The Jeep of the skies

Ever since I was a kid I liked Jeeps. And later helicopters. You know why? Because they would go anywhere I wanted. Over the garden path, through my mother's flower beds (woops), over the lawn. My other car models would get hopelessly stuck on even my bedroom door's threshold. Not the jeeps! And my Airfix Phantom would need our neighbor's house as well to touch down. Not the Huey I built!

Well, the DHC-2 Beaver falls into that category. It doesn't take off vertically, but it comes close. It only needs a very short runway (well, er, if you can find one) to take off and land. And even on water it doesn't take much to get it airborne. It's the ideal plane to get you anywhere in rugged terrain such as Alaska, Canada and the like. It is also a great plane to use for sightseeing and enjoying some of the beautiful scenery that you can find on AVSIM's library to download!

The model reviewed here is Version 7.0 for FS2000, the remake of Fred Banting's FS98 Beaver. Fred built this one with the help of Yannick Lavigne from Bordeaux, France. Yannick provided the beautiful panel and all of the artwork. Graphically this plane is a real treasure. It has all the usual moving parts such as rudder, ailerons, prop and flaps (with many settings !). In addition, you will find that using the "/" key will raise and lower the rudders at the back of the floats (and they are linked to the tail rudder for maneuvering in water). And you can retract the skis on the ski/wheel model! Another nice touch is the pilot who has a beard and a mustache if I am not mistaken. And then there is the oar on the left float, for if you not quite make it to shore on your engine. Or the piece of paper stuck behind the radio panel (is that a fuel bill?). Also, have a look around in the cockpit to admire the special artwork from Yannick (I noticed that no one fastened his seatbelts... ). A lot of hours have gone into these graphics!

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Beaver moored, ready to cast off

Look inside while flying in the Swiss Alps

Beautiful cockpit view, reflecting gauges

Some frustrations first...

When I first downloaded the file (which is a hefty 7 Meg!) and went through the readme.txt, it seemed like a breeze to get this thing installed and up in the air. Well, the first part was true. Just unzip it into your FS2000 directory using the WinZip setting 'Use folder names' and all pieces go where they need to go. Start your FS2000, click on 'Select flight' and ... oops, nothing there yet. Click on 'Select plane' and there you will find three Beavers. One with floats, one on skis (and wheels) and a regular wheeled one. Of course I took the float plane. That was my target to test. Since I was only using FS2000 for two months, I had some trouble positioning the plane on a water stretch to start with. I chose a place near one of the Dutch islands (since I live in Holland) and finally got the plane 'on' the water instead of 50 feet above or totally submerged <grin>.

And then the trouble started. I performed all the pre-start tasks according to Fred's documentation and finally pushed the throttle lever all the way forward. The nose went down a bit, but nothing else happened. It was like the plane was stuck in the mud! No way of moving it. Okay, I must be doing something wrong here. I did all the steps all over again. Same result. Right! Then let's position the little Beaver in Toronto, Canada. That should work, shouldn't it? This time I decided to begin with a landing, to get some flying time in at least. Well, you guessed. I crashed it on hitting the water. Shoo!

That's when I decided to contact Fred and ask him what was wrong with my (his!) Beaver. Luckily Fred answered almost within half an hour. He told me that this is a known FS2000 problem. Sometimes the water is usable, and sometimes it isn't. His first advice was to keep trying! He also told me that 3rd party scenery usually worked (like that of Ken Nelson). So I downloaded the Alaska scenery (also to be found on AVSIM's library), which took me over 7 hours. By this time my phone company started sending welcoming letters and inquiries whether I wanted to open a business account with them :)

In the end, I did find water to fly from. Actually, Toronto works as long as you do not go too far out onto the sea. And most of the new Alaska scenery I have tried works too. Since I am a fan of realism, I never tried 'funny' things. I have this friend who will try all the weird things first, like flying into the Empire State Building, instead of around and admire it. Land on the Tapanzee bridge, and try and find the North Pole with a sailplane. Not me. Until now that is, because the water problems made me curious. FS2000 obviously does not treat the world as realistic as I thought it would. So now I have discovered that I can land my Beaver float plane near Meigs Field, in the water. But I can do the same with the Cessna 182S on wheels! Bummer!

Actually, Fred sent me a scenario file that sets the Beaver in Toronto harbor moored to the shore. It would be nice to have this file included in the total package. It would certainly have saved me some time taking off, but on the other hand... you would not have had this "float plane beginner's story."

Landing short of the runway is no problem!

Just took off from the Mannlichen, Switzerland

Checklist found on a real Beaver.....

