Flight1 Piper Meridian

By Andrew Herd (16 August 2004)

f you have a PPL, money to burn and a need to travel far and fast, then look no further, because the Meridian is for you. This ship can fly high, is certified for known icing and packs sophisticated avionics into a package designed for single pilot operation. A thoroughbred through and through, Piper's flagship is not only stunning to look at, it has performance to match - and now we can all enjoy it, thanks to FlightOne.

The Meridian has its roots in the Malibu, a high performance six seater turbocharged single which was designed to compete with the Cessna Centurion. The Malibu was certified in the early eighties and remains popular today, with over 900 hulls sold, mostly as the powerful 350 hp Mirage version; which can be wound up to 196 kias for long range cruise at FL250. However, piston singles aren't best suited to flight in the higher airways and putting a bigger engine in the Mirage didn't make for a completely trouble free ride, so in the end Piper bowed to the laws of thermodynamics and substituted a turboprop - producing the Meridian, which can fly all the way up to FL300 at 262 kias, although in theory, at least, that isn't a legal cruising altitude.

Piper's newest toy has a P&W Canada PT6A-42A turboprop derated to 500 hp, driving a four bladed constant speed Hartzell prop. The main reason for derating the engine (which can deliver over a thousand horsepower in its raw state) is that it allows the plane to climb at 1750 feet per minute all the way up to the point where the temperature limit is hit at FL250 and also results in a TBO of 3600 hours - the catch being that derating makes the Meridian drink fuel below 10,000 feet, where the engine is relatively inefficient.

The new plane has a much bigger tail than the Malibu, in order to increase lateral stability enough to cope with all that extra power, and it also has a greater wing span with root extensions to keep the stalling speed down to 61 knots. The book range is one thousand nautical miles, but in practice Meridian owners seem to get rather less than that and seem to allow three hours with an hour's reserve, which translates into something like 750 nm as long as you fly at FL250 or above. The over-riding philosophy of Meridian flight is therefore to get into an airway and stay there, but in doing so many pilots must reflect on the one weakness of the aircraft, which is that its load carrying capability isn't huge and the fuselage is relatively tight. If you put six adults and baggage into the plane, you are restricted to something like an hour's worth of fuel, but since the Meridian isn't aimed at charter operators in the first place, this is hardly a problem. Typical loadouts include two attorneys and their golf clubs; a corporate financial adviser and his laptop; or an oilman and his mistress. The cost is a cool $1.5 million or so, but it gets you a single which outperforms many regional passenger twins - if you can't stretch to a real one this month, FlightOne will sell you a sim for only $29.95.

Part of the appeal of the real Meridian is that it has multi screen Meggit avionics - six in all if you take up the right hand seat option. Meggit is an extraordinary success story and is sweeping the board with its innovative digital display systems; it also markets the very popular S-Tec series of avionics. Meggitt instrumentation is fitted to more than thirty aircraft types, ranging from Boeing 737s all the way up to the U2. The Meridian has MAGIC® (Meggitt Avionics next Generation Integrated Cockpit), which is an outstanding fully-certified solution providing a Primary Flight Display, Navigation Display, Engine Display Unit, and Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System. MAGIC interfaces with most new GPS systems and autopilots and has the major advantage of allowing provision of integrated avionics and flight information to a standard normally only found on commercial or military panels - for example, if any engine parameter goes out of tolerance, the relevant display changes to red and an entry is automatically made in the computerised engineering log. In addition to the flight displays, the Meridian system comes with the MAGIC® 2100 DFCS - a digital attitude based flight control system in an avionics stack-mounted case, which contains a mode selector/programmer, annunciator, roll, pitch & yaw computers and servo amplifiers. This, along with integrated altitude selector and alerter modes, amounts to one of the most sophisticated avionics suites available in a GA plane, although the new G1000 suite that has recently appeared should give Meggit a run for their money.

