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News! - Carenado 2016 Sales Now On! - 50% off! The 2016 Carenado sale is now on until the 18th December or for just 10 Days. 50% off all listed aircraft is a brilliant deal, including the excellent B200 King Air HD for US$17.48!, The PC 12 HD for US$17.48!, B1900 HD for US$17.48 and even the 208B Caravan for a crazy US$14.98.... yes just US$14.98! And my top ten favorite aircraft in X-Plane in the Bonanza F33A is only US$13.48! crazy, crazy, stuff ... Go Now! Go to the -> X-Plane.OrgStore for all these great deals Stephen Dutton 9th December 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

Aircraft Plugin Review : Reality Expansion Pack (REP) for Carenado B58 Baron SimCoders have released their latest REP or Reality Expansion Pack for Carenado's B58 Baron general aviation aircraft. This expansion pack covers many areas including the aircraft's flight dynamics, more onboard systems and failures, extra tools including maintenance hangar, a kneeboard, the weight & balance and an extensive walkaround, sounds are also more highly advanced. Carenado B58 Baron Before we cover the REP package, let us familiar ourselves with the original Carenado B58 Baron. The aircraft was released now in Nov, 2012 and that is four years ago to date. That is not to say the aircraft is old or out of date, in fact it is the opposite in the fact with the many updates and revisions the current v3.0 release is a pretty solid aircraft now with very few if any bugs or quirks. Admittedly it is a fairly basic aircraft, and has few real special effects. But that is to the good as the aircraft is brilliant and simple to fly, and a great starter for anyone who wants to learn to fly a good solid twin-engined aircraft, as for being a very good twin training aircraft I can't think of any better aircraft to use. The B58 Baron still looks and feels great as well, the lines are clean and unfussy, and it is quite fast at 205 knots (380 km/h, 236 mph) at sea level, with a Cruise speed of around 190-180 knots. Cockpit and panel is fairly basic, but again great for a first time user or if you just want a no fuss fly to somewhere. Most instruments are oriented for the pilot and the right seat is really just for casual flying. Switchgear is set out all together behind the pilot's yoke, not a lot of adjustment here like with the panel lighting (on/off) but still very comprehensive in detail. centre pedestal has all you need but nothing more in the standard throttle, propeller (feather) and rich/lean mixture levers and trim wheels. Equipment stack is dominated by two Garmin GNS 430's GPS. Both pop out for ease of use. Standard issue Garmin 347 audio panel is top with the KFC225 Bendix King autopilot below (then the two Garmin's) with a Garmin GTX 327 transponder centre and finally lower a KR87 TSO ADF unit. Cabin Cabin seating is arranged in a four seat club layout with a folding out table (very nice). Cabin detailing and (spot) lighting is excellent, and as this is an early Carenado, you still get the baggage items behind the seats and in the forward baggage compartment. Only two pop-out menus with the standard Carenado "Cameras" panel and the lower "options" panel, both are basic and there is no "autopilot" pop out that you usually get with current Carenado's. Liveries There is one blank (white) livery and four graphic liveries with the aircraft SimCoders Reality Expansion Pack (REP) for Carenado B58 Baron So the Carenado B58 Baron makes a very good basic platform to add on a REP package. These Reality Expansion Packs are created to extend many areas of the aircraft's flight dynamics and systems and to improve on the already very good layouts from Carenado. Installing the REP Installing the REP package is really quite easy, as in the download package you get just one folder named "REP" and that folder is installed in the aircraft's plugin folder (just drop the whole folder in) and that is it, very easy and done quickly. I do recommend to have two complete versions of the Carenado B58 Baron, the standard one and one I labeled "Carenado B58 Baron REP" because you never know if you just want the basic version to just simply fly, as we shall see. When you start up the REP version of the B58 Baron you are asked for a key (provided) and the authorisation page is on the X-Plane "plugins" menu under "SimCoders.Com - REP" The drop down menu also gives you a "settings" panel to: Enable the plane damages Show Failure messages Enable Mouse gestures Save and restore aircraft staus between (flying) sessions Enable hypoxia effect use imperial or metric units With the REP package installed you also get a five tab menu on the left side of your screen. These tabs cover: Kneeboard - Walkaround - Tow - Maintenance Hangar - Weight & Balance Kneeboard First upper tab is the kneeboard or checklist feature. pop-up Kneeboard is very good and covers Normal Operations, Emergency Procedures and References (v Speeds). The kneeboard is very handy and comprehensive, but annoying as well because it constantly pops up for no reason if you press items on the panel or touch other things releated or not to the feature. Walkaround Second tab is the walkaround feature. Walkaround features are now very common in X-Plane, but this was one of the first and it is still very good. You press to check and go around the aircraft in a clockwise motion... ... It is more involing than most as many items are animated like your Ailerons, flaps, elevator and rudder. You press the centre button to check (animate) with sound all the flying surfaces, it is comprehensive and very good. You can hide/add external elements like tie-downs, chocks and engine covers... ... but the walkaround goes a lot further than that as you can also check tire wear, Oil Quantity, fuel Quantity and even the water contamination within your fuel tanks, it is as note a very comprehensive check of the aircraft. Tow You can manoeuvre the aircraft around with the third tab tow feature You need to turn off the brakes, then use your joystick with up-down for forward/reverse and left-right for left turn/right turn. Maintenance Hangar The fourth tab is the Maintenance Hangar feature that allows you to check wear and tear on the aircraft and if required then perform Maintenance to fix or rectify the issues. First two tabs relate to the two engines and their general wear and tear. As I have not done too much flying yet, the settings are still mostly as new, but you need to keep a eye on the items on this panel as you use the aircraft or suffer the consequences. There are two options on the "Engine Tools" tab. One is the "Winterization Kit" that puts two cowl fairings in the engine inlets, but watch your temperatures to not over heat the engine if you move to higher temperatures. Second is another winter tool in that you can pre-heat the engines with a (noisy) heater provided outside the aircraft. Last two items on the maintenance hangar panel is the Maintenance for both "Electrical/Electronics" and "Landing Gear/Brakes". Also note that many items on this maintenance panel are also noted on the walkaround feature and vice-versa, and all items in the maintenance panel to be changed/fixed can also only be done with the engines switched off and you have to be on the ground. Weight & Balance Another item that was rare but now common on X-Plane aircraft is the "Weight & Balance" panel. The SimCoder's version is very good with a "Centre of Gravity" graph to show you your balance and weight on the aircraft. All weights including pilots and passengers can be inputted along with their baggage. Fuel can be added or emptied, and you get C.G. predictions with estimated flying time. A total summary of all weights is shown bottom left. You can then apply all weights and fuel input to the aircraft. (note just check you do have actual fuel on board before you fly, as most times the aircraft is shown empty and not half-full as usual by X-Plane standards. Flying the SimCoder's B58 Baron Although the Carenado version is of very high quality, you do have say another complete step of features by using this expansion package. SimCoder's have made sure you get the best possible real life experience that you can get with the REP package, but one feature that I can't simply surmount every time I use the REP is just starting the engines? Yes I understand that old aviation piston engines are cranky things, just like old cars can be. But the time and effort required here to start the engines can be a bit daunting... worse here as you have two cranky engines to start and not just one? There was the point that just simply cranking over the engine with no go can go past the point of just leaving the REP package and just going back to standard Carenado aircraft to just go and fly. I have the REP package on the excellent Carenado Bonanza F33A and although I loved the added realism of the REP package, the starting feature continued to beat me and maybe I should have persisted more than returning to the standard Carenado version. Worse here than the single-engined Bonanza is my add-on Saitek throttle works both the right and left engines at the same time. SimCoders do provide hints, but they don't seem to work well for me, the starting window is sometimes just toooo tight in making it believable and accessing the rest of the package. In the most cases when they do start it is in just sheer luck or persistence, and with no constant patterns to follow, you just start churning again when you come back to restart the engines? If they flood your sunk... No doubt this is all very authentic, and I don't say that SimCoders have not done a brilliant job in recreating a perfect feel for this environment, but a slight helper or reset would make all the difference to this sequence of the simulation. If they do actually start I do love the adjustments to warm up the engines, no doubt this is highly realistic, and you can't fly until the engines are actually ready to go and all the needles are showing all the correct numbers and temperatures. You have to find the right RPM or otherwise the engines will growl at you (or at the worst conk out!), too fast and you are running too fast and too slow is the death zone. But you find the right setting by leaning the engines and adjusting the throttles, certainly a split throttle system is a real bonus with this REP here. We could never criticise Carenado's packaged sounds, but SimCoder's have certainly added a lot to the variety and depth of the sounds, certainly in the range in the engines. You now go from engine clicks and stutters, to and excellent start sounds, to the many varied sounds in the lower lean and idle throttle zones. To a point these sounds are important for you to guess the condition of the engines and the correct lever adjustments make the correct feedback including the horror "stutters" and misfiring fouled plugs... It is all very well done for realism if not for the stress it can also cause to your already fragile heart. Fine details like propeller sync can also effect the torque of the engines and you have to use it realistically here and switching on is under 25% RPM, if not you get a warning. As you adjust the engine RPM (locked together here under the single throttle control) there is a noticeable difference between each engine in performance. Certainly these differences will expand more as wear and tear with more hours of flying take their effect, and any maintenance performed is noticeable on the sounds and gauges as well. Excellent extra sounds continue in the air. Wind sounds and landing gear activation and wind noises all add into the effects of realism, but the cruise engine drone is an acquired taste, and you lose a little of the those lovely 3d surround sounds that come with the Carenado version. SimCoder's advise to use their excellent "Headshake" plugin and I would certainly second that, in fact I always use headshake as it is a very good effect plugin on all aircraft... take it away and you certainly see and feel the difference, so it is a must have in X-Plane. Systems in oil and electrical are highlighted as well and you can have oil pump failures and realistic vapour lock. SimCoder's have tuned the Baron for more realistic stall speeds & behavior, correct climb speeds and more realistic cruise speeds, the aircraft does feel significantly different. I flew the standard Baron down from KLAL to KRSW Florida and with the REP version doing the return trip, and yes the aircraft is a marked contrast from the original in all aspects of the flight model, certainly you notice the engine behavior is very different machine from the more highlighted sounds and gauges. Summary The start point with the standard Carenado version (which you have to already have to use this REP package) is certainly an excellent base line, as it is a great simple twin-engined aircraft that is sweet and easy to fly. So the extensive intergration of the Reality Expansion Pack (REP) does feel and add in a huge difference and experience to that base model design. And extensive it certainly is... the package covers a huge amount of detail, but mostly it concentrates on the feel, running and realism of running those two IO-550 engines. You work hard in this cockpit just working the levers to get the right outcome of keeping those two cranky engines flyable and in a good workable condition, and that certainly expands out the experience of using and flying your own B58 Baron aircraft and in the end that is the ultimate goal of these packages in realistically replicating the ownership of a certain type of aircraft. Negatives... for one mastering the start and operation of the engines is one of the biggest challenges you face, most owners of these REP packages will have easily done so, so don't fret it can't be done, but do expect to find that an early learning curve. The constantly popping-up kneeboard is seriously annoying, as it come on the screen at important points in your flying, like taking off or landing, and yes it is a distraction you don't need unless called for, and the drone sounds are for a particular ear. But I did really like the ultimate realism of running the aircraft and maintaining those engines, this is of course no load in X-Plane and fly aircraft, as the walkaround has to be completed and the engines when started need time to warm up and settle down (just like the real thing). Maintenance needs to be completed and this is an aircraft that would require a log book and running details noted down, but then that is what the REP is all about, ultimate realism of running your own General Aviation aircraft... and in that scenario you get the full works here. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! the SimCoders Reality Expansion Pack (REP) for Carenado B58 Baron is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : Reality Expansion Pack for Carenado B58 Baron Price is US$19.99 Required for the use of this plugin! B58 Baron by Carenado: Carenado B58 Baron Price is US$29.95 REP Plugin Features Include: Ultra Realistic Flight & Ground Dynamics Realistic stall speeds & behavior Realistic climb speeds Realistic cruise speeds Realistic Weight & Balance Realistic taxi behavior Complex Damages System Triggered by the pilot actions Based on real world data Target every system in the aircraft Meant to teach you how to correctly manage an airplane Realistic IO-550-c Engine Simulation Realistic propeller animations as never seen before on X-Plane Realistic differencies between the engines Different throttle/propeller/mixture setting required for each engine Different CHTs and oil temperatures Realistic engines synchronization Custom propeller governor Correct fuel consuption Cowl Flaps Drag Oil System: Realistic oil viscosity Interchangeable oil type Oil pump failures Realistic oil filter Injection Fuel System: Realistic fuel pump behavior Realistic fuel filter Interchangeable spark plugs: default or fine-wire Spark plugs fouling Realistic Lean of Peak and Rich of Peak operations Starter Realistic startup procedure Realistic engine temperatures Vapor Lock Simulation Fuel Flooding simulation The engine parts are damaged if not managed correctly Engine Preheater and Winterization Kit The engine may be warmed up upn start with the provided electrical heater Once activated, the electrical heater runs even when you close the simulator A winterization kit let the airplane to operate at very cold temperatures Realistic Landing Gear The landing gear is damaged by hard landings and overspeed operations The brakes and tires are damaged if not managed correctly Electrical & Avionics System Realistic Battery The avionics are damaged if on when the engine starts/shuts down Learn with the in-flight tips A non invasive tip with a suggestion about the conduct of the flight is shown when you are not flying the airplane properly A non invasive tip with a suggestion on how to recover the problem is shown when you damage the airplane Simulation of Hypoxia Tunnel Vision Hard Breathing Stunning sounds Realistic engine clicks and stutters Realistic engine humming sounds when the engines are not synchronized Real starter sound Fuselage wind sound Landing gear wind Independent touch down sounds Real avionics sound Realistic open window wind sound Interactive Walkaround Cockpit checks Aileron, rudder, elevator and flaps check Tire check and choks removal Tie-down removal Pitot tube check Engine cowl check Fuel quantity check Oil quantity and quality check Interactive towing Push, pull and steer using the joystick Towbar simulation Weight & Balance Tool Load the airplane and check the C.G. and weight limits at takeoff and landing The airplane behavior changes when the C.G. moves Popup Kneeboard Complete normal operations checklist Complete emergency operations checklist Complete reference tables (speed, fuel consumption etc.) May be shown/hidden with mouse gestures Simulation state saving Every single switch and lever position is restored when you reload the aircraft The battery may discharge if you leave it on and then close X-Plane When X-Plane is launched, the engine and oil temperature are restored basing on the time passed Maintenance Hangar Engine maintenance tab Electrical systems maintenance tab Oxygen system tab Landing gear, brakes & tires tab ______________________________________________________________________ Requirements : X-Plane 10.50+ (any edition) The B58 Baron by Carenado is required for this add-on. It will not work on other aircraft Current version: 2.61 (last updated Nov 22, 2016) ______________________________________________________________________ Installation : Download is 5.80 mb which is unzipped and inserted to the Carenado B58 Baron "Plugins" folder. Key authorisation is required. Documentation : includes Manual.pdf README_INSTALLATION.txt REP-b58-checklists-references.pdf ______________________________________________________________________ Plugin Review by Stephen Dutton 30th November 2016 Copyright©2016: X-Plane Reviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global v10.50 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Headshake by SimCoders (free)

