Chock

Sadly even that's not true compared to older Captain Sim stuff. With things like their 727,707, 757, 777 etc for sims such as FSX and P3D in the past, the one thing you couldn't criticise about those products, was the amount of animations and features there were on the exterior models and their VCs were usually a notch or two above everyone else's as well. You had opening nose radomes with the animated radar inside it, all kinds of GSE loading vehicles which drove up when you opened doors, emergency slides, etc; there was hardly a panel on those models which didn't operate in some way shape or form. It was genuinely impressive. That's not the case with this MSFS model, you can swap out a few antennas on the thing with a utility, but that's it. It's a pale imitation of the modeling complexity Captain Sim's stuff used to enjoy. Their 3D models used to genuinely be the benchmark to try and match in terms of animations, and indeed they still are if you buy any of their FSX/P3D stuff.

Yup, or you'll get a nickname which you probably won't like.

If anyone is curious about this, see my review of the initial '200 version'. Since both are basically visual models using the default 747 under the hood, there isn't likely to be any real difference between the 200 and the 300 rather than the looks, so I suspect my review of the other one will be more or less relevant to this add-on as well, and it will therefore tell you what to expect. It's alright as an add-on so long as you are prepared to accept what it is, the liberties it takes, and are thus aware what you are getting for the price of entry, but be aware that if you want a decent airliner which genuinely has a stab at replicating the real thing fairly well, then the souped up A320 you get for free, or some of the community patched other stuff for the other bigger jets, or the payware Aerosoft CRJ and the PMDG DC-6 (releasing later today allegedly) will be quite likely to serve you better for some realism. If you want my opinion on these things, that's about the size of it, although I wouldn't exactly call them Captain Sim's finest hour.

Yeah, in aviation, if you do anything like that in aviation, nobody ever lets you forget it, it's like that at the airport too, if you cock something up, everyone winds you up about it forever after. 🤣

Yup, I'm pretty sure nuclear missile launch codes have less file name encryption than that. 🚀

With regard to ground looping in a Stearman, the wingtips of the real thing are fairly tough and can easily be replaced even if they do get damaged, so a not very serious ground loop is more of an embarrassment than a costly repair, although obviously if a wing digs in, then there might be trouble.

Nope. There are two locations for add-ons (I'm referring to the MS store version here, not the Steam version). Official add-ons from the MSFS marketplace install into the Official folder the address of which is along the lines of: F:\WpSystem\S-1-5-21-2323705056-408888195-2989242969-1000\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_7wekyb3d7bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore Others, such as freebie add-ons and most payware add-ons you buy from the developer's website rather than the in-game MSFS store go to: F:\WpSystem\S-1-5-21-2323705056-408888195-2989242969-1000\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_7wekyb3d7bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community Whether in the Community folder or the Official folder, they essentially work pretty much the same in spite of this different location, although you will tend to find that ones going into the Community folder tend to be more accessible to modders, for example, with a visible Aircraft config file, whereas ones in the Official folder tend to have hidden Aircraft config files. The updates and patches just update the sim with no need to point anywhere manually, it's a fully automated process which triggers when you start the sim if an update is available which is mandatory, although sometimes you also have to go to the MS Store and patch it there before the sim patch will trigger. Official add-ons from the MSFS however, do have to be updated manually if a patch is available, but this is simply a case of doing this in the sim, so again not manual moving of files is required, you just tick the update from a list and hit a 'download/install' button. It's all fairly intuitively numpty-proof for the most part.

