Aerospatiale SE210 Caravelle Super 12 Panel

By Andrew Herd (18 February 2001)

am always attracted by the off-beat, so Benoît Gaurant's Caravelle panel caught my eye immediately when it was released earlier this year. Not only does it have very few faults, but it is one of the most pleasing panels I have used in a long while, and I think that Benoît is to be congratulated in producing such an excellent package.

The Caravelle was regarded as a beautiful aircraft in its day, and it was unique in having rear mounted engines, which made the cabin relatively quiet for the 80 passengers. This innovative design also allowed for a clean wing, which coupled with the tail mounted elevators made for excellent handling in engine-out mode and for good controllability near stalling speed. The Sud Aviation design team began work in 1953, first flight was in 1955, and first service was four years later with Air France. In that year, United Airlines rather unexpectedly bought twenty airframes, which caused a stir at Boeing's headquarters, but Sud Aviation failed to capitalise on their success and never achieved significant penetration of the American market.

The Caravelle 1 had Rolls-Royce Avon engines which were used for succeeding versions including the Caravelle VI, after which a powerplant switch was made. Following the merger of Sud Aviation with another company to form Aerospatiale, a stretched fuselage Super 12 first flew in 1970, powered by Pratt and Whitney JT8D-9As, which gave it a range of 2500 km. Production of the Caravelle finished after a total of 282 hulls had been built, a surprising number of which are still flying. Although the plane can hardly be counted as a success for Aerospatiale, the legacy of its rear-engined design lives on, given that it inspired such classics as the Boeing 727 and the Douglas DC-9. So all in all, this is an aircraft that just begs your attention - a historical treat, that just has to be flown.

The Caravelle hasn't caught the imagination of the developers, which led to my first problem: where to get a plane suitable for flying the panel? A quick search on FlightSim.Com found several planes by the prolific Rob Bennis, the visual models for which are, as is usual with Rob's software, very good. Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with his aircraft: the nose wheel "floats" high off the runway, which is something I can live with; but sadly the .air file isn't quite right. Load one of the planes and you will immediately notice what I mean on takeoff; even with flaps trailing there is a tiny margin of airspeed available over stalling speed which makes for tediously slow climbouts. I constructed a passable freeware Caravelle by substituting Patrick Saint-Dizier's .air file for Rob's; this cured the climb-out problem, but brought an unrealistically fast rate of roll.

Though the Caravelle was definitely a member of the "if you can see the runway you can land on it" generation of aircraft, it surely would not turn on a dime, so I looked further afield. In the end Joël Branchu came to my rescue. Joël has released a commercial package with five Super 12s in it which has been reviewed before on FlightSim.Com, but his planes have lacked a panel - until now. Joël's FS2000 .air file is probably one of the best I have come across for a small airliner of this generation, although there is a bug which disables the EPR gauges on Benoît's panel (this is being worked on right now). I don't plan to review Joël's aircraft again, but suffice it to say that it is of an exceptionally high standard, featuring accurate modelling of the airbrakes, for example (two in descent and four on finals) and it goes very well with Matt Ukena's sound set for the Boeing 727 [7272KSND.ZIP]. Incidentally, Joël, with characteristic modesty, says that the Caravelle is not his best aircraft; I guess I am going to have to buy his Mercure now...

Back to Benoît's panel. Benoît is not a gauge programmer, so he has relied on the generosity of others - there is a long list of credits at the end of the readme file that reads like a hall of fame of flightsim development. It is good to see people giving credit like this when they release new packages, particularly when the flightsim world is going through an ethical crisis at the moment. Although the various panels can be selected from the menu, the majority can also be opened and closed by clicking on hotspots - useful when you need to do things in a hurry. People who get lost easily will be relieved to hear that Benoît has even included a hotspot for selecting the FS2000 default GPS, despite the fact that as far as I know, no Caravelle was ever fitted with one.

Benoît has gone to considerable trouble modelling the cockpit, right down to including a start panel and a simplified start sequence that shows off his modelling of the moving high pressure levers on the pedestal to advantage.

Once the engines are started, you will need to set up the radios from the pedestal, the bitmap for which must be one of the best I have ever seen on a simulation aircraft. If you haven't already done so, I suggest you click on the image left and look at the larger version, because I gaurantee you will not see anything more realistic in a long, long time. A number of commercial developers out there could learn a few things from looking at this panel. Many of the levers and switches are animated, and the radios have some of the clearest readouts I have ever seen.