The actual model test

As mentioned earlier, the actual package consists of 3 models. The float plane, a wheeled version and a wheeled version with ski's, for landing on snow (or in Chicago harbor. What I missed at first... there is more drag from the floats and skis compared to the regular wheel model, just like in the original (thanks for pointing this out to me Fred). Taking off is easy, especially if you follow the proper procedures as documented by the authors. Mind the rudder, the plane has a rather strong tendency to turn left, caused by the rotary engine.

Looking at my log I see that I have flown the plane for more than 4 hours total, much of which was on short test hops, doing a lot of taking off and landing, mountain flying and taking screenshots from all angles. Okay, so four hours is not much in real world flying on a new type. But it does not include all the times I pressed 'pause' to just look at the plane and write notes, which I am sure you will do too (well, forget about the notes then).

The Beaver is really easy to fly, although it lacks all the fancy stuff such as a large radio stack, autopilot or a glass cockpit (duh). The autopilot can be used through the Aircraft menu, but that's no fun is it? Nice touch for the European pilots, the temperatures are in Celcius rather than Fahrenheit. As in the real world, touching down with a float plane is a lot more difficult than your regular landing. You do not have any visual clues regarding height (unless you are about to land on top of one of the Chicago sailing boats, like I did). That means your altimeter has to be set correctly and you have to use it to decide when to pull up the nose and let the floats hit the water. It's easier when using the spot plane of course. You can see the shadow on the water and use that to land the plane with a proper flare.

Taking off in the wheeled and ski version is tricky, as with any tail dragger. You don't see anything but sky out of your front window! Especially since the plane pulls to the left this makes taking off somewhat of a tricky affair. Constantly look outside the left window to be sure you stay on the runway. Luckily you can get the tail up quite quickly so the world gets into view again. With proper flap settings the Beaver will lift itself into the air easily after that. Performing nice three point landings is best done using the spot plane (yes, cheating !), or crossing your fingers.

Test System Custom PIII 450 MHz Windows98 SE 128 Megs RAM NVidia Riva TNT 12 Mb 40X CD ROM Creative Labs PCI128 Sound CH Flightstick Pro Compaq 17" Monitor Flying Time: 4.2 Hours over 14 days

Oh, and the sound! The steady, sturdy drone of the Pratt & Whitney Wasp 9-cylinder radial drove my wife nuts (I like to turn the sound up to get the real flying feeling, don't you?). Starting the engine is a real good experience too. It actually sounds like it has a constant cold, not surprising the climate it usually works in. The engine really coughs into action.

This is what a real panel looks like

Yannick Lavigne's excellent rendering

One of the problems I found is that the instrument panel is a little bit different than that of a Cessna (surprise, surprise) and I lacked the help of either documentation or pop-up descriptions when moving the mouse pointer over some of the instrument gauges and handles. It took a bit of experimenting to figure out the place and settings of mixture, prop and throttle (all in the middle of the panel) and I kept looking in the wrong place for the RPM and Manifold. Some instruments or indications are a bit hard to read too, like the lever settings. Perhaps when I have the money to buy a 21" monitor one day all these little annoyances will be solved. In stead of a 21" you can make screenshots, like I did, and view them enlarged. Then you see all the beautiful details, such as the reflection of the manifold and rpm gauges in the throttle panel, and you can see the text printed next to those levers. Enlarging the view of the plane from outside also will reveal the steps under the doors. Looking at the panel in the dark is rewarding too.

Fred has provided some excellent background on the plane's history in his documentation and there is a complete checklist for all stages of (pre) flight and landing. As mentioned before, some nice pictures would have helped get me airborne just a touch quicker... perhaps for the next version?

The rating

I gave them 4 stars for an excellent package. Adding the panel description windows, improving on some of the documentation, and adding the start scenario, would get it up to four and a half stars. I am reluctant to give them the five stars after that for one reason only: having achieved the maximum rating they might stop building new models and we would not want that to happen!

The authors

Fred Banting of Ontario was bitten by the fly bug by stories his father told him, an ex-RCAF flyer and some time in a tail dragger back in the late 40s. Fred got fascinated by bush planes when he grew older, and although not a pilot, he spent some time in a real Beaver. He built his first (FS5) Beaver panel years ago, and continued building and improving from there. The FS2000 model took him 7 months to develop, with the help of Yannick Lavigne who provided new art work. Fred's saying is that if it doesn't have a prop it doesn't count.

Yannick Lavigne of Bordeaux, France, is a graphics artist of profession and got in touch with digital artwork because of his work. He discovered Flight Simulator some years ago and started playing with the graphics files that are included. Over the years he has learned to use all tools available to experiment with and improve the images, mixing photos with art. Yannick liked the Beaver in Flight Unlimited II (me too!) and started looking for one for FS98. He downloaded the one from Fred and developed a panel and new interior and exterior artwork for it. The result of their cooperation is this wonderful package, which you can download here!