Glad I didn't put you off. I was just trying to be honest on that review, as I always try to be; and I was fairly sure the criticisms I had of it would be addressed quickly, as it seems they have, but it would be disingenuous to do a review and not point such things out, instead blowing neverending sunshine up a developer's jacksie. I do always try to go 'glass half full' rather than 'glass half empty' on the way I talk about stuff on my reviews, but I at least hope people see them as being as honest and comprehensive as I can be without being nasty just for the sake of it. A good example of that would be the other biplane which was released at the start of this week for MSFS, which I also reviewed - the Dorand AR1 - which was one of the rare occasions where I got a review copy of the thing. It's always a bit difficult to steel yourself to be honest when you've been given a free review copy, but if anyone watches that review they'll see that I do criticise the textures a little bit and the lack of pilot and observer figures on the external model, and that's a good thing because there were also many plus points I pointed out too to give a balanced view of the matter, so the developer actually contacted me and said he liked the review and was going to look at addressing those points I was critical on, which I assume they will because they're not especially difficult fixes to implement. This is something Avsim founder Tom Allensworth stressed to me back when I was an Avsim reviewer years ago, when I asked him if we were under any sort of obligation at all, to not to be negative of things we got for review, and he said 'absolutely not, if you think there are bad things about something, point them out'. So I'd like to think my youtube reviews carry on that tradition, as it is certainly the way I look at matters; one can be mean in the way one goes about that, or one can try to make it constructive criticism, and I know which one of the two I personally would prefer to hear when it is directed at me, and which I would be more likely to respond to. Anyway, back with the Stearman, now that the drag and roll rate have been tweaked on it, that's really all my reservations gone as far as this thing is concerned and for the price, especially if you have some Just Flight loyalty points stored up to discount it further below its already low cost, is well worth it as a price of entry. So if anyone has about a tenner in their pocket doing nothing, then what are you waiting for? Send it to me, erm, I mean go and buy that Stearman, and maybe even that Frenchie biplane as well, cos that's fun to fly too. 🤣

Okay, I'm going off memory here, so don't ask me to cite any actual posts or anything, but as far as I recall, when the future of sims was still in a bit of doubt, naturally PMDG took a look at doing stuff for XPlane, and so they decided to make a comparatively simpler aeroplane to dip their toe into the water so to speak. That was their DC-6. Naturally XPlane users were excited about the prospect of PMDG making stuff for XPlane, and many posts followed concerning their 737 and 774, and when they'd make it into the sim; at that time, PMDG had just made their revamped 747 for FSX, and remarkable it was too, managing to be very detailed but still very good on VAS limitations, so naturally much of the posts were asking when their 747 would be in XPlane since they'd managed to do wonders in FSX. That's when RR posted that their experience with XPlane and developing their DC-6 had led them to the conclusion that there were some features of their ESP-based 747 which could not be done in XPlane as it didn't support them (dunno what those things were, but that is what was said), so they said their airliners would not be making it to XPlane. That's as I recall it, and it was on the PMDG forums when they were hosted in Avsim, so i guess if you were prepared to search for it, you'd find it in the archives. Having recalled this very tale recently, I must admit it did make me a little concerned with regard to PMDG making a DC-6 for MSFS and whether it would result in history repeating itself, but apparently it's just a case of their DC-6 deve team beating their 737 dev team on development progress, and so the DC-6 is the one they prioritised for release.