The package is available as a 65 Mb download from the Flight1 website and installs using Flight1's standard key system. After your credit card is processed, a software key is sent to you and must be validated online before installation can proceed. Flight1 are quite brave selling the sim at this price, because the Meridian is in a different league to the average thirty dollar FS add-on and could have retailed for twice the cost and still been a bargain. I had no problems with download and setup - although it is a little unusual by Flight1's standards, since once the main package has installed, there is a second stage in which the Garmin interactive trainer for the GNS530 GPS is loaded. The installation offers a choice of installing the package in FS2002 or FS2004 and when it was finished, I found the plane, panel and sound set installed in FS2004, a folder containing documents and links, a copy of Text-o-Matic (FlightOne's livery installation program), and a configuration manager for the sim. I ran the configuration manager before doing anything else and found it offered options to select a high resolution virtual cockpit and for loading the plane - I opted for two up front and a passenger, which as you will gather isn't an unrepresentative loadout. There is also an option to use 32 bit textures, but exercise this with care unless you have a very high end system, because it carries a significant performance penalty.

Recommended system requirements are a 1.4 Ghz Pentium, 384 Mb RAM, a video card with 64 MB and Win XP/2000, though as always, the faster the PC, the better the result. The FS2002 version may run on some Win 98/ME installations and for this reason Flight1 have a compatibility check program available on their site - the reason for the compatibility check being that the Garmin 530 relies on an a separate 16 bit Windows application to run and will not work on many 98/ME setups. You can download the software to do this at the bottom of the website page here. Having used the package, I would say the specs are remarkably honest, and I definitely would not try running the sim on anything less than a one gig Pentium or eqivalent.

The documentation Flight1 supply is impressive, not least because of its somewhat unconventional origins, at least by FS standards. A 117 page manual is included, but even so, this only just has enough space to cover the checklists and the details of how to get airborne (as with all FS planes, you can just firewall the throttles and fly, but that misses the point with an add-on like this one). By and large any detail on how to use the avionics is absent and I leafed through the printout with increasing frustration until it dawned on me that I was looking at something quite different to the ordinary run of flightsim add-ons.

If you want to understand more about how the sim works, there are links in the manual to the equipment manufacturers' websites, which allow you to download the real world manuals as PDFs. Oh, yeah, I can hear you thinking, 'For what? Why should I read a 70 page manual on the S-Tec 550X, or a 200 page guide to a GPS, just so I can play with a sim?' Well, the news is that the Meridian is just a little out of the ordinary as FS add-ons go, because the vast majority of the avionics work exactly the way their real life counterparts do, and the best way to find out what you need to know is to...read the real manuals. Yep. It is a little bit jaw-dropping, but that is how it is, and while I am sure that some users will be a little shocked to discover that the main manual only has, for example, got enough space to detail how the hotspots work on the altitude preselector, leaving you to read the manufacturer's literature to figure out the rest; others are going to be in seventh heaven when they make the discovery. There is an option to buy a real Piper Meridian POH for $39.95 and I suspect that many users will take it up.

When I first reviewed the Meridian for FS2002 in February 2003, I thought it was the most ambitious GA add-on for Flight Simulator I had ever seen and fifteen months later I haven't had any reason to change that opinion. The plane itself is a Gmax model and the configuration manager allows you to install it either with frame-saving DX3 textures, or with more detailed, but inevitably more processor intensive 32-bit ones. The visual model is very good indeed, and it looks outstanding with the 32 bit texture set applied. There is a full house of animation, some of it very clever indeed; for example, you can't open the doors when the cabin is pressurised, which is neat. FlightOne only provide a single livery, but there are many repaints for the FS2002 version to choose from on FlightSim.Com.

The flight model is an absolutely stunning achievement, squaring the difficult circle of keeping the performance at or near the numbers while providing a good impression of the handling of a plane in this class. Looking back, I think it was probably the best FS2002 flight model I ever tested; capturing the sheer power of the Meridian as well as showing off its maneuverability - the FS2004 version is very fine too.

The sound set captures the bass whine of a PT-6 well, the wav files being long enough that there is hardly any noticeable cycling. One thing you will notice is the trim operation, which is annoyingly loud - I have never been in a real Meridian, but I would be amazed if it was true that a million dollars doesn't buy you a quiet trim.

