Eurowings ATR42/72 Professional

By Kris Heslop (2 July 2003)

The package has only just been released and is only available in download for (50mb) so be prepared to wait if you really desire the CD-ROM version or you are still on a 56K dial up as it will take forever to download. Those of us lucky enough to have ADSL or T1 connections should be satisfied with the download speed, it took about 15 minutes for my broadband connection (ADSL) to acquire the package and then about 5 minutes to install to FS2002. The install is simple with no user inputs to make other than clicking next and then reading the read-me file. The read-me is primarily there to warn about problems that were experience with some joysticks with throttles. The up and down of the problem being that some were a little jittery and so had a tendency to upset the Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) simulation, I have to say that I had no such problems with my USB Logitech Wingman Force 3D but it's something to consider.

Now generally I am the kind of person that will go balls out to get new toys working rather than reading the instructions first, however, once bitten twice shy. After my previous experience with A320 PIC from Wilco and the fact that I was reviewing the package I thought that it was fair to at least peruse the manual and see what it had to offer. Normally these are very dry and heavy going to read but this is an exception to the rule. Aerosoft really have thought about who their market is. The manual goes through the basics of installation and then moves gently into how to fly the aircraft without sounding like an overbearing teacher. The approach of the manual seems to be to give the new owner of a shiny ATR enough information to get airborne without crashing while encouraging you to go and hand fly it and most of all enjoy it! The manual also runs through the complex panels that you will have to negotiate and gives information on the new features it offers such as pushback and GPU's (complete with ground equipment and moving external doors). Finally full checklists are provided for you to print out and keep, despite the fact that they are dutifully replicated in the on-line checklist (by pressing F10). In total the manual is 69 pages of black and white and color and is a joy to read when compared with other add-on manuals. The addition of individual idiot guides to each aircraft type included makes it easy to decide which part to print without having to mortgage the house to pay for ink and paper.

The manual also points you in the direction of additional software that is supplied, in the form of the 'Livery installer', 'Load planner', 'Flight planner' and the 'ATR configuration system'. The livery installer allows you to add more liveries as you collect them from the web in the same way that the DreamFleet Boeing 737-400 does. The load planner is also very similar to the B737-400 system, letting you add passengers to empty seats or in the freighter version adding the ABY (igloo) containers. Saving the config updates the CFG file with the load data and so you can adjust your V speeds to be correct. What really got my attention was the flight planning utility. This clever little package contains all of the Eurowings routes that they fly in real life. This allows you to decide which aircraft or route you wish to fly and then print a PLOG (Pilots LOG), which you can then input to the FMC. It's unnecessary but just adds that little bit of extra realism. Finally the configuration utility allows you to set what type of VSI is fitted (TCAS or analog) and also select if you want voice call outs from your co-pilot. The option to have a cold cockpit is also found here which leaves you in a completely shut down aircraft on starting the sim.

OK reading over, time to take to the skies although I intentionally left the manual open in the background so I could chop to it as and when I got stumped. The sim starts as normal and the aircraft can be selected from the menu in the normal way by choosing Aerospatial and then the aircraft version you wish to take out. Aerosoft have provided:

• ATR42-300
• ATR42-500
• ATR72-200
• ATR72-212
• ATR72-500
• ATR72-200F (freighter)

Best to start small so I select the ATR42-300, having printed the PLOG from the flight planner and the performance data from the manual I'm all set. The PLOG I chose was from Geneva to Dusseldorf so I position the aircraft to a suitable stand at Geneva and start the sim. The cockpit is indeed cold and dark, not a mouse stirs on this flight deck. Pressing SHIFT-E secures the aircraft on stand, chocks can be seen in the wheels, the main doors open and the helpful ground crew have even placed cones in front of the props so the pax don't inadvertently wander into them. Applying the parking brakes allow a GPU to be added at the touch of a button on the overhead panel, sure enough the outside view shows a little GPU outside and the cockpit comes alive, once you select Battery on that is.

