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Introduction:
1. Southeast Adventure: Vero Beach - Titusville - Orlando, Florida.
2. Southwest Adventure: San Jose - Salinas, California.
3. Northeast Adventure: Boston - Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
4. Northwest Adventure: Seattle - Yakima, Washington.
5. Central Adventure: Grand Junction - Gunnison.
What makes this product different from most adventure add-ons, is that here you won’t find cross country airline flights to be flown with 737s or 747s for many hours. This product includes relatively short Cessna flights, that test your IFR skills. According to the box "You will have to keep the FAA Private Pilot Practical Test Standards (PTS) in mind as you brave the various challenges, both system malfunctions and weather...". It seems like the purpose of these adventures is to see if you can fly in the most realistic conditions and under very strict rules. Oh, and you're graded at the end of each flight. If you failed to contact the right ATC facility, deviate off course or off altitude, missed something on the checklist, etc. you'll get points off.
Package and Documentation:
The package comes with some very good documentation. It includes all of the Cessna's checklists (including the Emergency Checklist, you never know when you'll need that), and it includes all of the maps and charts needed for each of the flights: both arrival and departure airport maps, and en-route nav aid maps. Also included are the lists of procedures for each adventure. This is very helpful in knowing what to expect up ahead (I am not sure if this was included in my box because it’s some kind of a "review edition" but in any case, these lists of procedures can be found on the Internet in FlightSafety's site).
The minimum system requirements aren’t too harsh: FS98, Pentium 100, Win95 (or Windows NT 4.0), 8MB of RAM (or 12 MB for WinNT users), 25 MB of Hard Disk space, Double Speed CD-ROM drive, SVGA monitor, a mouse and a sound card.
Installation:
No complaints here, the installation process is very smooth and quick. Adventure files and Wav files are copied from the CD to the proper directories, without any problems.
Flying the Adventures:
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of adventure add-ons. Sometimes, you get vectored into an area, but you find yourself somewhere else, sometimes you get deviation warnings when no deviation occurred, sometimes it seems that your ATC station has totally forgotten about you, and there isn't much you can do about it. So, how did AviatorPro behave? Let's see.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of shortcut keys to talk to ATC. No, they weren't missing in the documentation, you just don't talk to ATC with this product. By switching to the proper frequency you automatically contact them, and there is no need to read back any message. Ok, that might not be very realistic, but it does make things easier.
Start up, taxi and departure went without problems. I liked the ATC chatter in the background (which seemed like it was taken from actual ATC recordings). I did notice, however, that while switching frequencies I could still here the random ATC chatter in the background. Once I had my new frequency, though, things got better and I heard only the relevant ATC chatter. Even though some messages repeated themselves (one right after the other), this feature does help increase the sense of realism.
The flight went well, and I was starting to feel happy about this product which seemed to have adventures that worked properly. However, Things started to get worse. As the weather deteriorated (quite abruptly, but that’s not the product’s fault), so did the adventure. At first it seemed fine, but once I completed my procedure turn to land, as instructed by the manual, I started getting altitude warnings (by the adventure, not by ATC). These warnings are supposed to be given every time you loose score for something you do wrong. Anyway, I checked my altitude and I was at the 1500 feet I was supposed to be according to the documentation. I guess I could just ignore the warnings, but they still bothered me. When I reached the Missed Approach Point (MAP), I could see the runway in front of me, but according to the documentation "At the MAP you should NOT have the runway in sight and should execute the Missed Approach". Since this adventure is supposed to involve a Missed Approach and a flight to Orlando Intl. (the filed alternate airport), I decided to act as if I hadn't seen the runway, and I began to execute the Missed Approach. According to the maps in the manual, the Missed Approach Procedure is to climb and turn to a certain NDB. However, the adventure document read "When instructed fly a heading of 320 degrees, and climb to 2000ft...". Well, the "when instructed" part was the problem. Even though I was on the right frequency I never heard from ATC. After reaching 2000 ft on my own, and still not hearing anything, I decided to give up.
As far as I can tell, I flew the adventure exactly as I should. I really don't know why I never heard from the Tower, or why I had so many unexplained altitude warnings.
Anyway, I guess that these glitches with adventures just happen, and there's nothing we can do about them. Most of the time the adventure did work fine, however, and I'm not sure whether the same problems necessarily occur with any of the other adventures.
Conclusion:
If you're looking for a challenging, realistic (as much as possible, anyway) collection of Cessna flights, this might be good for you. The adventure did keep me alert, and there was quite a realistic sense to it (until the landing, that is). If you're a novice pilot, however, I don't think that this product is right for you yet. The adventures require the ability to not only fly the plane, but also to be able to follow the checklists, the procedures and the ATC instructions, as accurately as possible.
Some glitches may occur, and even though almost all adventure products have them, you should be aware, that this one has them too. To end the review on a better note, however, it can be said in favor of AviatorPro, that from what I've seen, it strives towards a very realistic environment, and it's one of the only products (actually, the only one I know) that deals with Cessna IFR flights.
Iair Arcavi
arcavi@isdn.net.il
The following additional comments were received from an interested
reader who has also used the product:
"What I did was fly each adventure in the recommended sequence, until the point of where it became clear it wasn't working. Then, I flew each adventure again with the adventure detail sheets (call it a "cheatsheet" if you will) to see what I'd done wrong. In each case, doing exactly what I was supposed to do, each adventure worked perfectly. The really great part was how much I learned about instrument flying, such that I completed the fifth and most difficult adventure the first time I flew it - without the detail sheet. I have to tell you, that after nine years of "simming," this was one of my proudest moments..."