The Carenado Seneca is one of the best aircrafts (but the weather radar is not working correctly)

Ahoy sailors,

after buying and testing the Carenado Seneca I found out that I like the Seneca even more than the Ovation. The cockpit is absolute cozy and comfortable, the seats are very soft and ergonomic, everything is tinted in a warm brown tone.

The cockpit illumination is perfect at night, and the instruments are absolute gorgeous (but for me everything that is not standard Garmin glasscockpit is “gorgeous”.) But that´s not the full story, I love that the Seneca has a outside and cabin temperature gauge, plus a functioning TIT gauge (the Carenado Mooney M20 has no functional TIT gauge, the TIT temperature setting is just an empty bar on the right side of the cockpit on this EDM gauge.)
Well in the Seneca the TIT reading is functional.

There are two ampere gauges - an absolute FANTASTIC cockpit, worth every penny.

Now the old problem… the weather radar.
Both weather radars (the implemented Bendix weather radar and the Garmin 750 add-on GPS) are functional in a strange theoretical way - which means they show me a horizontal and vertical radar scan of the cloud formations, but keep the scanned image as a static image without doing further scans while flying forward into new cloud formations.
Also changing the scanning range of the radar does not function.
Only switching between vertical and horizontal scans give me new (but again fully static) radar scans. I assume it´s that old weather radar SDK problem again.

Here are some screenshots, everyone should have this awesome looking machine in the hangar :slight_smile:
(and please FINALLY ADD THE WEATHER RADAR in the SDK, every single add-on developer is waiting for that!) :slight_smile:

Look at this magnificent shaped engine nacelle design with the engine mounted above the wing instead of just having it hanging under the wing in some ugly way:

The weather radar only show a static picture on both the Garmin 750 and the Bendix radar:

The winner for the best shaped engine nacelle design… is the Piper Seneca! This engine nacelle looks like some Gepard or Jaguar while jumping forward. Imagine how strong these turbo-charged six-cylinders are currently pulling on the plane.
May the force of the crankshaft be with you!

When looking at the carpet it is clear that many of the cockpit interior textures are not just mirrored in the middle, but great textures with endless possibilities for repainting and/or giving the interior a uniqué touch:

Normally I don´t care about cabins (especially not boring airliner cabins - repetative rows of hundreds of copy-paste seats are an absolute waste of polygons and rendering/calculating power and VRAM), but cabins of smaller jets, business jets, business planes or private GA planes that look that awesome are truly precious and invite to take a seat while the autopilot is doing the flying… :wink:

I love this eighties Knight Rider style gauge showing me electric details, Amps, voltage, battery charging details. The other setting has manifold pressure RPM and turbine interstage temp (which is in this case related to the turbo charger, but I need to read more detailed technical info about this plane´s engines). There is a little bug, the reading for the outside temp says “OUTS IDE” - I am going to send a bugfix ticket to Carenado to make them consider patching this little spelling error to make that plane perfect :slight_smile:

Detailed from every angle - that´s how a perfect cockpit/cabin looks like.

I love this prop-deicer amp gauge!

I would rate this plane with 5 out of 5 stars - but ONLY if the weather radar problem is getting solved and a fully functioning weather radar that is updating it´s scans while flying and with working scan radius change, is patched :wink:

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Here is a link to a thread which will let you know about the weather radar in MSFS.

Thank you! And I have seen how awesome the weather radar in the CRJ 1000 looks like in a video yesterday. It is implemented in the navigation MFD.
The sooner Asobo finally fully implements weather radar in the SDK the better these awesome add-on DLC aircraft cockpits will be :slight_smile:

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Is that Weather radar from the plane’s on-board weather radar, or Nexrad weather ??

All those pictures but none out the front window. I know why!

I too like this aircraft. The interior, the gages etc are fantastic. But it has one downside you didn’t mention and any perspective buyers need to know. It has extemely poor visibility. You can’t see out the windows. You can’t see out the side windows because those dual engines are huge and sit rather far forward. So no visibility there. The front window is narrow and the little view that could be had is blocked by a big black frame that sits directly in your view. It’s for de-icing the windshield but it’s not removable. As such it blocks your view and thus you can’t see out the front window either. So there’s no visibility in this aircraft.

