Woody Woodpeckers Unite…
I don’t really know what happened, but as of right now this thing is disappointing.
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As soon as you load up either cold and dark or on runway, there are two woodpeckers knocking on something right above your head. If you disengage the parking brake, one of them dies. The other one is immortal. This knocking sound will persist the entire flight. I think I will have the woodpeckers haunting my nightmares.
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What is that THING? That THING behind the captain’s seat? It’s a blurry carpet of some sort that’s used as a separator between the cockpit and the cabin? It’s straight out of 1998. For the love of god, fix it, please. Or put something else there. Or take it away. SOMETHING. It’s REALLY low-res and spoils otherwise passable graphic quality of this aircraft.
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The exterior model is gorgeous. The interior is pretty well done. It’s no Carenado or Asobo, or Aerosoft for that matter, but… it’s fine. But I have a small issue with how STERILE everything is - for an aircraft produced in the 70s and the LAST ONE being produced in 1990, the textures have absolutely no wear on them. It’s like it just rolled off the production line. It may be a design choice, but it takes me out of the experience a little bit.
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It hand-flies pretty well. A little touchy on banking, but it’s pretty good in terms of that.
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Which cannot be said for the Autopilot. For one, the autopilot is located down below on the right… towards you from the throttles. That makes it a PAIN to operate because you gotta take your sights all the way down to your waist to operate it. It’s an unfortunate placement. If that’s how it is in a real one, it’s… a curious design. But I am not gonna hold this against the developers. But I was fighting with the autopilot the entire way. It seems to not work consistently when arming VS mode. The fact that you gotta hand fly it while screwing around with the autopilot that’s wonky makes it a challenge.
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The prop levers seem to not affect RPM. You can see that in my shots above - RPM is at almost 100% when the prop lever is in the 80s… or in the 30s. The only thing that seems to lower it is reducing thrust via the throttle.
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I forgot to disengage the left starter. Yes, it’s a pilot error. But that made me lose avionics half-way through the flight. Gens were on… But once I turned off the starter, my avionics came back. Oops.
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The clickspot to power up the EFB is REALLY small and weird. There is not any OBVIOUS place, but you have to click on the very edge of the iPad to turn it on. Whatever, no biggie.
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The sounds on this thing are irritating. They are tinny and sound like a low-powered vacuum cleaner. I don’t know what the real thing sounds like but… it’s bad both on the outside and the inside.
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Weather radar is off and INOP. Figures.
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Night lights in the cockpit are nice, but outside illumination of the pavement is pretty dim.
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Gauges are SMALL. Fonts on them are even smaller. They are REALLY hard to read. Just like Virtualcol’s. I guess… it is what it is. That’s the cockpit.
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Avionics are Garmin GNS530, default.
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It has potential, but those glaring issues with sound and that THING behind me need to be addressed.
Overall, I find this one to be better than Virtualcol Beech 99. But not as good as Carenado’s stuff. It doesn’t hold the candle to Carenado visually, but it’s not ugly (other than that THING behind your back)…
The sounds and the autopilot and that THING behind me make this a pretty annoying experience right now and for $37 US dollars? I am not impressed. Sorry. I really wanted to like it more, but the woodpeckers, man… They are brutal! The woodpeckers ganged up on me the whole time and… oh… NO! MAKE THEM STOP!
I didn’t have time to really dig deep with the systems yet. I just wanted the woodpeckers to stop so I didn’t even shoot an ILS approach yet. I just wanted to get it down to the ground. That’s what I got so far.
Your mileage may vary.