Well, I've not said I don't want to learn that stuff, I'm just pointing out it's pretty hard for new people, I have learned that stuff, and still do learn stuff all the time. In fact today I was re-doing exams for working back at Menzies Aviation at EGCC, where I started again literally this Monday. So yesterday had the aviation medical (again), and now I'm currently about halfway through the 46 exams I have to retake for all the necessary certifications on all the rules and knowledge for working on the airliners, plus I've just done the (very intrusive) UK Government security clearance test form this evening, I'm halfway through the DBS check for the UK, and then I'll have to do the GSAT terrorism security thing again. Then I've got to do all the driving tests for the airside licence (again), then I've got to do all the airport security pass stuff to get the blue airside pass (again), then I've got to be re-certified on all the work stuff for all the vehicles and engine start supervising and headsetting, pushbacks, loading and all the other ton of procedures (again). This is a lot of stuff and it's a big effort, even bearing in mind I've done all that stuff before and am familiar with it, so I am also trying to help those people who also started working there on Monday as well, but have never done any of that before. Because I remember what it was like first time around and recall how confusing it was when everyone was going on about stuff you've never heard of and using all kinds of strange lingo, where you've got people talking about AKEs, AKHs, ULDs, EBTs, wellworks, AVIs, HAZMATs, hilos, LD8s, LD4s, FEPs, GPUs, APUs, ETDs, zigzags and a million other things you've never heard of but you're gonna be doing an exam on that afternoon. Whilst the above is not the same as learning how to operate your toy A320 or 737 for MSFS, when these products are a detailed simulation and you've only just started getting into flight sims, as some people are doing with MSFS, then I can sympathise with the task they are facing, since it too is a lot to learn. It's not just all the aeroplane's systems, it's all the how you fly things, and all the ATC, and flight procedures, flight planning, loading, weather, IFR procedures, learning charts and so on. I do that stuff for real and even I think it's quite a lot of stuff for to learn when I look at it in flight sims, And they are more complex than they used to be. So I'm certainly not averse to learning stuff. But the point is that anyone who comes in cold to flight simming now, literally has to learn it all in one go, whereas those of us who've got pilot's licences and flying experience and have been into flight sims for years and maybe work in aviation too, have had a gentle introduction to it all over a very long period of time, much of which was in concert with the slowly increasing fidelity of the add-on aeroplanes we got for our flight sims and the increasing fidelity of the sim too (it wasn't until FS2002 that Microsoft Flight Simulator even had any built in ATC at all, nor AI aeroplanes, and there was no GPS in the sim until FS2004), so whilst there is a lot of stuff we've learned, we've been able to accumulate that knowledge with the benefit of a somewhat gentler learning curve than anyone who bought MSFS last week and is then suddenly faced with literally everything they need to know to get their realistic add-on airliner working. And as noted, not just the systems on the aeroplane, but also how to fly it, what all the flight planning, fueling, loading and operational routing etc covers. So it's all very well saying 'learn it' to someone else when they have to do it all in one lump, but that's a very unsympathetic attitude indeed and it's not very welcoming toward people who are new to all this and interested in getting into it. These kind of snobbish elitist attitudes are what garners criticism for places like Avsim, when people who regard themselves as time-served self-appointed veterans are unsympathetic to the tougher learning curve people who are new to all this are facing. And they really are facing a tougher learning curve than we did, because they're coming into it when detailed add-on aeroplanes rival the complexity of the real things, whereas when we were all getting into it, one of the plus points they'd list on the back of the box to our add-on 737 for FS98 was that it featured twelve-sided polygons for the fuselage. Now people start whining if you can't zoom in to a distance of two inches away from the things and read the stencilling on the avionics cooling vent outlet mast. And for those of you with rose-tinted spectacles who think it was just as hard learning your FS2004 PMDG 737 NG as it is nowadays, I've just pulled out my old PMDG FS2004 CD installation box and took this picture. Anyone wanna take a guess how many pages the manual was for this PMDG 737 NG? If you guessed 43 pages, then give yourself ten points, because yup, that's your PMDG manual for the FS2004 737600/700 NG, (so that's two aircraft types, with different wings, different engines, different fuselage lengths, different turning circles, different fuel tank and cargo/passenger capacity and a different overhead) and it's not a big page size either as you can see. The FMC manual is a bit longer at around 70 pages, but that's literally all the documentation you got, and to be honest, you could have read it all in about an hour and a half pretty easily, because there are a lot of pictures and the print isn't tiny.

