Radio in this aircraft in real
You can’t down the gear when you are on the water, it come from MSFS not us, try the icon for exemple
There is no “speedmeter” on this aircraft
Amphibious aircrafts are limited actually in MSFS, for exemple floating.
And we can’t make an aircraft funny to fly, but like the real one 
For exemple the other ULM run à 120 knots that’s not real at all…
We actually work with a real pilot, and he told us that it’s a really hard aircraft to fly, so a lot of things about the flight model is normal.
But we gonna improve this aircraft and hope you will improve your review soon considering these informations.
Hello everyone, indeed it is an aircraft that is not easy to fly in real life. Due to it’s aerodynamism, and the inflatable boat body does not help matters. We try to improve this Ultra lIght aircraft several times a week before sending it to the flight simulator marketplace. You can find several videos on Youtube about the Flight model that show how weird can be this aircraft to fly, especially on Roll for exemple. It is also slow so it does’nt float as i’ve seend on a SimMarket Review ( be sure you fly with a modern flight model also ). So yeah if you have any suggestions that missed for this aircraft that can respect the real aircaft we can bring it into Flight Simulator. Best regards
Sorry for my bad english …
I just bought this and I think it’s a ton of fun to fly!!! Great work, something nice just to tote around with. LOL. I do hope someday it can make the water to land transition, that would be AMAZING!
Thanks!!
XCub Amphibious did it first 