The Eurowings livery is nice and all the little touches such as warning placards are all in the right places. Movement of the stick shows that the usual refinements of moving control surfaces are all present including flaps and even the high speed roll spoilers slightly inboard of the main ailerons (nice touch). So into the cockpit along with my freshly printed checklist and PLOG, The screens are on and showing the PFD (Primary Flight Display or Artificial Horizon) and EHSI (Electronic Horizontal Situation Indicator). Judging by what was said in the manual there are a myriad of hotspots which will open the additional panels but let's face it remembering them would take out the fun so I randomly click when the cursor changes to see if I can get the additional panels to show themselves. Sure enough the hotspots are fairly obviously located and access to the pedestal and overhead is straightforward. The FMC is also accessed by clicking on the main panel and it opens remarkably quickly, my anticipation of having to learn yet another FMC system is relieved quickly as the FMC is exactly the same one as is found in the B737-400 package and I expect in all of the other Eurowings packs so there's one less bit of learning to do. I use the PLOG to get the FMC up to speed and then browse around the flight deck to see how the EHSI displays the route and also how the Nav fit works.

The EHSI can operate in several modes the most useful of which being the arc mode although the rose modes have their uses particularly in the approach phase. The system of getting the FMC coupled to the EHSI and autopilot is a little strange but if you do what the manual tells you it seems to work. This is perhaps due to the fact that most ATR aircraft don't have an FMC of this type, many using a GPS for their RNAV compliance. Setting up the radios and Navaids is fairly straightforward although I would question the wisdom of having made them so small instead of having them on a separate panel, perhaps I just need a bigger monitor or perhaps a nice LCD projector... unlikely I am told by my financial and social director (girlfriend).

On to the flying I think and so we must figure out how to fire up the engines. The option is there to auto-start but I like the old fashioned way of doing the start cycle. I open the overhead and turn on the fuel booster pumps and then select start B (No. 2 or right engine); the no. 2 is traditionally started first as passengers board on the left, this means if you need to get off blocks swiftly you can have one turning and burning or indeed in the ATR's case use the no. 2 with the prop brake engaged as an APU. The 'Start B' button is depressed and N1 cranks up to 12% and then stops. There are no HP cocks that I could find on the panels so in the end I had to repeat the process but this time pressing CTRL-F4, the engine again spools up to 12% and lights up peaking then stabilising and the prop spinning up to 60%. The process is repeated on the no. 1 engine this time selecting 'Start A'. Once both are running the start selector is switched to Off and I run through the after start checks turning on the generators, alternators and hydraulic pumps. Slowly I see all the caution lights extinguish and the overhead panel is set. The ATR is like most modern aircraft in its overhead panel design, things only light up if they aren't set properly for flight so once all the lights are out and the GPU waved away we are good to go. A new gauge has been added to allow for a proper pushback in place of SHIFT-P, the new method provides a visually pleasing tug in front of you and gives you the option of which way to be pushed. The gauge also allows you to open and close the main doors rather than trying to remember key presses, which is a nice touch. Cleared to taxi the tug is waved off, props put to 100% and the brakes releases. A gentle advance of the throttles gets us underway to runway 05. The aircraft quickly gains speed so the throttles are best left at idle and it will happily and very accurately taxi although a little fast for my liking so I apply the brakes to keep the speed under control.

Taxi checks are completed and flap 15 selected for takeoff and we are given clearance to line up, the FMC is set and coupled to the flight director and the altitude selected in the ALTSEL window. I decided to apply 50% power against the brakes to allow the engines to stabilise, which they did quickly, the brakes are then released and full power selected. The FADEC system limits N1 to give best performance for the outside temperature and allows reduced thrust takeoffs should you wish to limit engine wear. The aircraft accelerates quickly and the co-pilot calls '70 knots' then 'V1, Rotate' at about 95 knots. I dutifully rotate at his call and the aircraft refuses to lift off, the elevator twitches the nose up but not enough to get us airborne, I check the speed and smell a rat. The runway is ample for the ATR so I lower the nose again and allow the aircraft to accelerate to 110 knots then rotate, this time the nose smoothly raises to 10 degrees nose up and we climb from terra firma. The co-pilot calls 'positive climb, gear up' and the gear is selected up with a reassuring clunk. It would appear my first officer was a little eager for us to be airborne.

