Carenado Beech T-34 Mentor for FS2004

By Andrew Herd (29 October 2006)

n 1948, Beechcraft were on something of a roll, having successfully made the move from the Staggerwing/Beech 18 fabric and strut era into stressed-skin construction with the Model 35 Bonanza. Walter Beech felt that there were military sales to be wrung out of the Bonanza airframe, so he set his team to work on a private venture primary trainer that became the Mentor. Three initial designs were narrowed down to one that flew in December that year and after a tour of airbases across the US, Betty Skelton laid on a memorable display on Independence Day weekend at Chicago O'Hare. In 1950, as part of an extensive evaluation to find a new trainer, the USAF placed an order for three Mentors which were put through the wringer by test pilots and serving flight instructors. The grapevine has it that the turning point came when one of the test airframes was accidentally flown into a cable, the impact occurring at nearly 190 mph - the Beech won the argument convincingly, although it needed a new wing leading edge.

In 1953, the Mentor was duly selected and production began early the following year. As it turned out, the arrival of the jet era meant that the T-34 saw relatively brief service with the Air Force, but an order from the Navy followed, after the Mentor's gear was found to be virtually unbreakable; a big advantage for carrier deck landings where aircraft are 'planted' on the deck. There were also orders from China, Argentina, Chile, Venezuala and Japan, and a deal with the RCAF nearly came off, but fell through at the last minute. Nearly 800 hulls were built for the US military, which isn't bad going, considering that the Air Force phased the plane out in the early sixties - the strong points of the Mentor being that it was certified for unlimited aerobatics and was liked by instructors, students and ground crews alike. As a design, it had few vices and above all, the T-34 had a great safety record, being one of the few airframes ever certified for inverted spinning. The Navy Mentors soldiered on right into the seventies, being replaced by the T-34C Turbo Mentor, which is powered by a PT-6A.

The USAF sell-off saw quite a few Mentors finding their way into civilian hands, following FAA certification. The FAA required mods included installation of a stall warning horn, significant de-tuning of the engine to reduce performance, removal of nose wheel doors and installation of a stall strip on the right wing. These planes are known as Beech D-45s and - interestingly - are not certified for aerobatics, although it is hard to imagine that their owners don't put them through their paces from time to time when no-one else is looking.

The Carenado Beech T-34B is a 30 Mb download from the Pilot Shop. Installation involves the usual step of entering a copy protection key emailed at the time of purchase and I experienced no problems with the process. When everything was done, my system had shortcuts to four documents installed on the desktop and two T-34B liveries on the aircraft menu in FS2004; tidy minded simmers are likely to want to create their own program group and I can't quite work out why the installation doesn't do this as a matter of course, but variety is, I guess, the spice of life. The documentation is all in pdf format and includes a history of the T-34, 28 pages of performance charts, 22 pages of checklists (including one for propellor bolt failure, may that never happen to you) and a 15 page cockpit guide.

As we have come to expect from Carenado, even allowing for the fact that this isn't one of their latest simulations, the visual model has plenty to offer, even if it only comes with a pair of liveries, but the price is low enough to make it a very attractive purchase. The textures are neat and include just about all the rivet lines, with extensive detailing of the gear, the gear bays and the cockpit - something you get to see a great deal of in spot plane view, given all that expanse of canopy. One hazard that simmers are spared in the Mentor is the phenomenal heat build up that occurs in planes of this type while waiting at the hold on a hot day, but in the process of doing the review I checked out the canopy animation and it opens as realistically as you could hope, to show an exceptionally well detailed interior. The Navy livery is a classic yellow scheme, the other paint job being an extremely hard-used metallic finish. Just about the only difference between the two planes is that the Navy version has a single pilot, while the metallic scheme has both seats occupied, and the guys spend a good deal of time looking around and enjoying the view. All the usual control surface and gear animations are included, but there is no 'maintenance mode' that I can find, so the only view of the engine you are going to get is through the cooling slots in the cowling.

The 2D panel is a particularly clean graphic, just about the only problem I could find with it being some stepping along the top of the glareshield, but there are none of the stray pixels that some developers seem to feel aren't worth the bother of cleaning up and the gauges are very crisp, so no-one is going to be disappointed with the quality. The graphics stayed sharp right up to 1600 x 1200, which isn't bad considering that their base size is 1024 x 768 - which speaks volumes for Carenado's experience with Photoshop. The gauges all have extremely believable reflections on their faces, which is one of the things that really makes 2D panels seem real; and all the instruments match up. By this I don't mean to say that they are all from the same manufacturer - I doubt a plane exists where this is the case - but they have quite clearly all been developed by Carenado specifically for this cockpit, rather than the awkward mix of different generations of FS gauges borrowed from different planes that is common in many addons from less accomplished developers.

There are ten pop up panels, accessed by a very clever piece of programming indeed. I have seen just about every method of dealing with simicon popup groups, but the T-34 has one of the neatest, the group being represented by a single small icon at middle left of the panel, which spills out a further nine icons when you click on it. This means not only that the panel isn't littered with simicons, but that you don't have to spend half your time clicking randomly around the graphic trying to find out where the hotspots have been hidden.

In addition to the usual map, kneeboard, ATC and GPS windows, the popups include a radio stack, lighting panel, gear panel, quadrant and start panel. These are standard military spec and have been kept in proportion to the main panel, which means that some of the popups will be quite small on a 17 inch display. The graphics for the popups are adequate; much better than the default panels, but not quite up to the standard of the main panel. The stack is basic, as befits the role the T-34 had, being confined to a single com radio and an ADF, which will send many simmers screaming for the GPS, but once you get the hang of steering a course rather than flying the needle ADF nav isn't that much more difficult than using a VOR. What you do not get is an autopilot, but then the Mentor was designed to find out whether people could fly or not, not how good they were at pressing buttons.

The virtual cockpit (VC) is actually better than the 2D panel and given the relative simplicity of the plane, I am sure that the majority of simmers will use this mode most of the time. All the instruments you need to work can be moused and the stick and pedals are also animated. I did most of my aerobatics during the review in this most using TrackIR and had a lot of fun in the process. One catch is that like many VCs, if you set the viewpoint too far back, the panel loses focus and you won't be able to operate the gauges.

The Mentor is generally described as being 'sporty' but by all reports it was generally pleasant to fly, with no particular vices and a docile stall. The Carenado .air file is certainly in the ballpark as far as handling is concerned, although my impression is that it is slightly tame compared to the real thing - however subtleties of this nature are extremely hard to capture in FS flight models and the lack of control forces makes any judgements in this area highly subjective. The sound set certainly qualifies and I didn't find any bugs worth mentioning.

Verdict? A very nice little package, pitched at the right price. This late in the FS2004 product cycle, anyone who is considering buying another addon could do a lot worse than choosing Carenado's Mentor, as it makes a nice alternative to the default planes and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. There are quite a few repaints in the file library, so the fact that you only get two liveries is hardly a limitation - the red and white scheme shown in some of the shots is by Glenn Baker.