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Note: it’s all too-easy to miss the “Move stick forward to unlock the tail wheel” placard top center of the T-6 panel. Moving the stick near full-forward while taxiing WILL unlock the tail wheel which makes tight taxi turns or pirouettes a breeze. What’s nice is if your unlocked tail wheel turn is a bit too rapid, just ease the stick backwards to re-lock the tail wheel to within a max angle of +/-15° and that’ll arrest the rapid turn rate. I’ve found that the take-offs are much more sedate and not “squirrelly” at all if you limit manifold pressure to 32” max. That way you’ll not be fighting the torque so much as well as not overboosting the engine. Push the MP over 36” and your engine will produce prodigious smoke on the ground and exhaust flames if airborne, as well as surely lose a good bit of power. If the engine hasn’t been damaged by overboosting it, at 32” MP and 2250 RPM, 3/4 fuel load, near sea level, the T-6G should climb at pretty close to 1200 FPM. Keeping an eye on the MP more so than the RPM is critical in the T-6. Not sure I’d characterize the AT-6G flight characteristics as “ponderous.” I’d say more like steady and predictable. At 25”MP and 2000 RPM she’ll do fairly rapid snap rolls and beautiful loops all day long. As one wag put it, “the T-6 Texan is built like a Kenworth but handles like a Ferrari.” I agree. 🙂

Just purchased the CZST Stewart and CYBD Bella Coola packages from the X-Plane.org store. Tested with XP12.06R1. Haven’t flown into CZST yet, but I can report that Bella Coola lives up to all of the marvelous hype, and then some. The scenery detail is extensive and astonishing without much of a FPS demand. Although both the Stewart and Bella Coola scenery updates pre-date the release of the X-Plane 12 beta, the only minor shortcoming that I could see is that the XP12 rain puddles do not appear on the Bella Coola runway or tarmac during rain. That being said, snow does appear perfectly on the airport without the installation of the separate snow textures included in the scenery package. PS, thanks for the detailed reviews. They were a big part of persuading me to purchase the scenery packages. Had I been aware of how very cool the scenery packages are, I would’ve bought them much sooner.

Recently purchased the Aeroprakt A22–LS, in part due to your thorough review, and am very much enjoying this unique aircraft and its systems. Like many of Huss’s aircraft, there’s a certain forthrightness to the design and liveliness to the flight model, and the A22 is delightfully easy to trim for level flight. Thank you for steering me toward this very fun to fly back-country airplane. It is certainly no typical Piper or Cessna. By the way, you really should check out the Avitab tablet plug-in, either as directly implemented in the cockpit as it’s done here in the Aeroprakt, but also as a standalone command-able pop up window. It’s very versatile and presents a lot of useful information at your fingertips.