I have the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended and enjoy flying  it. Other than it though, I only have the default FSX:SE twin props and a Piper Aztec I got as a freebie with FSX, which TBH is quite terrible. My $ comfort zone is in the vicinity of what the Milviz add-ons cost. I say STOL, because I mostly fly in the Pac NW with Orbx and RTMM scenery, where a good number of airfields are short. Non-STOL that don't have long take-off requirements would work too.

If anyone could recommend some twin props, it'd be much appreciated.

Edited August 27, 20205 yr by Kronovan

Flight 1's Britten Norman BN-2 Islander may fit the bill - a nice visual model and I believe the flight model is quite true to life also. It is quite frugal on its take off and landing requirements...  and I've seen plenty of videos of real ones on youtube accessing tiny airfields.

I like it, I have a few threads in the screenshot forum so you may get an idea of the visuals, but please check out other reviews.

Great suggestion HighBypass - many thanks. I wouldn't have come up with that aircraft on my own, despite it being well reputed for its STOL capabilities. That's no doubt partly due to me being in western Canada where DHC's Otter and Twin Otter absolutely dominate the STOL market. 

The BN-2 was available @ PC Aviator for which I have a discount coupon, so I bought it. I haven't got any yoke time with yet, but I've been reading the doc and it looks well written - really like that it has decent procedures detailed from startup to shutdown. 

1 hour ago, Kronovan said:

...really like that it has decent procedures detailed from startup to shutdown. 

I would also add that fortunately, the procedures are not that complex given that the BN-2 is a "simple" piston-powered twin. IRL it is referred to as a "Flying Land Rover", possibly as a term of endearment, probably not with too much malice  from a time when the Series II Land Rover was commonly available! It's a hollow box with a Lycoming either side of your head, so no wonder. 

Not that the levers on the throttle quadrant can be combined. In the VC, just left click on the bottom of the quadrant in between the levers - Mixture, Condition or Throttle - the tooltip (if you have it displayed) will change to reflect this  - SEPARATED or COMBINED.

The KLN 90B GPS I believe is quite well represented too although I don't have real world experience of the plane, nor the instrument.

No problem for me with throttles, mixture, etc - I have a Flight yoke, 2 throttle quadrants and rudder pedals. That's why I'm particularly looking for twin prop aircraft. I've been having a blast recently putting all that gear to use flying the WW II Bristol Beaufighter, Blenheim and Petlyakov PE-2 in the IL-2 series. When I looked at my FSX aircraft for bush piloting though, other than the Twin Otter and an AAA fan-made Grumman Mallard, everything I've bought is single prop.

I'm probably going to get the Mitsubishi MU-2B-60 too, but that's more for Air Hauler 2 and the med-long airstrips in the Pac NW.

A bit large for your hangar possibly, but have you considered these twin prop aircraft, some of which don't need too much runway - relatively speaking of course! 

IRIS Simulations Battlefield Airlifter (AKA C-27 Spartan). I have this one but not yet tried it out 

Consolidated PBY Catalina. Lot of water in the Pacific..

The venerable DC-3 (Manfred Jahn has an excellent freeware version I believe!). Bush flying a DC-3 does happen.. 

EDIT - Dornier 228 (Carenado do one, but I'm sure you know Carenado aircraft can vary in their flight model fidelity..)

 

 

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by HighBypass

I am now finding my way around the Aerosoft Twotter! I did not realise that it came with the Lukla Everest X I purchased via Just Flight. A lovely surprise.

Thanks for the additional aircraft suggestions, I've considered most of those - especially the PBY Catalina, but I couldn't find a source for a quality payware or freebie. I sort of burn out on the DC-3 with FS 2004, for which I put in a lot of stick time in with it. A newer FSX edition is probably worth a consideration though. Indeed I'm leery about Carenado products - my Cessna 206 Stationair by them is 1st rate, but my Bonanza V35 is lacking. I've been eyeing their Shorts 330 and 360, which is no stranger to the skies here in the Pac NW.  I think I need to dig up a review or 2 on those Shorts.

If you want to add some additional realism and immersion to the great Flight1 BN-2 there was a very good modification developed for this which you may wish to try:

The Carenado Shorts 330 and 360 are visually excellent, as you might expect, and quite fun to fly if you are willing to accept the usual little Carenado niggles, although I’m not sure if they would really be considered STOL aircraft. If however you are looking for a large turboprop aircraft with true STOL capability you could try the great freeware DHC-7 from Milton Shupe. 
 

Bill

Thanks for the reply Bill. I had indeed thought about the Dash 7, but I've wondered  how well it would work with only a dual throttle quadrant setup?

[Edit] Remembered something else...On the flightsim website where I could find a reference to the fan-made Dash 7, it read like it was a conversion from FS2004. That's potentially a no go for me, as I run with DirectX10 graphics and most Fs2004 conversions I've tried don't display with correct textures.

Edited August 31, 20205 yr by Kronovan

16 hours ago, scianoir said:

If you want to add some additional realism and immersion to the great Flight1 BN-2 there was a very good modification developed for this which you may wish to try:

 

Unfortunately it seems to no longer be available in the Avsim library. Is there possibly another site that's hosting it?

6 hours ago, Kronovan said:

Unfortunately it seems to no longer be available in the Avsim library. Is there possibly another site that's hosting it?

Hi. I think the damage modification may still be available over at the Flight1 file library if you wanted to give it a try.

With regard to the Dash 7, I think there may well be an FSX native version of this available too - I know that I originally used an FS2004 port-over of this which had some issues in FSX but I later installed another version which I think is FSX native and which runs well for me although I am not using DX10.
 

Bill

Hello,

The file is still available at the Flight1 file library.

 

http://library.flight1.net/?p=11388

 

There you go!

The Carenado/Alabeo Aztec is beautiful and has an incredible short field performance just like the real thing. I updated the sound package from Simmarket though. 

@Kronovan Incidentally, regarding the Aerosoft Twotter did you find that when going through the checklists properly via the pop-up notebook, especially the parts requiring high throttle settings, that the brakes were not good enough to hold the aircraft? I ended up trying ti demolish half of Lukla's ramp!