Parttime virtual pilot

In flight refuelling, air-to-air refuelling, IFR, AAR, tanking...

2008-12-17T13:14:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I managed to refuel in mid-air in FSX. A first to me, since I bought the F-16 Fighting Falcon X of Aerosoft. A great bird which has splendid in-game performance. It's a joy to look at the radar, lock onto targets, intercept them, and try to refuel from them. Too bad Lockheed-Martin didn't equipped their (ok, ok, General Dynamics their bird...;-) ) aerial warrior with a more decent AP...nav hold would be very handy during long-range flights! A highly recommended add-on. As is Realflight's new Hellcat. It is said to be " pretty close to knocking the Realair Spitfire off the pedestal, and crushes the A2A P-40. ".

BRUspotting is scheduled for tomorrow...let's hope for better weather!

Here we are, once again.

2008-07-04T17:39:00.002+02:00

Now, last Monday I started studying for the exam of accountancy I've got to redo at the 28th of July. I was lucky this time; fortunately the director of my school arranged somebody (ironically, one of his accountants ;-) ) to be at school at that date. Normally it was set at the 19th of August, but since I return from our holiday at Corsica the day before, that would make it impossible to be prepared...

Something else now, back to 'business'. I'm curious who's going to be the new reviewer of Screenshotartist.co.uk...

As you see, my wishlist has been reduced a bit. Aerosoft (in fact, Mathijs Kok did, between "his 101 other jobs at Aerosoft" in Ian Pearson's words) has made a very nice deal: I promised to buy the upcoming Catalina (lovely aircraft) and the F-16, and I get the Hughes for free! Still, my list is in fact too long; my wallet can't take it.

And fortunate as we are, my fellow simmers, they (Aerosoft) are making a Huey! The ^mighty^ Huey, the nightmare and persecutor of the Vietcong. Another must-have to me.

Other must-haves include the RealAir Spitfire and Scout package. And the virtual birds I already wrote about of Aerosoft...I wonder how they keep doing it, developing such fine models, sounds (though that's more of matter to Turbine Sound Studios), and so on. I bought the Beaver and Twotter already, and it's in my opinion the only payware where I'm 99 % satisfied with.

That last percent means to me the lighting in the Beaver cockpit, the mountain reflection on it's floats, and the lack of the amphibian variant(s) of the Twotter.

Before these two I only flew the Goose and Grand Caravan, but now I'm very serious into seaplane operations (I can even reverse a Twin Otter into a crowded harbor these days ;-) ), therefore I installed MoCat's excellent add-on 'Caribbean Seaplane Tours'.

I talked to my parents the day I got my school report and said I wouldn't spend more than an hour on the computer per day, but it's hard to maintain...I wish I already had the Hughes or Spit (or the Scout package), then I at least had something to look forward too.

Why...[do I haven't got more bucks in my pocket and is there so much nice payware!]

2008-04-10T21:37:00.006+02:00

Good. The last days I keep wondering about...(since you read the title anyway I'm not goin' to repeat it for ya). There are some pretty good developers on the FS market; Real Air Simulations (RAS), Alphasim, Aerosoft (their support really rocks and the manuals Mathijs Kok writes are really funny to be honest). But there are others which are fine too and offer fine products for a reasonable price. Here's a short list of my favorite developers.

Razbam (these guys made the well-appreciated A-6/EA-6B package - but why didn't they include the Prowler in the FSX version too ? That's the reason I crossed it out of my wishlist...if they offer a reasonable price for the A-6 and the EA-6 packs I'll buy it maybe)
Shockwave Productions; they made the superb P-40 and developed 3D Lights [Redux for FSX]
Sky Unlimited; though probably a bit the unknown one to most of you, this team made as far as I know the best P-38 Lightning I've ever seen (for FSX, since I didn't use FS9/2004). One of the best things they made (IMHO they make fine products all the time, but that's something else...) was the Horten/Gotha Ho/Go-229. Awesome aircraft.
Aeroplane Heaven (they made a fine Tiger Moth and I wished they made the Lancaster for FSX instead of FS9...).

Now, I haven't got much time left so see you all tomorrow and happy flying. Let's fly, let's fly, let's fly away...(I still wonder about the name of that song. If you know it, leave a comment, okay ;-) ). The post is shorter than I intended to make it but...parents...sometimes you love them (e.g.when they agree on buying the BeaverX for ya), sometimes you [almost] hate them ("George! Shut down that bloody computer!").

