Hi all,

after reading through a bunch of threads here, I picked up the Toliss A320Neo and am really liking it. Most of all, I like the comprehensive documentation that was included. 
 

I had asked this community about the best GA planes and got some great responses, and now I’d like to get a GA plane that has a similar level of documentation - something that really teaches you the plane.  
 

I bought the Airbus because I wanted to see XP12 from on high - and it really delivers. Now I’d like a GA plane that can get to say FL20 - not low and slow - and that also has really good manuals.

what would you all recommend?

thanks

 

 

Depends on what exactly you want the documentation to teach you. The Hotstart Challenger 650 just lets you use real world docs because it's that close. With the virtual FO and the onboard checklists, it's pretty good to learn (although still very complex of course).

1 hour ago, finkelstein said:

Depends on what exactly you want the documentation to teach you.

Something that has a good tutorial that explains things, not just a plane that expects you to know the POH. The Toliss (and PMDG) planes have tutorials that do a good job of explaining why you’re doing things, not just a checklist. 

After some research and based on the previous thread, I have picked up the Aerobask DA-62. While it doesn't have a tutorial as such, it has a comprehensive set of manuals and seems to be a great plane!

I don't own it, but given its complexity, the SIAI SF-260 should come with a usable manual.

While I like a well written manual, I only use it for reference when I get stuck learning operations from the checklists and reference cards. From a "get going" standpoint, GA is all the same anyway and honestly pretty boring. Throttle, mixture, prop, magnetos. Sometimes fuel pump and retractable gear. Fly it by the cards and you should be fine.

The actual fun part about learning a new GA aircraft for me is googling for information on how to actually fly it from videos or forum conversations between real pilots. That way I, for example, learned that the t-tail Turbo Arrow needs a bit more speed on takeoff and landing than the low tailed one because the lack of boost from the propwash decreases elevator effectiveness. The manual didn't tell me that.