And now for the panel...just take a peek at the screen shot for a little while first. Yep, it really is as good as it looks and the most extraordinary thing about it is that it doesn't savage frame rates, which is amazing considering how finely detailed the gauges are and how much code there is driving them. The 2D panel is one the best I have ever seen and a feast for the eyes, with the sharpest panel edits around and great visuals. Given that the Meridian has just about the most sophisticated set of flight instruments available for a GA plane, I guess we had better move on quickly, before I start talking about what it was like when we flew wearing suits of armor.

The four instruments which make up the heart of the panel are the three MAGIC displays and a Garmin GNS 530, all of which are coded by Reality-XP in the sim. Just do not ask what these cost in real life - the 530 alone is beyond the pocket of most GA owners (real Meridians have two). At the top, above the center of the yoke, is the Meggitt Primary Flight Display or PFD; below that is the Navigation Display (ND); then going to the right of them, at top, you find the Primary Engine Display Unit or EDU; and below that is the GNS 530. Above the left handle of the yoke, top to bottom, are the autopilot annunciator; the S-Tec Altitude Selector/Alerter; and (steam instruments being darned useful when the all lights go out inside a cloud) a turn and bank indicator. Next row to the left has a very sophisticated clock/cockpit voice recorder, a cooking VOR/glideslope indicator, and the cabin pressure display. If you work it right, the clock will even go through the checklists for you.

Up on the right of the glareshield is a set of gleaming red icons which variously pan the viewpoint up and down and let you extend the view over to the right. You can also use them to display an IFR view which brings the electrical subsystems and the flap gauge into view. If you hit the right hand button, it lets you access the functions of the autopilot stack, which sits above a tantalisingly non-working Bendix King Multi-function display (I guess FlightOne had to stop somewhere, but maybe one day we will see it light up). At the top of the stack is a Garmin audio selector, below which is the autopilot itself. Above this stack are a set of backup analog gauges and above that are the annunciators. If you look top left, there is yet another icon stack which lets you select the overhead and pop up the pedestal.

Now we have taken a look around our new toy, it is time to do some homework. I confess I haven't actually measured the manuals, but I would guess that printed out double-sided, the whole lot is a daunting two inches high. While it isn't necessary to learn the contents by heart, a little background reading definitely pays off if you want to use the sim to the max - and this is a package that is designed to be tried to the absolute limits.

If you want to fly the Meridian right, the first thing you will need to do is get your head around is engine management, though if you choose to ignore it, you won't get into trouble beyond a few irritating bleeps now and again. In a real plane, ignoring too many bleeps is followed by systems shutting down, bits falling off and the mechanics taking your bank account prisoner, but fortunately no-one has worked out how to do that to us in FS yet. If you should want to do things by the book, then you are gonna have to learn some numbers - don't worry, it isn't too tough. On top of the sort of figures you need to remember for any airplane - best rate of climb, cruise climb, flap limit speed and so forth - there is an additional layer of complexity, because of the sort of powerplant the Meridian uses. Turboprops have to be flown within a limited range of torque, ITT, Ng and fuel flow settings to get the best out of the aircraft and to preserve engine life; which is why very few of them are certified for single pilot operation. Unusually, the Meridian is - chiefly because the cockpit is a triumph of ergonomic design, but also because of those mouth watering MAGIC instruments. With practice, it is possible for flying this bird to become second nature, and in FS, as in life, you may discover that you don't ever want to use anything else.

One of the things that will dawn on you after doing the first couple of flights is that in order to get time to check out the ITT and all that other stuff, it follows that you are going to have to have some help with flying the plane, and that is where the S-Tec gear comes in. The reason is that with something as quick as the Meridian is that it is really easy to 'get behind' the plane, and that is when mistakes are made. So learn everything you can about the S-Tec. The autopilot setup will be familiar to users of the FlightOne Cessna 421, but the developers have taken the code a stage further and its function appears to be an exact duplicate of the original, as far as I can tell. The S-Tec system has three parts: a conventional mode selector, which anyone who has used the default Cessnas will recognise; a remote unit, mounted in front of the pilot, which allows preselection of altitude and pitch, as well as performing various other functions; and a mode annunciator, which lets you know what you did wrong.