Quick Flight Review : AeroCommander Shrike 500s by Carenado I am doing a quick flight in the new AeroCommander by Carenado to sample the aircraft and get a feel for it. This is the second AeroCommader in a month with another version by Nimbus that was released in September, like Hollywood movies aircraft in X-Plane do come in twos. This is not a direct comparison, because in reality that is not fair to either developer. The Carenado version is more expensive and comes from the very highly regarded studios that has one of the best track records in X-Plane for extremely high quality and the sheer functionality of their aircraft. A new aircraft developer would be put in the David and Goliath position in comparison. But I will make a few notes in the summary. In reality this AeroCommander from Carenado has been a long time coming to X-Plane as the FS version has been available for quite a few years, but here it now is, and it was certainly worth the wait. The quality of the modeling is excellent, but this "Shrike" version which was basically just a company name change more than a distinctive version, and was related all the Piston-engined versions that were manufactured after 1967. This Shrike however is one dirtied down worn out stunner. The throaty engine sounds hit you as soon as you put up the throttles, and the aircraft was so stable that only a few hundred feet above the runway I could already do a nice curved turn and head north. There is plenty of power and the rate of climb is 1,340 ft/min, but you feel you can easily do more than that, but I will be kind to the old bird. Powered by two Lycoming IO-540-E1B5 air-cooled flat six piston engines developing 290 hp (216 kW) each, the aircraft looks heavy and you expect it to be heavy, but actually it is quite nice and even really easy to fly. First view of the cabin is... its buggered!, old, dirty, worn, tired and even rusty! Thank god we don't have smell-o-rama in X-Plane because this is one aircraft that would stink! But you love it all because it is all so real. There is an animated foldout table that seems to have come off better than its surroundings, this is a great cabin. Panel is quite basic, but the instruments are so beautifully detailed and nicely lit. Engine dials put the two engines on one gauge. But there just really the standard six instruments, a clock and adf pointer on the pilot's side, missing is a VOR 2 pointer which still has the lower readout of speed and distance, but no pointer is hard for distance or state traveling and lining up airports and runways. The Co-Pilot has to with only three dials in airspeed, artificial horizon and altitude. Note the worn tired control column (removable) as both are beautifully done, and the carpets are so threadbare. I like the way the yoke covered control links are done across the floor, small thing but realistic. Centre pedestal is extremely well rendered and built. The sets of twin throttles, propeller pitch/feather and mixture levers are a treat to use and more so to look at. Lower are two Alt Air levers that are well crafted. There is a Garmin GNS530 GPS unit, that pops-out, Bendix-King KR87 ADF unit and two Collins Comm and VOR/NAV 2 radios. The overhead panel is really two units, with one the lower switch strip panel for lighting and start switches, and the upper panel is for the excellent chunky rudder and elevator wheels (Pitch is on the pedestal). The splash panel lighting is very good, but can be over bright and you need to find the right adjustment. Two spot lights are switchable. There is a very basic Century lll Autopilot system. The panel pops out for ease of use, which is handy because the panel is in two parts with one the selection dial that is positioned far right panel and the main switches are upper left panel. Ease of use is the game here... roll switch and knob to turn, heading, altitude (hold) and pitch with adjuster wheel. Very easy and very effective. The Century lll is noted as an original installation in all AeroCommanders. Lighting Internal lighting is excellent. As noted you have to balance the front overhead panel lights to get the best feel, but you also have two spots for each of the pilot and co-pilot, and four spots over each seat in the cabin... feeling inside at night is of comfort and warmth. The cabin looks brilliant from the external view as well... Beacon, Nav and strobe lights are good. There is no taxi light, but only two drop down landing lights, but they are very good to use as the taxi light. Flap drag is brutal! So you have to know your correct speed zone to let out on the step down, but in the final flap setting the speed can then be a touch over 60knts and the aircraft transforms itself into a stable slow platform to land the Shrike pretty right on the money of wherever you want too. The Commander is so good in this condition as your approach speed is so low and controllable... love it. Gear animation and the view from the cabin is brilliant. No reverse pitch thrust, but who cares as the speed is just a little faster than running.... Menus There is the standard three Carenado menu tabs on the left lower part of your screen. A ) is the Century lll Autopilot B ) Carenado Views, including Field of View and Sound volume C ) Options, including Window Reflections, Instrument Reflections, great static elements including tags, bollards and engine inlet covers, Small baggage door, Pilots door and passenger door. Close up the detailing is really excellent on the Commander, but it is a bit of a squeeze for the passengers to get into the cabin under the wing. Note the excellent undercarriage construction, up close it is mind-bending good, the stowage animation is very good as well and you get a front seat view from any of the seats in the cabin on the replay as seen above. Liveries Liveries include one blank white, three American registered, one Canadian and two Australian in a nice private and customs versions. Summary Pretty hard to fault this excellent AeroCommander, if X-Plane users had to wait a little longer then the wait was certainly worth it. It covers almost every area with ease from the sheer quality including shiny fuselage and spinners, to the grubby interior and wear and tear. Sounds are perfect as well and in 3d, and it has a nice throaty roar that isn't as whiny as a lot of Carenado's can be. features are good and plentiful and so is the lighting, and as a handling aircraft it is easy but with great feel at the same time. Autopilot is simple to use and effective. Only a few negatives in no VOR 2 pointer, which I feel is important on these types of aircraft, and the manipulators are doubled-up and can be tricky to use and messy if you need to change something quickly. This is only one quick flight and a few impressions, but it passes the "I really love it" statement with ease, so can you compare this Carenado version with the Nimbus one? Well for one they are very different and prices are different as well, the Nimbus gives you great value at US$27.95, but the Carenado is cheap at US$32.95, were I would have expected it to be in the US$35.00 range easily for what you get here, so this AeroCommander is a great deal as well. If you love these commuter aircraft then the AeroCommander Shrike 500S needs to be in your hanger, it is a really lovely aircraft, a new favorite aircraft of mine... yes indeed it goes straight to the top of the list. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! the AeroCommander Shrike 500s by Carenado is NOW available from the new X-Plane.Org Store here : AeroCommander 500S SHRIKE HD Series Price is US$32.95 Features Include: Original 500S Aero Commander autopilot installed New and improved multi-function scroll support Volumetric side view prop effect. Default X-Plane GNS530. HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 350 pixels / meter textures Custom audio plugins with extra effects for added realism 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Individual passenger 3D reading lights and numerous HDR lighting effects. Dynamic loading/unloading of 3D parts and plugin logic for FPS optimization ______________________________________________________________________ Requirements : X-Plane10.0 + (any edition) - 64bit mode Windows 7+ (64 bit) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux - 64bit Operating System 3 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1Gb+ VRAM - 2Gb VRAM Recommended Windows users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. Current version: 1.0 (last updated Oct 24th 2016) ______________________________________________________________________ Installation : Download is 501.70 mb which is unzipped to your X-Plane Fighter folder at 544.00mb. Key authorisation is required. Documentation : includes 500S Emergency Checklist PDF - 500S Normal Checklist PDF 500S Performance Tables - 500S Reference PDF 500S Autopilot Operation PDF - Recommended Settings PD ______________________________________________________________________ Quick Flight Review by Stephen Dutton 25th October 2016 Copyright©2016: X-Plane Reviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global v10.50 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Headshake by SimCoders (free)

News! - Aircraft Released! : Aero Commander 500S Shrike HD Series by Carenado I the space of a month we now have another Aero Commander with Nimbus's version and now this "Shrike" version is by Carenado. So what is the "Shrike" version. Basically it is just a company name change more than a distinctive version, and was all the Piston-engined versions that were manufactured after 1967. Features Original 500S Aero Commander autopilot installed Default X-Plane GNS530 installed HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 350 pixels / meter textures Custom audio plugins with extra effects for added realism 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Individual passenger 3D reading lights and numerous HDR lighting effects. Dynamic loading/unloading of 3D parts and plugin logic for FPS optimization. This is a Carenado, which the name alone signifies quality and that high design craftmanship that we have come to expect, you are not going to be disappointed here with this Commander either. Included in the package is: 6 HD liveries 1 HD Blank livery 500S Emergency Checklist PDF 500S Normal Checklist PDF 500S Performance Tables 500S Reference PDF 500S Autopilot Operation PDF Recommended Settings PDF Lush interior helps with the visual experience, but overall this a working utility and transport aircraft. Technical Requirements Windows Vista - 7 - 10 or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux Only for X-Plane10.40 64 bits or higher 2.5 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1GB VRAM 490MB available hard disk space For WINDOWS users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. ______________________________________________________________________ The Aero Commander 500S Shrike HD Series by Carenado is NOW available! here : Aero Commander 500S Shrike HD Series Price is US$32.95 Images & Text are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 20th October 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

