Aerosoft Beech 18 - Martha's Vineyard For FS2004

By Andrew Herd (15 July 2006)

s far back as 1930, Walter Beech saw there was a need for a fast, enclosed cabin biplane to transport executives in comfort, but the board of Curtiss-Wright, his employers at that time, didn't see it that way and the idea only took root when Beech formed his own company in 1934. The result was the classic Model 17 'Staggerwing', which went on to sell 781 hulls, many of them on the back of a performance which outclassed the Army Air Corps fighters of the time. Initial sales were, however, slow, and so Beech and Ted Wells (his chief designer) did a survey to find out what their customers needed, and more importantly, what they might build to save their young company from dependence on a single design. Everything pointed to a twin, so in late 1935, the engineering team began work on the Model 18, a plane which, though very different to its predecessor, turned out to be every inch a classic in its own right.

Leaving aside the number of engines, the obvious difference between the Staggerwing and the Model 18 is that the latter is a monoplane, but where the fuselage of the 17 used wooden formers and stringers, the twin was built around a welded chrome-steel truss and semi-monocoque. Just about the only fabric covered parts of the plane were the control surfaces and the degree of precision involved in assembly gave the company some major headaches as it was far beyond anything they had done before. But there was a problem - even with two 320 hp Wright R-760s iinstalled, the Model 18 was noticeably underpowered and it could not compete with the Lockheed Electra. Despite a long series of experiments with different engines, few sold, until in desperation, Beech opted for an extensive redesign to create the Model 18S, which sported a pair of 450 hp Pratt& Whitney Wasp Juniors and was fast enough to win the MacFadden Trophy in early 1940; but sales still stood at a derisory 39 hulls.

And then came the war. By then Beech had gotten all the bugs out of the plane and they rightly benefited from huge military orders, with the result that by 1957, when production finally ended, more than 6000 Model 18s had been built, which isn't bad for a design that had struggled to make sales in the beginning. When you remember that that total doesn't count the Super 18, production of which only finished in 1969, this Beech twin can claim, as far as I am aware, the longest continuing production record of any commercial twin ever built. Just about every possible type of gear was fitted on Model 18s, ranging from skis to floats, and the ones with wheels weren't all taildraggers either, because the H18 featured a tricycle undercarriage. All kinds of after-market conversions appeared from the mid-fifties onward, including the Pacific Air Motive 'Tradewind', which had a single fin and rudder; the Hamilton 'Westwind', which flew with PT6A turboprops; and the Volpar 'Turbo 18' which was fitted with Garrett TPE-331 turbines and once again had trike gear.

The Aerosoft Beech 18 is available in the Pilot Shop in a DVD style box, an added attraction being that the installation includes scenery for the famous resort island of Martha's Vineyard, located off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Minimum hardware requirements are quoted on the box as FS2004, Windows XP, a 2.0 Ghz Pentium, 512 Mb of RAM, a 3D graphics card with 128 Mb of RAM and a CD-ROM drive - and I would say this is realistic, for once, although as always, a faster system would be better. The box contains the installation CD, a 54 page German/English manual, a registration card and an installation key code. Having run Aerosoft software installations many times in the past, I didn't expect any problems, nor were there any, and inexperienced users won't face any challenges, given that once the disk activity stops there is nothing left to do but fly the plane and enjoy the scenery.

A quick check of the Start menu showed a new program group under the Aerosoft label, which has links to a second manual, this time a 30 page pdf describing the functions of the panels and which gives an overview of the features of the plane, before finishing with a clutch of approach plates for the included airfields. There is also a link to Microsoft .NET, which is required if you want to use the MP3 player that is fitted in the panel, a fun feature, given that it will play any MP3 you have on your hard disk. The pdf also explains some of the philosophy behind the development of the addon, which in a nutshell was to capture the spirit of the Beech 18 rather than to simulate a particular plane or model down to the last rivet. The message is that some compromises have been made, but having flown the sim for many hours, I would say they were good compromises.

Five different variants of the Beech 18 are included, ranging from a Twin Beech Expeditor, with a couple of Commemorative Air Force liveries; through passenger version with three liveries, including a US Army scheme; a cargo 18, with a couple of liveries; and passenger and cargo float planes, the former sporting three schemes and the latter only one, although it is probably the most eye-catching of them all. Effectively, all the models included are variants of the D18S and so they all have the same engines and panel arrangement. It would have been interesting to have an H18 to compare the trike and taildragger versions, but the inclusion of the floatplanes will be a popular decision and I can see this addon putting some smiles on the bush pilot fraternity's faces.