P.S.: check out the screenshots in the Razbam forum, there are some quite impressive pictures of their product there...or check Ian Pearson's review on Screenshotartist about that one..

Back to...bush flying ?

2008-04-02T10:22:00.007+02:00

As some of you may know, I'm not a regular pilot of (jet) airliners in flight simulator. I flew them a lot until I got tired of doing always the same things...ILS approaches, asking for pushback and engine start clearance, etc. I still wonder how people never get bored while always doing the same things...bush flying is more a challenge. You may land somewhere where nobody has landed before you, like somewhere in Canada or Alaska.

Already during the first days my favorite aircraft was the Cessna 208B; the only thing I regret about it is that Microsoft didn't made a new amphibian version for it like it was in FS2004.
But I wanted something else, with better STOL performance, higher cruise speeds, and maybe some other things...maybe even a floatplane this time ? At least something rugged, not too slow, and powerful, with useful short T/O and landing performance. So I started looking for a STOL.

The first thing I saw was the Dornier Do-27 I wrote about a while ago. Not really good for your framerates which aren't too good anyway (FSX is still a tough 'game' to 'play', even with a 3.40 Ghz Pentium D - dual core -, two GB of RAM and a Nvidia 7600 GS with 512 mb dedicated memory). That's one of my main reasons I don't like to fly over Europe; too less water, seaplane bases, short runways, lakes and other nice stuff like that. Another reason is the always boring weather here in Western Europe. Around the Bahama's (my homebases are Cape Santa Maria and Hog Cay Exuma, from the latter I regularly fly with the Beaver or the Twotter or another plane to Duncan Town. The default scenery of FSX is quite boring, it's just a small 2500 ft strip without many trees or buildings around there. On Avsim I recently found a nice piece of scenery for Duncan Town. I just made a short flight around it and noticed a nice hotel, a cruise ship if I'm not wrong, several ports with some boats and a larger airfield compared to the original. Though completely fictional, it's still a nice airfield to start some island hopping around the Bahamas. Something else I got already some time in my scenery library in FSX is IPBB: Ian Pearson's (one of the reviewers of www.screenshotartist.co.uk) Bigger Base, in British Columbia, Canada. You can get it on Avsim, it's a great place to start with the Beaver amphibian and make a flight to one the seaplane bases which are located less than 100 nm from I believe...that's something for tomorrow...and flight from Cape Santa Maria or Hog Cay Exuma to Duncan Town is something else I'm going to do...

Last Saturday I bought two great deHavillandCanada's: the BeaverX and the Twin Otter, both from Aerosoft. Two great planes. I both checked the planes and with full fuel and the default load I got airborne from Fowl Cay - an airfield with a coral runway, 1300 ft) easily. Especially the Twin Otter has stunning STOL performance, you actually have to see it take off to believe it...and the landing was even easier, I used maybe only half the runway available. The only thing I wonder about is why Aerosoft didn't put a NAV/GPS switch in the Twotter with floats...But they both fly wonderful and flying them manually is a joy itself. The Twin Otter is even so manoeuvrable you can roll it without problems....perfect for these short TFFG-TFFJ (Grandcase - St.Barthélémy) flights. The Beaver amphibian is a great one too, it flies through all weather and lands almost anywhere you want it to. And of course it makes the transition from water to land and vice versa without a single problem...it's the most versatile and useful plane in my virtual hangar...
Someone asked me why I bought a Beaver , since there's a default one in FSX. I replied immediately: because of the so much better soundpack, more accurate flight model, and amphibian and wheeled variants of it.

Some screenshots

1) The screenshot may be unrealistic (I haven't seen snow on the Bahamas ever), but the landing and approach to this wet, 1800 ft long runway on a small island (Hog Cay) was very simple, since you can land at very slow speeds with the Twotter...and I like the angle of this one...

2) My DHC-2 Beaver of Air BC moored at IPBB...note the Piper Cub on floats in the background...it's on a small lake this base with some hills surrounding it, which makes it a fine and very exciting approach to watch with instant replay in FSX...

3) The comfortable 'office' of my Beaver...

Today I also downloaded (with a bit of help of FDM :) ) the great scenery of Raimondo Taburet from Simviation. More than 2 GB to download...it was all downed within one hour, thanks to a fast internet connection and FDM...otherwise I'd still be downloading now. Looks great from high altitude, but it's not really interesting when you want to fly 'low 'n slow' with a Beaver or Twotter. It's fine if you like high-altitude flights with jetliners however.