There is also a Flight Director/Autopilot (FD/AP) switch, which is a superb piece of kit. First press arms it and switches on the FD - this not only lets you fly the bars, it means that you can set up your cleared altitude and rate of climb on the ground, with the correct modes pre-engaged on the autopilot. Then, once you have the Meridian cleaned up and stable in the climb, all you have to do is press the FD/AP fully home and the autopilot takes over, though you still have to look after the power settings. This is one of the places where the philosophy of the manuals becomes a little challenging - you have to read the S-Tec manuals to understand that you have to pre-engage ALT and VS modes in order to climb to the figure set in the selector/alerter... and the FlightOne manual to figure out that the way to press both keys simultaneously is to left-click between them. It works - like everything else in the sim - like a dream, but it can take a little time to figure out what needs doing.

I won't spend long on the S-Tec, but rest assured you can do all kinds of clever stuff with it, including using it to fly the plane under command of the Garmin. Sure, it is more complicated than the default autopilots, but it also does a darn sight more. Once you get your head around the way the units interface, using the S-Tec becomes second nature in a reasonable length of time. For example, to fly an approach, you set the localiser frequency on the GNS 530, set the heading bug to the inbound course, press the CDI key on the 530 to engage VLOC, hit the NAV key on the autopilot and sit back and watch the S-Tec automatically engage APR mode and fly the beam.

The trouble with MAGIC is that once you have got a taste for it, it is kind of hard to leave it alone, especially when you don't have to rob a bank to pay for it. If this is as near as I ever get to a real MAGIC panel, then I am going to pine away, because not only are the gauges pin-sharp, but they duplicate all the real world modes, and are coded so tightly that there is no jerkiness or hesitation in the instruments at all, which is unusual with gauges of this complexity.

The ND has four modes, accessed via the page key. The most useful page shows TQ, ITT, Np and Ng together and saves you from developing a kink in your neck trying to scan all the data. Paging was instantaneous on my system and the images were sharp, bright and faultlessly animated. You can use the ND to illustrate one of the neatest bits of coding in the sim, which is the automatic fuel balancing - in a real Meridian, if more than a 40 pound imbalance builds up between the tanks, surplus fuel is automatically pumped from the fullest tank to the other side and the sim does that too. This will be a revelation to anyone used to the older Piper fuel systems, which gave the impression of having been designed to be as counter-intuitive as possible and have led to one or two scary situations in their time.

As you will have noticed, the panel is night lit, with various combinations of lighting available via the overhead. While I was playing around, I discovered that the sim even has ice lights, which are essential when you are flying real IFR at night. Without them, the only way of working out whether there is any ice on the leading edges is to use a torch, which tends to alarm the passengers.

Next, there is the GNS 530, at one time the top of the range GA set Garmin had available and a far cry from the GPSIII that most of us carry around in our bags. The best way of learning what the 530 can do is to download the manual (all 200 pages of it) but in summary it combines the function of a fully featured, approach-capable GPS with dual NAV/COM radios and an autopilot interface. This means that you can slave the 530 to the S-Tec and use it to fly the Meridian right around an approach procedure if you need to - and guess what? The 530 has a worldwide database of procedures preloaded.

In the FS2002 version of the Meridian, punching in a goto on the Garmin when the addon was being used with either the UK2000 scenery of the UK VFR Photographic scenery resulted in intermittent single figure frame rates and bad stuttering. Much the same happened if the package was run on a hyperthreaded processor, but it appears that all of these problems have been fixed, along with a few other small bugs. Certainly in tests, single figure frame rates were no more common with the Meridian than with the FSD Commander.

As far as I can see, the FlightOne GNS 530 emulates every single mode found on the real instrument. The secret behind this presumably lies in the way Garmin's GNS 530 trainer loads with the Meridian and runs minimised on the task bar - if you kill this app the 530 screen goes blank in the add-on. Given that the 530 is probably the most complex piece of GA avionics available anywhere, I didn't manage to test all the modes, but I ran through as many as I could and they all behaved as the book said they should, which is incredible, given that this is just one gauge in a very complex panel. In common with the MAGIC instruments, the 530 can be enlarged by clicking on the upper face and this helps a great deal with programming it, which would otherwise be fiddly in the extreme.