Yup, I know there's a lot of people who've been to the Aerosoft forums once, but I bet the number drops off significantly when asking for people to put their hand up if they've been to it twice. Then again, there are people with that opinion about Avsim too, which is why I usually go out of my way to give people a thumbs up and a welcome when they post that they are a new member. 🤣

But that's the point. Lots of people coming to MSFS cold from never having had Fly!, FS2004 and FSX, and probably never even having heard of P3D, they essentially have been living under a rock as far as the PMDG name is concerned. Personally, and like many others, I can appreciate the joy of having an add-on aeroplane with a radial engine which behaves like a real one and demands proper operation, but back when I was first getting into flight sims, it was a long time before anything like that was around, and so I had the benefit of growing with the capabilities such fancier add-ons eventually demonstrated. Recall if you will the original FS2004 737 NG when it first came out; you couldn't move for people who were posting on bulletin boards and forums about how they couldn't get the second engine started because they knew nothing of systems such as bleed air. This is the kind of thing you have to slowly get into when starting out with flight sims, and its where many of us on Avsim are. But it's not where a lot of people new to flight simming are, and to them, it would be easy for them to view what we revere as wonderfully complex and detailed, as simply expensive and not easy to start up, and you can well understand that viewpoint if you think back to your own early days with flight sims of fancy airliners with a ton of switches.

Yes, that is true, but for most people who meet you the first time, you are what you do, not what you have done. So you have to demonstrate that and gain respect, rather than just demand it from past glories. It becomes obvious soon enough if you are what you say you are, but it's not simply a switch you can flick on at will. The proof of the pudding may be in the eating, but if the pudding is so expensive that you don't even want to try it, then it's all for nothing. Someone who thought a Carenado GA was a bit steep for DLC at 25 quid because they had no knowledge of them, might have thought 'oh well, here goes' and spent the cash, and now they know what they get for their Dollar, but that's a bigger leap of faith when you are looking at spending a pretty large chunk of your wages.

Worth bearing in mind that whilst some people in crusty old flight sim circles may go around whispering the name of PMDG in hushed tones of reverence, there'll be a ton of people new to flight simming who've never heard of them. Now granted that will change, but you can't just turn up somewhere that people have never heard of you and go: 'don't you know who I am!?' demanding instant respect. Old gits like me who've been into flight simming for years know what PMDG and A2A etc have done, and we've also been gently persuaded over the years to accept that add-ons used to be a tenner for FS98, then they started being twenty quid, then thirty and so on, until we saw the PMDG 737 NG tip up for FS2004 and start pushing that 60 quid price tag, and it eventually became acceptable because of the fidelity and the slow process of acceptance to the point that we might not exactly be thrilled to pay 130 quid for an FSL A320, but we know that we are getting what we pay for, and we were with those developers every step of the way to get to that point of acceptance. Aerosoft got this one right and priced their first airliner add-on at a level which reflected the fact that it was a cut above the rest of the things that were available, but they didn't come in at a price level which traded off what to many viewing the MSFS market, as unknown past glories. The PMDG DC-6 for MSFS will demonstrate this to people who've never heard of them, and they'll doubtless learn more of the company when having coughed up for their first product from PMDG, and then they will be accepting of the fact that you're getting something which warrants a higher price, but for many, they'll have to be eased into that notion, just as all us old farts were years ago, because you do actually have to make the leap and buy something in order to know that what you bought was worth it. A good example of that is the Lexus brand, where it took a while for people to accept that this wasn't just a Toyota with a lot of fancy marketing and the made up Kudos of some badge you'd never heard of, in the hopes that it would instantly have the century-old gravitas of Mercedes, Daimler, Jaguar, BMW etc. So we might not balk at a high price tag for this thing, but that's because we know the score and there's only so much second hand reverence you can expect people to take on board. We also have to bear in mind that whilst a lot of us regard the DC-6 as a classic, to lots of people it's just 'some old airliner which doesn't fly around much any more', so it's a bit tricky for PMDG and I wouldn't want to be the one naming the price, but if I had to do so, I'd take a leaf out of Aerosoft's book and maybe bang it out there for sixty quid, as a loss leader which sets out their stall, then hope that people new to that kind of pricing and fidelity will see the youtube vids and reddit posts etc where those in the know will be vocal in saying why it's worth it, and want to join the club, but it'd be a brave developer who'd stick a 737 on the MSFS market for 140 quid without first having established their credentials with the many new flight simmers, that's for sure.

