I recently tested Abacus' Combat Squadron.... you have probably seen the review here at AVSIM. And I was not very impressed with the product. And hence it was with some apprehension that I embarked on yet another Abacus title. But, truth be told, this Flight Deck II is definitely in a different league!
Flight Deck II comes with 6 US Navy aircraft (planes and panels), an aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz) and a mule. A mule!!?? Yes, that's the tractor to pull your aircraft around the deck... you can actually drive it to get another view of the carrier. Apparently I am just a bad driver as a pilot, because I managed to go over the edge of the deck and sink the mule... and most of the aircraft, come to think of it.
As a CFS2 add-on the usefulness is limited of course. CFS2 is a World War II sim. So what fun is it to fly a Skyhawk against a Mitsubishi Zero? And in FS2000 you cannot use the guns of the military aircraft. But nonetheless I had fun flying (most of) these birds, so read on...
Documentation
In the box you will find a leaflet entitled "QUICK START, Read this first," which I dropped when opening the box, so didn't use for my first install (call me clumsy). And there also is a 38 page booklet with an introductory text (about carriers and their history), an article on each plane and a chapter with "aviator slang" to teach you the jargon. You will not find anything in it related to installation or using the add-on, so pick up the Quick Start guide first!
Installation
The installation guide is short but very good. And the installation software is equally clear and easy to use. Since this add-on can be used in CFS2 and in FS2000, there are two installations possible. You will have to choose where you want to use it. Once you have installed it in one program, you will need to do another install for the other program. Easy.
I will not repeat the instruction of the installation guide here.. read the guide. Just some remarks I jotted down when doing my first install in CFS2:
What do you get?
First of all two icons on your machine. One for the readme file and one for FS2000 (or CFS2) setup. I ignored them because everything was working already.
More importantly, you get 6 new aircraft:
You also get a number of 'missions' (in CFS2, or situations in FS2000). These are mainly training missions to get you back on deck. Which is far from easy!
Go fly… And crash!
That's what it's all about of course… fly these machines off the deck of a carrier and get them back on again. No easy thing to accomplish, I can tell you right from the start! Some of these aircraft seem to behave too sensitive and hence are difficult to fly. Let alone to 'bang' them on the deck of an aircraft carrier with relatively high speeds.
But although landing is the more difficult part of the flight, taking off did not prove as straight forward as one would hope either. As I said before, I dropped the Installation Guide. So I tried to take off with the Skyhawk, straight out of the box, and sure enough ended up in the water just in front of the carrier multiple times. You just don't get enough speed performing a normal take-off.
Fortunately at that time I found the Installation Manual under my desk and discovered that the second half of the instruction deal with Using Flight Deck II. There is a chapter 'Landing and Launching' that explains how to do it. But it did not help in all cases. Some aircraft (like the F-18) I have not been able to get off the deck yet. The problem is that there is no way of 'catapulting' the aircraft off the deck, so this has to be dealt with in a different way. According to the instructions it requires full throttle, full flaps and full afterburner... then release the parking brake and …hoopla! Even when following these instructions many of my 'hoopla's' ended in 'splashhhh'!! Problems occur with the F-18 and F-14, the engines are just too powerful for the parking brake to hold, or so it seems.
The bad thing is that not only did I crash a few million dollars worth of hardware, repeatedly, but in CFS2 it also crashed the program!! When I selected a mission (take off or land) my CFS2 would crash! Less of a thrill, I can tell you.
Some other funny things I noticed… for some reason I could not get some of the aircraft to touch the ground in FS2000. The F-18 Hornet floats just above the runway, no matter where I went. And similarly, the standard FS2000 Mooney floated above the deck of the carrier (yes, I know you're not supposed to land a civilian Mooney on the Nimitz).
I also had trouble starting the engines on some of the aircraft. And nothing I would do would help me in this. Not even changing (in FS2000) to the regular standard Cessna, starting it, and then changing to the F-14 or F-18. The engines would spool up and then die again. Haven't found a good answer to that one yet. At some point in all my trials they would just keep running somehow… and I would quickly take off when that happened.
The Hornet gave me more troubles. When applying flaps it would shoot up in the air like a cork in your bath tub. Not very realistic and very difficult to trim into landing configuration. In addition to that it then proved to have a very high sink rate with full flaps, so I had to fly with afterburner to reach the runway threshold. It would also steer wildly over the runway from left to right, overreacting on rudder input. The same applies to the F-14 unfortunately.
The aircraft
We all have some aircraft we really like to see, often for nostalgic reasons, sometimes because we actually know them. I used to read Buck Danny strip albums. And re-read them many times. Copied the drawings. And built plastic models that were featured in the stories. The Skyhawk was one of the famous planes in that era. So was the 'Crusader' (the F-8U).
