Fokker F50 Package

By Andrew Herd (12 October 2000)

ne of the most noticeable gaps in the enormous range of FS2000 panels is a good series of short haul commuter aircraft along the lines of the Avro RJ, SAAB 340 and Dash 8, so I was extremely interested to see that a new version of Espen Oijordsbakken's Fokker F50 panel had been released for FS2000 [ef50v20.zip]. Knowing that Espen is a member of the Freeware Panel Designer's Association and that his panel has been a year in the making made me all the more keen to see it, despite the 6.35 Mb download size.

To use the panel, I needed an aircraft, so I shopped around on FlightSim.Com and found a series of FS2000 F50s designed by Rob Bennis, which make the ideal companions to the Espen's software. Rob has painted his F50 in Aer Lingus [f50aerli.zip], SAS Eurolink [f50luxa2.zip], Air Nostrum [f50klc1.zip]. There is also a Phillipine Airlines version by Many Ozias [f50pal.zip] and a Fairchild Hiller FH 227 in Ozark colors [fh227oza.zip]. This package is based on an original AFX by Dan Holthausen, which has been modified by many different designers over the years, and it is presented here with a retracting undercarriage, rotating props that windmill realistically to a standstill, transparent cockpit windows and 512 x 512 textures. The flight dynamics have been completely revised so that they are only suitable for FS2000, but the .air file leaves a bit to be desired and a better bet is to download Simon Evans [fo50v31.zip] which is much more realistic. To use it, simply replace any existing .air file, renaming this file to the same file name. Make sure you back up the existing file first!

Having located an aircraft, I needed some sound to replace the over familiar King Air package. After a long search, I came up with Aaron R. Swindle's [tpesx2.zip] FS2000 Pro twin turboprop regional commuter sound package. Although this was developed for the Raytheon-Beechcraft 1900D, it is also suitable for the Fokker F50, ATR 42-500, and most other turboprop twins. At nearly 7 megs, it isn't a small file, but the quality is very high.

Putting these three packages together provides about as realistic a regional passenger aircraft as it is possible to fly in FS2000. The F50 had its origins in the fifties, when Fokker decided what sort of aircraft might be needed to replace the DC-3. By 1953, they were showing a design for the F27 with Rolls-Royce Dart engines, seating 32 passengers in a pressurized cabin and with good short field capability. The first prototype flew in 1955, and many orders followed, including licensed production by Fairchild Aircraft in the States. The F27 proved to be a steady seller and more than 700 were built in a variety of versions including the F27 Mk 200/F-27A, with uprated engines; the Mk300/F-27B which was a freighter; and the stretched F27 Mk 500 and Fairchild FH-227.

The F27 was very reliable and many remain in service today, but the life of the airframe was extended by the development of the Fokker 50, the plane we are interested in, which had new engines and avionics. The closure of Fokker has shut the line down now, but you can still see plenty of F50s in the air today, and if the venerable F27 is anything to go by, the F50s will be with us for a long while yet.

The first thing I should say about this combination of three different packages is that it isn't perfect. I experienced the occasional GPF while I was using it, but on the whole I like it very much, and the fact that it is freeware raises it to my current personal top ten.

I do have an ulterior motive in highlighting this particular panel, plane and sound combination, because I think it demonstrates not only how good well designed freeware can be, but also how a great simulation can be assembled at nil cost, given a small amount of imagination, and a little bit of time spent researching what is available for download. But more than that, the result is a tribute to the people who programmed its various constituents, because believe me, you could spend a great deal of money on buying boxed software and end up with a far worse result.

The panel is the most complex part of the plane I assembled, so I have devoted the largest part of the review to it, but Rob's aircraft and Aaron's sound set are also worthy of comment. The plane I flew most was the SAS Eurolink model which has a particularly photogenic scheme and so appears in the screenshots. The paint job is remarkably detailed, right down to the exhaust blacking on the engine cowlings and I experienced no significant problems with bleed through, although at some angles it was possible to see some color mismatch on the fuselage textures.

The transparent cockpit allows you to see the pilots and the opening stairway is a nice touch; you will be pleased to know that this only deploys when the engines are off! The only serious problem with the plane is the virtual cockpit views, which are marred by enormous grey bars where the cockpit pillars should be; these are unrealistically large and block out significant portions of the view. However, this is a minor gripe; other features such as the tail lighting more than compensate for it. The flight model is impeccable, as one would expect in a sim which has such a long pedigree, and it reflects the characteristics of the F50 quite well, making for a very manoeuvrable aircraft with excellent short take-off and landing performance.

The sound package is a good example of Aaron Swindle's art - his most recent release is the sound set for the DreamFleet/FSD Cessna 172, and this one is no less good. Looking back on it, Aaron has been responsible for some of my best loved aircraft sounds, including the recent Piper Cub [piprj3mm.zip] by Manuel Medel, Steve Small, Yannick Lavigne, Fred Banting and Aaron Swindle; and Paolo Zamparo's Aermacchi MB339 [mb339pan.zip etc]. Just as this review went to press, Aaron released a new package [fkr50snz.zip] which I am told makes the one I reviewed look pretty tame, so do yourself a favor and download it.

Probably the best way to show this package off is to take you on a flight, and I am going to use the flight plan which is detailed in Espen's documentation, so that new users can see what to expect. I should point out that I use the Norway 2000 scenery [norw2_2k.zip], which is why my airports look different to yours. We are going to fly from Bergen to Stavanger, so start thinking Scandinavian; this is not Kansas any more.

