Flight1 Cessna 441 Conquest II For FS2004 And FSXBy Andrew Herd
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essna's 441 is a rare example of a plane that the manufacturer wished hadn't turned out to be so speedy,
because it ended up competing with some of their bizjets. With a maximum
operating speed of 245 knots and a service ceiling of 35,000 feet, the 441 can fly in the airways and it is popular for
short haul commuter flying. The turboprop equipped 441 has to be flown
like a jet, demanding very different engine management
to piston-engined aircraft. In practice, most TPs are flown nearly flat out
all the time, since this makes them more efficient; as an example
of this, rpm settings of less than 96% aren't allowed while the Conquest is
airborne. Broadly, once the condition levers are pulled back to 'cruise', the
power is set by monitoring the Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) and once this is
done, the levers are left where they are until the descent. The constant fiddling
around with mixture, power and prop pitch that characterises piston engined
flight has no place in this kind of plane and if you have mastered the King
Air and plan to move up, Flight1's 441 sim is a logical next step. |
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The visual model is very nice indeed, although only one livery is included, as is traditional with Flight1 releases - I should point out that the Conquest installs with DXT3 textures by default and if you want to use the 32-bit textures which are supplied, you will have to install them yourself. These and extra liveries can be added using the supplied Text O Matic utility, which has its own manual; however, although the 441 has been around a while now, it doesn't seem to have exactly inspired freeware painters, though a handful of liveries can be found in the file library. All the animations you would expect to find are there, including the cabin door and cargo compartments, with the added bonus of working trailing link gear and although the 441 could never be said to be gorgeous to behold, the sim captures the workman-like look of the original very well.
I did the review using FSX SP2 on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, a 768 Mb GeForce 8800 GTX and Windows Vista and frame rates were broadly comparable to the Microsoft King Air. In English, that means that the 441 returns superb frame rates in FS2004 and is adequate in FSX as long as you don't fly approaches in bad weather into complex airports. While you are taking a look in spot plane mode, listen to the sound set which really shows those Garretts off.
The flight model is better than anything Microsoft have ever done, although the default planes get better with ever new version of Flight Simulator. The 441 shares a peculiarity with many FS2004 planes for the nose to come rather suddenly off the runway during takeoff, so that it has to be pushed smartly back down again to maintain flying attitude, but this tendency is less in FSX and otherwise the sim handles really well and gives about as good an impression of flying a real aircraft of this class as you can get in a simulator. Nope, it doesn't have the fighter like handling of the 421, but then neither does the real thing, yet the 441 is a pleasing aircraft to fly. Approach stability is very good indeed and the sim makes an excellent platform for practicing ILS shoots.
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The 2D panel (bottom row of screenshots) was one of the best I had ever seen when I first reviewed the 441 for FS2004, but other developers have learnt fast and it doesn't stand out quite so much from the rest of the pack these days, especially since flying using the VC is more common in FSX. Instead of fooling around with the perspective to squeeze as many gauges in as possible, Flight1 have gone for a 2D panel view very similar to the one a real pilot would get, although inevitably this is something of a compromise given the rectangular format of a computer screen. So the 2D view is of the section of panel directly in front of the left hand seat, putting the top of the glare shield where it should be in real life, and everything else is accessed on pop-up panels. This means that some instruments have had to be moved around, but on the whole it works extremely well - the trick being to pop up the panels you need for each phase of flight and close down all the other stuff to reduce the clutter - or, if you have a powerful enough system, to undock everything and run it on a second monitor. As usual, Flight1 have delivered the most fabulously crisp 2D panel graphics and it really does feel as if you might be there - the last time I recall seeing such a convincing set of gauges was in the FS2004 version of the MAAM-Sim B-25. The only snag is that barometric pressure setting on the altimeter is only possible in inches of mercury, which are not commonly used outside the US, but hitting 'B' makes any changes automatically until you reach flight levels.
