Bear's Cave The world of Flight Simulators short reviews by Steve "Bear" Cartwright Last week we saw 117 new files uploaded into the AVSIM library and it was another stunning week in high quality and original files as well. Jan Visser uploaded his 4th in a series of liveries for the Rambow/Chaffin/Visser DC-3, there were several bush sceneries, Canadian Mesh, airport sceneries, aircraft for all the sims, and there were more excellent Terrascene sceneries for FLY! My picks this week are of 5 files you may have missed that I feel everyone should take a second look at, so here they are! 11-Mar-2001 Air Canada DC930 by Roberto Vigetti fly_dc930.zip uploaded 5-Mar-2001 1,287Kb FLY! First up this week is an excellent DC-9-30 in Air Canada livery from the collaboration of Roberto Vigetti, Jean Sabatier, Doug Moldenhauer, Paul Golding, Pierre langloi, and Jose Lopez! High quality jetliners have been somewhat in short supply for this sim (freeware jetliners that is), but Roberto and friends have come up with an excellent package. The panel is based on a Paul Golding original (specifically Roberto used Paul's gauges and the basic bitmap), a Doug Moldenhauer flight model file was adapted by Roberto Vigetti for this project, and the visual model was done by Jean Sabatier and he was ultimately responsible for combining all this work (but he did note in the readme file that it was Roberto that did most of the really hard work). Flying this aircraft is a real pleasure and it is something that every FLY user should take a serious look at! I personally found the flight modeling to exhibit the feel that I would assume an aircraft of this size & weight to have, plus you have to plan your approach and be very aware of your speeds, which is generally what is also the problems that pilots of real aircraft of this type have noted. I would highly suggest you download this aircraft, as I think you will see that these fellows have done a pretty fair job at producing a very attractive aircraft and an aircraft that's really enjoyable to fly! ...Bear! 11-Mar-2001 Zlin Z526 AFS Hungarian Aerobatic Team by Tibor Kókai zlin526afs.zip uploaded 5-Mar-2001 520Kb FS2000 Tibor's readme file gives a bit of the history of this aircraft which was quite widely used in Aerobatic competition up until the mid-1970s, but then specially designed aerobatic aircraft from all corners of the earth began appearing. The aircraft builders at Zlin then took their Z526AF and applied some major modifications (mostly involving shortening the fuselage and increasing the control surface areas) and changed the model number to the Z526AFS, which this FS aircraft depicts. This aircraft was used (the Zlin) with the Hungarian Aerobatic Team from 1970 - 1986 and Tibor, using FSDS (Abacus's Flight Simulator Design Studio) Pro and Abacus's Aircraft Animator, has designed yet another beautiful appearing FS aircraft. No custom panel or sounds are supplied, so Tibor relied on the default files (uses the default Cessna 182S, but I switched it to the default Extra 300). Flying this aircraft is fun, but it does require a lot of concentration due to the general sensitivity of a high-roll-rate, lightweight, yet slightly underpowered aerobatic aircraft. Unlike the modern Pitts Special, Extra 300/400, or Sukhoi Su-31, the Zlin Z526AFS being somewhat underpowered, requires that you allow your speed to build before you attempt any vertical climbs or attempts at a perfectly round loop; in other words, speed is everything in these older aerobatic aircraft. Overall I really liked this aircraft—it does require a bit of extra concentration to fly successfully—but the overall appearance and its increased level of challenge to fly is really terrific! ...Bear! 11-Mar-2001 General Mitchell International Airport (MKE) by S. Gonwa mke01v1.zip uploaded 7-Mar-2001 1,983Kb FS2000 There have been, lately, some really unbelievable uploads (sceneries) of various airports around the world and nearly all have been extrordinary and Mr. Gonwa has equally produced a very intensive, complete, and highly detailed version of the General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! Mr. Gonwa's readme file mentions such details as there being over 200 taxiway signs and the scenery includes static aircraft for Midwest Express, Northwest, TWA, USAir, among others. What he doesn't mention are the USAF KC-135s parked at the military side of the airport or the static display of the Billy Mitchell (B-25) at the front entrance of the main terminal building and many such items that he paid extra attention to. Overall this is as excellent a scenery package as I've seen anywhere—highly detailed and highly accurate—but (here's the but!) it does require a faster computer due to the frame rate hit you're most likely to get (most presumably for the smaller machines, that's for sure). I encountered little problem though my fairly fast system did receive a major hit. Regardless though, it was still quite flyable when in the area of this really beautiful rendition of KMKE in Wisconsin! ...Bear! 11-Mar-2001 Barquisimeto International, Venezuela by David Maldonado svbmfs2k.zip uploaded 8-Mar-2001 825Kb FS2000 Barquisimeto City is about 150 miles due south of Aruba and in the interior of Venezuela! David Maldonado has put together a really nice little package that not only accurately covers the International Airport there, but also includes several buildings or items of interest in the general area, including a couple of soccer stadiums, many of the downtown buildings, and several dynamic aircraft working the airport. This is a really nice scenery package that is using some newer textures depicting the brick construction of the terminal and tower buildings, with full 3D cars in the parking lot, BP Oil tanks, and I noticed that even one of the dynamic aircraft is a Russian built Tu-134A—pretty neat actually! Download this scenery and take a look at it for yourself. I like it and David, you did a bang-up job on it! Oh yeah, I noticed virtually no change in frame rates on my system either! Nice work David! ...Bear! 11-Mar-2001 Aerospatiale Ecureuil AS-350 B2 Monaco Air aircraft by Frans Vranken panel by Jean-Pierre Langer and Arne Barthel fad_as350.zip; fad_as350guages.zip uploaded 10-Mar-2001 6,498Kb/3,700Kb FS2000 I'm not a helicopter pilot and frankly, I've found that the default Bell 206 in FS2000 to be all but impossible to land correctly (well, without crashing that is). This latest from Jean-Pierre Langer though I found to be very easy and well within my ability to fly, though at first I needed a landing pad about the size of the Astrodome! With practice, I've gotten much better and this example of the Aerospatiale Ecureuil AS-350 B2 has made that practice pay off. The detail and realistic appearance of Frans Vranken's helicopter is very very good and the custom panel is on equal to the exterior of this copter as well! Jean-Pierre Langer and Arne Barthel applied some very unique features to the panel that are very worthy of note and the most notable is that by clicking on a couple of custom designed FS2000 panel icons will switch the panel to one of 3 variations. There's the standard position, a close-up position, and a 45ş look-down position (for landing), each of which are as close as a quick click of your mouse, rather than having to depress the Shift+2 or 3 or 4 keys on your keyboard! The paint scheme is for Air Monaco (Monaco is a small principality on the South Coast of France) and looks good in all views. This helo, besides the really terrific appearance, has fully animated parts, includes the custom panels (I mentioned above), plus it also has custom sounds as well! So, if helicopters float your boat, than this full package is well worth a look see! ...Bear! Tell A Friend About these Reviews!   Standard Disclaimer These reviews above are a subjective assessment of the work of the authors. 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