Aircraft Review - PA31 Navajo HD Series from Carenado I am flying directly west from Brisbane, Queensland towards the great dividing ranges that protects the coastal areas from the red dirt interior of Australia. My transport is the latest from Carenado in the PA-31 Navajo. A small Twin-Engined cargo or 5 to 7 passenger feeder aircraft from the late sixties. The dividing range is not very high, more a line on a beach than the tall high mountains like the Rockies or the Alps. So six thousand feet is more than high enough to clear them easily. But you feel comforted up here, cocooned in your own world, it is a smoothed out world that is created by the billowing clouds around you. The PA-31 purrs along with those two 310 hp (231 kW) Lycoming TIO-540-A turbocharged engines in their "tiger shark" cowlings which are pulling you effortlessly through the air at just under 200knts. The Navajo's cockpit is a nice place to be, no glass or G1000 thingamajig's here, just dials and gauges like in the olden days. I have a reason to be going west out here, well two actually. One is a group of investors on board that want to... well invest money. The other is my destination, in an interesting airport called Wellcamp Airport. Wellcamp Airport has an interesting history, it is 145km west of Brisbane and is just situated 15km outside of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs. The airport is brand new, venture more than a service by a wealthy family in the Wagners that made a fortune in construction products, quarries and concreting. Toowoomba already has an airport, but mostly in a regional domestic capacity and the Wagner's wanted a bigger one, Toowoomba Council said "no" and so they built their own, a huge one right in the middle of nowhere really and called it Brisbane West!... cheeky buggers. Point is no one today build's their own airports on this scale, is it a brave statement on the future or a folly of rich people doing things because other people see more sense in the idea than they do. The great thing of going around government bureaucracy and 100 million dollars is that things can get done very quickly in the way that construction was started in April 2013, and everything was completed by October 2014 with the first regular Qantas service being on the 17th November 2014 in connecting with Sydney Airport. And here is Wellcamp on my starboard wing thanks to fhvanhal and his excellent "YBWW Brisbane West Wellcamp" scenery (link is at the bottom of the review). YBWW Wellcamp is hard to find and line up to the 12/30 single runway in this open landscape, so you have to do a little homework before you leave. But the runway once found is huge... a mammoth 2870 m long by 45 m wide, and easily capable of handling aircraft to Boeing 747 size. The airport is rated at Code E, and has already been visited by a Cathay Pacific B748F freighter. To save an eon of time taxiing I floated a little down the runway before settling down and taxiing to the modern terminal area to unload my greedy investors. I have wait a while before taking them back to Brisbane, so let us have a look at the Navajo. Like a bewitched teenager it was lust at first sight with the Navajo. A beautiful aircraft created out of the smaller PA-31 Twin Comanche and an early relative of the PA-31-350 Chieftain, PA-31T1 Cheyenne and the PA-31P-350 Mojave. The aircraft first flew on the 30th September 1964 and deliveries started in March 1967, production by Piper ran till 1984 and altogether 3942 Navajo's were built... and many if most are still flying. You would think that design and high quality construction had peaked a few years ago on Carenado aircraft, but they just keep on pushing the boundaries higher with every release. Highlights are many, but those propeller spinners are excellent, engine internals peak out of the tiger shark cowlings above and below the wing through the air vents. Tie-downs, antennas and all sorts of fuselage detailing is very good. Engine vents and wing light assembly is sublime as is the small metal airflow lip on the wing/engine join. All screws and riveting is par-excellence and note the one and only wiper for the pilot. Undercarriage assemblies are almost perfection, and they all come with great realistic animation when moving. Note the great glass work in the landing taxi lights (wing light is excellent as well) and all the glass work and reflections on the fuselage. You can almost touch the realism of the paintwork.... it is all so good... great. Menus Carenado provide you with three tabbed menus on the left lower screen. A ) is for the pop-up Autopilot panel. B ) Is the standard Carenado views, Field of View and Volume panel. And C ) is the Options panel. Options gives you Window and Instrument reflections, passenger, luggage and nose door animations. Static elements finally you can change the livery on the bottom of the panel. All are certainly great options. but we don't have the old Carenado features of luggage in the front compartment and in the large rear cargo area, and you really miss them here as the areas feel very empty. Static elements are odd as well. You can have your wheel chocks but only with the aircraft hand puller on the nose? What if you just want to chock the aircraft until you fly again. No engine inlet or tags either but you do get wing cones. We will look at pop-up autopilot when we are flying again. Cabin Quality cabin is luxury defined. Four seats in a club layout with spot overhead lighting. The rear cargo entrance area does feel a little large and empty with the cargo door open as well, so overall you feel you are missing a few seats or one on the right rear... Lovely wooden paneling behind the pilots gives the aircraft an expensive feel, overall the internal fit-out is excellent with excellent leather and deep wool pile carpets. Cockpit Power off and the panel looks dark but highly detailed, instrument reflections are superb. Overhead is a molded roof with set in switchgear and three dials. Power on and the whole feel and character of the cockpit changes. Two high panel set red down-lights cast a colourful glow over the instruments. On the roof the two fuel gauges are angled lit as is the amp gauge internally. Highlights are the two over-head blue lighting units with one in the cockpit and one over the entrance door. The bulbs are internally beautifully recreated and when switched on they both cast a blue glow over each area. Panel and Instruments The instrument layout on the Navajo is a little haphazard and can be confusing if you swap over piloting positions. Yes both stations have the standard six layout instruments. but even these are not set out in the same order in both areas. Airspeed Indicator and the Attitude Indicator are both in the same position top left and right with the Turn Coordinator and Vertical Speed Indicators set directly below. But the Artificial Horizon and Heading Dials are different instruments with the pilot's set centre of the panel and the co-pilot's set more correctly in the standard six layout. The co-pilots Artificial Horizon is adjustable but the pilot's is not. The pilot's Heading Dial has a built in Course Deviation Bar (CDI) and can be set to the course angle and heading change knob. but the co-pilot's only has a rotary heading adjustment. And that is the commonality between the panels. On the pilot's side there are also instruments for radar height, localizer indicator and ADF pointer. There is a very nice EDM 760 digital readout and an analogue clock. On the co-pilot's panel besides the standard six you get only one instrument in the VOR/ADF pointers. Very nice but in the wrong place for me as I use the VOR/ADF pointers a lot for airport or runway alignment, and being right over the other side of the aircraft's panel for me makes it useless... unless I fly in the right hand seat. The rest of the right side panel are gauges for pressures in gyro, fuel, oil and cylinder head/oil temperatures. Oxygen supply is set out below. Centre panel has at the top a very nice set of annunciators and below are four dials that covers both engines, Manifold Pressure, RPM, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) and engine fuel flow. Equipment stack is very good. Standard issue Garmin 347 audio panel is top left with the X-Plane Garmin GN350 GPS system below. Then there are a set of three Bendix/King units in one KR87 TSO ADF unit that is hard to adjust, and two KR 64 VOR/DME speed and range sets. Right stack includes a Bendix/King KX 165 TSO Comm/Nav (VOR2) tuner and a Garmin GTX 320 transponder. The weather radar is a Bendix/King and comes with a manual that notes you can adjust the range and radar angle, but I couldn't do any adjustments accept to turn it on, test and adjust the brightness. Lower panel switchgear is minimal except for the landing gear lever and position display as most switchgear items are on the roof. The wiper switch is great with a three way action in park (which is actually intermittent) slow and fast. Side panels are excellent with nice fuse panels, there is (Goodrich) Prop-Ice amp gauge that works when you turn on the de-icing... a nice touch. Centre pedestal is excellent. All twin-engine levers are well done as are the three trim wheels and knob, all have great position marks that are easily noted. Built in Autopilot is mostly use with the pop-up, but the pedestal panel is not too hard to use either if you want to. The "Cowl Flap" switches are low down (one each under the engines), but the position indicators are great to use The roof rocker switchgear is great. Upper panel has, ground fan, seat and no smoking switches. left panel has lighting switches and right panel has pitot/windshield heating and anti-ice switches with the main Amp gauge central. Lower left are four magneto switches and engine left/right starter switch. Lower right are two left/right fuel pump switches and the Hobbs meter. Center lower are the two fuel tank gauges and four rotary knobs for the panel and overhead lighting. A note is that at night the switch gear is mostly not illuminated and can be hard to use, the in built X-Plane torch feature is the only way to use them... Flying the Navajo My investors are back and so it is time to load them up and head back to Brissy... Sorry Brisbane. Putting the mixture levers right forward and hitting the start switch does not fire up the engine? You have to give each engine a little bit of throttle (each engine separately) before it will catch and fire and only when they have a bit of heat in them can you back them down to idle and the volumetric side view prop effect3 feature is visible as well. Open the small window and the engine noise powers into the cabin. Carenado sounds are really first rate and Carenado have done a completely new sound architecture on the PA-31, it as 360º movement will give you a dynamic range and totally realistic sound, internally and externally, and they are noted as HQ digital stereo sounds that are recorded directly from the real Navajo... they sound about right. The Navajo idle taxiing speed is great to perfect as well, a little extra throttle to get you moving and then back to idle will give you the right speed. It is bye, bye Wellcamp and fhvanhal has certainly done a great job. There is a few far too many animated vehicles though, and enough police cars to fill out the Blues Brothers movie, but otherwise it is excellent scenery. The sound change from idle to full power is very, very good, but save (your best takeoff) and do a replay of your takeoff roll and watch the excellent undercarriage animation flexibility, it does show on how far X-Plane in sheer detail has really come... watch the wheel struts as they absorb the bumps on the runway and as the aircraft gains its lift with the airflow, just amazing. Those Lycoming TIO-540-A 310 hp (231 kW) engines are really powerful and you need to bring them in gradually and smoothly, building more and more speed with the slow forward throttle movement, rotation is around 110knts and the climb rate is officially 1,445 ft/min, you can easily keep it around 1,200 ft/min as you climb away and hold speed. Turn coordination is great, you bank with ease and with total control... this is a nice aircraft to fly manually. Which way do I go to Brissy? "Oh the pointers are over there right on the other side of the panel!" Two notes though. The Navajo can be a bit of a handful even in a bit of a crosswind and more so on the runway on taking off or landing, so you have to have your wit's about you if you are above a blowing 5knts. Another was I had a few flicks of the aircraft flickering quickly, I am running for the first time here 10.50 in the RC2 setting, so It could be that, but I don't get these flicks with other aircraft in the same settings and the weather is set at calm? Range for this Navajo is 1,011nmi (1,875 km (1,165 mi)) and the ceiling is a mighty 26,300 ft (8,015 m). Top speed is 227 knts (420 km/h (260 mph)) at 15,000 ft (4,600 m) and the Cruise speed is around 207 knts (383 km/h (238 mph)) with an econ cruise is best at 20,000 ft (6,100 m). Here I was just under the standard 200knt zone at 7,000ft and it felt quite right. Note those lovely spinners!, look great in flight. In the air you get a great look at those under engine vents, note the detailed internals. The drop down blinds have built in light reflection that looks authentic with the roof lighting... nice touch. The sight of Moreton Bay and lots of water means I am over Brissy. So a heading north over Mt Cootha (those television station antenna's are seen from all over the city) is required as I am using the smaller regional cross runway of 16/32 at YBBN. You have to release the ALT (Altitude) hold before you can descend, I tried to hit the DN button for ages (idiot) before I caught on. A final turn over Redcliffe set me up for the approach to RWY16. I found the flaps were best to control the final descent speed into the final approach, as this aircraft can go in too fast unless you do. You can easily fly over the boundary line at 100kts, but your speed aim is more 85kts for a more controlled landing, stall speed is 63kts so you don't have too much room for error. That landing speed is crucial as you don't have any reverse thrust, so slowing down requires a bit of space before touching the brakes. And like noted the PA-31 can be twitchy with a bit of wind from any direction. As my investors piled into a waiting limo for the ride back to the city, I gave myself a little bit of a smile... as I was certainly the one who got the best deal of the day... The Navajo! Lighting Lighting is controlled by those four knobs on the roof panel and the two blue (one cockpit and one left over the door in the cabin) overhead units. Highly adjustable (for a GA) you can easily find the nice environment for night flying. Overhead Switchgear however is as noted hard to find in the dark... I found a sweet spot for landing in using the overhead blue lighting and a little glow from the instruments to be perfect. Cabin has four individual seat spot lights... very nice. But you need them all out and just the over door blue light on for landing or for taking off in the dark. Externally you have a landing and taxi light on the front wheel strut, and a wing light on the starboard side. The navigation lights and both strobe and position lights (both selectable) and the position lights work very well in the approach and on the ground. The high tail beacon just stays on all the time, and the white spinners do glow a little in the dark? The lighting spread on approach or on the ground is very good... Liveries One blank and six liveries are provided... One mustard with yellow, red and black stripes, then five white base liveries with Blue Stripes, Blue/Gold, Red and Stripes, Blue/Gold Stripes and Green Stripes. All are 4k HD high-quality (4096 x 4096) 350 pixel / meter texture liveries... Summary I can easily be bias here with the Carenado PA-31 Navajo, as it easily went straight on to my active flight-line along side of my beloved Bonanza F33A, Caravan C208B, Beech B1900D and CT206H Stationair, and that is against an already stiff competition in the twin-engined category with the C404 Titan coming to mind... and it is cheaper as well, only mostly by US$2.50 but still cheaper. So I quickly loved the aircraft, and it is totally great from the start... but it is not completely absolutely perfect. The most glaring omission is there are no rain or fog effects? These are staple Carenado features now, and the PA-31 would be great with that single wiper thrashing through a storm filled night searching for a runway. The other things are purely cosmetic, the empty spaces could be filled with another Carenado staple in luggage and it does feel a bit too empty at the rear. No tiger shark" cowling covers or tags? And is the weather radar correct and is the manual wrong, or vice-versa and I will just have to fly that right seat to find my way home with the placement of the VOR and ADF pointers (there is a ADF on the left side panel but not together to line up a runway). The Navajo is tricky to fly in winds, but the power and lovely flying feel is excellent, in quality it is above and beyond in detail and it is another if slight step towards to total nirvana. Sounds are very good as well. So the Carenado PA-31 Navajo ticks every box, in almost every area that you would want... even the value for money one. It is that good, even great and certainly a far, far better investment than an airport west of Toowoomba in the middle of nowhere. _____________________________________________________________________________________ The PA31 Navajo HD Series from Carenado is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : PA-31 Navajo HD Series Your Price: $32.95 Special Features All-new sound architecture Volumetric side view prop effect3 X-Plane G530 installed Features Original Navajo autopilot installed Default X-Plane GNS530 installed HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 350 pixels / meter textures Custom audio plugins with extra effects for added realism 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Individual passenger 3D reading lights and numerous HDR lighting effects. Dynamic loading/unloading of 3D parts and plugin logic for FPS optimization. Requirements: Windows 7+ (64 bit) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux - 64bit Operating System X-Plane10.40 + (any edition) - 64bit mode 3 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1Gb+ VRAM - 2Gb VRAM Recommended Windows users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. Current version: 1.1 (last updated June 24th 2016) _____________________________________________________________________________________ Installation and documents: Download for the PA31 Navajo HD Series is 394mb and the unzipped file is deposited in the "General Aviation" X-Plane folder at 440.60mb. Key authorisation and a restart is required. There is Normal and Emergency procedures (checklists), excellent sets of performance tables and weather radar manual. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 26th August 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 and also used in X-Plane v10.50RC Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Scenery or Aircraft - YBWW - Brisbane West Wellcamp 1.1 By fhvanhal (X-Plane.Org) - Free - YBBN - Brisbane Airport 1.0 by tgd - (X-Plane.Org) - Free

News! - Aircraft Update : G1000 system update by Carenado/Alabeo Now you may have to make your coffee before you load up a Carenado/Alabeo aircraft. New complex systems are always going to have issues and none more than FMC/GPS systems. Carenado's very ambitious G1000 was a case in point. Early versions were a "go and make a cup off coffee" while it loaded and the system was not very efficient, certainly in the MAP view and programming the routes was a bit heavy going. Things looked up with the TBM850 as that G1000 version was a real step forward, but not completely perfect... Now Carenado has released a full update of a completely revised G1000 system with version 3.3, and the aircraft affected are: CARENADO CT182T Skylane G1000 X-Plane CT206H Stationair G1000 Extension Pack X-Plane SR22 GTSx X-Plane TBM850 X-Plane ALABEO DA42 Twin Star X-Plane Changes are really significant as noted by Carenado below, I haven't had a chance to run an aircraft yet, but will do so over the next few days. Changelog is: -Almost instantaneous database load time (compared to 40-50 seconds before) -Database is now handled in a separate binary plugin, separating it from other logic in the plane. -Back-end is now more similar to how the default GNS430/530 handle the database. -Compatible with Navigraph updates to the GNS430 Custom Data waypoint and navaid files. -Numerous optimizations to minimize FPS hit during certain conditions -Improved file compatibility with file plans generated in 3rd party apps -Smoother/snappier navigation and data entry -Increased stability and improved initialization logic (especially from cold and dark) -Better handling of ambiguous locations for waypoints with duplicate names, both when entering a flight plan and when loading an .fms flight plan from file. -Higher resolution moving map -Numerous minor fixes (wind indicator, GS, engine indicators, visual glitches in applicable planes) -Improved "Core" vs. "Custom" G1000 architecture, keeping all core functions of the G1000 more similar and unified across multiple aircraft. Carenado - Alabeo Support is on the X-Plane.Org: Carenado - Alabeo Support ______________________________________________________________________ All G1000 suite aircraft are available from the X-Plane.OrgStore here: Carenado : X-Plane.OrgStore If you have already purchased any of the above Carenado/Alabeo G1000 suite aircraft then go to your X-Plane.OrgStore account, log in, and download ver 3.3, check under the "Requirements" tab if the aircraft is the updated version and it should be noted like this "Current version: 3.3 (last updated July 26th, 2016)"... If Purchased from the Carenado Store then to update then go to: Carenado.com The Carenado G1000 Database must be installed in the main root X-Plane folder to use the G1000 suite. ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 3rd August 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews 2016

