Blade form Lionheartcreations

I stumbled upon the Blade futuristic electric aircraft from Lionheartcreations. For a price of $7 it is a bargain if you are keen to try something radically different. There are faults... quite a few. But for that price it is still good value if you are willing to put up with some inconsistencies.

Exterior:

Very good. Some cool liveries including digital cammo. Nothing better than that  Landing and nav lights quire poor – they look like they are about a meter away form the aircraft. Nice landing gear action though. All in all nicely modelled plane. The lights are the only flaw in otherwise well modelled aircraft.

Interior:

Some good and few (but serious) bad ones. The overall ambiance is superb. Light switched are simple and well laid out. Looks more like a car than a plane – in a good way. Avionics have some flaws. Autopilot is counterintuitive with some bugs. Auto throttle opting apparently available but not working at all. VS hold not working either. But those are not a big deal as the plane is not really fast enough to make this a necessity. My biggest problem with the avionics is the cumbersome way it is laid out. At no point can you get to a configuration where all info is available at the same time. Consequently you need to constantly switch between screens on the MFD. PFD should have more information it like DME, VOR info, etc. Mouse is very busy during instrument navigation. It’s more about eye candy that functionality. ILS is the best exsamble - more of a visual show off than anything remotely functional. Pity. If you like IFR this in not for you. For VFR however, when all you are concerned with is an occasional heading and altitude hold it is a really nice plane. I can’t stress it enough how much of a good value for money it is. Lots of effort must have gone into developing it. And all for 7 bucks!

GPS looks like a custom unit but includes a lot of functions straight out of G1000 – I really like that.

My humble conclusion: Not perfect. Not by any means. I’d give the avionics a score of 4/10 at the most (only thanks to the cool GPS)if you don’t factor in the bargain price. But it is something different. The installation is flawless. I have bought planes anywhere between $50 and $100 which gave me endless troubles. The Blade installed without a single hick up. All in all it is a nice addon to your hangar. Expect at least $20 worth of value for the $7 barging.

Bart

Nice looking job..:)

http://www.lionheartcreations.com/Blade.html