The Meggitt displays and the Garmin were developed with Jean-Luc Dupiot at Reality-XP and though it bears a superficial resemblence to the GPS 500 that comes with FS2004, it is such powerful piece of kit that I am only going to be able to skim the very surface of what it can do. FlightOne seem to have implemented every feature of the real thing and one of the few criticisms I have of the Meridian is that the enlarged view of the Garmin in the sim could really do with being double the size (it can be dragged to a larger size, but the bitmap suffers) but I guess you can't have everything. The most powerful key on the unit is probably the CDI button, which is used to couple the 530's GPS or VLOC receiver to the aircraft's CDI or HSI; you just keep pressing the button to select which type of navigation you want, and then you can let the autopilot do the rest for you.

One of the best features of the Garmin is that you get a view of all the airspace boundaries, even in FS2002 - in many countries, the amount of uncontrolled airspace is less than you would think and in a fast plane like the Meridian you really have to pay attention in order to avoid entering controlled airspace accidentally. You can also select airspace and review its classification and upper and lower limits before there is any chance of a bust. With all the options enabled, this does produce a rather busy screen, but the 530 not only allows you to declutter, but also gives you the option to select the range at which particular features will be displayed.

Another really neat feature of the real 530 - and therefore the sim - is that it allows you to quickly select the frequency you need for any nearby airport and transfer it to the stand-by slot. This is a real life-saver, particularly at night. It is also possible to pull up a frequency list for all the airports along the route of an active flight plan and the waypoint pages allow you to view everything from a plan of the field to approach procedures and it is also possible to review navaid data. The runway page is particularly useful because it allows you to view designations, length, lighting and surface type, letting you avoid those embarassing moments when you break cloud to discover you have a million and a half dollar plane lined up on a farm pond. It is also possible to create user waypoints, which will be popular with simmers who have discovered the art of using such niceties as center fixes.

Flight planning with the 530 is pretty easy and reduces workload immensely once the Meridian is airborne. Waypoints can be added, edited and deleted without any problems; and plans can be saved, reactivated and even inverted, so that you can return home without creating a new one. If at any time an emergency develops, such as the doorbell ringing, or an urgent need to return to work and earn enough money to keep on simming, you can activate the NRST page and select from a list of airports and navaids within 200 nm of your present position.

Instrument gladiators will be delighted to hear that whether a flight plan is active or not, approaches and transitions can be selected directly from the database - although the Garmin database only appeared to be partially populated. Though GPS approaches are beginning to be certified in the US, there aren't any in Europe, as far as I know, mainly because of the oft repeated caveat that GPS might be de-tuned without warning (a European system is being designed to replace GPS as I write). This doesn't stop pilots using 530s to fly procedures - the technique being to select and load the approach into the flight plan and only activate it when you need to - the system will even allow you to fly vectors to the localiser until the aircraft is established. If you choose to do this, at a couple of miles from the final approach fix the 530 switches to approach mode and the CDI scaling tightens in automatically to fly the needles. Like I said, this is a complex piece of avionics.

The VC is excellent. If you use the high quality version the graphics are focussed, the gauges - with the exception of the Bendix King panel - all seem to work, and the bitmaps are bright. Quite how the development team managed to code a VC (and a virtual cabin) that didn't kill the frame rates stone cold dead, especially when the 2D cockpit is so incredibly detailed, I have no idea, but they have somehow gotten away with it.

Every release of Flight Simulator has spawned a package which stood out head and shoulders above the competition. For FS2000, it was Wilco's 767 PIC; for FS2002, it was FlightOne's Meridian, because I find it hard to imagine that another team could be assembled and managed to deliver such an outstanding and so bug-free a project. When I wrote the original review, I doubted whether another developer could equal the Meridian, it being so rare to come across such a fine and well balanced package. So far, no-one has, so I have given the FS2004 version an Armchair Aviator Award to go with the one I awarded to the original release. The Meridian remains the most impressive GA package I have seen for Flight Simulator.