Flight Club Aircraft

[airernie 263]

I want to add a three or four aircraft to my collection that are of the type that might be found at a Chicago area (US) flying club. These would be primarily two and four seat pistons and perhaps a light twin.

 

I have Carenado's 152 II and will be adding their 172 N Skyhawk II, due to my having flown versions of both models. I have no experience with low wings, other than a Zenith, but am looking at the Piper Tomahawk and Cherokee. What I don't know is, who makes the best models of these. A lot of forum users seem to like Carenado's F33A, so that's a possiblity also.

 

The other aircraft would be a light twin. Again opinions seem to favor the MilViz C310R, though I'm not sure if there is another model that would be more likely found in a flying club.

 

Thanks,

Ernie

[Wing 32]

For a light twin, the Just Flight Flying Club Duchess is something I never see mentioned anywhere but is one of my very favorites. The cockpit engine sound (done by Turbine Sound Studios) is the absolute best I've heard in any FSX add-on. The graphics are less than high resolution, but it doesn't bother me at all. It has a fake GNS430 that does nothing but tune the radios, but if you have the RXP GNS430 it swaps in perfectly; even the 3-D knobs line up. (You will need to edit the Panel.cfg to add the RXP GPS, but it's a simple process.) I did have to do some light tweaking to the Aircraft.cfg; for one thing they have the engines unrealistically set to turbocharged by default (a simple fix by changing the "turbocharged=" value in the Aircraft.cfg from 1 to 0). I also don't like that they have CGI passengers in the virtual cockpit (some people may like this but I find it a little creepy). You can turn them off by changing the payload for copilot and passengers to 0, but if you do that your aircraft will constantly want to bank to the left because of the way FSX works in this regard. What I did was change the third "station_load.0" value in Aircraft.cfg from 0.75 to 0, which is like putting the pilot's weight on the center line (I also set the first value of "station_load.0" to 360 which simulates having two 180 pound people in the front seats instead of just the pilot). After a few simple tweaks the JF Duchess has become one of my most loved and most used add-ons.

 

The MilViz C310 has gotten a lot of praise for its flight model but it's not particularly one of my favorites (for one thing I'm not a fan of the way they did the virtual cockpit). You really need rudder pedals to get the most out of its flight model.

 

The only Tomahawk I know of is the one in the Just Flight Flying Club. I bought it because I like Tomahawks but I was not impressed with it at all and never fly it. Carenado makes a Cherokee Archer and Arrow, but in my opinion they are the two worst offerings Carenado has in terms of flight model. I do like their Cherokee 180, but sadly its panel is not very well equipped and not appropriate for IFR flight.