Phew. I spent a good portion of today reading through this entire thread. I came here first to check if this was worth buying. I was on the lookout for a retro single-engine GA, and looking at some screenshots from Aeroplane Heaven I quickly fell in love with the retro art deco appearance of this one.
Before reading through the entire thread I decided to take the plunge and buy it. First flight around the Chicago area, I found the plane handled well, and is a joy to fly.
I picked up an amazing tip from this thread that I did not know about before: assign something on the controls for trim axis. I use the prop axis in my HOTAS Warthog throttle unit.
However, some 15-20 minutes into the first flight I lost electrical power. Meaning all external lights and radios go dead. So I spent a few hours reading through the rest of this thread looking for an answer.
Well, the answer it seems, is that this is an issue with all aircraft not having an alternator switch. Whilst reading through the rest of this thread, I’ve left the plane with the engines running at Renton, and sure enough, the electricity went out this time as well.
The “fix” seems to be to hit Ctrl-E as this strangely restores electrical power.
Another thing that bugged me was that I could not figure out how to get the bush wheels working. There’s nothing in the manual about this. On the AH product page there’s this bit of information:
“3 versions of the Cessna and if you know your way around configuration files your choice of which version to use per livery.”
Which didn’t help. But in this thread there’s a couple of posts that mention the click spot on the wheels, that you need to hit whilst being in the cockpit. A word on this in the manual would be decent.
Anyway, as I said she flies well, it’s the easiest taildragger I’ve landed so far in any sim, she looks stunning - BUT - here’s a few critical points (which are not deal-breakers):
- I needed to turn the engine sounds down to around 20% in the settings menu
- There’s some wonkiness going on with the handling of the primer and the starter switches
- There’s a basic autopilot which doesn’t make sense at all as there’s no display anywhere for HDG and ALT values. But you can turn the heading knob and the plane will go left or right. I somehow managed to get it to hold HDG and ALT, which is good enough. Didn’t buy this expecting a fancy autopilot and IFR capabilities.
Would I recommend this? Well, yes, if you’re in the market for a retro single-engine GA and can live with some of the quirks.
Even if you tweak the manual sound mix settings, it doesn’t respect headphone simulation or the door or window being open.