Aircraft Update and Review : Carenado C208B Grand Caravan v2 HD series Route - KEYW (Key West) to MYNN (Nassau Intl) The Grand Caravan from Carenado was their first larger, one size up aircraft for X-Plane. And right from the start at the release in Mid-2012 everyone knew this was something special. It was a sensational success and really cemented Carenado’s already formidable reputation of creating the very best aircraft in General Aviation. Over a year later it has now been finally updated to 64bit and moved over into the HD series. So what does make the Caravan C208B so special. What are the core ingredients that makes it stand out a little above the rest of so many other really good aircraft. Why time and time again it was always the Grand Caravan that you of choice would to choose to fly again and again. I think I know the answer to those questions and this review is a way to explore them and highlight the qualities that made this aircraft so good and we can also see the extra features and update changes to v2 . The Cessna 208B Caravan is a short-haul regional airliner and utility aircraft with a single turboprop engine. It uses a fixed-gear undercarriage for reliability and for rough runways and the aircraft is built by Cessna in Wichita, Kansas in the United States. The aircraft typically seats nine passengers with a single pilot, although with a FAR “Part 23’ waiver it can seat up to fourteen passengers. The 208 Caravan I prototype first flew in December 1982. The production model was certified by the FAA in October 1984. Since then, the Caravan has undergone a number of design evolutions, and working with FedEx, Cessna produced first the Cargomaster. (utility cargo version). Cessna offers the 208B in many configurations and the basic 208 airframe can be outfitted with many various types of landing gear, and allowing it to operate in a wide variety of environments. Some common adaptations include skis, enlarged tires (Tundra) for unprepared runways and also floats on the Caravan Amphibian model. The 208B Grand Caravan is a 4 feet (1.2 m) stretch of the Caravan I. The 208B also features a more powerful Pratt & Whitney PT6A-114A engine (built in Canada). Cost is US$2,022,450 (Base price) and over 2000 have been built. Cruise speed: 197 mph (171 kn; 317 km/h), Range: 1,240 mi (1,078 nmi; 1,996 km) with max fuel and reserves, Rate of climb: 770 ft/min (3.9 m/s) To a point the Grand Caravan is a niche aircraft with a wide scope of different roles, It fills the need of an aircraft sized larger than the standard General Aviation aircraft and is still smaller than a commuter aircraft of 20 seats and above. So it is ideal as a regional feeder aircraft or in its most popular role as an Island hopper in transporting around 9 to 14 passengers over short distances (200nm to 500nm). This is a typical route that we will fly today is from Key West to Nassau Intl which is 245 nm. To set the aircraft up for its flight you have three sets of menu options on the lower left of your screen. (D) is for Doors and this pop-out menu allows you to open and close the aircraft doors, which in include the Pilots and Co-Pilots door(s) (with a great swing down ladder), a passenger door (right rear) and a double (upper and lower) Baggage door, and when you open the passenger door if you have the cargo pod attached under the aircraft the four smaller baggage compartments also open. (O) is for Options and this second pop-out menu allows you to stow the Static Elements (Chocks, Tow Tractor, Pivot Cover and engine and prop covers. You have a choice of two seating configurations in eight Single seats (8 Pass) or a singe and a double seat per row (and two single seats (11 Pass). the Co-Pilot's seat can be used as either a passenger or a pilot. I am here going for the 11 passenger configuration for this flight. You can also on this menu select either Clear or Tinted windows (VC Windows), I like the dark green tinted. You can choose if you want the under-slung extra (baggage) cargo pod on or off, It adds weight to the aircraft and so if you going for range or flying a considerable distance it is better left off. (C) The top Menu item is “Camera”, that gives you the standard Carenado view system with a zoom function. This has been extended in v2 to add extra programmable views. Settling into the Pilots seat is time to get the C208B ready to go, the panel is clear, unfussy and well laid out. The main engine and power/electric switches are on your left on a tall box structure, and the lighting switches are arranged (grouped) on the left lower part of the panel. The centre upright pedestal has an emergency power lever, single throttle lever, Propeller RPM/Feather Lever and a (clever) gated conditioning/cutoff lever. On the far right is the gated flap lever (3 positions). A huge pitch trim wheel on the side and another rudder trim wheel lower down in the pedestal box. The Bendix/King weather radar has been updated in v2 with a rainbow activation screen. It is quite bright and can either (thankfully) be turned down or you can select the “on” position that gives you the standard screen. The system is just limited to the standard X-Plane weather screen and is really just on or off. You don’t turn a key but push a switch to start the huge Pratt & Whitney PT6A, So after setting the RPM and condition levers to right up high you then just sit there. Nothing happens at first but then deep in the nose something stirs, it cranks and whines and finally rumbles into a sucking whiny loud turbine roar. One of the highlights of the Caravan is its noise, 3D stereo sounds are all around you, but in reality it is so noisy you can’t really tell which direction it is coming from anyway. It is mega great though as nothing else sounds like the caravan, on the ground you get those whiny sucking air turbo sounds and in the air it just roars. The propeller animation in v2 has had a revision and it was pretty good in v1 but now in v2 it is more refined. Let off the brakes and you have to control the power. The Caravan was always hard to taxi as it has so much thrust. I found adjusting the RPM doesn’t work? The only way could reign in the power was to pull the condition lever back into the gate (to far back will kill the engine) and finally you can taxi out at the right speed (and with a bright “low oil Pressure” light in your face). It may not be the right thing in a real Caravan to do but, it was the only way to reign all that thrust in? Power is the problem on takeoff as well. Push up the throttle on 10º Flap, and the asymmetric thrust will pull you hard to the left. So you have to be aware right from the moment you let the brakes go to give only a little thrust until you can lock the nose-wheel straight and then give it full power after a certain speed. It works with a little deft right rudder and once in the air you can quickly straighten the airframe up. Even with a full fuel and passenger load the aircraft has the power to climb easily and you soon find the aircraft settled into a 800fpm climb to 10,000ft. Watch you speed though, if the C208B starts to struggle then half the pitch. But otherwise it will climb quite high, you are not pressurized but have a ceiling of 27.700 ft (8.443 m). You have real C208B weight and balance dialed into the aircraft and that gives you a realistic feel for the aircraft empty or fully loaded. I don’t know if you could call the Grand Caravan a beautiful aircraft, it is functional and utilitarian rather than pretty. But Carenado’s work here is exceptional, the textures are now in the HD (High-Definition) series, and the detailing is excellent. All the riveted panels are there to be seen and the detailing is exquisite in noting the flap runners and pitot probes, and the rubber trailing edge aerials that feel and act with realism and movement. Wire mesh in the engine intakes and a beautifully crafted tricycle undercarriage, that springs and claws together when not under-load. A final piece is the large horn of an exhaust that billows smoke under-load. The windows and glass is perfection in realism. In the air the panel is very functional. The white background on black dials looks modern and distinctive, The Standard Six set of instruments is well set out, but the yoke (removable) can hide the radar height and turn indicator. I like the voltage switch, you can switch it to different aspects of the voltages in four modes. There is a full set of alert lights that can be in two modes in that completely dark or a night setting, which illuminates the panel slightly to see them at night - It works well in the day also to see what their different functions are. The equipment stack is not large, but you still have everything you need. Radio, A Garmin GNS430 (Comm1/VOR1), Bendix King KX165 (Comm 2/ VOR2), Garmin GTX 320 Transponder, Bendix King KR67 ADF and an excellent KFC 150 Autopilot with pitch hold (V/S) and height ALT on a separate panel (push button to switch to either “select Height or V/S” (Vertical Speed) ) The Co-Pilots./Passenger side only has the Standard Six instruments with lower Air-Conditioning and Cabin Heat controls. The panel lighting is excellent with small over lights on the dials, switches and with no background dial lighting, and so at night it is spectacular and still very functional. Overhead is your fuel supply switches and oxygen supply. Overhead lighting works in the front but not in the rear? The front window blinds work in being very adjustable, but still odd in the way you move them into position, and get it wrong and they can be hard to store away again, They are just tricky to use but essential for the pilots in flying directly into the sun. Cabin detail is first rate and can’t be faulted, worn in parts but still a modern flavour in cloth seating for the pilots and rear seats. The two pilots up front are fully animated and realistic... Wouldn’t it be great to have the same animations as passengers in the rear?... As it looks pretty empty back there without anybody sitting in the seats. In v2 the lighting has been brought up to HDR standards, the new flickering strobes are excellent, as is the wing light (left side only). The taxi and landing lights are both set in the wings together and are very good, the tiny detail attention by Careando is shown here by them (Taxi/Landing) being noticeably different up close. The standard Nav/Beacon lighting is also more noticeable though the upgrade. Now way out over the water it is starting to feel empty out here, The engine is feeling strong and purring along, but you have to watch those flickering dials. This engine feels like a tractor engine and you can run it hard at full throttle until the pressures start to show you that you should back off a little. You get a white (paint/default) livery and five other HD liveries, (Clockwise) Executive (Blue), E Arab, GoTrop, Brazil and Executive 2 (Red). GoTrop is my favorite, but there are over thirty others available on the .org As Nassau Island popped up on the horizon it was time to descend. I was happy the VOR (ZQA 112.70mhz) finally kicked in and on the Caravan it gives you your speed and distance to the Nav-Aid. In many cases you pull back on the throttle and slow the speed. But in the C208B it can cause you to stall without the power on. So it is a little throttle back and set the V/S to -700 to start the glide down and then adjust the throttle to match the right speed. If you get it right dropping the flaps to 10º and then 20º to reduce the speed down to 80knts, but don’t forget to give the aircraft a little throttle to balance the drag - as the flaps do create a lot of drag. The Caravan is very stable on the descent and it is very easy to turn-in and line-up with the runway (RWY32). Using the throttle to find the right speed is also very easy and a final flap down to 30º is setting the aircraft up easily for landing. Lowering the speed (throttle) smoothly till you get to the right place to slightly flare it down. As quiet as it is in the air. The Caravan suddenly becomes noisy on the ground. First is the noise of the Reverse Thrust of the Propeller, and noisy and powerful it is. This action can give you almost STOL (Short TakeOff and Landing) capabilities. The sounds of the engine reving up high here is simply amazing as in “goosebumps” territory. But then you suddenly have duel issues to contend with, 1) holding it straight on the centerline (keep the front wheel locked until the speed is right down) and 2) that powerful engine is pulling you hard as you move into the taxi speed zone. I have to jump on the condition lever to get it back to the first gate position as soon as possible to quell the speed. Otherwise set it on the approach ready. This can be problematic if you need power on a missed approach and really not advisable, but it does give you a better transition from your landing speed to a sedate taxi speed. As you taxi the 3d sounds change with every turn as the high whine returns. Find your parking position and pull back the condition lever to “Cut-Off” and revel in the winding down of the turbine. You just love these sounds and never get bored of them and that is a big part of the attraction to this aircraft. Hit the menus to open doors and get the baggage out. I personally would like the lower pod baggage doors on a separate button option from the opening passenger door, as they droop down even if you just want to let a passenger out. The C208B is a complex aircraft but frame-rate is not a problem, I rarely get the shudders and rarely go below the 20 frame-rate mark. Conclusions Why is the Grand Caravan 208B so good. First off is the sheer versatility of the aircraft. Any situation or idea you can dream up in a short distance flight, can be usually done in the Caravan. Pickup passengers, island hop, deliver mail, short regional airport to regional airport delivery flights, tourism flying, hub shuttling and delivering cargo or small freight. The Caravan can do anything that you can put together in flying 8-11 passengers (or Cargo) in a 500nm circle. The Carenado Caravan was my “Aircraft of the Year 2012”. Many other aircraft that were released were better like the Boeing 777. But I flew more hours and went to more destinations in six months in the Caravan than any other aircraft over the whole year. It is challenging to fly in all that power from one engine, it has brilliant sounds, It is beautifully crafted by Careando and fully featured and detailed, and you can also configure the aircraft in many different ways... and most of all you just fly and watch your course and hum along to that turbine sound like you are in heaven. At 10,000ft in a C208B Caravan you are as pretty close to heaven that you can get. Follow on from this review to the "Expansion Pack" Version of the Caravan with a review here; Aircraft Update and Review : Carenado C208B Grand Caravan CargoMaster v2 HD "Exp Pack" So If you have the v1 of the 208B Cessna Caravan then the v2 update is now available at the X-Plane .OrgShop... or if you want to buy: Price is $29.95 : C208B Grand Caravan HD Series Documents: Technical Requirements: Windows XP , Vista, 7 or 8 (32 or 64 bits), MAC OS 10.3.9 (or higher). Linux X-Plane 9.7 , X-Plane 10.22+ . 32 and 64bit compatible Pentium 2 GHz - 4GB RAM/512 MB VRAM. 1GbVRAM Recommended Download: 291.60mb - 252MB available hard disk space Current version: v2 (last updated September 25th 2013) X-Plane10 is required for HDR lighting effects and the HD textures are rendered to maximise the low frame-rate. updated store# Developer Site: Carenado Review By Stephen Dutton 27th September 2013 (note: the engine torque enhancements are included and ignore the C208B service pack on the Carenado site.) Full List of v2 updates: -32-bit and 64-bit Mac, Windows, and Linux support. -X-Plane 9.7 and 10.22 acf files included. -Updated SASL to official v2.0.1 release, which contains optimizations that benefit from Laminar's X-Plane 10.22 release. -Overhauled lighting system. Lighting halos for nav and strobe lights are now more visible under certain viewing angles. -Landing light features tightly-focused "glare" effect when viewed from the right angle. -Landing lights optimized to work better under v9.7 lighting, as well as v10 HDR-off and HDR-on lighting -Nav lights have been improved for a more realistic appearance. -Strobe lights have been re-programmed to follow a strobe flashing pattern, determined by the plugin. -Improved ground handling -Optimized objects -Improved weather radar, -improved stereo sounds -Improved interior and exterior graphics and visualizations -No longer has inverted fuel and oil systems. More realistic. -Optimized various menus, to use less memory. -Tweaked turning radius on ground to compensate for new v10 no-toe-brake-with-rudder setting. -Adjusted trim time from centre to max for v10, as this setting, left un-addressed, will cause the same plane to take twice as long to trim. -tweaked gauges, such as fuel and oil pressure, vacuum, etc. to conform to v10's new way of calculating "Nominal pressure/temperature" as opposed to "Max pressure/temperature". -Programmed default camera snap points for v10 (on top of existing ones via "Cameras" pop-up menu) 2 Different .acf files: one for v9 and one for v10. -v10 .acf features optimized objects. Interior/exterior shading is applied only where needed, saving resources. -v10 .acf has further optimizations to objects that don't need the background (clouds, skies) to be drawn through them, if they're not transparent, saving further resources. -v10 .acf also protects certain textures from resolution degradation at low rendering settings. This guarantees that the panel instruments and text are always crisp and clear, no matter what rendering settings are chosen for the sim. -v10 .acf is optimized to make use of HDR rendering, especially in terms of lighting. This includes spill lights, which illuminate the surroundings, coming from Nav and Strobe lights. -When HDR mode is turned off, care has been taken to optimize the appearance of the plane without the enhancement benefits of HDR. Review System Specifications: Computer System: - 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27” - 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3 - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb Software: - Mac OS MountainLion 10.8.2 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.22 (final) - ExtremeSceneryMAXX Addons - Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle Scenery - KEYW - Key West International Airport V1.0 - fletcherj - MYNN - Lynden Pindling International (Nassau Intl) - mhayling

News! - Aircraft Release! - PA31 Navajo HD Series from Carenado Sneeze and there is another aircraft released from Carenado or Alabeo... Great stuff and keep them coming. This is the excellent twin-engined PA31 Navajo. The Navajo is a scaled-up Piper Twin Comanche to seat two crew and five to seven passengers, with a range of 1,011 nmi (1,875 km). Features Include: Original Navajo autopilot installed Default X-Plane GNS530 installed HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 350 pixels / meter textures Custom audio plugins with extra effects for added realism 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Individual passenger 3D reading lights and numerous HDR lighting effects. Dynamic loading/unloading of 3D parts and plugin logic for FPS optimization. Note the Navajo is a standard instrument package aircraft with the GNS530 and not a G1000 fitted panel. Included in the package is: 6 HD liveries 1 HD Blank livery PA31 Performance Tables PA31 Reference PDF Weather Radar PDF Recommended Settings PDF Technical Requirements Windows Vista - 7 -10 or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux Only for X-Plane10.40 64 bits or higher 2.5 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1GB VRAM 440MB available hard disk space For WINDOWS users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. INTERNET CONNECTION is required for installing this product. ______________________________________________________________________ The PA31 Navajo HD Series by Carenado is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : PA31 Navajo HD Series Price is US$32.95 The PA31 Navajo HD Series from Carenado is also available from Carenado: Images & Text are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton Update: 27th June 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Updates Due : G1000 GPS packages by Carenado As noted in the Diamond DA42 release by Alabeo, there has been some significant updates to the G1000 GPS package that comes with the aircraft. I can certainly note that the changes are very good and the GPS system is now far more highly efficient and far smoother in running (in other words your framerate hit is vastly improved). Carenado have noted that upgrade packages for all the former aircraft with the G1000 with the: CT206H StationAir CT182T Skylane TBM 850 SR22 GTSX Turbo All the aircraft above will soon have upgrade packages available and they are due very soon. For more information and releases then follow this X-Plane.Org thread: G1000 Improvements coming Stephen Dutton 1st June 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews

Release Quick Look : TBM 850 HD Series by Carenado This French aircraft has its early beginnings as an American aircraft and an iconic American aircraft company at that in Mooney. In the 1980s, the Mooney Airplane Company of Kerrville, Texas designed a six-seat pressurised light aircraft that was powered by a single 360 hp (268 kW) piston engine in the Mooney 301, which made its maiden flight on 7 April 1983. A French company bought Mooney outright and in the process allowed SOCATA to build a turboprop derivative of the 301. The result of these discussions was the TBM 700, which was much heavier than the 301 with more than twice the power, with a joint venture between SOCATA and Aérospatiale that was named TBM International and still is the current manufacturer of the TBM range of aircraft. The model designation "TB" stands for Tarbes, the city in France in which Socata is located, the "M" stands for Mooney. The TBM 850 is the production name for the TBM 700N, an improved version with the more powerful Pratt & Whitney PT6A-66D engine flat rated at 850 shp (634 kW). The TBM 850 is limited to 700 shp (522 kW) for takeoff and landing, but in cruise flight the engine power can be increased to 850 shp (634 kW). The TBM 850 has a typical range of 1,520 nautical miles (2,820 km). High resolution (HD) textures are up to the usual excellent high quality standard for Carenado. So the intimate detailing is very good to excellent, I like particularly like the great riveting detail on the wing root fairing, it is really well done. But the whole design work is very good and authentic to the aircraft. This is the fourth aircraft by Carenado that uses their comprehensive G1000 gps display system. This is the three display version with the two smaller PFD's (Primary Flight Display) and the larger central Navigation and Engine management display that dominates the panel. All displays pop-out and are very high quality in their resolution. It is to noted that you have to download Carenado's G1000 Database pack separately to use this aircraft. Cockpit is very highly detailed and fully functional, with the excellent GCU 475 Control Unit that is lovely to use. Highlight here is the trim knobs which are working away hard on the yoke when the autopilot is activated. Three menu pop-ups cover the (C) VIews and sound, (O) Options for ground elements, reflections and opening and closing the various doors and hatches. Internal cabin is first rate with incredible detail, and the lighting is very good with separate overhead lighting switches for each seat. There are one blank and five high quality liveries. But no military versions as the aircraft is in service with the French Army and Air Force. Comments A first look shows you a fine aircraft with incredible detailing, It is quite nice to fly, but sounds in HQ digital stereo are very strange compared to other large single turbo-props and are actually authentic... but it sounds like a cement mixer at speed? The G1000 gps is of course very comprehensive, but that central large display is very heavy processing wise so I recommend a large powerful computer to handle the load. The TBM 850 is marketed as an Alabeo but the download is Carenado, so I have noted it here as the Carenado. The TBM 859 HD is now available from the X-Plane.OrgStore. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Yes! the TBM 850 with the Garmin G1000 by Carenado s NOW available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : TBM 850 HD Series Price is US$34.95 Features: Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) with GCU 475 Control Unit. AFCS GMC 710 autopilot All-new sound architecture Volumetric side view prop effect Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) with GCU 475 Control Unit Terrain Awareness map mode Different declutter levels Advance menus and cursor with scroll wheel, click/hold or /drag Aux- Trip Planning Window Checklist mode Crisp, vector-based water data Pop-up windows can be resized and moved around the screen Pristine scroll wheel support FPS-friendly terrain map Other Features Original autopilot installed Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 422 pixels / meter textures 3D gauges Over torque engine failure simulation HD Sound System Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft 3D stereo effects, such as outside sounds entering open windows. Enhanced Flight Model Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Carenado Menus Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Included in the package 5 HD liveries + 1 HD Blank livery Carenado G1000 PDF TBM 850 Emergency Checklist PDF - Normal Procedures PDF - Performance Tables PDF TBM 850 Quick Reference PDF Recommended Settings PDF _____________________________________________________________________________________ Requirements: Windows 7+ (64 bit) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux - 64bit Operating System X-Plane10.40 + (any edition) - 64bit mode 3 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1Gb+ VRAM - 2Gb VRAM Recommended Windows users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. CARENADO G1000 database must be installed ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 5th May 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Aircraft Release : TBM 850 HD Series by Alabeo Alabeo have release very quickly another aircraft with their unique Garmin G1000 gps system. This is the TBM 850 in the HD (High-Definition) Series. The TBM 850 (Marketing name for the Socata 700N) which has the G1000 Integrated Flight Deck and a fuel tank extension modification is a variant of the SOCATA TBM 700. The aircraft is a single-engined turboprop, six to seven-seat low-wing monoplane of mainly aluminium and steel construction, but with the tail surfaces built of Nomex honeycomb. It has a retractable tricycle landing gear and is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-64 engine delivering 700 shp (522 kW). The first original prototype the TBM 700 made its maiden flight on 14 July 1988, with French certification following on 31 January 1990 and US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification achieved on 28 August 1990. (wikipedia) Special Features include: Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) with GCU 475 Control Unit. AFCS GMC 710 autopilot Only for X-Plane 10.40 or higher. X-Plane 64 bits required. All-new sound architecture. Volumetric side view prop effect. G1000 Features include: Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) with GCU 475 Control Unit Terrain Awareness map mode Different declutter levels Advance menus and cursor with scroll wheel, click/hold or /drag Aux- Trip Planning Window Checklist mode Crisp, vector-based water data Pop-up windows can be resized and moved around the screen Pristine scroll wheel support FPS-friendly terrain map Original autopilot installed HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 422 pixels / meter textures 3D gauges Over torque engine failure simulation Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft 3D stereo effects, such as outside sounds entering open windows. Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Included in the package 5 HD liveries. 1 HD Blank livery Carenado G1000 PDF TBM 850 Emergency Checklist PDF TBM 850 Normal Procedures PDF TBM 850 Performance Tables PDF TBM 850 Quick Reference PDF Recommended Settings PDF The TBM 850 is available now from Carenado/Alabeo: Price is US$34.95 For more information go to ALABEO : ALABEO.COM Requirements Windows Vista - 7 (64 bits) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux X-Plane10.30 (or higher) 64 bits requiered 2.5 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1GB VRAM 307MB available hard disk space For WINDOWS users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. You have to also download and install the Carenado G1000 Database pack to use this aircraft. Images supplied courtesy of Carenado ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton Updated : 16th April 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Aircraft Release - Cirrus SR22 GTXS Turbo from Carenado Now released from Carenado and expected from last week is the SR22 GTSX TURBO HD SERIES aircraft for X-Plane. I speculated if the aircraft would come with the new Garmin G1000 twin-screen GPS and that it does with the Perspective (PFD and MFD) with a GFC 700 Control Unit installed. This aircraft is super loaded with features: Carenado G1000 Perspective (PFD and MFD) with GFC 700 Control Unit Terrain Awareness map mode Different declutter levels Advance menus and cursor with scroll wheel, click/hold or /drag Aux- Trip Planning Window Checklist mode Crisp, vector-based water data Pop-up windows can be resized and moved around the screen Pristine scroll wheel support FPS-friendly terrain map Original autopilot installed HD quality textures (4096 x 4096) 422 pixels / meter textures 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft 3D stereo effects, such as outside sounds entering open windows. Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Ice and Rain effect Included in the package is: 5 HD liveries. 1 HD Blank livery Carenado G1000 Perspective PDF SR22 Emergency Checklist PDF SR22 Normal Procedures PDF SR22 Performance Tables PDF SR22 Reference PDF Recommended Settings PDF Technical Requirements Windows Vista - 7 (64 bits) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux X-Plane10.30 (or higher) 64 bits requiered 2.5 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1GB VRAM 275MB available hard disk space For WINDOWS users: Please ensure that you have all the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables downloaded and installed. INTERNET CONNECTION is required for installing this product. CARENADO G1000 DATABASE (MUST BE INSTALLED). ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! The SR22 GTSX Turbo HD Series is now available from Carenado: Price is US$34.95 Images & Text are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 23rd February 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Aircraft Announcement - Cirrus SR22 GTXS Turbo from Carenado The Cirrus SR22 GTXS Turbo HD Series has been announced as the next aircraft for X-Plane from Carenado. This neat small single-engine four seater general aviation aircraft is an excellent choice to get the Carenado treatment. The GTXS Turbo stands for the Tornado Alley turbonormalizing upgrade kit which is factory installed. It features twin turbonormalizers and twin intercoolers. The conversion also includes built-in oxygen and a Hartzell three-blade lightweight composite propeller. The engine is the Continental TSIO-550K, which produces 315 hp (235 kW) with a 7.5:1 compression ratio and can run on 94 octane fuel. This turbo version has a certified ceiling of 25,000 feet (7,600 m), a maximum cruise speed of 211 knots (391 km/h), and a top speed of 219 knots (406 km/h). All impressive performance for a small aircraft. There is no detail of features or what you get from Carenado with the X-Plane version, but I am going to do a bit of crystal ball gazing and say the XP SR22 "Could have" not that it "Does Have" the G1000 twin-screen panel. The G1000 system is now available for X-Plane as it debuted in the CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series back in September 2015. The FSX/P3D version does have the G1000 setup and the images below are of that version in a vision of what the G1000 in the SR22 could look like in the X-Plane version. Release of the Cirrus SR22 GTXS Turbo HD Series is due soon, no solid date of course, but I would guess around the end of February 2016. Images are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com Stephen Dutton 15th February 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