It’s maddening that the visibility is so poor. The aircraft performs well and is beautiful. But if you want to see the outside world… well you can’t. I wrote to Carenado and suggested they make the de-icing frame on the windshield an option that can be turned off via the iPad. Hopefullly they take my suggestion. Until that happens I just can’t recommend this aircraft.

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I was pleasantly surprised by this Carenado as in the past, I avoided them entirely from previous experience (known for good looks but shallow systems/performance/realism). This one is good to me. The real aircraft has that de-icing panel and its annoying. For flight sim, it should be taken off in my opinion. I can see just fine as I use Quickview often on the yoke (alpha). Other than that I love this plane.
Got fs realistic as well. It helps.

I don´t care much about the generic outside world, the visibility is good enough for me and when flying the clouds look absolut fantastic. The cockpit and the realism and the systems are most important :slight_smile:
This is how the views look like:

This beautyfully shaped engine nacelle with it´s cooling cut-outs on the back is a pure joy to look at:

Why is everyone hating this small de-icing frame so much?
This is how this airplane looks, taking it off would be unrealistic. This is how a real Seneca feels in the cockpit, and these Jaguar-leap shaped engines with these awesome propellers look great:

The deicing device is important when flying in cold conditions.

The hint is to go forward and a little bit lower with the camera while flying, when the camera eyepoint is too high like in this go-pro video, one only sees the overhead panel switches :smiley:

I have found two bugs in this airplane which I will send as a ticket to Carenado (if possible, but their e-mail is in one of the PDF´s).

I would fix these two spelling errors myself, but I cannot find the Seneca instrument ini files to correct the code lines myself, that´s why I must write Carenado an e-mail and hope that they will fix these small spelling errors (patching this would take less than a minute).
When these two spelling errors are fixed and with functioning weather radar the Seneca could even be a six out of five stars :ok_hand:

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Hi, it is possible to add the Garmin 750 GPS system into the cockpit just like in the Carenado Mooney M20.
And the Garmin 750 Pro has a weather radar function for vertical and horizontal scans, but this is non-functional and shows a static image only just like the build-in Bendix weather radar of the airplane.

The Carenado Mooney M20 Ovation has the same Garmin GTN 750 GPS to implement into the cockpit navigation gauge stack :slight_smile:

Hi,
While it has lots of eye candy, the flight model is poor. Just try to fly the Seneca with one engine out (which is done IRL regularly during multiengine training), and see how far you will go. For me this is a real letdown.- Literally.
The Seminole works far better.

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Carenado and their aircraft have been around for quite some time now and I think we should all know by now what you will get or perhaps not get if you pick one up. For anyone new to Carenado It’s pretty much always the same, nice modelling and textures and let down by flight model and systems. I get the feeling they either have more resource on the graphics side or that’s the part they like to do and is therefore where their focus is.

This is of course just a general view. Perhaps someone would care to give a shout ouf to any that they feel are good in all areas.

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You were making a review/recommendation and I noticed you didn’t point out this weakspot, which for some people is very important. I care about seeing the outside world and that’s why I mentioned it. I read a few reviews before buying this plane and nobody mentioned the poor view. When I bought the plane I was disappointed in the view but was more disappointed in the reviewers I read for not mentioning it. But I appreciate you updating your review with details about this.

Funny, I never noticed the 2 spelling mistakes you pointed out. But now that I know they’re going to bug the heck out of me. I’m not sure it was a good thing you pointed those out :wink:

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What is being displayed on the Bendix unit and where is it’s information coming from. ?

The GTN750 weather radar I recognize, (in its current Bugged, non scanning state), but what is on the Bendix ??

Interesting - I will try it.
What happens when I shut down one engine that is so wrong and shows unrealistic flight dynamic? This makes me really curious now… In a forum (for real pilots and real aircraft buyers to find out more about the Seneca) I have read “that she feels like as if she makes a 90° turn immediately when one engine is shut down on the runway”… :smiley: I would not try that in a real plane.

The aircraft´s systems are accurate and perfect both in the Mooney M20 and the Seneca. It is a steam-gauge airplane and these gauges cannot have several sub-systems and pages. All gauges work perfect and accurate, like in the PMDG Cloudmaster.

The only thing I have noticed that seems wrong is that the MAP manifold pressure gauge in the Mooney Ovation M20. The MAP gauge climbs to 30 and stays in the maxed out position when the aircraft is shut-off.