Espen's panel is very, very impressive, in fact the only freeware panel I can think of which has made a similar impression on me is Dai Griffith's Short SD3-60, which is only available for FS98. Like Dai's panel, you could pass this one by at first glance, the bitmap is OK without being spectacular and the night lighting is very pedestrian, but not only is the main panel very faithfully portrayed, but you also get a fully functional overhead panel and pedestal, with every switch, dial and knob duplicated. As you can imagine, a panel of this complexity takes some getting to know and you will need to print out the sumptuous Adobe Acrobat formatted manual, guillotine it carefully to separate the pages, and assemble it in a suitably sized ring binder. Believe me, manuals do not come any better than this, ever. In fact, the manual is such a joy that I can imagine some folk will get more fun out of reading it than flying the plane. The list of credits at the front of the manual lists the members of the Freeware Panel Designers Association, and we should give them respect, because this is the finest product they have released to date.

After going to FS2000\Gauges and deleting FokkerF50.ini (vital, in my experience, as the aircraft is inclined to do all kinds of strange things otherwise, including back flips on the runway) we can walk out across the hard standing and up the stairs into the plane. We pass a few moments idle conversation with the cabin staff, heave our gear into the cockpit, settle down in our respective seats and stare at the panel, which is as dead as a dodo, with the Primary Flight Display and Navigation Display switched off and dark. So we have to go through the initial checklist to even get the heating on.

We have two alternatives here - we can go through the printed checklist, or we can hit the spacebar and have the First Officer start reading the checklist. Being the lazy kind of individual I am, I always opt for the latter approach, chiefly because it is so cool. Each press of the bar and the invisible man in the right hand seat will read another item over the speakers; an idea so simple and yet so useful that I am amazed no-one has thought of it before - other designers take note please, because this deserves to become a standard. As a back-up to the verbal list, yet another window can be called up which uses a moving green light to show how far through the check list you have gone and if you are really lost, the manual tells you where every single switch and control can be found on the panel. If the screenshots haven't convinced you how complex this cockpit is, perhaps the fact that you can actually set the cabin pressurisation landing altitude will; just about the only thing that hasn't been simulated is the pre-flight inspection and Espen and the team are probably working on that right now.

Once the initial checklist is done, it is time for pushback, which is done by calling up the push-back window, setting a distance for the push using the mouse and choosing whether the nose should be pushed back straight or to the left or right. Push back involves the standard drop into slew mode, but it is enlivened by the taciturn voice of the ground crew giving instructions and the voice of the First Officer responding. At the end of an immaculate push, we hear the FO say, 'Starting engines, hand signal from my right hand side please, and have a nice day!'

From there we continue with our after start check list and taxi check list. One thing I really would appreciate seeing on sim aircraft is properly implemented control locks; this panel has a lock, but it only works in keyboard mode, which is frustrating. Trying to keep the taxi speed down to a realistic level is one of my personal bug-bears. So anyway, we line the aircraft up, advance the throttles, take one last look around and then we are off into the wild blue yonder, with the help of our FO calling V1 and V2, 'Positive climb, gear up,' and finally 'Gear up and locked' as we power out of town.

The autopilot isn't quite up to the level of sophistication of modern units, which is reasonable, given the age of the avionics, but it is well simulated. There are eleven modes including altitude select and glide slope capture and in general it works very well. I say in general, because when it is first engaged, with IAS mode set, the aircraft nose 'hunts' up and down very markedly before it settles to a steady climb. To begin with, I had some problems with the autopilot controlling a climb at all, the plane tending to start an uncontrolled descent instead, but with help I traced this to a mismatch between the FS2000 autopilot dialog climb setting and the aircraft setting. Once this was fixed, I had no further trouble beyond the roller coaster on initial engage, and when CLB mode is switched on, you can take your hands off the controls and admire the view. Espen Oijordsbakken tells me that a patch is under development which fixes this and a few other minor problems - it should be released about three to four weeks from now.

The flight takes us almost due south from Flesland to the STORD and then the KARMOY VORs, before dog-legging south-east to the RENNESOY NDB, a track which takes us across some of Norway's most interesting landscapes (roll on mesh scenery for Europe, by the way.) During the cruise phase of the flight, there isn't much to do except look out the window, but don't relax for too long. About 10 Km from the Karmoy VOR, we begin out descent, dialing in 3000 feet on the flight mode panel, switching in IAS mode at 215 knots (max descent speed), pulling the throttles all the way back and engaging ASEL, so that we level off at 3000, turn to intercept the ILS and begin our approach checks. In good weather, the runway should be in view almost all the way from the NDB, otherwise you will need to concentrate, as finals are over water and there is no room to land short. Landing is no problem, this aircraft not being known as the 'nifty 50' for nothing, and it handles well for an plane of its size. We kill our roll with a touch of reverse thrust, then we vacate the runway and begin our after landing checks as we taxi to the pan, being the professionals that we are (-: From there, all we have to do is to find our slot, pull the brake, run through the parking checks and walk out into the night.

This new F50 panel brings a new degree of realism to FS2000. Imagine flying it with ProFlight 2000 or Radar Contact, on a system running FSMeteo and there wouldn't be much to choose between it and the real thing, apart from the expense and all that time in commercial flight school. Great panel, great plane, great sound. Enjoy.