Aircraft Update : Carenado v3.2 X-Plane Fleet Overview Carenado updated their X-Plane Fleet of aircraft to v3.0 in early 2015 to cover the X-Plane version update of v10.30 which included the new GNS430/530 GPS systems. With the release of X-Plane v10.40 (which is officially still in progress to date at v10.45) Carenado have done another quieter version update to v3.1 since late October 2015 and then another to v3.2 early in this 2016 New Year to bring all the aircraft relevant and currently up to date with X-Plane. On the surface there was no really big changes like with v10.30 turnover, but their was a lot of small fine-tuning details done to aircraft in the Laminar Research update below the surface. These are incorporated in this v3.2 fine tune with .2 update covering the SASL v2.4 plugin changes that affected Apple's "El Capitan" system software, but more importantly there was of a lot of internal housekeeping done to make the series overall more compatible with one another (in older released aircraft they were updated to current standards). v9 aircraft was finally removed from all Carenado aircraft, dds texture files were also removed and all were replaced with .png files that give far higher quality and give much more better framerate and also removed the poor transparency issues that have been slightly annoying right across the Carenado range, if you know where to look all the v3.2 aircraft are all round better performers in texture quality and framerate performance. The new halo lighting was adjusted to current standards and sounds were better synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure. Most notable throughout the v3.2 changes has been the standardization of the manipulators to two versions, one the scroll wheel version with a switch off in the menu and the Christmas Tree version known as "SuperManipulator" that is scrollable in every direction. But overall there was more going other than the obvious changes noted when you refly the v3.2 aircraft. That became very obvious as I sorted through my list to update the aircraft over the Christmas/New Year break. I had a good barometer as I had around Aug/Sept 2015 done a bit of nostalgic flying with just wanting to catchup with some old favorites. You become not very aware of how much change is really taking place around you in X-Plane until when you pop yourself under the yoke of an older (but at the time of release excellent) aircraft. Two in question were the wonderful dual-tail C337 Skymaster and the V-Tailed V35 Bonanza. Both were awful and felt really dated. So when the C337 and the V35 were updated to v3.2 I wanted to assess the differences. The results are huge and the aircraft are very much now in context with the current standards. My current favorite the excellent F33A Bonanza also feels a worthy difference in all areas, from quality (textures), sounds, flight characteristics and the aircraft feels genuinely tighter. Bonus REP (Reality Expansion Packages) are also now available from Simcoders for the F33A and the CT210 Centurion II with more to follow. The biggest noted changes are to the more older aircraft of the Carenado fleet, nothing will bring them totally up to date as they were designed and textured in another era, but what can be revised has been done so, so they feel far better than they have a right to do so. No doubt that most changes listed here were in v3.0 last year, but it is the cohesion and intergration of all the changes that is significant in the v3.2 releases across all the fleet of aircraft that is to be noted. So here are the current lineup aircraft with v3.2 changes. Officially Carenado have not noted the v3.2 listed, as there is still a few aircraft to the New Year 2016 that have not been released, I will note them here when they are updated. If they are not listed then there is no v3.2 update for that aircraft, v3.2 update is for compatibility with Apple's "El Capitan" MACos compatibility, but both v3.1 and v3.2 change logs are noted below because v3.2 does have extra version changes on some aircraft as noted. If you already have any aircraft in the list then go to your X-Plane.OrgStore or Carenado account and update the aircraft to the v3.2 version (Just check the v3.2 aircraft has been updated). Mooney M20J As noted the older the aircraft the more significant the feel of the changes in v3.2. The Mooney is the oldest of the lot, and v3.2 has brought the old girl back to life. For the pilots who lived with the aircraft in their heyday, they will fall in love with the aircraft all over again. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility Mooney M20J US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Saratoga PA32R A big bruiser of a single-engined aircraft is the PA32R, with no autopilot aids to help you fly the aircraft either. The PA32 is another very early release from Carenado that has benefited from an upgrade. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility Saratoga PA32R US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Piper PA28 181 Archer II The very popular trainer and weekender aircraft the Piper Archer ll is a very popular machine with 32,000 aircraft produced, another great upgrade here in v3.2 with a lot of extensive changes and a hidden autopilot added (via keyboard shortcut). If in the air although I needed a lot of trim (nose down) to keep the aircraft level, but once trimmed the Archer ll was a nice aircraft to fly. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Added option to make windows 100% transparent (in Options menu) -Tweaked Startup Procedure -Tweaked stall characteristics and stall horn -Added Autopilot as hidden pop-up (activatable via keyboard short cut: xap/panels/3) v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Fixed internal startup engine sounds. -Set glass parts to hide correctly Piper PA28 181 Archer II US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________?????????????? Cessna 152 II A development of the late 1950's C150, the C152 ll is one of the most basic trainers flying. v3.2 has seen a huge improvement in this aircraft in handling (great before) but overall the upgraded quality also shows. newly installed hidden autopilot is not really needed on the tiddler C152 but welcome. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Added Autopilot as hidden pop-up (activatable via keyboard short cut: xap/panels/3) v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility Cessna 152 II US$24.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Cessna 172 IIN Skyhawk 43,000 C172 Skyhawks have been built and Cessna are still churning them out like no tomorrow. Like the baby C152 it is a simple basic trainer aircraft, but you get a float version included to add in for more versatility. Another aircraft that has benefited from the 3.2 update is the C172ll, which feels, looks and flies far better than the earlier C172 versions. Now the C172 has the added hidden autopilot via the keyboard. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Startup procedure, now won’t add mixture and will also require a little throttle for engine to start -Nose gear contact point -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Added option to make windows 100% transparent (in Options menu) -Added Autopilot as hidden pop-up (activatable via keyboard short cut: xap/panels/3) v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility Cessna 172N II Skyhawk $24.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Next are a trio of Beechcraft Bonanzas... F33A Bonanza The F33A is my General Aviation go to aircraft, if there is a better single-engine cruiser GA in X-Plane then I have yet to see one. Avionics are comprehensive and versatile. My first run in the earlier upgraded v3.1 version made me smile for days, totally brilliant... it was great before, just overwhelming now and now "El Capitan" compatible as well in v3.2. Add in the new optional SimCoder REP package to further enhance the aircraft. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Tweaked Hobbs meter 1/10th Hr. ring -Tweaked HPa baro ring to turn over in sync with larger numbers. F33A Bonanza US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore - SimCoder REP Package $US19.95 _______________________________________________ V35 Bonanza The V stands for V-Tail in this variant of the Bonanza series. Unusual to fly (in other words tricky) but rewarding. The V35 is very different than the F33A from the pilots point of view, single yoke and reduced avionics kit makes the V35 feel more old-fashioned. v3.2 update has thankfully transformed the aircraft to the same quality and flying standards as the other two Bonanzas. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility V35 Bonanza US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ A36 Bonanza The A36 is quite a significantly different aircraft than the other two Bonanzas. First it is longer by 10 inches (extra windows) has more power in 300 hp (224 kW) (the F33A has 285hp) but the biggest differences are in the cockpit. Both yokes are now separated (not mounted on a central crossbar) and there is the comprehensive Aspen Avionics EFD1000 PRO PFD avionics suite. In feel and flying it is a very different style of Bonanza aircraft, but the A36 is still an excellent single-engined GA. (listed also is v3.0 for Aspen EFD1000 changes) -Added scroll wheel support to knobs, so now knobs have click/drag/scroll functionality all in one (see documentation folder for explanation on how these work). -Installed X-plane 10.30 GNS430, along with all 3D cockpit manipulators and assets -Eliminated noise during load with engines running and reduced Doppler-related pitch intensity (noticeable before during fast camera switching) -Fixed playback issue relating to above sound fix. -Implemented auto-toe-brake for those without hardware toe brakes. (Automatically senses toe-brake hardware and disables plugin-based system, to avoid conflicts) -tweaked flight dynamics -Used new v10.30+ force datarefs to tweak engine torque effects (more future proof and tweakable) -Pre-compressed livery files to .dds for faster livery load times -Implemented COM2 Audio out for online use of Com2 radios for broadcasting -Removed v9-related files -Fixed Aspen EFD1000 to work in all French areas and airports -Made Aspen EFD1000 more future-proof by allowing future 5-digit airport codes to be parsed out for use in moving map. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Re-programmed clipping (dynamic cropping) for Aspen EFD1000 pop-up window, using SASL 2.4's new -Re-programmed functionality to save last known Aspen window size and position. -NOTE: to change default positions and size, please make sure the plane (or plugin) is NOT RUNNING in X-Plane, before editing the "AspenConfig.txt" file. A36 Bonanza US$26.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ CT210M Centurion II The CT210M Centurion is the non-strut turbo version with the 310 hp (231 kW) TSIO-520-R engine. In other words it is a fast sweet little aircraft. The v3.1 update was basic but worthy, however the SimCoder REP package really enhances the aircraft except for starting the thing which is painful. Full CT210M and REP review here: Aircraft Update - CT210M Centurion II v3.1 by Carenado + Reality Expansion Pack by SimCoders v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 (Useful for multi-monitor use, where 120 didn't cut it). -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure (No more detached control over plugin-based audio and X-Plane internal audio. Now, X-Plane's settings transfer to plugin-based sounds). -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). Additionally, the CT210 received the following updates: -Added pop-up autopilot -Tweaked landing gear sound -improved panel night lighting v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility CT210M Centurion II US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore - SimCoder REP Package $US19.95 _______________________________________________ CT206H Stationair HD Series An aircraft I really loved from first (flight) sight. Lovely panel with a large screen GNS 530 GPS looks amazing in flight and in use. The v3.2 update gives the aircraft a nice touchup and all round better feel and better quality. Now the CT206H comes with the new Carenado Garmin G1000 twin-panel display option for more versatility and detail. Standard panel version review here: Aircraft Review : CT206H Turbo Stationair HD Series by Carenado v3.1 changes: -Added SuperManipulator support -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Made spill lights (Taxi and Landing) work with HDR off. v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Fixed "first load" bug for "C" and "O" popup menus (Standard Panel only) -Addressed Linux bug (Standard Panel only) CT206H Stationair HD Series US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore - CT210 G1000 Extension Pack $US14.95 _______________________________________________ CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series The CT182T is Carenado's first fully equipped Garmin G1000 avionics package. Released in September 2015 the CT182T already was v3.1 compliant, so only v3.2 changes are noted. Exclusive features of the G1000 include: Exclusive Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) Terrain Awareness map mode Different declutter levels Advance menus and cursor with scroll wheel, click/hold or /drag Aux- Trip Planning Window Checklist mode Crisp, vector-based water data Pop-up windows can be resized and moved around the screen Pristine scroll wheel support FPS-friendly terrain map v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series US$34.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ C337 Skymaster HD Series Horrified that my beloved C337 Twin-Engined Skymaster was feeling so out of date. The earlier v3.1 update was thankfully very welcome and all the worries were put to rest as the Skymaster soared again. An amazing hybrid of an aircraft is the push-puller C337 and the detailed panel is one of the best in the business. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Updated engine behaviour for more realism during startup v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility C337 Skymaster HD Series US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Beechcraft type 58 Baron A powerful Twin is always a good thing to fly. The Baron B58 is such an aircraft, and has a very nice panel and avionics to suit. Excellent KFC225 Autopilot and two GN430 GPS units give you good systems to fly distances. The v3.1 update covers the basics and brings the aircraft up to date and freshens the B58 into a very good twin. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Fixed glideslope needle -Changed ADF1 radio tuner, to not enter negative numbers B58 Baron US$27.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Cessna 340 ll HD Series Bigger and a more powerful Twin is the C340 ll. It is pressurised as well which means it can fly higher and faster over distances of 1600 miles. In v3.1 the aircraft has had quite a bit of an overhaul and it comes out of the changes a much more rounded and usable aircraft. Overall the C340 ll feels far more solid in quality (It wasn't bad in the first place) and detail is now more intricate and the C340 ll is nicer to fly. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Fixed “divided by zero” error in Fuel Flow meter -reduced engine side cant, due to anti-torque measures already being taken care of via plugin. v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility Cessna 340 ll HD Series US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ PA46 Malibu Mirage 350P HD Series The PA46 Mirage is designed to have all the attributes of a light jet without the cost. It is powered by the powerful Lycoming TIO-540-AE2A 350 hp (260 kW) engine with a top speed of 234 kn (269 mph; 433 km/h). The aircraft was released by Carenado in March 2014, not old in X-Plane years. So the aircraft was still very good. The v3.1 update did however do a little fine tuning around the edges and brought the aircraft to the current standard, and yes it feels all the better for the changes and a slightly lighter framerate gain as well. Release Review: Aircraft Review : Piper PA-46 Malibu Mirage HD Series by Carenado v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Updated engine behaviour for more realism during startup v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Tweaked V/S scroll manipulator for easier use. PA46 Malibu Mirage 350P HD Series US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Pilatus PC12 HD Series Certainly the best Carenado release of the year in 2015. The PC-12 is an extraordinary machine and no one liked it? Lately it has found more and more converts and its future as a classic aircraft will hopefully be finally realised. Overwhelming quality and a challenging machine to fly, the PC-12 is one of my must go to aircraft. v3.2 changes are extensive and include a full aircraft tuning update. Lighter quality textures help with the framerate as well. Only blotch is the still too bright non-adjustable panel lighting. Release Review: Aircraft Review : Pilatus PC12 HD Series by Carenado v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Tweaked spinners to look more chrome -Pedestal night lighting (text) improved under certain weather conditions -Improved texturing of baggage compartment curtain -closed off baggage compartment graphical glitch -Fixed “divided by zero” error in digital Fuel Flow gauge -improved standby battery logic -air conditioner/heater logic implemented. -added Fuel Shutoff lever logic (Firewall) -added ECS Shutoff lever logic (Firewall) v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Implemented autopilot "Up" and "Dn" buttons for use with "IAS" mode. (Increase/decrease target airspeed). -Fixed looping air conditioning sound thud. -HSI night illumination with HDR disabled fixed. -Fixed Door Handle -improved standby bus light logic Pilatus PC12 HD Series US$34.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ C208B Grand Caravan HD Series The Cessna 208B Grand Caravan is overwhelmingly the largest selling Carenado aircraft in X-Plane, it is hugely popular as well. I call mine "The Mistress" because I always wanted to slip away with her and just have a lot of fun (flying not hanky panky). But I was throughout 2015 feeling the old girl was showing her age, yes the Caravan actually felt tired. With poor manipulators and average performance I was finding the aircraft below par. So like a few other aircraft here the v3.1 update was hopefully the tonic the Caravan needed to continue our love affair, thankfully it was extensive and the aircraft is all the better for the update changes and fine-tuning... just don't tell the wife! SuperCargoMaster addon is a must have, but you have to have the main C208B to install it. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Spool-up time from idle to full throttle more accurate. -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Plugin-enhanced - FPS-optimized model. -Night light effects - Prop disc effect -New plug-in controlled 3D sounds v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility C208B Grand Caravan HD Series US$29.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore - SuperCargoMaster Expansion Pack $US7.95 _______________________________________________ The King Airs... C90B King Air HD Series The Cessna KingAir series of aircraft is one of the great aviation success stories, and Carenado have produced three of the very best for X-Plane. The C90B is smallest of the range, but a very powerful aircraft. Carenado introduced a chrome feature in 2015, and in the v3.1update the C90B gets the new shiny treatment. All Carenado KingAir's are quite heavy on frameweight, so the redo of textures and efficiency gains are more noticeable on these aircraft, and that quality of fine tuning of textures has seen better changes to the the smaller text detailing (sharper) around the cockpit. v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Tweaked spinners to look more chrome -Pedestal night lighting (text) improved under certain weather conditions -Improved texturing of baggage compartment curtain -closed off baggage compartment graphical glitch -Fixed “divided by zero” error in digital Fuel Flow gauge v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility C90B King Air HD Series US$34.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Beechcraft King Air 200 HD Series You can't ignore the workhorse B200, it is an awesome machine. Multirole you can find so many variations to fly this aircraft over huge distances (over 2000miles) and living in Australia I have all flying space to spare. The B200 get the same changes as the B90C in v3.2 with the same results and that makes it a better more solid aircraft all round. Release Review: Aircraft Review : B200 King Air HD Series by Carenado v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Tweaked spinners to look more chrome -Pedestal night lighting (text) improved under certain weather conditions -Improved texturing of baggage compartment curtain -closed off baggage compartment graphical glitch -Fixed “divided by zero” error in digital Fuel Flow gauge v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -Tweaked startup auto arm, igniters, fuel in time, and spool up time compared to real videos. Beechcraft King Air 200 US$34.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ Beechcraft 1900 HD Series The B1900D is your go to aircraft for short regional point to point flying. X-Plane regional flying is now one of the most comprehensive in the simulator and if you don't have the B1900D you are missing out on the very best aircraft for the segment in history. v3.2 brings the same fine-tuning as the other KingAirs and it is a far more worthy aircraft for it. Once the King of the below average frameweight machines, the B1900D has progressed to something now as normal with constant work over updates on the heavy early textures, in other words it is now a very flyable and worthy machine. Release Review: Aircraft Review : Beechcraft 1900D HD Series by Carenado v3.1 changes: -Broadened FOV to 150 -Linked volume to internal sound infrastructure -Created mute button, which is synchronized with X-Plane’s internal sound infrastructure -Deleted .dds files, due to poor appearance, and some transparency issues. -Fixed lights to be 10.40+ compliant (Halo size remastered, so it doesn’t look huge on large monitors) -Flight dynamics tweaked (Removed auto-toe-brake infrastructure, since X-Plane 10.40 now has it built-in, and could cause conflicts with plugin). -Tweaked spinners to look more chrome -Pedestal night lighting (text) improved under certain weather conditions -Improved texturing of baggage compartment curtain -Fixed “divided by zero” error in digital Fuel Flow gauge v3.2 changes: -SASL plugin v2.4 updated for "El Capitan" MACos compatibility -HSI night illumination with HDR disabled fixed. Beechcraft 1900D HD Series US$34.95 : X-Plane.OrgStore _______________________________________________ As noted at the start of this update overview is the main thing that came across during the creation and flying for this update review. Is that all these aircraft are in v3.2 specification very mature and not so varied as before in their differences in quality and performance. In the HD (High-Definition) Series you can expect a very level balance throughout any of the aircraft in quality, performance and operation (simulator and aircraft) and all are very current with the X-Plane v10.40 requirements. And that is no mean feat considering the sheer breadth of the aircraft available for X-Plane from Carenado going into 2016. Stephen Dutton 12th January 2016 (revised) Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Sale! - Carenado sale now on till 20th Dec 2015 From now till the 20th December 2015 Carenado has a sale that sees 50% off their amazing aircraft, yes 50% off. So if you wanted that great GA aircraft then this is the only time once a year to put it into your hangar... So be quick and have a Merry Carenado Christmas! So go to your excellent: Store And have a browse! Go Here: Store.X-Plane.Org - Carenado 2015 Sale Stephen Dutton 10th December 2015 Copyright©2015: X-PlaneReviews

News! - Released! C404 Titan by Alabeo Alabeo have released the Cessna 404 Titan that was the Cessna's company largest twin piston-engined aircraft at the time of its development in the 1970s. he Cessna 404 was a development of the Cessna 402 with an enlarged vertical tail and other changes. The prototype first flew on 26 February 1975. It is powered by two 375 hp/280 kW turbocharged Continental Motors GTSIO-520 piston engines. Two versions were offered originally; the Titan Ambassador passenger aircraft for ten passengers, and the Titan Courier utility aircraft for passengers or cargo. Features Include: Custom C404 Titan sounds Default X-Plane 10 GNS430 Volumetric side view prop effect High quality 3D model and textures. Blank texture for creating your own designs. Accurately reproduced flight characteristics 64-bit compatible. Plugin-enhanced FPS-optimized model. SuperManipulator scroll wheel support Also Included: 5 4K HD liveries 1 Blank texture Normal Procedures PDF Emergency Procedures PDF Performance Tables PDF Titan Limitations PDF Yes! theC404 Titan by Alabeo is now available from the new X-Plane.Org Store here : C404 Titan - Price is US$32.95 Requirements Technical Requirements Windows XP-Vista-7-8 (or higher) or MAC OS 10.6 (or higher) or Linux X-Plane 10.40 (or higher) Pentium 2 GHz - 4GB RAM - 1GB Video card 405MB available hard disk space Price is US$32.95 Images are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com Stephen Dutton Updated 31st October 2015 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

News! - UPDATED - CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series by Carenado now available on the X-Plane.OrgStore The CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series by Carenado is now available from the New X-Plane.Org Store here: CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series Carenado And is priced at only US$34.95 Carenado have released their first aircraft with the Garmin G1000 avionics suite, in the CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series. As noted in X-Plane Reviews announcement G1000 GPS from Carenado first images here is the long awaited feature now available for X-Plane10. The Garmin G1000 avionics suite is a two panel display, with full moving map functionality. You are required to download from Carenado a G1000 Database (870MB) to provide data to run the screens.' G1000 Features include: Exclusive Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) Terrain Awareness map mode Different declutter levels Advance menus and cursor with scroll wheel, click/hold or /drag Aux- Trip Planning Window Checklist mode Crisp, vector-based water data Pop-up windows can be resized and moved around the screen Pristine scroll wheel support FPS-friendly terrain map The aircraft is not to bad either, full of the Careando features a quality design which include: Carenado G1000 (PFD and MFD) KFC225 autopilot Only for X-Plane 10.30 or higher. X-Plane 64 bits compatible. New and improved multi-function scroll support Volumetric side view prop effect. 3D stereo sounds. KFC225 autopilot integrated with the G1000 350 pixels / meter textures 3D gauges Original HQ digital stereo sounds recorded directly from the real aircraft 3D stereo effects, such as outside sounds entering open windows. Customizable panel for controlling window transparency, instrument reflections and static elements such as wheel chocks and turbine inlet/exhaust covers. Realistic behavior compared to the real airplane. Realistic weight and balance. Tested by real pilots. Realistic 3D night lights effects on panel and cockpit. Included in the package is: 5 HD liveries. 1 HD Blank livery Carenado G1000 PDF CT182T Emergency Checklist PDF CT182T Normal Procedures PDF CT182T Performance Tables PDF CT182T Reference PDF KFC225 Autopilot PDF Recommended Settings PDF Technical Requirements Windows XP - Vista - 7 (64 bits) or MAC OS 10.8 (or higher) or Linux X-Plane10.30 (or higher) 2.5 GHz processor - 8GB RAM - 1GB VRAM 385MB available hard disk space Images are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com Stephen Dutton Updated 25th September 2015 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews

News! - G1000 GPS from Carenado first images Carenado has published its first images of its Garmin G1000 GA gps system for X-Plane. Yes finally we will have a full avionics suite of the G1000 in Careando aircraft. Carenado have noted that they won't release the G1000 suite unless it was the best G1000 avionics pack for X-Plane and no time reference was noted in that "It will take as long as it takes" So any release (The aircraft here in the release images is the "Skylane") is going to be an event... The Stationair is also a noted G1000 user and so is the Cessna Caravan Executive series... yes please. Images are courtesy of Carenado© Developer site : Carenado.com Stephen Dutton Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: 24th July 2015

