There was time when I felt that all I need are BAe 146, ATR and M500. Now when ATR is more or less abandoned, I fly almost all my flights with the 146 or M500.
There seems to be a gap between these two. Sometimes I would like to fly with a regional prop or turboprop like ATR.
Most of my flights are 45-90 minutes, no more than that. I am not looking for a study level (could be but don’t have to be), but I want the autopilot and navigation to work as well as they do in M500 and BAe.
Oh yes, 95% of my flights are in EU + UK and Norway. So I would like tohave an aircraft that can be seen there in real life (+ real world liveries for that area).
What would you recommend me to get to fill that gap?
The Blackbox Shorts series and the Pilots DHC 7 are a bit smaller, but both are nice turboprops that could fill the gap left by the ATR.
They are a little more involved to fly, but both are fun and work well.
If you don’t mind jets, the HondaJet is a good business flier, though you might be looking for larger. If not, the Beech King Air should be pretty much ubiquitous across the globe, so the Black Square analog conversion would be a nice addon. It’s pretty close to full study level, but still pretty easy to get into the air if you opt to not do all the real-world preflight tests.
The stock TBM930 is close to the same class of plane as the Piper Meridian, and with all of the updates that it’s received, it’s probably the best stock plane in the sim right now.
If you want to stick with T-props with some size, there’s also the Dash 7 - four large kerosene-powered fans and short field capable.
The Blackbox Shorts aircraft look like a lot of fun to me. I’ve been contemplating buying the 360 for a long time. Only reason I haven’t is that I put my aircraft buying on hold for awhile, but it might be something for you to take a look at!
The SWS PC-12 is very nice and very accurately simulated. It’s not exactly half way between the M500 and BAe-146 but it is still substantially larger than the M500. Plus SWS has continued to support and improve it since release with several future updates and additions planned. It will be very much at home in Norway too.
