Eaglesoft Raytheon Beechjet 400A

By Andrew Herd (2 June 2004)

he Raytheon Beechjet 400A can trace its origins back to the Mitsubishi Diamond 2 business jet, which first flew in 1985. Only eleven were produced before Beech acquired the type certificate, re-engined the plane with P&WC JT15D-5 fans, redesigned the interior and called it the Beechjet 400. 64 had been built by 1990, when Beech introduced the 400A, which had better overall performance and a panel full of Collins Pro Line 4 EFIS displays. A luxury interior was fitted as standard from 1996, which was just as well, because with maximum fuel, cruising at 403 knots, the range had grown to 1673 nautical miles. The 400A is a powerful plane, with a maximum speed of 468 knots and a service ceiling of over 43,000 feet. More than 550 have been delivered to date, including 180 built for the USAF as T1-A Jayhawks, which function as trainers, transports and tankers. Flight crew is one or two, with space for six passengers – though up to 8 can be carried if they are prepared to do without the bar and one of them spends the flight sitting on the john (really).

The Eaglesoft Beechjet 400A simulation is a 26.6 Mb download, which comes with a free Premier 1 bizjet (another 26.7 megs), at a price of $24.95. The file can be downloaded from the Eaglesoft website, but cannot be installed until it is activated using a keyfile sent when purchase is verified. I found the whole process trouble free.

No documentation is included with the package, presumably to keep the file sizes down, but a 25 page flightdeck manual and 6 page checklist in pdf format can be found on the Eaglesoft downloads page – just keep scrolling down until you find them. The same page has the manual and checklist for the Premier 1 and all the documentation is in English, with the exception of a French translation of the Premier 1 checklist. The checklists are great, but the manuals could do with being much more comprehensive and there is no tutorial flight, though there is a helpful ‘quickstart’ section which will get you off the ground in fine style.

For space reasons, this review will concentrate on the 400A, the Premier 1 being an earlier Eaglesoft design which, while pleasing enough, isn’t up to the standard of their other aircraft. The Beechjet is listed under Raytheon in FS and comes with a single livery, though the file libraries are full of freeware repaints, including several from Ed Knapp’s talented hands. The only potential problem with these is that installing them involves editing the aircraft.cfg file, but Ed provides more than enough information on how to do this (and there is a tutorial elsewhere on FlightSim.Com if you need more help).

The visual model is more than acceptable, with all the usual animations, plus thrust reversers, opening cabin door and landing lights. Hot keys can be used to make the pilots don sunglasses and to lower the window shades. There is a full virtual interior, simulated to a reasonable standard, but without any frills like animated passengers. Frame rates were generally comparable to the default Lear.

The flight model is fine, if apparently a little stiff in roll, but compensates by being particularly good at capturing the feel of taking off and landing a plane of this class. There are limitations to how near to reality any flight model can be in FS because of the nature of the sim, but the 400A definitely passes the test. It is a hot ship, as you will discover if you do a climb to altitude at full throttle, and it demonstrates to perfection the low speed handling issues that swept wings generate. Below a certain speed, the wing simply quits flying, which is as it should be, so power on approaches are the rule and it would be as well to commit the relevant airspeeds to memory before doing your first flight.

Thanks to the Collins glass, the 2D panel is quite an eyeful, its main features being a big primary flight display (PFD) and Multifunctional Display (MFD) on the pilot’s side. The right hand panel isn’t simulated. The viewpoint is a fairly realistic compromise between what a monitor can display and a real pilot can see. Other notable gauges include a radio magnetic indicator (RMI) and a Radio Tuning Unit (RTU). A row of simicons at bottom left allow the user to pop up various subpanels, including: the overhead; pedestal, which is where the autopilot and course and heading selectors hide; kneeboard; and the standard FS GPS. The panel is appealing, but suffers from blurred text on the legends to such an extent that I could not read some of the words at all. To be fair, this isn’t too much of a problem, because you soon get to know where everything is, but it can be something of a challenge early on and it would be good to see an upgrade that fixed this. For some reason I had occasional trouble with mouse flicker when running the 2D panel in full screen mode, but this may be a video card driver problem, as it worked very well otherwise. All the instruments are all perfectly readable and the PFD/MFD can be enlarged for approaches.

The PFD is stacked with functions, just like the real thing, including minimum descent altitude selection (MDA), decision height, radar altimeter tape, V-speeds and autopilot status in addition to the usual stuff. What it lacks is the ability to display the magic magenta line, even with an FS flight plan loaded. The MFD has five modes, plus a test page, and can be used to display checklists, as well as selecting which bearing needles to display on the PFD. According to Eaglesoft, it is possible to use Reality-XP gauges with the panel, though if they supply a panel.cfg to facilitate this, I couldn’t find it.

Although the real plane has a flight management computer (FMC) the sim does not, Eaglesoft having opted instead to provide a curious little pop-up panel that looks like an FMC but has no functions beyond tuning the radios and which isn’t mentioned anywhere in the manual. Altering frequencies using this unit changes those displayed on the RTU and vice versa.

The 400A talks to you via a female-voiced ground proximity warning system (GPWS) and a male first officer, who can be turned on by clicking the lowest simicon on the left. In general, you won’t hear much from your P2 once you have taken off and cleaned up the plane, but he will chime in if you try anything likely to challenge the laws of physics.

With all that power strapped on the back, the 400A demands a decent sound set and sure enough it has, although as I have remarked in the past, one jet sounds much like another.

I flew the usual test flights, which didn’t turn out anything unexpected. The autopilot appears to be the stock FS unit, which means that the 400A inherits all the peculiarities of the default planes when flown in this mode. An IAS switch is included, which is handy, as many bizjets leave you in charge of the throttles, and I found it worked fine, although the sim had a strong tendency to fly with one wing slightly low. The one trap with the AP is that it has an on/off switch and if you don’t engage this, the unit will not become active matter how many modes are lit, but it does mean you can preselect the setup you want and then flick in the unit when you need it.

Overall the 400A is a solid package, much less complex than the Citation, but still fun to fly. With the Citation priced at only three dollars more, you might wonder how Eaglesoft expect to sell the 400A, but do bear in mind you get a completely free Premier 1 thrown in for your money. The Premier is best described as being on a level with the default FS jets, but since there are developers out there trying to sell much worse designs as payware, it is generous of Eaglesoft to throw it in.

Although I stress this is a review rather than a beta test, I didn’t find any serious bugs, which isn’t surprising, given that the addon has been around for a while. If you have mastered the Lear and are looking for something a little different, this could be it.

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