The aircraft is remarkably stable to hand fly but since this is supposed to be a commercial operation I put the autopilot in at 500 feet AGL and retract the 15 degrees of flap. The autopilot is very similar to the standard FS2002 modes so I select V/S +1000 and watch the aircraft accelerate. The difference between this autopilot and the standard ones is the addition of IAS mode, this will no doubt catch some out but to me it is a refreshing addition of a REAL LIFE mode that has been lacking in almost every sim I have flown. The IAS mode is NOT autothrottle; that would be too easy. The IAS mode is a climb/descent mode that will attempt to climb or descend the aircraft at the selected speed but you control power manually and in doing so you also control rate of climb and descent. If you have lots of power you will get a rapid climb rate and if you have little power then you will get a slow climb or even a stall if the power is too slow so be careful! The manual recommends 160 knots as best climb speed so I put in IAS mode at 160 knots and adjust the power to the recommended 80-90% n1 and prop to 86%. This gives about 1500 fpm climb all the way to our cruise level of FL150.

The autopilot follows the FMC route very nicely, turning to the new headings as it reaches each waypoint without any real issues. The climb is smooth and as we approach 1000 feet below the obligatory chime sounds. At about 250 feet below the IAS mode disengages and the autopilot goes into ALT * mode (also know as ALT Capture) and then finally settles at FL150 in ALT mode. I would be remiss now if I was to allow such a nice aircraft to automatically fly itself from A to B without playing with it a little so I think this is an opportune time to really put the ATR42 through its paces.

The Autopilot comes out and the aircraft sits happily at altitude and on heading, strange, I even re-apply and disengage the autopilot to make sure it did actually disengage. This aircraft is so stable you could run a riding school from it. The aircraft has been VERY well modeled; stability is the one thing you expect from a large, fast aircraft, something that most FS2002 models lack. Don't think that this makes it boring, on the contrary, the ATR42 (and the ATR72 even more so) will let you throw it around but it will not bite you even when you push its envelope. I had to really push the aircraft to make it stall, the nose simply drops as the elevator runs out of authority and the aircraft rights itself. In roll the aircraft will happily fly level in 60° bank turns and with some coaxing I had it level at up to 75° bank. The power is more than enough to keep the air flowing over the flight surfaces at almost any angle of attack and more than enough to recover it quickly although be wary of the slightly slow spool up time on the engines. All this stability bodes well for the approach phase, so it's time we left FL150 ready for descent into Dusseldorf so we complete the descent checks and point the pointy end towards the ground.

The descent is started by engaging the autopilot first in VS -1500 mode until we hit 230 knots indicated and then into IAS mode and adjust the power to give us 1500 fpm descent. The beauty of IAS mode is that you are in so much more control of your descent profile. The aircraft will keep your descent constant at the selected speed, all you need to do is periodically check to see whether you are low of high on the descent profile you planned and adjust your power to either reduce the descent rate (increasing power) if you are low or vice versa if you are high. This allows you to maintain a constant descent profile and so keep air traffic happy. (Constant Descents are now mandatory into major European airports such as Heathrow, East Midlands, Paris, etc. See how you do, you need to NOT be level for any more than 2.5 nm before hitting the final approach fix).

