Yeah the Wilga is as ugly as sin, but it’s one of the best airplanes around for low and slow flight.
It’s got plenty of character and and it’s very fun to fly.
I’m digging the freeware Flyndive Smaug lately (available on flightsim.to) which is a fictional aircraft based on the Draco. It has pretty simple textures, simplistic controls (except that it does work with the PMS GTN750 mod) and no manual or checklists.
If you need accurate turbine modeling, failure modes, etc. it’s not for you. But it’s a hoot and a half to fly.
No changes for me this month.
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Draco was based on the Wilga 2000, a late variant of the Wilga that replaced the Radial engine with a 300 HP Lycoming. Converting a Wilga 2000 to take a turbo prop was still a significant exercise.
Most of the Wilga 2000 were produced by EAD who bought the rights to the Wilga, and promised as part of the deal to continue Polish production while expanding to also make the aircraft in the US - and then controversially, a few years later, decided they were bored with making GA aircraft and stopped all production despite a large backlog of orders and substantial continued interest. The Wilga had been in production for over 40 years at the time EAD pulled the plug.
This the 104MA Wilga 2000, the last model sold …
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All of this Wilga talk finally inspired me to get that new Wilga I bought sometime last year out of the hangar and fly the thing.
So now I have. I picked one with the biggest tyres (because bigger tyres are always better 
) and jumped in with no idea. I suppose I wasn’t entirely surprised to find the thing was all in Polish, and I never have tooltips on so that made it interesting. With the interactive checklist I found most of the switches and managed to get it started up and fly it. It was all steam gauges which at least were recognisable. It seems that all of the rotary knobs were anticlockwise to turn them on, which is odd.
So I took off from Hawker and flew round Wilpena to enjoy the view. It all seemed to go OK. I didn’t fall in love with it yet, and it may be in the eye of the beholder but it sure is ugly. I’m sure if I dedicated time to it then I’d enjoy the depth, and the large number of variants which presumably all have different stuff. Surely I’ll be back eventually.
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80 variant is in English if you’re wondering.
Had a great hour flight in Wilma yesterday around the Yosemite valley. Never get tired of this girl!
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Ah I think I was in a 35P or something. I’ll try ask 80 for the English next time!
Just curious: as I own the Wilga, do I maybe need the C170 as well ? I mean it’s just 10 bucks.
I’d get the Rans Coyote before that 
hahaha. Lucky she is deaf from being stuck right behind that radial for many years running and so she didn’t hear that!
But it’s like a not-quite-supermodel lady that you get on well with. You will grow to love her after some time and look past the big nose and awkward stance!
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The float version also has a nice feature, you can use an oar to paddle it around the water.
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The Wilga is Got Friends so I already know it will be good. In all honestly I’m just coming up with excuses to try and slow down my 3rd party plane purchases lol. I grabbed the Goose cus I don’t have a decent flying boat and the iniBuilds version has awful ground handling that makes a smooth takeoff on land impossible. But I have quite a few bush planes so not sure I need another 1 (or 2 if I count the Coyote).
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Also got the Wilga yesterday. My first tail-dragger, so definitely need to learn some technique. But so far so good with a couple of short Alaska bush flights. Will have to try Nanwalek tonight!
I’m already trying to figure out how to map the ultra-simple autopilot pitch and roll commands to my rocker switches via Spad.Next…no luck with LVARS and Events yet.
Yeah, I know I should just hand-fly this plane, but it’s sometimes hard to sightsee and keep it level.
A couple of hints for new Wilga owners.
-
you can fly with the doors removed for a better view
-
the wipers function (switch over head) and do a good job of removing windscreen ice
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I almost got the wingla then decided to get the flying iorn p38 instead because I saw the twin engines on it
Spitfire. Spitfire. Spitfire… Flying Iron Mk IX
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“Powerful” is not a word I’ve heared to describe an ATR before - a Q400 has more power in one engine than the entire ATR72 
. The -42 is quite OK, but the big one feels like there’s something wrong with it ( and I’m assured that’s quite correct, the real thing’s climb rate is astonishingly poor ).
If he got data from Airbus then I’m not sure how much ended up in the plane - as I mentioned before I sat down with a crew to have a look at how it flew & they were shaking their heads about it & wanted it to be rather less responsive ( to be clear, most of their hrs on Dash-8 which is a bit heavier ). As MSFS planes go it’s better than quite a few in that area out of the box though. I don’t think the absurd reverse is fixable without doing both thrust & drag which is basically changing everything, so I’d just avoid using it at all other than backing off a stand.
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Hang on… is this your vote? 
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I bought the AH MK1 …
… because Mk1 Spitfire … nuf said
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Would love to see the numbers on that position edit if you have them handy
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Yes no worries… I thought I had posted it but it was actually a fix I did for the Cowan 500E that had even worse problem, but same idea to solve it.
I am not on my PC for a few hours but I will paste in the values I settled on when I boot up later.