Well, here we are up to the third week of October (13th thru 19th) and once again there were some real gems (all aircraft choices this week) for us to take a gander at. There were a large number of repaints, few scenery files, and a couple of very good utilities uploaded into the AVSIM library last week, but my choices have boiled down to include 1 panel, 1 semi-vintage government aircraft, a group of jet-turboprops, a new MSTS route, and 1 GA aircraft, so lets take a look at what I found!
Anthony Konstantinidis has been designing many aircraft for FS2000 and FS2002 and this just another in a long line of excellent designs. The Dornier Do28 D-1 Skyservant began production in the mid-nineteen sixties and production stopped when 125 aircraft had been delivered. Used primarily as a transport in its early days, it was the ability to be used as a spotter for pollution problems—sort of environmental police flying platform if you will—where this aircraft is used today.
Anthony's version comes in 3 paint schemes (textures by Bill Yannakos) and does include a custom 2D panel (a really nice one by the way). Using some default gauges and mostly Blue Sky's Easy Gauge to design the rest, the panel supplied with this FS aircraft is quite nice and I found it to be one of the best parts of this download. The aircraft itself, having been designed with Gmax, you do have all animated parts-components, including working suspension and opening side doors. The default Baron is used for sounds and I suspect the default Baron airfile is used as well. One of the items I noted, that lead me to believe it uses the default Baron airfile, is that even though this aircraft has fixed gear, if you hit the "G" key and then land, it is the same as if you had retracted gear, loud scraping sounds, smoke, and sparks, just as if your gear was retracted? Other than that though, I did find this work to be pleasing and interesting. ...Bear!
Bill Grabowski's award winning (AVSIM's BravoZulu award for 2002 and one Gold Award from me) ERJ panel continues to set new standards once again. This upgrade to Bill's earlier work includes 60 new features including TCAS, entire flight mapping, new cockpit sounds, new external sounds (Erick Cantu), new cockpit view art, and a new airfile from Sam Chin. This upgrade (at 4.3MB it is hard to call this an upgrade) does require the prior installation of ERJ_grab.zip and Bill deserves and does receive my highest award for his latest release, another Gold Award winner from Bill Grabowski. ...Bear!
John L. Woodward has performed a major rework earlier release of the Alon Ercoupe and with this new version John has included a J. L. Stubbs panel along with custom sounds from Aaron Swindle. John's little Ercoupe does include a 3D virtual cockpit, but the virtual panel is not dynamic, but in a small aircraft like this that is alright with me.
The original Ercoupes lacked any rudder pedals, because the rudder/s were interlinked with the ailerons, making the rudders sort of automatic, but side-slips were out of the question. (Watched a friend of mine land off of the side of the runway at Cottage Grove, Oregon in a pretty stiff crosswind in an Ercoupe long time ago. He did quite a bit of damage to his little Ercoupe, but because of the lack of rudders, crashing was inevitable I suppose) This FS version of the Alon Ercoupe lacks that interlinked rudder-aileron, like in the real thing, but I doubt that it is possible to do this in FS2002, so I would suggest everyone let John slide on this one. Surprisingly, I know of at least three or four of these little aircraft still flying today and considering it was first built in 1946, that says something! If flying the smaller of the GA aircraft in FS2002 is something you enjoy, then don't let this latest version of the Alon Ercoupe from John L. Woodward slip by. (John has a very nicely done version of the Republic SeaBee for FS2002 in the AVSIM library, that you might want to search for, if you missed that one also.) ...Bear!
Honorable Mention!
FFG is at it again and over the last week they uploaded many new examples of their work, this time it is the Business Jet version of the Boeing 737, the Boeing 737-800, and a really terrific Saab340 with a custom panel from Tom Dennis (Other liveries are also available)! You must check these aircraft out.
It wasn't but about a month ago that I gave Richard Garber a Gold Award for his design work on his Ohio Rail 9.1 route and now he has completely redone it using some very new, yet unique textures, and by adding several miles to the original Ohio Rail route he has once again received my Gold Award (perhaps I should call it the Golden Spike Award?). In addition to the new route files, be sure to check out these additional files for this route, including: or_steam.zip, ohioact7.zip, oractsd3.zip, oh_orw.zip, ohiodsl9.zip, orwmarsw.zip, ohiostm9.zip, and zans_shuttle.zip. These additional files include activities and trainsets dedicated to Richard's latest work. This latest version of the Ohio Rail by Richard Garber is one of the very best I've ever seen for MSTS, so if you are into MSTS, then check it out, as you will not be disappointed, believe me!
© 2002 - AVSIM Online |
