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It's dawn at the local airport and you have an appointment with your friend, Adam. He says he has a surprise for you and he asked to meet you at the airport. You arrive to find him waiting and he asks if you had breakfast. You answer that you had, and then ask him about the surprise. He answers, telling you that he'll give you flight lessons. You're ecstatic and can't wait to start. He takes you over to his trusty Cessna 152 and goes over the preflight inspections. You and Adam get inside, buckle up and check the instruments. Right before he starts the propeller he shouts "CLEAR PROP!" and the engine spurts to life. Adam does some final checks and contacts ATC. Next thing you know, you're cleared for takeoff; Adam tells you set the throttle to full and to gently pull back on the yoke at about 60 knots. You're up! Well, now that I have your attention, I'll sneak some actual information in:
The Cessna 152 is a small general aviation aircraft which was first designed in 1977 and is still in use around the world today. With Carenado's excellent add-on, you can fly it in FSX too; read on for my experiences.
After purchasing and downloading, I received a zip file about 39 mb in size. In the zip file there was the installer and a set of blank textures. Installation was pretty straight forward and had gone through without a hitch. The installer had added one Start Menu folder with a link to the uninstaller. I launched FSX and quickly found the aircraft. There are four repaints, along with two variants per repaint (wheel fairing and no wheel fairing). The one thing I don't like is how Carenado put themselves in the menu in FSX that allows you to sort by real world manufacturer, when it should really be listed under Cessna. This may be from the licensing issues which Cessna has been enforcing. However, it only takes a simple edit in the aircraft.cfg to fix it though, so no big problem. There was no manual or documentation to be found until I explored the folder Carenado installed to, which was where I found a quick reference, checklist and copyright PDF files. The checklist has ten pages containing the aircraft procedures and a list of the 2D panels. The quick reference PDF is one page with some stats/info about the aircraft.
Shortly after I started my flight, I was greeted by the virtual cockpit of the Cessna 152. I panned around to get my bearings to find clear, crisp textures surrounding me. There were many pleasing animations such as sun shades, windows, doors, vents, glove compartment, co pilot seat and what seems to be an ash tray.
Here are some screen shots of the animations:
All the controls in the virtual cockpit seem to be clickable and the overall quality of the interior is excellent. All of the gauges are clear and readable along with most of the plaques too. The upholstery is crisp and clear along with the scuff marks on the floor. There are also 2D panels available if you'd like to use them. The 2D panels include the main panel (Shift+1), vertical speed indicator (Shift+2), GPS (Shift+3), attitude indicator (Shift+4), heading indicator (Shift+5), turn indicator (Shift+6), airspeed indicator (Shift+7), RPM indicator (Shift+8) and VOR gauge (Shift+9). Moving on, the exterior of the aircraft is just as good as the interior; crisp textures, excellent model, and many details. All the details are visible, from the rivets to the exhaust stains and wear marks. As I had mentioned earlier, there are four repaints (calypso, red, light blue and brown with calypso being default), along with two variants per repaint (wheel fairing and no wheel fairing), bringing the total to eight variations. Overall, the whole model is FPS friendly while still attaining good detail.
The sounds and flight dynamics seem good, but I can't really say how they are compare to a real Cessna 152 as I haven't been on one. Comparing the Carenado Cessna 152 to the freeware one from JustFlight/FSInsider, I'd say that the flight dynamics seem much more stable. Compared to the default Cessna 172 it's slower, but more agile. I find it to be a good aircraft for touring sceneries or just general GA flying. In regards to its use in the real world as a training aircraft, I would definitely recommend it to beginner flight sim pilots for its small size and agile flight dynamics.
I'd recommend this to anyone who'd like a small plane for VFR flying, touring some scenery or learning to fly. Overall, Carenado did another excellent job with their Cessna 152 II for FSX.
Pros:
Cons:
Tested on:
Orion Lyau
orion.public@live.com
Learn More Here:
FSX version
FS2004 version
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