The panel is analog throughout. Though glass cockpits are extremely fashionable and Cessna are even fitting them in 172s these days, there isn't anything you can do with them that you can't do with a good set of steam gauges like these. The one thing that is missing in the 441 is a DME, though if the information is being received on Nav1, you can get a read-out by clicking in the center of the HSI, as well as an ETA to the station at the current ground speed - it would have been nice to see a proper gauge for this. The radios are the best set I have seen in a long while and it is a pleasure to use the stack, particularly given that the frequency selection has been set up in a way that is more intuitive than the standard method.
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In recognition of the fact that pop-up panels have to be used to fly the sim properly, Flight1 have provided a 'panel manager' window that can be displayed by clicking on a switch at lower left on the main panel. The panel manager sits unobtrusively at top right and can be used to select popups as they are needed. Most, but not all of the sub-panels can also be selected using main panel hot-spots and all the 441's systems have been simulated as far as possible, with the exceptions flagged up in the manual.
The most useful section of the manual is at the back, where it explains (among many other thingss) about the various modes which can be selected on the Nav radios, which are the ubiquitous Bendix King KX165A units. Apart from showing the standby frequency, each press of the mode button cycles you through showing a VOR CDI (useful for airways flights); or the TO and FROM radials from the currently tuned VOR, which is lets you make a quick check on where you are relative to a navaid. If you set the standby frequency to a second VOR, this mode is perfect for doing cross-cuts.
The only complicated bit of the sim is the autopilot, which newcomers to FS addons will be interested to discover is a simplified version of the real 441 item. There is a master switch on bottom left of the panel which turns the unit on; an Alt Alert unit which can be used either to quickly preselect a target altitude, or to set an alert level; and the autopilot itself, which can be slaved either to the Nav1 radio, or to the GPS. The autopilot is normally turned on using the switch on the unit itself, or by pressing any of the mode buttons, the master switch being there to allow a quick disconnect, for example on landing. If an altitude is selected on the Alt Alert unit, pressing the arm switch on the latter will cause the aircraft to climb to that altitude at 1500 feet a minute. It is, however, possible to preselect altitude on the autopilot as well - and a rate of climb to reach it - these becoming effective as soon as you engage the autopilot and override the Alt Alert unit setting. Since the Alt Alert is right in front of you and the autopilot hidden out of the way in the stack, it is tempting to use the former unit all the time, since the 441 can climb at something like 1800 fpm all the way to its operating altitude.
The autopilot is something of a mixed bag. I found it worked well enough climbing to altitude, but was subject to a certain amount of snaking when the 441 did radial or localiser intercepts at more than 140 knots. This probably reflects use of the default FS2004 AP code and wasn't a serious problem unless I did ridiculously large angle or short final localiser intercepts - and it isn't that far different from how some real aircraft autopilots work, as it happens.
The VC is where the addon begins to show its age, because it is only marginally better than the default planes and nowhere near as good as the best I have seen for FSX, although the 441 does come with a much better than average virtual interior, if you 'turn around' and look back from the cockpit. I ran the VC in high resolution mode the entire time and got good frame rates in FS2004 and acceptable ones in FSX. All the instruments I tried worked, though the radio frequencies were hard to read without shifting the eye point and as you can see (right hand screenshot, second row), the glareshield is a bit angular at the edges. DME is obtained by clicking on the face of the HSI, exactly the same way as it is done on the 2D panel.
 
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In summary, buying the box in the Pilot Shop gets you the FS2004 version of the 441, tweaked so that it will install and run in FSX also, but without any enhancements over the original FS2004 version, in so far as I can tell. For all that, it is a solid simulation of a complex twin that has been made simple to operate and fun to fly without sacrificing that feeling of 'being there' that proves so elusive in the FS environment. If you fly in 2D panel mode most of the time and don't object to buying a product that comes with a single livery, it still makes a good buy.
Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com
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