The ATR merrily zooms down the slope and we hit the final approach fix at 220 knots at 3000 feet. The APR mode sees us gently onto the localizer and the G/S mode arms. Now we need to deal with all this speed, closing the throttles and advancing the props to 100% prior to the descent point sees the speed quickly wash off to 180 knots and allows me to get the 15° flap out which in turn slows us further and allows us to get the gear down as the glide comes down to one dot above. The glide intercepts as we slow to 160 knots and the autopilot eases the aircraft down the glideslope, no chasing, just a smooth transition, the ability to change prop pitch allows such an easy method of slowing down the lack of drag spoilers is not even an issue, even in the descent the aircraft continues to slow and as we reach 130 knots I advance the power from idle in order to maintain 120 knots for the remainder of the descent. As the radar altimeter tells me we are coming down the last few hundred feet I prepare to take the autopilot out, at 200 feet I disengage the autopilot and again the aircraft doesn't even twitch I follow the flight director down to 100 feet and the co-pilot calls minimas (this is a CAT 2 aircraft after all despite the CAT 2 option not being simulated in this version so no autolands I'm afraid). I gently flare and the rate of descent drops to nothing and we kiss onto the ground. The flare is easily judged as the PFD actually shows an icon coming from below on the artificial horizon, which denotes the ground. As we settle onto the trailing link undercarriage the animated suspension takes the load and the nose gently nestles to the ground and I select reverse. The braking is good and the sounds are very realistic, the reverse thrust being absolutely superbly sampled. The aircraft comes to a halt with less than half the runway used and we taxi off...and back to the hold, this is too much fun I want another go!

I once again take to the skies but this time take the helm myself. This model is so easy to fly a chimp could do it, that is not to say it isn't challenging, there are more pitfalls in the mental gymnastics that you need to do to manage a flight correctly that these turboprops are designed to be stable and so this is pretty indicative of a real 20 ton turboprop. The developers have even allows us to have the MSFS GPS cleverly remodeled to appear as a handheld unit complete with hand, another nice touch. So using my trusty GPS to judge my position and turn points for a manual ILS I climb to 3000 feet and self position to the final approach fix at 3000. Again I manage my speed and end up at the top of drop at about 160 knots. The flight director gives all the cues you need for the approach so simply follow that and you'll be alright. Having read in the manual that there is another mode to the main panel I click the associated hotspot. The approach panel is basically a large version of the main instruments so you can see exactly what is going on even if you don't have that 25" monitor or LCD projector. The gauges are about 25% larger and much easier to read but you lose some of the main panel in the process, namely the standby instruments but at this point you are not too concerned about those unless you've had a screen or electrical failure. Again the stability of this flight model astounds me, it trims nicely, stays in a set attitude and is generally a joy to fly while being about a true to life as I have seen in the add-on market.

Normal View

Approach View

The ATR72 is also a simple and stable aircraft to fly and operates in much the same way as the ATR42, the only differences really being in length of fuselage and payload weights available so be careful to not over-pitch on take-off and landing thus causing a rather embarrassing tail-strike. Something new to me is the freighter version. There are still very few of these in real life and Aerosoft have at least got the correct livery (Farnair Sweden). The aircraft is the same flight model and so is exactly the same as the other ATR72 models with one difference that made me quite simply whoop out loud. The animation when the SHIFT-E function is activated is superb, not only do you get cones and chocks and a GPU as you see fit but the freight door opens, a hi-lo loading vehicle arrives at the side of the aircraft and the ABY containers slide forth from the cargo bay and onto the hi-lo. This is the first time I've ever seen such an ornate animation for a freighter, most don't even have opening doors, this is fantastic especially for a real life freight dog like myself.

So did those clever people at Aerosoft do a good job? I'll say they did, the package has everything I would want from an add-on. There are a few niggly things which I will come to in a moment but in the main the whole package is great and I'd quite happily use it to train prior to a sim check in the future even though it isn't the correct type for me. There are so many really nice touches that show that these add on packages don't have to suck your PC dry of resources like the A320PIC package does. The frame rates were more often than not 25-30 fps and even in complex clouds and heavy scenery they rarely dipped below 16 fps. I ran it on the same AMD Athlon 2000+ with 512 mb and a 64 mb MX400 GeForce2 graphics card as I did with A320PIC and the performance was visibly better than the A320. The sound is superb all the way through and the addition of a virtual co-pilot adds the realism even if he does get a little premature when it comes to calling for rotation.