The Carenado/Alabeo Diamond DA40 now available at the X-Plane.OrgStore and is priced at US$26.95 Go Here - http://store.x-plane.org/Alabeo-Diamond-DA40_p_400.htmlThe DA40 Diamond Star is a four-seat, single engine, light aircraft constructed from composite materials. Built in both Austria and Canada, it was developed as a four-seat version of the earlier DA20 by Diamond Aircraft Industries. FeaturesVision Microsystems VM 1000 Engine InstrumentTwo Default X-Plane 10 GNS430Volumetric side view prop effectHigh quality 3D model and textures.Blank texture for creating your own designs.Accurately reproduced flight characteristics64-bit compatible.Plugin-enhancedFPS-optimized model.SuperManipulator scroll wheel support16th July 2015 Copyright©X-Plane-Reviews

Alabeo have released the DA40 for X-Plane! Price is US$26.95 Features Vision Microsystems VM 1000 Engine Instrument Two Default X-Plane 10 GNS430 Volumetric side view prop effect High quality 3D model and textures. Blank texture for creating your own designs. Accurately reproduced flight characteristics 64-bit compatible. Plugin-enhanced FPS-optimized model. SuperManipulator scroll wheel support For More information then go here : http://www.carenado.com/CarSite/Portal/index.php?accion=product&correl=153

X-Plane Reviews : Update & Review : Carenado Cessna C337H Skymaster v2 HD Series KLAL Lakeland Linder to KJAX Jacksonville (213.40nm) "What time is it?" "Oh about 4am" "Where are we going at this hour?" "Jacksonville!" "Fine I'll put some extra fuel in the C337 and get her ready, I was a little short last time I did this run".... If I was going to get up and fly at 4am and do a quick 200 Nautical Miles or so then the C337H Skymaster was the machine to fly. This version by Carenado is again another small masterpiece of quality and craftmanship. I turned on the battery and turned up those lovely blue shadowing panel lights and adjusted the overhead light to get the aircraft sorted for flight... extra fuel to 60 GALs in each one of the front and rear tanks. I had to move quickly as I am only on the battery and it may run down to much power to start the engines. The customers were here and it was time to get them sorted, On the left lower screen there is an (O) options menu... It opened a rear baggage door for their luggage, turned on or off the window reflections, it took away the static elements of tags, wheel-chocks and engine covers that were now needed to be removed, Opened the upper and lower doors to get them into the very high cabin and had the option to turn on or off the nice slightly green tinted windows. I looked around and noted everyone was sorted and belted in, the doors were closed and it was time to fire up the engines. The C337H is a twin engine aircraft but with a twist. this configuration is noted as centreline, tractor or Push-Pull and in a few instances as In-Line. I turned each engine switch separately till the engine caught, they warmed up and then settled down to a slightly noisy "Chugga Chugga" sound that is unique to this aircraft. Carenado do 3D surround sounds on the C337H and here in the early morning it felt louder than you can imagine and more realistic that I am glad that Lakeland Airport is situated away from any housing. It may however make a few souls turn over with the noise in their beds in the nearby motel. With the engine temperatures reading normal it was time to turn on the lights NAV, Beacon (on the right tail) and strobe on. I am running HDR on here and that shows the excellent frame-rate with the Skymaster on my system, the HDR also shows off the revised v2 lighting by Carenado and brilliant it is... I also switch off the overhead cabin light and the two spot lights in the rear and toned down the main panel lighting to see out better, as lighting goes here it can't not be bettered... It is fully adjustable to get the very best balance of the instruments and also the dark view out of the front windows... There are a few lighting reflections but you get used to them. Now ready to go I switch on the two lights in the nose. One is for taxiing and and other one is your main landing light, here i will use both and the ramp before me is now very well lit. Off the brakes and the taxi is quite rapid, it can go too fast and a small pull back of the mixture levers will give you a slightly less pull, the engines however protest in going more "Kling, Kling" than "Chugga Chugga". We line up at the hold of RWY23, waiting for an another early departure of a C172 to leave. A glance around at our passengers and they look a little perplexed with all the noise as the rear engine is only set a small distance behind them, I give a smile to my Co-Pilot in the dark as I set the flaps to 1 of 3 settings down, It is great design by Carenado by the way the flap lever moves out to the right with every flap setting, handy in the dark. Runway clear we line up and push the throttles up for power. The C337H will track perfectly straight as the inline counter-rotating propellers give no directional thrust pull, and plenty of power there is. 75-80knts and you are off the ground and climbing easily away with that huge centre wing between the boom tails giving you as much lift as the wings. A loud double clunk!, gives the passengers another fright as the undercarriage locks up in to place. I turn smoothly and climb manually at 800 hundred feet per minute (fpm) till six thousand feet, no loss of power even if i had wanted to use 1000fpm or more, but as soon as I reach my altitude I pulled the throttles back into the panel dials safe zones. Against the first light the distinctive iconic silhouette of the twin tail Skymaster started to appear. I tuned in the freq 112.20 for ORL Orlando VORTEC into the NAV 2 and tuned my heading towards the Nav-Aid. I set the AP (Autopilot) to on and sorted the heading to the VOR 2 direction and finally set the altitude to hold 6000ft. The AP on the C337H is beautiful to behold, the buttons glow green in the dark light. My passengers where now starting to come alive sitting behind me in pointing out Florida's Disney World lit up on the horizon. With more light the cockpit started to come alive as well. looking left and right you can now make out the superb interior detailing. The cockpit is slightly quite small but oddly tall in the rear. By looking over to my right at Orlando International (KMCO) of which I use as a visual reference guide - I note I am on course and on track over Disney World. I love early morning departures in X-Plane. The transition from dark to light is always a thrilling feeling and the aircraft glows in a more softer light. The first Skymaster first flew on February 28th, 1961, and it went into production in May 1963. In 1965 Cessna introduced the model 337 Super Skymaster.This model was larger, and had more powerful engines in the two 210 hp (160 kW) Continental IO-360-C's, retractable landing gear, and a dorsal air scoop for the rear engine and then “Super” name was subsequently dropped. Cessna altogether built 2993 Skymasters of all variants, including the famous 513 military O-2 versions. Production in America was finally stopped in 1982. If you want to by one today the average price is around US$70,000. Maximum speed: 199 mph (173 kn, 320 km/h) at sea level : Cruise speed: 144 mph (125 knots, 232 km/h) at 10,000 ft (3,050 m) (econ cruise) : Range: 965 mi (839 nmi, 1,553 km) : Service ceiling: 19,500 ft (5,945 m) : Rate of climb: 1,200 ft/min (6.1 m/s) The ORL VORTEC is now way behind us and the Skymaster has now reached the east coast of Florida. Now it was time to turn north towards St Augustine and a re-tune of the NAV2 to (SGJ) Freq. 109.40. Excited noises now came from behind me as the view up the coast was spectacular, a lot of finger pointing and chattering would mean happy passengers and return business. The detailing on the C337H is extremely good. I wondered how Carenado could do this but in a certain light you can see the crafted separate panels that make up the 3d model, many developers usually craft 3d items in a full body, but it is in these panels that give the aircraft its authenticity. All aircraft in the HD series has the higher quality 4K textures that give excellent quality but with a very low render requirement. At every angle the C337H is a beautiful sight as the detail is outstanding in every aspect but the 4K textures also allows for every fine detail. The highlights are of course those twin beams with those twin lovely huge tails with the wide board between them... the detail on the tails is so perfect and right down to the rubbery aerials in the slipstream. You get one default (White) livery and five designs; Australian Westpac Coastguard, Rhodesian AF, Red, Grey and blue... The Skymaster's main panel is so well crafted. It does not have many mod-cons and it shows its age in design. There is digital engine readout and that lovely green buttoned AP. But otherwise the instruments on the pilots side are the standard six and few extra gauges for VOR navigation, the rocker switches below are mostly for lighting and main power selection. Reflections on the instruments (and the windows) are simply first rate. As the light moves then so do the reflections, and everything is highly realistic. The Equipment stack is quite old with a COMM unit, Garmin GNS430, Collins COM/NAV (x2) and two King ADF KR87's and a KT 76A Transponder. On the Co-Pilots side there are some excellent twin engine gauges with manifold pressure and RPM. A Fuel Flow and EGT dial. The highlight on this side is the engine dials that show fuel gauges (two tanks), oil pressure and engine temperatures. You watch these engine temp gauges like a hawk because the rear engine has a tendency to overheat. On the very early models of the Skymaster the rear engine would quickly overheat and mostly if you had a long way to taxi to the runway. Most of the early Skymaster accidents were caused by the rear engine failing and pilots not having enough power to climb into the air with only use of the power of the front one. You can cool the engines by opening vents on the underside at the front by the exhausts and up high on the rear fuselage. You do this via two switches low down on the panel with green lights to show they are open. The front exhausts are also very prominent with the vents closed and vibrate with a trail of a bit of smoke. The rear engine exhausts stick out from the rear bulkhead and also shake with a second trail of smoke adding more to the black cloud that is billowing from the front. The pedestal is excellent with six levers for the two engines (Throttle, Prop and Mix (Mixture). You can adjust either with a single lever or grab two for each selection. It is very easy to want to adjust the pitch via the trim selector (wheel). But that will just kill the Autopilot. The AP pitch adjustment is however low down on the pedestal with a roll adjustment and AP on/off switch. It is an annoying stretch down to the pitch wheel and it takes your eyes off the horizon, but there it is. Cabin details are excellent with two seats high for the pilots and two set low down in the rear. You can adjust the window shades in any position which is handy with the early morning sun. Roof detail has a speaker and fuel selection switches. The second menu available on the lower left of your screen is for ( C ) camera or different views around the aircraft, you can also zoom in or out by the slider. Black Hammond Island at Jacksonville twists at the Northend into this sort of Hammerhead and my Co-Pilot points out the formation as my point to turn west inland towards KJAX. I drop my height to 1400ft and run parallel with the airport. Behind me the couple have noticed their Southwest flight is already at the gate waiting. I am landing on RWY06 which will require a long run west then a turn back of 180º to the threshold, soon after the first 90º turn I lower the flaps two notches and adjust my speed. I drop the pilots shade to help to see the runway. And drop down the gear. My passengers didn't care about the noise this time around as it unfurls out of the fuselage, Carenado have created some magnificent animation to get this action perfectly right and complicated it is. The detailing on the wheels and associated landing struts are excellent. Final flap selection to three and I reduce the speed down to 150knts. The C337H is great under flap, as very little pitch adjustment is needed to keep the nose level. I used the AP to land the Skymaster of which I don't usually do. But I wanted to see how the aircraft reacted when it came out of the lower end of the beam. I fact it is not bad going into the flare although I found myself going a little to fast in case I had dropped quickly off the end of the beam. You can see the concentration on my face as In this case I slightly floated until I smoothly dropped finally down on to the tarmac. Again I suspect that large rear wing gives you more lift than you need with its large wing area, but placing the Skymaster on the centreline was a cinch and I expected at least some polite applause from the rear passengers... I had to pull the mixture back a little to get a slower taxi speed and we "chugga chugged" in along the taxiway and soon found our waiting parking space and so I finally shut the C337H down. Our passengers wanted out of the cabin and to quickly grab their bags. With the ( O ) options I opened the doors and got the bags out of the locker. As they disappeared to a waiting mini-bus I closed up the aircraft and looked over at my Co-Pilot... "What time is it?" "Just after 6.30" "So do like the Skymaster?" "Yeah I love it... this is a really great aircraft, fast powerful and pretty easy to fly, I love any Carenados, but they got a hell of a lot right with this one" "yeah I will agree with you on that... This version two is excellent". "I'm hungry... I need some breakfast, Do you know anywhere in Jacksonville open at this hour?" "I know a famous Diner that Ian Fleming dined at while he was writing Live and let Die" "did he like it?" "Na, he hated it... but he was always was a fussy eater.... It was in the book" "Sounds like my sort of a place" (laughs) The Cessna C337 by Carenado is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : C337 Skymaster HD Series And is priced at only US$29.95 _____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 31st August 2013 The v2 C337 Skymaster update is now available at the X-Plane .Org Store just check in and download the new version if you have an account. The Cessna C337 is available for both X-Plane 9 and X-Plane10 (note some effects and features require X-Plane10) : Installation is to download the file (254.40mb) and unzip (371.80mb) to your Aircraft/General Aviation Folder. Documentation - Is comprehensive for Versions v9 and v10 Developer Site : Carenado v2.0 list of changes: -32-bit and 64-bit Mac, Windows, and Linux support. -Updated SASL to official v2.0.1 release, which contains optimizations that benefit from Laminar's X-Plane 10.22 release. -Overhauled lighting system. Lighting halos for nav and strobe lights are now more visible under certain viewing angles. -Landing light features tightly-focused "glare" effect when viewed from the right angle. -Nav lights have been improved for a more realistic appearance. -Improved ground handling -No longer has inverted fuel and oil systems. More realistic. -Optimized "options" menu, to use less memory. -Optimized "Cameras" menu to use less memory -Tweaked volume knob for engine sounds ("Vol" knob on GNS430) -Tweaked turning radius on ground to compensate for new v10 no-toe-brake-with-rudder setting. -Adjusted trim time from centre to max for v10, as this setting, left un-addressed, will cause the same plane to take twice as long to trim. -tweaked gauges, such as fuel and oil pressure, vacuum, etc. to conform to v10's new way of calculating "Nominal pressure/temperature" as opposed to "Max pressure/temperature". -Programmed default camera snap points for v10 (on top of existing ones via "Cameras" pop-up menu) 2 Different .acf files: one for v9 and one for v10. -v10 .acf features optimized objects. Interior/exterior shading is applied only where needed, saving resources. -v10 .acf has further optimizations to objects that don't need the background (clouds, skies) to be drawn through them, if they're not transparent, saving further resources. -v10 .acf also protects certain textures from resolution degradation at low rendering settings. This guarantees that the panel instruments and text are always crisp and clear, no matter what rendering settings are chosen for the sim. -v10 .acf is optimized to make use of HDR rendering, especially in terms of lighting. This includes spill lights, which illuminate the surroundings, coming from Nav and Strobe lights. -When HDR mode is turned off, care has been taken to optimize the appearance of the plane without the enhancement benefits of HDR. As this review was being completed. Two great Lightning Liveries for the C337H popped up on the .Org by Tanisa. Review System Specifications: Computer System: - 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27” - 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3 - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb Software: - Mac OS MountainLion 10.8.2 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.22 (final) - ExtremeSceneryMAXX Addons - Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle

Aircraft Release News! - Pilatus PC-12 by Carenado Carenado have announced their next X-Plane release is the Pilatus PC-12. As Easter approaches my guess the aircraft will be a holiday release and that makes the 2nd quarter of 2015 looking like a big period for major X-Plane releases. The aircraft has the typical high Carenado quality, but there are no images of the panel or cockpit, only the cabin. When these (teaser) images are release I will add them in here... For more Information go to the Carenado Site Images courtesy of Carenado Stephen Dutton 6th March 2015 Copyright©2015: X-Plane Reviews