I haven´t noticed the poor view, for me flying the Seneca looks almost exactly the same as flying the Beechcraft Bonanza or Baron. :slight_smile:
If the view outside is a pure joy like in the F-16 or blocked by ugly oversized bulky window frames like in the Tomcat or the Trinidad - this fully depends on the airplane designer.
I cannot hype criticize a third party virtual airplane developer for re-creating the same either superb or limited view the real aircraft has in an accurate way. :wink:

Both instruments show a horizontal cloud scan from the weather radar, the GNS750 the nearest cloud formation very close-range and the Bendix weather radar with a long-range radar scan from my Colorado mountains flight today.

Don’t know about the Seneca but I certainly haven’t read that about the Mooney. The Mooney thread on this forum is not exactly glowing towards that aircraft. The gauges are never normally the issue it’s the switches/controls that normally are not accurate. If they are as you say then every switch/control should do the correct thing and as a result you should be able to operate with a real POH. That has never been the case with any Carenado aircraft that I’ve had. Which comes nicely onto the flight model. The POH performance numbers need to be correct to call it accurate.

That one engine topic made me curious, and I tested one engine flight.

This is what happens when in a real Seneca the right engine falls out:

The airspeed falls to 110 to 100 knots.

Here is what happened when I shut down one engine on the Seneca:

With flaps down stable flight with 85-90 knots.

With flaps retracted and fully loaded to maximum take-off weight she kept flying with 95 knots:

Everything just like in the real Seneca :slight_smile:

Hmmm… a real POH I have one for the PMDG Cloudmaster. But I could not find one for the Seneca V or the Ovation.
Here is a POH for the Seneca II:
https://www.rochesterair.com/documents/Piper-Seneca-II-POH.pdf

I am too lazy to read the differences between the Seneca II and the simulated Seneca V because it has gotten very late tonight, but in the YouTube videos the cockpit looks exactly the same as in the simulated Seneca. To the last switch and button (even this strange “either beacon or navigation lights - but never both at the same time on” switch some did not believe really being in the cockpit, is in… :wink: )

When switching off one of the two magnetos, the propeller rpm sinks 10-30 rotations. This is simulated too.

I am honest I don´t really know how to test such an airplane to check realism like Grim Reapers from DCS can. I don´t know how to measure the runway lenght to see if this is accurate, I am too lazy to completely fill the tanks and fly for five hours to see if the flight distance with full tanks is accurate, I can also not measure the necessary runway lenght on an hot & high airport, and so on.
But I love reading POHs and comparing YouTube cockpit videos with my simulated Carenado treasure to get that feeling if everything is simulated in a correct and realistic way (how fast is a Seneca accelerating in a GoPro cockpit vid - does it feel the same in my simulated one? Is the airspeed gauge on the runway crawling up as fast as in my Seneca? Are the climb engine settings and the climb speeds realistic? And more…)
It´s more a look and feel test but not testing accuracy by the exact numbers.

But this would be impossible in a real plane too :wink: imagine having the same engine type in the same car type from the year 2000. A perfectly maintained car looses 5% engine power, a poor maintained with old oil can loose up to 25% of it´s engine power.
Also you can have two exact same real-life Senecas build in 2004, one is climbing with 95 knots IAS and 1100fpm, the other one is climbing only with 87 knots IAS and 1000fpm with the exact same engine settings.
That´s why saying “only these exact POH handbook values must be correct - and everything else is false and a bad simulation” is never a good idea because the airframe of an older plane is slightly bent with the wings no longer in an absolute perfect aerodynamic position and therefore maybe generating 1% to 5% drag, the engine is getting old and loosing 1 to 5 percent of it´s torque but you will not notice this because these fixed rotation speed propellers are still rotating with the same 2700rpm (but the pulling force is weakened with a weaker engine)… many factors change aircraft parameters over time :slight_smile: especially in older aircraft from 1970.

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Plane is good

Hi,
I have to retract my statement above about the Seneca.

The reason I kept crashing when flying single engine was that I am not able to fully feather the prop with my Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant. Seems the the feather switches do not work (yet).
Once I fully feathered the prop, using my mouse, the airplane behaved as expected.

So it was my error, my bad.

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You should buy the Seneca and fly it - you will never get a better and more comfortable and comfy biz plane (untill Carenado is releasing another masterpiece) :slight_smile:

Here is a great review video from a flight instructor about the Seneca, this takes longer than my Bahamas flight right now, and is very detailed: