Introduction What a neat idea. Bundle up four neat little GA aircraft with a nicely detailed airport scenery and offer them as a combo pack. I remember seeing the announcement for this package early in 2005 and thinking “Just Flight’s gonna have a hit with that one.” They proceeded to open a dedicated webpage for the Flying Club and were optimistic about having the CD out by April. April came and went and as many other developers have discovered you just can’t anticipate that release date till you’re pretty much done. By August each of the individual aircraft had already been trickled out for download from the Just Flight website and the Shoreham scenery had already been available for download from Online Simulation Solutions. So in essence, you could have purchased the individual parts of the whole set (albeit for more money) before the CD actually became available. Now the choice of offering the Shoreham airport is actually an easy one if you dig into it a little. This is the oldest licensed airport in England and in addition, has one of the most beautiful examples of art deco architecture you are going to find anywhere in the world. You can find plenty of information concerning the history, as well as current operations, of the Shoreham airport at their own website. The four aircraft included are the trusty Cessna 152 and Piper PA-38 Tomahawk two seat trainers, the reliable and economical Piper PA-28-161 Warrior four seater and for a twin, the Piper PA-34-200T Seneca II. These are representative of the type aircraft you can find at many flying schools and clubs almost anywhere in the world that you find general aviation being conducted. Just Flight went a step further in this grouping though, and added configuration managers for all included aircraft so you can adjust fuel and passenger/cargo loadouts. There is also a utility for adding repaints that is easy for anyone familiar with using Flight1 and Dreamfleet’s Text-O-Matic. An added bonus feature in this software grouping is a utility that allows you to change the face on the pilot to one of your own choosing. You can truly personalize this software so that it is just for you. Installation and Documentation
Now the last time I purchased a box with CD’s in it for Flight Simulator was when I purchased my copy of FS-ACOF. All of my subsequent add-ons have been downloaded with all the inherent hassle of confirmation and registration to ensure that it is not a bootlegged or pirated copy. Don’t get me wrong, cause I know there has to be steps to prevent the unscrupulous from doing their thing. And when it all goes smoothly and you’ve confirmed and registered all is well, but when it glitches on ya… well, that just can ruin your day, or couple of days, or even week. This time I have a DVD type plastic box in my hand with a full color print on the cover and pictures… and when I open it… a big thick manual. What? A printed manual, I haven’t seen one of those in years! You mean you get something you can hold in your hand after spending your hard earned money? You bet. It may not be the instant gratification of downloading and playing within minutes of the purchase decision, but it sure is nice to have something substantial that you can look at even when the computer is off. The printed manual covers installation, features of the scenery and each of the four aircraft in very good detail and one of the reasons it is so thick is it is repeated in French and German. The CD is set to autostart when you insert it into your computer and the first screen to come up is a listing for other Just Flight products. Now before you think this is just capitalism gone awry (don’t we get enough ads anyway) there are many that might actually be interested in more information on one or more of these products. You might already own one or more of these products too and there are 17, yes 17 very nicely done videos by Stefan Lorenz of fsclips.com to top off this little showcase. There is a time limited demo you can download of the Piper Tomahawk from their site just to let you try out a sample of how the aircraft are modeled. Just Flight also did release all four of the aircraft as separate downloads prior to the CD release of Flying Club. There was an offer to discount the price of the CD for people who had purchased and downloaded one or more of the included aircraft. If you already have one or more of the included aircraft and want the Shoreham scenery or all of the aircraft I would recommend you ask Just Flight if they might extend this discount. It seems like a good idea to continue since someone might still buy only one aircraft and then want to complete the set. It is true you could purchase and download all four aircraft and then purchase and download the Shoreham scenery from OSS but that would cost more than purchasing the CD. I already had all four aircraft on my computer from an earlier download but did not have the Shoreham scenery. The CD installation does give you the option of only installing the scenery or picking and choosing each of the four aircraft. It even gives you the option of changing the default aircraft used in the MSFS flight lessons for each of the aircraft included in the Flying Club (more on that idea later). My recommendation if you already have any part of the Flying Club already installed on your computer, is to uninstall it/them and install Flying Club fresh from the CD in its entirety. My reasons for this are, the updates for the aircraft and scenery are different if you installed from a download or from the CD and keeping it all one way avoids great confusion and potential problems down the road. Also, if you decide to change out the aircraft used in the flight lessons, you have to use the Flying Club aircraft from the CD install. If you try to use the downloaded aircraft and just click on the option on the CD install for the lessons it doesn’t work… I already tried. Shoreham Airport This scenery is basically the same package you can purchase and download from Online Simulation Solutions. It is a very impressive and accurate visual representation of the Shoreham airport and surrounding landscape. This scenery includes mesh and landclass and there is a patch to make it compatible with Visual Flight VFR Scenery. You have a scenery configuration manager that allows you to pick and choose among which features you want enabled in the scenery, so you can tailor it to your specific system and personal tastes. The surrounding roads and railways are included, you can watch the train pass by and at night, the roads have moving lights to simulate the movement of cars. These cars are traveling at a rather high rate of speed if you attempt to follow along behind them with the aircraft… isn’t that what you are supposed to do? The immersion factor of this scenery alone is really quite outstanding. My first take of this package involved placing myself in the Tomahawk at night. I was surprised just how realistic the buildings with their night lighting effects and the ground textures looked just close by. Further in the distance I could see the moving lights of automobile traffic. As I taxied out and then took off those moving lights from the cars give a really impressive effect and my sense of really being there was enhanced, I wish that Microsoft had at least retained this option from FS2000 for moving lights on roads because I personally like the effect.
What these shots can’t give you is the sense of immersion from the moving lights on the cars below On later flights taken in the daylight hours, I was impressed with just how realistic this airport looks from a distance. The blending with outside textures is well done and you don’t notice the transition into the higher detailed areas. As you fly the pattern, you can look down and see the fences surrounding the airport property to the North, as well as cars in the parking lot and the trees and shrubs around the buildings. The buildings themselves have their real life character with attendant unique architecture and you never get any sense of a generic airport. This is a special place and is one of my favorite airport sceneries on my computer.
Low pass by terminal building and hangers, was hoping the train would be passing this time
Great looking airport from the air, really like the grass strips and markings AeroSelect After installation, you will notice a new icon on your desktop called “AeroSelect” which also gets called “Aero Tools” in some of the literature. While you might first think this is just a competitor’s version of “Text-O-Matic” it actually does a few things that its older distant cousin doesn’t. When you first open AeroSelect, you will see the JF Flying Club aircraft you have installed on your computer and you will have to select one of them to make any further selections except for “Help” and “Exit.” The Help part is actually quite "helpful" especially if you haven’t read any of the instructions so far. Pressing “Help” followed by any of the three parts of AeroSelect (AeroPaint, AeroFace, or AeroLoad) will open the PDF help file associated with the corresponding part of the program you selected. But alas, even with this effort, there are some that still won’t read the help files! AeroPaint in itself does operate with many similarities to “Text-O-Matic.” And for a repaint to work with AeroPaint, it does have to be made in a specific way outlined in the help file. I have noticed a few repaints of the Just Flight Flying Aircraft that aren’t compliant with this and Just Flight has politely asked people that want to share repaints, that they follow their instructions so as to avoid confusion. I can say they have tried to make it about as easy as possible and the repaints I added from the Flying Club site worked very well. You can create a new livery, take an existing paint and edit it, edit the details of a livery (to change registration number for instance), delete a livery if you don’t like it, and if satisfied with your work make an export file of the livery to upload to the Flying Club site and share with others. Not foolproof mind you but pretty close.
AeroLoad is one of the nicest (for GA) and easiest loadout programs I have come across. When you select an aircraft for loadout you see a picture of the aircraft and the empty weight and gross weight are displayed in the upper right hand corner. The lower portions of the window show your different options. You can add passengers, change fuel load and change baggage load from here. If at any time you overload the aircraft the green weight bar up top will go red and indicate your problem. There are still those out there that didn’t realize most small aircraft won’t carry full fuel and full seats and this will give you a good visual representation of that fact. Fill the seats and you now have to go hunting for ways to bring the aircraft back down to a safe flying weight. Limiting baggage is one way, putting your passengers on a diet also works. What usually does the trick in real life though, is leaving off fuel. This does have a serious impact on how far you can fly and when you can see this on the screen you get a better appreciation of it. You are going to have to do your own handwork figuring out your flying range and of course this will depend on your winds and engine settings, but remember the FAA guidelines are 30 minutes VFR reserve and 45 minutes IFR and VFR night reserves. In real life, a safe practice is flying with one hour reserves and any real pilot with some experience under their belt won’t disagree with that rule of thumb. AeroFace is the real icing on the cake for the AeroSelect suite of features and I saved it for last. This unique feature allows the user to change the face on the pilot to one of their own choosing, usually their own. Now mind you, this doesn’t change the pilot model so you can’t change the size of the pilot, their hair or even their clothing... just their face. This is just pure fun and while it has nothing to do with the actual simulation of flight, I celebrate Just Flight for thinking of it, developing it and including it. You just need a straight-on photo of a face, like a passport photo, and then use the program to center and size the image. If you don’t like the results it is easy to change back to the default face with a single mouse click. Having a mind like mine though, I quickly settled in on using the face of Worf, the Klingon security officer from "Star Trek- The Next Generation". Just the thought of him pre-flighting, then hopping in and flying the Tomahawk gave me hours of smirks, grins, outbursts of laughter, etc. You can have fun with this part of the program any way you choose.
Piper PA-38-112 Tomahawk When I first started flying lessons back in 1980, this is one of the aircraft I looked at, sat in, went over with the instructor and other students that had flown it and then decided not to fly it. It cost more to rent than the Cessna 152 and my classmates talked about how that long tail with the T elevator would “wag” if you pushed the rudder side to side during flight… I didn’t find that comforting. In preparation for this review I actually had the idea of renting one so I could say I had flown a real one. Curiously that same day that actual aircraft was involved in a stall/spin accident on a touch and go and while it wasn’t fata,l the student and instructor were badly hurt. I wish them well and am always saddened when I hear about the loss of an aircraft, especially if there are injuries or worse yet fatalities. My memories of viewing and sitting in the Tomahawk though are very much in sync with the model Just Flight has included with the Flying Club suite. It is just a very basic two seat trainer. This is not a high performance aircraft, just a cheap to fly and reasonably stable flight platform that is good to train on. Not a lot of instruments to worry about either. The passenger compartment is actually larger than a Cessna 150/152 and the visibility is quite good out of that canopy.
Some of the gauges used in the panel (like all of the Flying Club aircraft) are Microsoft default, those that are unique to this aircraft are drawn in a similar style to default so nothing looks out of place. I found the panels, especially the VC to work very well, remember these are pretty simple, mostly VFR use aircraft. For those of you that are put off by the use of Microsoft’s default gauges Arjen van Groos has made some panel configurations using RealityXP’s new Flight Line T gauges as well as some with their radio upgrades. These can be found at RealityXP’s community site and yes they are payware. Exterior model, animations and texturing are on par with the other payware add-ons currently available. At the same time I didn’t find it to be a hit on frame rates so good job on making a realistic looking aircraft that isn’t a resource hog.
I found the flight characteristics to be realistic for this class of aircraft. Performance was very close to book figures and it felt like a small trainer should. Stalls were predictable and it didn’t have any bad habits to speak of. The sound set is also nicely done without having any annoying repeating soundloops. Visibility was always the strong suit of the Tomahawk as well as its competitor, the Beech Skipper. The VC shows this off the best and I found I liked flying it best from there. I like the removable yokes that Just Flight added in their update, even with TrackIR4 its just hard to get to the switches which are under the yoke. Cessna 152 AVSIM reviewer Alexis Esguerra has already written a single aircraft review on this aircraft which actually prompted Just Flight to make a few changes to the visual model, including a "hide" feature for the yoke in the VC (this hide feature for the yoke was also added to the Tomahawk). You might be tempted to ask about comparing this to the Flight1/Dreamfleet Cessna 152. That is not a fair comparison though, despite the Dreamfleet product being older, it was a single aircraft simulation that copied an actual owners aircraft basically to the rivets. For all those that complained about the F1/Dreamfleet Cessna 152 having wheelpants though… here is one without them.
I thought the exterior modeling and texturing on the Cessna 152 to be a little below the level achieved with the Tomahawk. If you are expecting something along the lines of the highly detailed Dreamfleet/Flight1 Cessna 152 already mentioned, you might be a little disappointed, but this is not at the same price point either. One thing you will find in the Just Flight Cessna 152 that isn’t in the competitor’s product though, is 3D modeled throttle and mixture controls in the VC, I do like that quite a bit. The annoying thing you will find in either payware 152 is the lack of instrument lighting at night in the VC, in both versions it is coupled with the dome light. Curiously in the Just Flight version the VC switch for the dome light also toggles the Nav lights, so if you have the Nav lights on and you turn on the dome/panel lights from the VC the Nav lights get switched off… hmmm? Maybe Lucus designed this switch!
I put the majority of my training time for my license, including spin training, in the Cessna 152 and the flight model on this one won’t disappoint you. This is an underpowered, reasonably stable (given light turbulence and winds), flight platform that is quite forgiving of most novice pilot control inputs. Piper PA-28-161 Warrior The PA-28 series Piper is actually the most prevalent GA aircraft available for FS2004. There is the default Microsoft AI Piper Archer which can be enabled and a choice of freeware panels are available or you can use the default Cessna panel but there is no virtual cockpit. There are a few freeware variants out there too, some with virtual cockpits, some better than others. There are three other payware vendors with a total of six variants of the series also available. Believe it or not this one is the only original Warrior variant that’s out there… yes there is a Warrior II and III available from someone else. In real life this is an attractive aircraft to own because it is so relatively inexpensive to fly (considered cheaper to fly than the Cessna 172 cause the block time for an annual inspection is less). As a result you will frequently find them being used in flying clubs and flight schools and they will usually be quite well worn. They do have four seats but really should be considered a 2+2. You really have to limit fuel load if you are going to carry four adults… you’ll find this out the first time you try to load it up in the AeroLoad configuration manager.
Speaking of loading it up with passengers, try enabling the visible passengers and filling all four seats and you will find that your right seat passenger is none other than Alex Ford, Just Flight’s publishing manager. You’ll also discover that you now have enough fuel for a little over a one hour flight with reserves. I’ll let you in on a little Just Flight trivia… all of the Just Flight staff are modeled as passengers in the Flying Club aircraft, you just gotta look on their website and compare these to the ones you find in your plane.
My only real complaint with this particular model is with the size of the yoke in the VC panel… I can’t imagine it being that big in real life. I found it to fly very stable and perform like I would expect it to, it is especially sluggish at gross weight, the real one is too! Don’t think I’ll try flying to Leadville, CO in this one. Piper PA-34-200T Seneca This is the aircraft that most interested me when originally reading the press announcement from Just Flight about Flying Club. I’ve always like the way the Seneca looked and saved the Flying and AOPA Pilot magazine articles from the early 1970’s when they were first announced. The Seneca has a well deserved reputation as a very easy to fly, forgiving light twin. One of my favorite simulator aircraft of all time is FSD’s Seneca which is based on the current Seneca V with all its advanced avionics. The Flying Club Seneca is based on a much earlier Seneca II and has a much older look to it especially when you get inside and look at the panel.
This is how the original Seneca looked, basically a carryover from the Cherokee design on the panel which means it is not as tall as the current aircraft’s panel and you’ve got some gauges here and others over there which means you have to learn the scan procedure for this aircraft. During that scan you’ll notice an older style autopilot in the lower left part of the panel which is just a bitmap, I wish they would have either omitted this or made it a functional gauge. The VC even has the electrical panel over by the pilot’s left knee… thank goodness they put it in an overhead panel on later versions. You can’t really see any labels on these switches when using them from the VC but Just Flight did include tool tips so when you hold the cursor over the switch you can read what it is for.
The 2D panel has a bitmap that is a little too brightly sunlit for my tastes. The distinct shadows do look nice for an instant but as you start to fly and notice the sun coming from a different angle it just doesn’t look right. The VC on the other hand is a little more subtle and while you still can see the shadows they are not as overpowering. As with all the other VC’s in the Just Flight Flying Club suite of aircraft the VC is a nice place to fly from with reasonably good refresh rates on the gauges, although the fit and finish of the Seneca’s panel is not as good as the other three single engine aircraft of the Club. I still consider these VC’s as good as and in many cases better than Microsoft’s default VC’s. You’ve got to move around a bit in the Seneca’s VC to see all the gauges so having Active Camera or Track IR with the vector expansion certainly helps. I liked the flight characteristics of the Seneca and even its engine out characteristics, my only gripe about engine out practice with this simulation is the props aren’t animated for feathering so you look out at a flat blade. In real life this would windmill from the aerodynamic forces and create a great deal of drag. Hopefully Just Flight might add this animation to the prop in a future update, would make this Seneca even nicer. Flight Lessons On installation there is an option to change the aircraft used for Microsoft’s default flight lessons out for all four of the Flying Club aircraft. Now this is only available for the CD version of Flying Club, as the aircraft installed are specific for this purpose and have US registration in addition to the UK registered aircraft which are the ones you download from their site. Just Flight actually did a rewrite of the lessons so that the lessons do work well with the Just Flight aircraft. This doesn’t mean they re-invented the wheel mind you, these are still the Rod Machado Microsoft lessons and checkrides and Rod will call the aircraft you are flying by their original default Microsoft aircraft name. I tried out some of the lessons and checkrides with mixed results. While most of the lessons worked well, the ones using the Seneca gave trouble with manifold pressure settings, since the Seneca is turbocharged and the lessons are asking you maintain a given manifold pressure setting for the normally aspirated Baron. Also given speeds were sometimes difficult since the changed aircraft have a little different speed envelope. After getting the lesson/checkride cancelled for the third time I stopped trying. My real critique though, comes with trying to revert back to the original lessons/checkrides on my computer. While it was easy to change to this option during the installation, it was just a checked box in the installation dialogue, I didn’t find an easy way to uninstall this particular feature. No mention of it in the manual, written or the one installed on the computer. OK, so I go to the website and dedicated forum… still no mention of how to uninstall it and revert back to original default lessons/checkrides. In the root folder for FS2004 you will find a folder called “Lessons” and another folder called “Lessons_FC.” It appears the “Lessons_FC” folder contains all the original lessons/checkrides so changing the Lessons folder name to something else and changing the “Lessons_FC” back to “Lessons” should restore the lessons/checkrides back to default. I would have preferred having an automated process that would allow switching back and forth for this and that may be in the works for a future update. Conclusion As I stated at the beginning, I think this is a wonderful idea and its execution makes for quite an enjoyable flying experience. You have four aircraft included that are all nicely modeled and quite highly detailed on the exterior with enough animations to keep you busy viewing from the outside for some time. The interiors are accurately done and while they do not have the high definition of some of the top GA simulations out there, they are very frame rate friendly and make for some very fun VC flying even if you thought you didn’t like VC’s. Having Rob Young work on the flight dynamics was a good move and it shows in just how well these aircraft fly. The inclusion of the Shoreham airport scenery really brings this Flying Club together to make it a just plain fun package. |
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