The visual model is fine by FS standards, with some nice detailing on the Wasps and a full complement of aerials on the military planes. You get all the usual animations, plus working cowl flaps, pilots that look about as they are flying, and an opening fuselage door - a short list compared to some, but there isn't much else that could have been animated on this venerable twin... or is there? Using the VC, it is possible to open the windows on the left side of the cockpit and the roof hatch on the models which have one; in addition, when you set the parking brake, chocks appear under the wheels and foam inserts are fitted on the engines, so whatever you do, don't forget to lean the mixture at the same time, or your mechanic's hands are going to get chopped off. The liveries are generally good, with the exception of the US Army paint of the wheeled passenger version which has fallen victim to the dynamic shine versus camo scheme trap, the result being a horrible bilious green that positively hurts the eye. Frame rates in test were good enough that I didn't notice any issues at all on a 3.0 Ghz system.

The 2D panel is much better than average and made quite an impression on me when the plane loaded for the first time. Unlike the US Army livery, whoever did the panel got the colors just right and I would rank it among the best I have seen in a while in terms of overall impression - it looks real in a way that many other panels do not and the graphics hold up even on a twenty inch monitor at 1600 x 1200. The legends are crisp and there is very little evidence of stepping or orphan pixels; in addition, the gauges have graphics whose quality ranges from above average to excellent and which have been subtly 'aged' where appropriate. The ageing extends to the panel background itself and adds to the feeling of flying a period plane, the only downside being that the developers have opted to use VC stills for all the other 2D cockpit views, which as always, lack the sharpness of the panel graphics and are something of a let-down after the magnificent view you have forward.

All the planes have the same panel, the instrumentation being a mix of old and new gauges, such as would be found in surviving Beech 18s - if Aerosoft ever do a 'mark II' release, it would be great to see a completely period panel available as an option. Navigation around the sub-panels is aided by a clutch of simicons on the left of the standard six and these give access to a modern Bendix-King/Garmin avionics stack including an autopilot; the FS2004 GPS; the switch panel; the throttle quadrant (which, as you can see, seems to have been added as something of an afterthought in that the perspective and the design style don't match the rest of the 2D panel); the pedestal; the map; the kneeboard; and the circuit breaker panel. The EGT and backup fuel gauges are modern digital readouts; the only other thing worth remarking being that the flaps lack detents, with each press of F7 only altering their position by a couple of degrees - so don't just trip the button a couple of times and expect a perfect landing, because you won't have enough flap set. Needless to say, real Beech 18 pilots wouldn't know how to use the GPS since they fly by looking out the window.

One of the best features of the panel is that you can zoom any of the gauges up to an extremely generous size by clicking on it, and this works in the VC as well, albeit with the zoomed instrument appearing in a window. Overall, the addon can claim to have one of the best 2D panels and VCs released for a plane of this vintage.

Allowing for the comments above, the big surprise is that the addon has been designed to be flown from the virtual cockpit (VC). In general, developers who take this approach don't waste much time with the 2D panel, so the discovery that the Beech's VC was at least as good, if not better than its 2D counterpart was a real surprise. Everything in the VC works as it does in the 2D panel, with the exception of the circuit breakers, for reasons explained in the manual - since circuit breakers only pop on rare occasions in real airplanes, this can hardly be counted as a negative point.

The sound set is more than acceptable, which takes us onto the flight model, which is the one area of the addon which could do with a certain amount of attention - which it will hopefully get, given Aerosoft's record of issuing patches for such things. By the standards of modern twins, the 18S lacks punch, although it was good for its time; but if some differential throttle is used to keep the sim straight, it is actually possible to do a flapless takeoff followed by an 1800 fpm climb with the gear down, without bothering to push the nose forward to gain flying speed first. Needless to say, this isn't realistic and a real 18 would go through the boundary fence if treated like that. Once the plane is established in flight, it handles well, except at the stall; power on stalls usually resulting in a tailslide due to the way the elevators retain their authority right down to the lowest possible speeds. Real 18s apparently have quite benign, normal stalls, so this feature needs tweaking. The final problem is manifest on approach, with the controls getting progressively mushier until the plane beginning to wallow at 80 knots - troublesome because the Vfe is only a hundred knots and the stall with flaps down occurs at 70 knots. Again, from what I have been told about real Beech 18s, their low speed handling was good as long as you didn't try and fly them right into the stall. In addition, the dreaded FS flight model problem of exaggerated skid in turns is apparent, all of which conspires to make tight approaches to the kind of small fields the Beech was built to operate out somewhat tricky. Were these issues fixed, the Beech would have got an award, so on the whole I can live with them, given that the rest of the sim more than makes up for the flight model.

One of the things that makes this such a fun addon is the Martha's Vineyard scenery which includes a couple of enhanced fields and a phototextured terrain. Some idea of the quality of the custom buildings and textures can be gained from the top row of screenshots. The scenery is only a supporting act for the Beech, but the quality is well above anything you can see in a default installation and you get two airports - three if you count Trade Wind, where the scenery consists of a hut, a 4x4 and a builder's skip, so who knows? There may be more to come yet.

Verdict? Good visual model and liveries, excellent 2D panel and VC, so-so flight model, scenery is a nice bonus. Were the flight model tweaked, the Beech 18 is a potential FS classic; as it stands, I enjoyed reviewing it very much.