C525B

It's realistic for the props to overshoot 1700 in conjunction with abrupt power changes because the governors don't work instantaneously. It was excessive with the Carenado 350 out of the box, but my tweak should make it a bit more realistic...I actually rolled prop_tc back a bit to 0.003. Smooth takeoff power application is a hard-learned technique when flying the King Air. I use the takeoff technique that was taught to me when I flew the 350 for real. FlightSafety, especially, teaches everyone to make static takeoffs in the 350 now. Line up, hold the brakes, advance the throttles smoothly and in stages until the props come on the governors and stabilize at 1700, then smoothly advance the rest of the way to takeoff TQ while slowly releasing the brakes. The B350 has large props with lots of inertia and lots of torque, so your right leg gets a workout on takeoff roll, and you can make it much more exciting by mashing the power so that your governors are helplessly groping around trying to find 1700 RPM. S-turning down the runway for your entire takeoff roll is really fun and the passengers always love it. Of course, the sim doesn't really replicate that feeling, but if you're rough with the power in conjunction with sloppy rudder technique, you're gonna make 'em sick before the gear's up.

You can improve this by slightly increasing the value of "prop_tc" under the Propeller section of the aircraft.cfg. It will improve the responsiveness of the governor and help it "catch the props". I changed the value to 0.005 from 0.001.

Can anyone who owns both the C90GTx and the Hawker 850 comment on any differences/improvements made to the PL21 avionics since the Hawker?

Yep, it's pretty annoying. Every recent Carenado release has that issue. It's an easy XML hack to fix it.

I was really impressed by the Turbine Sound Studios B200 sound pack from SimMarket. If you don't like the Carenado sounds you can always go that direction. It's $10, I believe.

There is a single white-capped switch in the lower left corner of the switch panel labelled "AVN1 AC". I believe that's your inverter switch by a different name.

Hey Jim. I think it's just the name that Flightaware has generically associated with the type "F406". I believe the "Vigilant" is what Reims calls the maritime surveillance version of the F406. Seems like a mistake on Flightaware's part. The 404 and its derivatives (particularly the C441) seem to be a favorite with aerial mapping and photo outfits. Not surprising to see the only F406 in the continental US put to work in that role. I definitely wonder about the history behind the "Denver-Calgary" decal on the tail of N27NW.

I'd say the transponder is far from the only thing that's been over-simplified. Yes, I believe it could be fixed and I have some code I was working on to accomplish that, but I'm still waiting on (hopefully) another update to the Navigraph pack to fix the major issues before going any further with that. Every time I communicate with Carenado I strongly emphasize that we (the community) all know they will continue to use their same G1000 and Pro Line 21 in future add-ons, and that it would be best to spend the time to get it right once in order spare future trouble, but that doesn't seem to speak to their motivation.

C90GTx just announced yesterday on the Carenado Facebook page. I would expect them use the Collins Pro Line 21 from the Hawker, and I believe it would also be fair to speculate that they'll eventually make a B200 with PL21 avionics as well.

It's pretty common to see this in many add-ons. I think what's happening is that the motion of the plane is being sped up 8x, but the autopilot is basically still working at 1x. Therefore, it's sort of working against itself and it causes some exaggerated corrections. Another example of this can be seen when you have a significant turn in your route while running at 4x or greater: the AP NAV will usually overshoot the turn and end up making a series of S-turns back.

Alright...random thoughts... CDI and DTK alignment: The CDI is setting itself to the true course, not the magnetic course. I was doing my test flight near "home", so I knew that the mag-var was 13 degrees E, and that happened to exactly match the amount of the error. Further testing confirms this. Loading airways: Here's a useful workaround... On the LD AIRWAY page, you may discover that you when you select the airway you want and then move to select the exit fix, the list only has waypoints extending the wrong direction down the airway. Go back to the airway selection, and keep turning the knob until you see a second entry for the airway you want. Pick that one, as it should show all the waypoints down the airway in the correct direction. The courses being computed and displayed on the FPL page of the G1000 are not being calculated correctly. Distance to the active waypoint is not displayed on the FPL page (it shows 0.00). They made the Direct-To button "work" (it worked before, but I mean to say that you can now highlight a waypoint on the FPL page, press DTO, and it will automatically load that waypoint into the field)...but it's still bound by the behavior of FSX GPS. Be warned, if you use DTO with the Navigraph pack, it will give you a direct course line, but it's going to wipe out the rest of your flight plan. I would suggest the following: Highlight the fix you want to go direct to on the FPL page, use the "ACT LEG" softkey to make it the active waypoint, pull up a GPS BRG pointer on your PFD, put the HDG bug on the pointer and use HDG mode to navigate direct to the fix that way (you will have to adjust for wind). Vmo (barber pole speed) is 320 KIAS in the P300, not 350 KIAS as shown. I sent this one to them a long time ago, and it would have been the easiest thing for them to fix, out of all the bugs.