Lower down on the pedestal, you will find what passes for the autopilot. Remember the original was designed in the late sixties, when airline pilots still wore goggles and flew low to read the signs off railway station platforms when they got lost. Okay, so maybe things weren't quite that primitive, but it has to be said that half the fun of flying these early airliners lies in fighting with the control systems, and Benoît has captured the functions (or lack of them) on the Sperry almost perfectly. When you get fed up programming the FMC on Wilco's 767, take a spin with this panel and you will appreciate just how far things have come on in the last forty years. You get heading hold, alt hold, IAS hold and VOR lock; and that (apart from App mode, which only just made it into the Super 12) is your lot, so you will have to climb and descend manually. In reality, IAS mode was only used by Caravelle pilots during autoland procedures, and the aircraft was flown on the throttles the rest of the time. Yip, read my lips, that does mean you will have to move the levers and the stick yourself. Novel idea, huh?

The night lighting on the panel is just superb, which probably isn't surprising because the gauges that do it are courtesy of the FDPA and originally appeared in Paul Golding's MD-80 panel. It took me ages to work out how to get the lighting on (mainly because only wimps read manuals) but flicking the nav lights switch brings on the red instrument lights, and it is possible to switch to white panel lights via the upper panel as shown in the screen shot. The overall effect is incredibly subtle and makes night flying very restful indeed. Should you ever get bored of it, you can select the color of the lighting for the engine instruments and the captain's panel separately.

The panel is littered with warning lights, including an ice warning that has seen much use in my recent flights; there are also thrust reverse lights, oil pressure lights, low fuel lights and numerous other displays. Once again, the graphics for these are so well done they are almost distracting.

OK, you say, there have to be some bad bits. Well, there ain't much to complain about. I haven't shown any frame rates because the Caravelle panel gives identical results to the default King Air - if you can run that panel, you can run this one. There isn't a virtual cockpit, but those of you who are familiar with my reviews will realise that I don't see this as a terrible sin. If you choose to swap out the upper panel, the lower panel pans up and reduces the field of view, but this could be regarded as a "feature" rather than a bug. The only annoying problem is that one of the gauges intermittently produces a frame rate drop big enough to stop FS2000 in its tracks. Disengaging the autopilot resets the heading bug to north, which is worth knowing about, and with IAS mode set on the Sperry one throttle lags slightly behind the other, which is reflected on the HP gauges and can cause problems with throttle settings when you revert to manual unless you first advance both levers fully with the mouse to match your controller. There is a tendency to "hunt" a bit when alt hold is set, but this isn't too much of a problem and the original auto wasn't perfect, anyway. My preference would be for a rather larger hot spot on the pedestal panel and once the panel lighting is on, switching it off again isn't that easy, but this is all small stuff.

I have to say that this is one of the best panels I have ever used. I look forward to seeing the next version; and I only hope that Benoît will carry on and do some more golden age airliners - perhaps a de Havilland Comet or an early 727?

And now for a brief commercial. This is a freeware panel. In its current form, it could never be payware, because the gauge programming belongs to others who have made their work available gratis - as long as no-one ever charges for products which use them. In reality, this panel represents the combined efforts of at least twenty people, brought together for us in one package by Benoît. As far as I can tell, Benoît has credited every single person involved in programming those gauges; and he has put who knows how many man-hours of time in putting this package together, just so that you and I can enjoy it.

Designing something like this panel is a labour of love - and sometimes it doesn't get rewarded. Joël Branchu tells me he once posted a JS31 freeware package that had 12,000 downloads and only had ten "thank you" emails. How many people will tell Benoît how much they have enjoyed this panel? I don't know. Some of you will install it and fly it once - some of you will make it their default panel and use it for years - but the key thing is that we will all be enjoying it for free. There are people out there who have difficulty understanding the fundamental nobility of this system, but I think it represents the best qualities of the human race. If these qualities triumph, then freeware will flourish. If they don't, and a small minority of simmers are allowed to keep ripping off other people's work without any credit, then freeware will die; it is as simple as that. We will lose panels like Benoît's Caravelle, Espen Oijordsbakken's Fokker F50 and the Rambow/Chaffin/Visser DC-3, as well as countless planes and other add-ons that make simming so interesting. My own view is that the major web sites should agree that once someone is identified as a rip-off artist, the offenders should be given one chance to put matters right and then the site owners should undertake to pull every file these people have ever posted, effectively deep-sixing them into virtual non-existence.

I don't enjoy writing this kind of stuff, any more than I guess you enjoy reading it, but if we don't take a stand now we will lose more than any of can afford to. Even this review is freeware - I don't get paid for doing it, and it has taken many hours to do; I don't design panels or planes, but the way I give back to the flightsim community is to highlight what I think is the good stuff. So if you agree with anything I say, email Nels Anderson at FlightSim.Com and let him know where you stand.