Best of both worlds for me, Howard. They've picked a classic and sturdy design and upgraded it with even more powerful and reliable tech for all kinds of missions. For the classic ways, I still have my Uiver DC-2 in place.

A turbine DC3?

 

Yup, there have in fact been many of them. There's the Conroy Turbo three, which has Rolls Royce Dart engines, and a later version with three PT6As, then there's the USAC Turbo Express, made by the United States Aircraft Corpration of which I think 15 were built, and there's the BSAS C-47TP Turbo Dakota, made by Braddick Specialised Air Services, most of which went to the South African Air Force and which also uses the PT6, and of course there is the Basler Turbo Conversions BT-67, which is the most well known one, with absolutely loads of them built.

 

It's a great conversion, gives the old girl a 28,750lb MTOW, ups the maximum speed to 225 knots, updates the avionics, adds new windows and a stretch to the fuselage, strengthens the wing and increases its area a little, gets new control surfaces and a revised tailfin, and renews the airframe hours to zero, effectively making an old DC-3 into a brand-new and even more versatile aeroplane than the original, but still with that lovely shape. Lots of government agencies use them, and some militaries use them as gunships, a bit like the old AC-47 Spooky.

 

Al

OK, you've made me waiver I'm downloading as I type...

Exterior shot showing the 3D particle effect landing lights:

 

 

Al

Exterior shot showing the 3D particle effect landing lights:

 

 

Al

 

Offtopic: that night lighting looks really good, are you using some kind of add on to achieve that effect?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Offtopic: that night lighting looks really good, are you using some kind of add on to achieve that effect?

 

Looks like, either native FSX bloom or Enb?

That's the night lighting effect from two add-ons, Ultimate Terrain Europe, and Beetle Print Experience X, plus the FSX lens flare and bloom options turned on, with some of the lights being from cars because AI traffic is on 100 percent as well, and all that is over Just Flight's VFR UK photo scenery. As you can imagine, all that lot eats up frame rates, I was getting I think 18 fps at the time, because I was right near UK2000's EGCC too.

 

Al

Incidentally, this aircraft, in Air Hauler, which is what I wanted one of these for, is 4,112,000 Dollars to buy outright, or 228,500 per month to lease, with a 514,000 deposit, so it's a bit dearer (nearly twice as much) than a stock DC-3. Just about to test fly it with some cargo from Baghdad to Fetesti, which at 1017 miles as the crow flies, is about 200 miles further than a regular DC-3 could manage, and probably even more when the cargo is added.

 

Al

thanks for posting about this fantastic add-on.

 

really hard to believe that they are giving it away for free.

the virtual cockpit, the flight dynamics, in-game setup panel... puts some pay-ware add-ons to shame.

 

i like the customized controls within the VC (middle clicking on left/right engine levers can link / unlink them. tooltips on starter buttons with hints what you did wrong. middle click starter button so you have the mouse free to control levers and much more)

 

would be really great to have a neutral paintjob though. maybe a private version or some cargo alrline. (or a paintkit :) ).

I presume a paint kit will be forthcoming, apparently more paint jobs are on the way. If not, I'm going to knock up a neutral apint job anyway, it's relatively easy to do with a clean texture in PS so long as the panel lines are fairly well defined.

 

Al

Al, I have the TSS sound set and aliased the Twin Otter to it. They do replicated the PT6 sounds extremely well. I'm not saying its perfect, but it's a lot closer than most, and frankly a lot better than the default King Air (although it's not horrible).

 

Just a by-the-by here (speaking of sounds) I've aliased the Carenado 208 to the default Caravan sounds. The default Caravan has a bit of a distinctive sound from inside and the default sounds are dead on (or as close as FSX will allow). MS actually did a very good job with some sounds, the Beaver being the other that I know personally very well. It's dead on in all respects.

 

Hope that helps.

I see I'm not alone on tweaking sounds.

 

I've ended up adding some gear up/down sounds from the DC-2 since the Twotter set didn't offer some noise for obvious reasons. The DC-2 gear sound differs a lot from the King Air example, which was my thinking on picking that one.

On another occasion, I've pitched the Twotter prop sounds down since the (prop) shaft rpm of the PT6A-20 and -27 is 2200rpm, compared to a max of 1700 rpm on the BT-67 with the larger -67R variant running and driving that 5 blade prop. This established a more sonorous impression which should be ok for that rough editing method.

 

Don't ask me if this is genuine, but I had the feeling that the Twotter prop sounds came in too high pitched on the BT-67. I hope that sounds reasonable. :blush2:

 

Agreed on the MS planes case. Some are well done concerning the age of the sim and the fact that a truckload of them came with the initial game at no extra costs involved.

Just downloaded this one last night. Not really done enough to test but seems right on the money so far. Can't believe that it's free.... Possibly the best freeware I've ever seen!

Yessir! Those folks put together one exceptional freeware offering. Thanks guys!

 

There are quite a few WIP threads(one here, http://forum.avsim.n...sler-bt-67-fsx/) that show off some of the added liveries I think will be released soon. The Kenn Borek Air Ltd, and Polar 5/6, liveries should be perfect compliments to Aerosofts Antartica X

[edit] Here's another peek at most of the WIP liveries they made; http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=459652&postcount=73

 

I already had Bill Shultz's CV-580 soundset installed, so that's what I'm using. Tweaking the volume(s) in Options/Settings/Sounds gives me what I want. They aren't correct for the PT6 engines, but, I really like their lower "note" a lot better than the available defaults.

 

"FS2002/FS2004 Allison T-56 Engine Sounds", 580sound.zip @flightsim and the update "T-56 Allison Turboprop Sound Update for L-188 Electra, CV-580 and P-3 Aircraft", t56_sound_update_cielo.zip @ Avsim....Don

Thanks for the tip on the free set. Didn't know about that one.

 

Anyone got an idea on a tweaked AP gauge to be added to the VC? The replacement should be easy as there's no special 3D model involved at the top spot of the radio stack. I was thinking about something from the Carenado planes of mine.