In case you were considering this one for MSFS, here's my review of it:

I don't think anyone is suggesting that anyone does try that. But someone more familiar with the product could do that, which in fact PMDG pretty much already have done in their own series of videos on their channel. So this person could wait until they were more familiar with it before doing their take on it and adding something of their own based on their knowledge. But winging it with a live stream is just generally not a great way to make engaging or informed content from what I typically see of that kind of thing. I know streaming popular with 'da kidz', but it's usually pretty dire as a format and is invariably more about channel hits and revenue than it is about using the best format to convey decent information in a genuinely entertaining way which isn't full of padding. It's like the internet's version of the QVC shopping channel, where some tragic TV presenter, with their shattered dreams of fame written all over their face, has to talk for literally hours about some bedsheets which are on special offer discount, if you CALL NOW!

Yes, see my previous answer. If people want to watch a live stream then I'm not stopping them, I'm looking forward to the product myself, but I find live streams more like an annoying tease than an informative watch. People can feel free to disagree with that if they like. I've had their original DC-6, I know this one will be good from all the previews they've done etc. So I'll buy it without watching someone else playing with it, I find that more annoying than informative as a format.

But a review of it will highlight the good and bad points, and you can FFWD those if there is a boring bit or stuff you already know. So yeah, watch a stream afterwards, fine, but live it's just very drawn out. That's why I do reviews; the average length people watch my reviews for is approximately 10 minutes, and they're usually a bit more than twice that in length, and I completely understand why people do that, some of them will maybe even watch the entire review, but at double speed. You have options with stuff that isn't live.

Yawn. Never understand why anyone gets excited about watching someone else streaming using something. Frankly I can't think of anything more tedious.

http://www.londoncontrol.com/ Free demo available there.

Welcome back 🙂

Yup, lots of people forget that the vast majority of what are today classed as illegal drugs were in fact not illegal to possess in the UK until the early 1960s, and even then the UK had to be pressured into making that a law by the US. My mum has got a really old copy of (I think) Good Housekeeping Magazine from somewhere around the 1900s, which actually has an article in it on how to grow Marijuana, recommending it for its medicinal use, and that wouldn't have been seen as at all controversial at the time it was published; let's not forget that Queen Victoria, who was on the throne at about the same time as that article was published, was pretty keen on opium and cocaine, and that wasn't exactly a secret. Most people could fairly easily get a friendly doctor to prescribe even heroin prior to that UK legislation in the 1960s. In much in the same way as you would do for any other aeroplane, i.e. the way you are doing. It's worth bearing in mind that most WW2 combat aeroplanes were, in so far as it is possible, designed to be as much a 'set and forget' type of affair when in combat as they could be. This was why they all tended to have some kind of automatic propeller pitch control system which you didn't need to faff about with unless you absolutely wanted or needed to, or if not, then they would have a pretty basic cluster of throttle, prop and mixture levers which were easy to adjust quickly with one hand since they all moved in the same arc. We can see how important this was on the Spitfire from the Luftwaffe's report on the thing, when they tested captured early variants not equipped with variable pitch propellers; their conclusion being that whilst it was 'a nice aeroplane', it was as they put it, 'a miserable fighting machine', since with a fixed-pitch propeller (the wooden Watts propeller found on the Mark 1), it was either over-revving or under-revving when in mock combat against a bf109E. This was also when they discovered that without fuel injection, the Spitfire could be out-maneuvered by simply shoving the stick forward on a 109E and diving away from it, then zooming back up out of the dive. If you tried that in a Spitfire, the negative G loading would make the fuel stop feeding from the carburettor, whereas the bf109 was fuel-injected and this system worked with any amount of positive of negative G on it. Of course by the time the Battle of Britain took place, these things were no longer as serious an issue with the Spitfire, since by then it did have a better three-blade variable-pitch propeller and its pilots knew to simply do a half roll in the Spitfire to keep positive G on the carburettor to prevent the engine from choking. Later the float chamber and valve on the Spitfire's Merlin engine carburettor was modified to largely alleviate the issue of neg-G fuel starvation too unless it was particularly prolonged. Thereafter, the necessity of making a more complex fuel injected Daimler-Benz engine for the bf109, which required more finely-machined parts than was the case with the simpler Merlin with just a carburettor, meant that this had an impact on the war, where it was as much a war of how fast you could produce stuff as much as it was about actually fighting with that stuff. so simpler stuff was generally better. What most combat pilots would do therefore with the Spitfire, and indeed most other dogfighting aeroplanes, was pick a decent mixture setting which gave plenty of acceleration for the altitude at which the combat was set to occur, and then unless they had time to faff around with minor tweaks, they would pretty much leave it where it was and let diving and zooming sort everything else out. This might seem odd to us in a world where we fly about in Cessnas and Pipers etc, and worry about the plugs oiling up over time owing to incorrect mixtures and such, but this was never a problem with the Spitfire or other warplanes like it, since the Merlin engine tends to need its plugs to be replaced after just twelve hours of usage, so they hardly have time to accrue much in the way of plug fouling build up.