On the down side those who wish to pummel their processor and graphics card into submission will be disappointed to see there is no virtual cockpit, Aerosoft having opted to use photos of the various views to give the impression of being there. This is probably why the frame rates don't suffer as there are no fancy gauges that have to be drawn in 3D all the time. The flight planner, while a good idea, is a bit flawed in that it only gives you the Eurowings routes and also doesn't seem to interface at all with the FMC so you have to program the routes into the FMC manually. The realism is let down to some degree by the lack of performance data for the V speeds, While the package lets you set your weights accurately there is no reference for the corresponding V speeds and indeed the virtual first officer could catch some off guard especially if he is premature in his Rotate call on a short runway. I am open to suggestions as to where to find this information should anyone find it in the manual (I may well have missed it). It's nice to have the checklists that they have provided at the back of the manual but an expanded list might have been a good idea as well as some of the checks aren't exactly self explanatory. Like most add-ons perhaps someone needs to write a step-by-step tutorial for it so mere mortals won't struggle to get the engines turning. I know these sound like pretty petty things but I feel I have to mention them if only to avoid being flamed by people who bought it on my say so and wanted 3D cockpits etc.

On the whole the developers at Aerosoft have done a damn good job on this aircraft. Those simmers who think turboprops are just smelly egg-beating slow-coaches might be advised to take a look at this package purely to see how good they really are at flying a complex aircraft without the niceties of auto-throttles and computers to tell you where and when to begin descents. They have made a rather ordinary aircraft a joy to fly and easy for a new simmer to get into while making it complex enough to challenge even the most advanced of us. A lot of credit for its ease of use has to go to the manual's author, it is well written and really makes you want to go and play with the aircraft but also provides all the technical information even the most hardened realism freak could want. The flight model is very accurate and provides a really good platform for people to venture into proper instrument flight, after all how can you fly an attitude if the aircraft will not trim to the desired attitude and then stay there as I have found with almost every aircraft I have flown in FS2002. The addition of a PROPER IAS mode on the autopilot makes me warm and fuzzy all over; at last developers have realised that there is a stopgap between simple Cessna autopilots and advanced autopilots/auto-throttle systems of the Boeing and Airbus families.

From an eye candy point of view, all the panels are made from photos and all the gauges are very accurate. Even the autopilot has been modeled faithfully to the actual aircraft. The exterior is nicely painted and there are plenty of liveries to keep most people happy plus the option to add more in the future through the livery installer. The animations are excellent and model the real moving surfaces of this aircraft very nicely. The only thing the aircraft seems to lack is seats, from the external view you can see into the aircraft but it appears that there is standing room only.

I think Aerosoft are onto a winner here, they have thought through their package and they know their customer base so it has been written for that ability level, I would have no hesitation recommending this to a type rated ATR pilot or a new simmer who wants something more challenging than a Beech Baron without going the whole hog and leaping into a 'cindyjet' like the A320 or B777. At $25 for the download version I'm sure they will sell like hotcakes if only people can get past the mental block that this is not a jet and is therefore not exciting; try a V1 engine failure in a turboprop and compare that with the same failure in a fly-by-wire jet. You'll find that people start their flying careers on turboprops because they are more challenging to fly and thus give the young aviator more practice at good airmanship so when you get into a shiny jet and it all goes wrong (computers fail or the screens go black) you have the experience to fall back on that you learned while flying the prop. Well done Aerosoft for making a turboprop sim that is both accessible and challenging perhaps now we can start changing the preconception that jets are best!

Kris Heslop
boxjockey99@hotmail.com

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