I just got the expansion. I noticed that some weird things happen when you enter your departure/arrival airports as lines in the flight plan, and then select SID/STARS for those same airports. It's best to go straight to the PROC page, enter the airport there, and select the SID & STAR you want. I just started playing with the airways, but it looks like that feature also works similarly to the PROC page...i.e. don't put the entry fix for the airway in your FPL. Go straight to the LD AIRWAY page and put in the entry fix from there. The implementation of the FPL, LD AIRWAY, and PROC pages is not exactly true-to-life, but I'm more concerned with basic functionality at this point. They changed some fonts and stuff on the map and these new graphics look really good. Some big issues so far: -As with the Hawker and S/II, the flight plan always defaults to a cruise altitude of FL280, and there's no way to change this. This means that if you want to use VNAV, you will have to manually change the cruise altitude at EVERY FIX along your flight plan because everything will be pre-filled with 28,000 as the altitude constraint. This is already wrong because the real G1000 VNAV is very, very basic, even in the P300. You must manually enter any restrictions you want to use. There is no cruise altitude field, so you should not see altitudes pre-filled for enroute fixes. I have not yet used VNAV in the P300, but I find Carenado's implementation useless in the Hawker and Citation. -A/P seems to way overshoot any turn along your route if it's any more than 20 degrees or so. -The course needle is not setting itself to the correct DTK for the segment. The A/P mostly seems to be tracking the correct route (minus my squawk above), but the indication on the CDI is incorrect and confusing. Playing around with it now to collect more information. -I'm not sure if it has to do with SP3 or with the navigraph pack, but my inset map on the PFD seems to have a permanent "LOADING..." indication.

So, I have all three, and I've extensively tweaked all of them, using community mods and my own changes. Best out-of-the-box... My feeling is that the Citation S/II is the winner here. I love the S/II. There was much talk in the forum about its FDE being wrong, but I think there were some misconceptions about the way this class of aircraft performs. I've flown a C501 (Citation I/SP) in real life, and the performance of this S/II seems about what I would expect. Climbs like heck at low altitude (granted you're typically doing <200KIAS in the climb) but peters out quickly in the flight levels. You'll make FL410 on a good day only. Its systems are not very complex, so there was much less for Carenado to get wrong. Skip the Navigraph pack and install some third-party navigation...that's really all this one needs. ISG FMS with Janek's mod would probably be the thing that most closely resembles what you'd see in your average S/II, but if you don't have the ISG pack, then a GNS or GTN will do nicely. You could also wait for the CJ2, but I assume that release will be plagued with problems from Carenado's Pro Line 21 system. Most potential... Phenom 300. SP1 fixed the major A/P issues. It remains to be seen what the expansion pack will add (or break), but that's where the aforementioned potential is. The G1000 is fairly basic in functionality, but it very closely resembles the look and feel of the Prodigy system. I believe that many of the issues with the G1000 can be cleaned up. However, in its present state (pre-Navigraph), the navigation capabilities are being crippled by dependence on FSX GPS. As always, you can get around this by adding a 3rd party GPS in a pop-up window. I use the RXP GNS because RXP's "linkgps" feature will update your route in FS, thereby displaying your flight plan on the G1000. And then there's the Hawker... I'm a big fan of Hawker aircraft in general, so I suppose I invested more sweat equity in Carenado's Hawker than I might have otherwise. The SPs were pretty worthless. They fixed almost nothing that mattered. The AP requires you to use hidden workarounds to be usable at all, although Bert Pieke mentioned that he was back to tinkering with it and he's had some good results. I spent an entire day coding to make the systems vaguely resemble reality, and even then my efforts are being undermined by items that are hard-coded in the virtual cockpit model. Anyway, the point is: any further development on the Hawker will be from the community. This was obviously Carenado's worst release ever.

I think I need to know more about your needs/wants to best answer your question: -Are you looking for the best out-of-the-box functionality with FMC, etc? -Are you willing to incorporate some modifications, such as a GTN750, RXP GNS, or ISG FMS in order to have sophisticated navigation? -Do you have a late-model or high-end PC that will run these add-ons without performance problems?

Gregg, I certainly agree with your statement, but I am afraid that the Carenado we see is the only Carenado we'll ever have. Their smugness coupled with unwillingness to improve their product and improve their relationship with the community is very unfortunate. I don't know if it's realistic to expect Carenado to really make this right, but I hope they do. If they don't, then this will be their third problem-plagued jet in a row. With that cloud hanging about, I would imagine the sales of the CJ2 will be poor, especially since it's in exactly the same class as the Citation S/II (they're crowding their own market!). There must be a breaking point with the bad publicity where either 1. they finally accept some help with the technical stuff (even FREE HELP that's been offered many times) or 2. they quit. ...There has to be a breaking point, right? I'm not making these write-ups to air my grievances. I'm enjoying this add-on, despite the faults. I just want the folks who read this forum to be able to make an informed choice and to ask themselves what issues they can live with and what they can't. For all of the technical frustrations, Carenado airplanes are also very beautiful and atmospheric. So, I think the tired, old counterpoint is perfectly valid here: the value you get out of an add-on depends on what you get out of flightsim. I was appalled by the Hawker at first and shelved it for well over a month. But, after some hours of tweaking, I feel like it's about "85% good," and that's good enough for me. I feel that the investment of time fixing that product will be returned many times over, but--counterpoint #2--it's easy for me to say that because I have no qualms with hacking my payware add-ons apart to fix them. Sure, I have many moments with the Phenom where I think, "ugh, this thing is wrong, and this thing is wrong, and see how the G1000 doesn't......." but--counterpoint again--the number of times where FSX has ever fooled me into thinking I was sitting in a real cockpit is exactly zero. P.S. Send me a PM...I have some goodies for the Malibu Mirage you might like. I was over in the Mirage forum today and I saw you have that one.