've
been a flight simmer for a number of years following the progress of this challenging program since FS5.1. I have enjoyed so many excellent freeware aircraft, scenery, and applications that I could not begin to count them all. Nearly all of these files were made available to me at FlightSim.Com, and the best ones always earned a note from me thanking the author for taking the time and effort to create and share them with me.
On the other hand, if an aircraft didn't fulfill my needs or expectations, it was easy enough to delete it without a second thought. It seemed wholy inappropriate to send off an email letting an author know I was disappointed in some way with his product. That's not to say I didn't want to sometimes.
I'm a huge fan of commuter turboprops like the Saab 340's and Dash 8's but they are almost always patterned after a jet's flight model. Even many fast, single engine general aviation planes are based on the Lear. I have found one Saab 340 that is modeled after the King Air in FS2000 and what a joy it is to fly. I can sit on the tarmac with the brakes released, pull the prop levers down and rev the engines to redline without moving an inch then pull them back up and voila, we're ripping down the runway. The only problem is, it's in a Swedish livery and I fly the East Coast of the US, so I don’t exactly fit in...Seriously though, if someone is going to create a turboprop aircraft, please model it after the King Air with prop and condition levers and a realistic overspeed rate.
Anyone run into a panel without a switch to turn on avionics? How about turning on the magnetos or even the battery? I just installed a C-130 panel that didn't have a transponder! Sure, I added it myself after getting soundly beaten up by DFW_TWR on Squawk Box, but a really good panel should not only look like the aircraft it's intended for, it should come with the basics to run it. A big turnoff is to have to load a stock FS2000 aircraft just to get access to an avionics, battery, or magneto switch then re-load the aircraft I wanted to fly! Another peeve is starting multiple engines at once when there are no engine starters provided. Hey, I have no problem with multiple panels so please use them to get the basics in there. As an extra, I’d sure like to see every airliner panel, big or small, come with an air conditioning and smoking switch on the panel which would increase the realism factor on every flight.
In my favorite aircraft, the designer would place a higher priority on a realistic flight model instead of lots of moving parts, which I don’t see from the cockpit anyway. For those of us with force-feedback joysticks, the heavier the plane, the softer the taxi rumbles please. Oh, and when climbing into a cold aircraft, the more complicated the start-up procedure the better!
In closing, I'd like to see the file descriptions, as supplied to FlightSim.Com, tell us up front what model the aircraft was patterned after. The file description could state, for instance, "aircraft uses jet based panel" or "aircraft uses turboprop panel". That would sure make it easier to find the appropriate aircraft panel to marry it to.
John Stanton
Westwind captain #1463, MIA