So the first planes I tried were these two. The Skyhawk (also known as the Scooter) looks good and there are not many around, not in any sim, on the market today. Same goes for the A-7 (which is the successor of the Crusader).
To tell the truth, I like the way they are portrayed here. Both have great detail, look very crisp, the movable parts work accurate and realistic. And the A-7 is fun to fly. Not the Skyhawk. It just didn't feel good, far too sensitive on the controls, especially on the pitch. It seemed to be wanting to point its nose down all the time and was difficult getting up to speed. I kept adjusting the elevator trim and that took away some of the fun flying it. The A-7 seems to have a more realistic flight model and behaved better.
Then onto the others. There are two aircraft included that are not fighters. The S-3 Viking and the E-2C Hawkeye. The Hawkeye is a twin turboprop and basically a mini-AWACS for the carrier group. Flight characteristics aren't too bad and it takes off from the carrier without too much problems. Landing is difficult no matter what plane you are using. The S-3 Viking is a submarine killer and a very specialized aircraft at that. The model in this package looks pretty good, but flies like a fighter aircraft, which it is not. Like the Skyhawk it seems to react much too sensitive on the controls. (This was actually acknowledged by a former S-3 pilot of the Blue Wolves a US Navy Sea Control squadron, who spoke to one of Avsim's other reviewers, Bill Slaven). Just to show that not everything we write here is total nonsense and that sometimes the 'perception' of a non-pilot about what an aircraft should 'feel like' can be right on target (and this can by no means be proven in any scientific way ;-) ).
On to the last two aircraft, the F-18 Hornet and the F-14 Tomcat. Again, the Tomcat is one of my favorite planes, just like the F-15. Don't know why really, probably because I have seen these aircraft in real life a number of times and they are just awesome. Especially the F-14 is a big aircraft, with swing-wing, twin engine and (in real life) superior weapon delivery capabilities (Phoenix long range missiles and a host of other missiles and a 20mm canon). How time flies... it's over 30 years since it took to the air and I still think it's one of the modern, state-of-the art fighters. Well, it is actually, no matter how many Hornets may be put into service.)
The Hornet is its successor to a certain extent, but a totally different concept. The two planes portrayed in this package look good, perform relatively well, although I have some questions about the after burner usage or it's visual representation in the sim (it seems I am almost always flying on the 'burner if I want to maintain some speed). The paintwork is not as good as on the A-7 and Skyhawk though.
Cockpits/panels
I can be brief about this part. All aircraft have their own particular panel. But the panels are mostly "dead". There are few switches that actually function and there are no other inside views than the regular 'straight ahead' one. Bit of a disappointment, especially on the real nice planes like the A-7.
The only additional function you have is the autopilot and navigation radios. You can call up a small panel with these by pressing Shift+2. In the Quick Start guide you will find the necessary frequencies of the Nimitz… It gets awful lonely out there over the sea sometimes, especially if you are running low on fuel. The nav radio helps you find your way back to the carrier.
Missions/flights
Again, this is easy. The missions included are all but one positioning you to either take off from or land onto the carrier. Not very exciting. There is one mission that has you kill a Hawkeye and take out a bridge and a base. Too be totally and bluntly honest, I haven't tried. Why not? My CFS2 would crash every time I selected this mission and I gave up finding out why.
Now I did do some flying in CFS2 with some amazing results. Imagine flying your multi-multi million dollar Tomcat, with 200-mile shoot-and-forget Phoenix missiles, just to take on 4 P-38s? I actually got shot!!!! Yeah, yeah, worthless pilot, I know. Anyway, I figured I needed some sky between me and the old P-38s, so gunned away on full throttle and afterburner, seeing how long it took to get up to 30,000 feet. While looking at my altimeter and speed, I all of a sudden had bullets flying through my cockpit again! A quick glance behind showed two P-38s on my tail, and these suckers must have been doing some 600 knots at 25.000 feet!!! So much for CFS2's reality factor,,,
Another thing you do not want to do when close to the ground but not above the runway, is hit the '/'-key. This acts as the tailhook (when landing) but also reduces your speed to 0 knots in no time. And increases your sink rate to that of a brick!! Don't touch it!!
Conclusion
I like the package. If nothing else for having some really good looking aircraft that are not often portrayed for FS2000. Especially the A-7 is one of my favorites now for VFR transfer flights <grin>. It also adds a nice carrier to the scenery, that you can use for landing other military aircraft on, and is great for helicopter operations. I see this package as an add-on for FS2000, more so than for CFS2. The reason of course is that CFS2 is a WWII simulation and these aircraft just don't fit in, and cannot really be used in the 'game'. And last but not least, I like the Mule to drive around in over the flight deck and scare the heck out of all those invisible flight deck crew members!
Flight Deck II is available at the Abacus web site.
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