Sort of true but not quite with old cross-dressing Herman. He was wounded when he was shot whilst marching with Adolf H, in their failed coup attempt (aka the Beer Hall Putsch) in 1923. word not allowed and a load of his SA mates were arrested in the failed attempt to seize power, and it was whilst old Adolf was in prison that he wrote his nationalistic racist drivel-fest Mein Kampf. That book is what ended up making him fabulously rich since when the N@zis took power, they decreed that every new mother, and newly wed couple, should be presented with a copy of the book, which the government bought for that purpose, so Adolf got a ton of royalties from this massive number of 'sales'. Unlike Adolf and several others, Goering escaped capture from the beer hall riot and was smuggled away to Innsbuck, where his wound was treated. However since it was a pretty bad and painful injury (in the groin), he was given lots of morphine for the pain and this was over a period of about six weeks, so he ended up with a bit of a taste for it as a result of the massive amounts he was prescribed. It was this more than anything which kicked off his addiction to drugs. Following this treatment, Goering went into hiding in Vienna, so he escaped being taken into custody for his part in the coup attempt. After that, he bummed around in a few European countries until he ended up in Poland where he was, by that point, in very bad shape owing to his morphine addiction, which had made him very violent and unhealthy, it was so bad in fact that he was committed to an asylum in 1925 and held in a straitjacket in his cell, so ironically, he didn't completely escape a similar fate to that of his mates in that riot who got sent to the slammer. Fortunately for him, it was determined by his psychiatrist that it was the drugs which were making him that way, so when he was weaned off them in the asylum, they let him out, but he had a relapse and had to return for more treatment. This might have been the end of the story for Goering, since he would often descend into similar lapses, but in 1927 there was an amnesty announced in Germany, which allowed Goering to return there and work in aviation, and by that time word not allowed was out of prison (released in 1924), and so they became pals again, and of course we all know what happened after that. Goering was well known for being prone to mood swings even prior to his drug addiction; he would often fiercely berate subordinates when he was in command of his Jasta in WW1, then as if realising he had gone too far, he would suddenly turn on the charm and try to win their favour again. As a result of that, some people who met him when he was in one of his charm offensive moods would leave with the impression that he was quite likeable, whereas other who caught the rough side of him would report the opposite. Like most of the N@zi bigwigs, he was rather petty and used a lot of his status to further himself personally, often to the fatal misfortune of others, so on balance we can surmise that he was a fairly horrible person and not really because of the drugs either, but even so, Just Say Nein!

Welcome to Avsim. 🙂

Put 5 degrees right rudder trim in.