Aircraft Review : B200 King Air HD Series by Carenado Route : Archerfield (YBAF) to Roma (YROM) to Longreach (YLRE) and Mt Isa (YBMA) : Distance 979.31nm This is the B200 is second King Air release from Carenado after the C90B in November 2013. Both aircraft very much the same from the cockpit forward, but they are very different in design and by length at the rear by 8.3ft and the B200 has a distinctive large T-Tail configuration that came out of the development of the 100 series that had the longer fuselage over the C90 Series but still kept its conventional tail arrangement. The Model 200 series and Model 300 series as they became known were originally marketed as the "Super King Air" family, but the "Super" was dropped in 1996, but the B200 is still in most cases called the Super King Air. The Model 200 was originally conceived as the Model 101 in 1969. Apart from the T-tail, other changes included Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-41 engines rated at 1,015 shp (757 kW) instead of the 805 shp (600 kW) engines of the Model A100 then in production, and a wing of increased span and extra fuel capacity.Overall, the 200 series was 3 ft 10 in (1.17 m) longer than the A100, with wingspan 4 ft 3 in (1.29 m) greater, containing 60 US gallons (230 L) more fuel. Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) was increased by 1,000 lb (450 kg). After protracted development that including extensive wind tunnel testing of the design (especially of the T-tail which was tunnel-tested for 375 hours),the first 200 Series prototype flew for the first time on October 27, 1972; a second prototype took to the air on December 15th of the same year. Three production aircraft were also built in 1972 and delivered to the U.S. Army, these three were designated Model A100-1s by Beechcraft and were given the military designation RU-21J, which was the first of some 400 T-tail King Airs to be ordered by the U.S. armed forces. The 200 received civil certification in December 1973 and the first civil delivery took place in February 1974. Performance : Maximum speed: 339 mph (294 knots, 545 km/h) at 25,000 ft (7,600m) - Cruise speed: 333 mph (289 knots, 536 km/h) at 25,000 ft (7,620 m) (max cruise) - Stall speed: 86 mph (75 knots, 139 km/h) IAS (flaps down) - Range: 2,075 mi (1,800 nm, 3,338 km)with maximum fuel and 45 minutes reserve - Service ceiling: 35,000 ft (10,700 m) - Rate of climb: 2,450 ft/min (12.5 m/s). Royal Flying Doctor Service. One of the largest operators of the B200 King Air is the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. In Australia the aircraft is very wildly recognised more through the familiarity of the aircraft as it is an icon of the outback of the services it provides. The RFD service has 12 Beechcraft B200 (Basic) King Air's, 20 Beechcraft B200C King Air's and 2 Beechcraft B300C King Air's with 34 aircraft in total (latest add-ons to the fleet include C208 Caravans). The Model 200C in was introduced in 1979, and this version had a large cargo door on the LH side of the rear fuselage with an airstair door similar to the Model 200's door built into it. The door opening was 4 ft 4 in (1.33 m) high and 4 ft 4 in (1.33 m) wide, allowing a large range of items to be loaded into the cabin. The Model 200C found favour with many operators who fitted them out internally as Air Ambulances like with the RFDS. The 200C was built from scratch rather than as a modification of the Model 200. The RFDS is a very old service that was created by the Reverend John Flynn had worked in rural and remote areas of Victoria and was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church to look at the needs of Outback people. His report to the Presbyterian Assembly in 1912 resulted in the establishment of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM), of which he was appointed Superintendent. In 1928, he formed the AIM Aerial Medical Service a 1-year experiment based in Cloncurry, Queensland. This experiment later became The Royal Flying Doctor Service. Today the RFDS is based at Alice Springs. The RFDS is made up of seven legal entities – National Office, Central Operations, Queensland Section, South Eastern Section, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Operations. The RFDS operates in a federated structure and each of the seven entities has its own Board and Management. Each entity operates independently, both financially and operationally. Every now and then the RFDS has to replace aircraft in the fleet and being a commercial self-funded operation the fleet is a mixture of old and new aircraft. So here we are going to deliver a second-hand German aircraft that had been delivered to Brisbane in Queensland for delivery to the Central Australian Alice Springs base,. But first it has to flown from Archerfield to Mt Isa for a RFDS paint job and registration change. Departure from Archerfield was wet and cold. Which is very unusual for Queensland which is situated in the tropics. Sometimes you get a southern wind that comes all the way up from the Antartica, and that plummets the weather from a very nice 22º to a freezing cold 4º in one day. The B200 comes with great rain and ice effects and a misty cabin to make you feel at home, and a new feature of an exhaust gas shimmering effect on the turbines. You have to look pretty hard to find it, but it is there.The aircraft is noticeable in several areas in the B200 than the C90 and it is that first is that the big T-Tail makes the aircraft very twitchy in strong winds. I had a nasty 16knt side-wind and you worked very hard to keep the aircraft straight while going down the runway and it was even more apparent once you were airborne and climbing up through the gusts. So you are working hard in keeping the aircraft smooth and straight. You can't over power the turbines either. Once clear of the runway you have to dial the power back to at least 88% torgue or they will start to fail on you. The B200 does not like the default scenery much either. The C90B had an issue with those 2K textures (Which were X-Plane9 left-overs) on your frame-rate, the B200 has the newer larger 4K textures and they are heavily revised to help in the frame-rate and so dropping the texture resolution has no effect on the frame-rate and even under my 512mb VRAM limit (around 362mb was the average). However if you put any default autogen around the aircraft and then the frame-rate dropped markedly, The weather did not help things either, but even in clear weather the aircraft did still not enjoy any heavy autogen? But the slightly extra length of the aircraft and the high tail makes this King Air a lovely machine in the air. It is beautifully constructed by Carenado and the aircraft has a great physical presence. You notice the 2K textures, but only from some angles, in other angles the livery looks really good and clean and I can easily live with that. You have the option to either have the standard wing or one with winglets. Both are well designed, but the winglet's are simply beautiful in their curved shape out of the wing. The aircraft looks stunning in any point of view with them selected. By any stretch of the imagination, Australia is a big place. It is the size of America in that after the Mississippi it is then just desert all the way to California. More than that the barren emptiness starts only a few hundred kilometers inland from the sea, all Australians mostly just cling desperately to the cooler ring of the coast. Our first stop is at Roma which is only 252.42nm inland from Brisbane at an average of 220knts, so you were there in just a little over an hour and a half. In the lighter inland 5knt winds I find the aircraft nicer under the controls. In all the landings here I never found the sweet spot to drop the first of the three stage flaps. Dropping the speed to just below 120knts still gave me a lift I didn't need and then all the full power I had to bring the speed back up to counteract the drag, I tried different ideas of finding the right place (speed) to drop the flap (To Approach) to make it smoother, but I never found it. But under the yoke and rudder however the B200 was very easy to control in the descent and lining up of the runway, even fun really as the aircraft reacted the right way you wanted it to. But the devil was in that if you struck the lower high-winds the aircraft suddenly became very twitchy again. Outside lighting is excellent with a taxi-light on the front undercarriage strut with two landing lights, outboard on each wing was an extra landing light that created a full lighting effect right across the landing runway. This arrangement would be ideal for landing at a dirt strip at light. The rest of the outside lighting is excellent as well, with a high tail beacon, three strobes (wings and tail) and Navigation lights. Roma Approaching the aircraft the next morning you can see what options you have to play with. There are three pop-up menu options in typical Carenado fashion down on the lower left of your screen. 1) is the Views or © Camera, 2) is the Options (O) and 3) is the Autopilot (A). A walk around the aircraft notes the excellent entry door on the left rear, Carenado leave nothing to spoil the completeness of the design. Everything is totally detailed to perfection. The riveting and paneling, the wing panels with those excellent leading edge rubber ice-boots. That high towering T-Tail that is so significant to this design. The undercarriage is very well constructed with perfect linkages (animation) and piping connected to the well designed braking units on the hubs, The undercarriage when retracted is still semi-exposed (the tyres). Smaller detailing is well covered in all the required pitot tubes, radio annennas (and cables) and moving trailing edge Static dischargers. (O) Options gives you access to - Window Reflections - Winglets - Static Elements - Passenger Door (rear exit) and finally the Cockpit door that separates the cabin from the cockpit. The cold cockpit is very familiar if you have come straight from the C90B, it is almost an exact replica here except for the two Garmin GNS430 units (Com 1 - VOR 1 and Com 2 - VOR 2). Panel detailing is phenomenal almost overwhelmingly good, note the metal sliders on the rudder pedals and you can see how far Carenado will go with almost every nut and bolt, switch and knob created to an intimate detail. Lower pilots panel behind the (hidden) yokes. The switch gear covers all the lighting and electrical elements of the aircraft with engine anti-ice and Ice protection. The battery and the Generator switches (1 & 2) are hidden under a panel. Turn on the power supply and the panel comes to life. Instruments on both the pilots and the Co-Pilots positions are basic in just the standard six instruments on both sides. (the altitude display is digital) but updated with the built in EFSI (Electronic Flight Instrument System) that is connected to the Electronic Attitude Director Indicator (EADI) and the Electronic Horizontal Situation Indicator (EHSI) on the main (PFD) aircraft panel, this system works in conjunction with the autopilot. You have a set of instruments set at the top of the pedestal that covers the Flap position, Cabin Climb (pressure) and Cabin altitude. There is a twin set of gauges set down the panel that covers the engine ITT (*Cx100) - (Interstage Turbine Temperature), Torque (FTLB x 100), Prop - RPM, Turbine % RPM, Fuel Flow and Oil temps. Besides the two Garmin GNS340's there is a AVIDYNE Entegra EX500. This unit is very good but also limited in application. Each engine has its own "Ignition ON" switch, and then another switch to start the each engine that both sets are situated low and behind the yoke. It takes awhile to wind up and then start each turbine to full power. Multi-track stereo sounds are excellent as the whine and then the power as the engine comes into life. When running, don't forget to turn off the Ignition ON switches as displayed on the glareshield. I found an odd note in that the alert panel showed "Battery Chg" on all the time unless you switch the battery switch off, On starting the aircraft hot the alert stayed off with the battery switch in the on position? Lighting is control by a battery of knobs on the overhead panel. You have master to turn them all on together, or you can adjust them individually. The spot lights in the cockpit by the OHP and the rear cabin can be adjusted to point light in any direction. Panel lighting is indirectly and not from behind the instruments and dials... Overall the lighting and switchgear lettering is brilliantly lit and very clearly readable. However I did find in some circumstances the main panel "Instrument Indirect lights" like on the C90B could affect the frame-rate by 20fr, and at other times it did not? switching it off meant flying with a dark panel until conditions changed to use it again? You have twin fuel tanks and the gauges are on a panel on the left side of the pilot. I put in 13.5 x 100lbs per tank to give me 2700lbs of fuel and enough fuel capacity to get me now all the way to Mt Isa. The panel also has two backup switches for standby pumps. The pedestal has twin levers for both engines in the throttles, prop pitch (feather) and condition/fuel cutoff. The condition levers have an idle position (thankfully) and the best placement for taxiing is about half-way from the idle notch to the full throttle position. The aircraft still needs a heavy shove from the throttles to get it moving, but once you are you can do the turns with just the brakes to slip off a little speed. Many runways in Australia are a single runway with a slight space at each end to turn the aircraft around, no problems with the B200 with just a slight nudge from the throttle to get through the tight u-turn. Distance to Longreach is 378.45nm or about 2 hours flying time on a good day, but again those pesky winds came and went with regularity. I had help though with the aircraft's autopilot (AP) system that is located on the rear of the pedestal. You can thankfully use the AP panel as a pop-up by pressing (A) on the menu selection. It is resizable from the very large unit that takes up a big proportion of your screen space to something smaller, it will work outside the cockpit as well which is great if you like to fly like that and still set the autopilot with out ruining the view by having to dip into the cockpit. Without the pop-up functionality you will know if you have used the X-Plane default King Air of how hard it is to set and reset the unit by it being down and away behind you... how many times have you looked up to see yourself cartwheeling into the water after takeoff by just a glance away from the window? As noted the AP is part of the EFSI (Electronic Flight Instrument System) that controls many functions over the aircraft. The AP itself is quite straightforward in the standard settings are all set out as usual. Here you can select the Heading-HDG - NAV (a note here in that right now the NAV function is fairly useless, however with the new GPS in v10.30 then it will come into its own) - APPR (Approach selection) - B/C - ALT (To hold an altitude) ALT-SEL (Altitude Select with the V/S mode) - V/S (Vertical Speed), the vertical speed is used with the DN/UP button to select the feet per minute (fpm) in - or + in the pitch of the aircraft. I found the aircraft climbed very nicely at 1200fpm and reduced to 800fpm over the last 2000ft (to 10.500ft), The B200 will climb easily at even 2500fpm but a warning in that if you over-torque for longer than 5 minutes with those engines, they will fail, throw smoke and ruin your whole day. You set the Altitude via the altitude select display on the lower panel and use the ALT-SEL to stop the aircraft at the selected height. There are also two CLIMB and DSC selections as well, but they climb and descend in a quick go/to manner. I never used CLIMB/DSC and always the V/S system. AP engage and YAW engage is on the lower panel with the large turn selection knob. Two large selection knobs above the main AP selection buttons are for the HEADING Selection and the COURSE Selection. These are both shown on the main Heading display. The Course needle has a built in CDI (Course Deviation Indicator) The smaller middle selector knob allows you to change the Heading display into three modes - Rose - ARC and MAP. Out here and way out in the outback of Australia the MAP function is fairly useless with just a few dots, all nav-aids are too small anyway except for a few points on lining up to a runway with a lot of fixes. In the center of the AP pop-up panel are two arrow buttons that allow you to select on the Heading display either the ADF bearing or a VOR bearing, the other button can be used to select the VOR 2 bearing that shows information on a separate display on the side of the Co-Pilot. There is a manual version for NDF/VOR just next (left) and slightly above to the electronic one. All autopilot selections are displayed on the electronic Artificial Horizon display. The whole instrument package is exactly the same as the version in the C90B. If you love that one, then you will also feel right at home here. The yokes are well in keeping in with the quality of the aircraft. The pilot's yoke has switchable clocks in real time, zulu time and elapsed time that you can start or stop. On the Co-Pilots yoke there is a clever 24 clock that you have to glance at a few times to see how it works. There is a point in every journey when you just fall into the rhythm. It is constant background sounds and it is usually the engines and the slight rushing of air around the body of the aircraft. You are not bored and yet there is very little to do except to watch the gauges and click of the passing numbers of speed and height. There are blinds that you swing around the main windows to block out the sharper light. They make the cockpit even more smaller, more intimate, now and then you look out of the windows of sometimes complete nothingness, a flat landscape with no visual clues on where you are going or where you have come from. Australia is like that in parts, just empty space and you feel very small in the landscape. The main cabin has 6 luxury leather seats with 4 in a club layout, another seat is set behind the rear partition opposite the door/entrance and by a large empty luggage bay. The windows give a great view out outside and the whole cabin feels more like a personal jet than a turboprop. You can adjust the polarized rear cabin windows, as they can be darkened by dragging a handle around in semi-circle. A opening door is situated between the cockpit and the cabin, but this is a delivery flight so we keep it open most of the time. Tables can be stored or open for the pasengers. You can use the excellent menu © Camera or views menu to easily move around inside and outside of the aircraft and change the pilots POV (Point of view). Night-lighting With tbe HDR on the lighting effects are excellent. Every cockpit and cabin roof light is both adjustable for brightness and for direction. This shows how good and effective the X-Plane lighting effects really are when executed with skill. If you swivel the lighting in certain ways you can see the effects from the outside of the aircraft. The panel lighting highlights how far and how good the aircraft lighting has come from the of clever lighting tricks in 2d cockpits and XP9. The cockpit is dream of reality and lighting sources and the lit text that fills up all the your view in any direction. It is a nice place to be in the dark. Out of the windows and the green is getting sparse, the drier and hot inner continent is now coming out as life slowly recedes away. The straight line of the Landsborough Highway, the only connection between the the few townships out here and the rest of the world comes into view. Each way you look it just one line from horizon to horizon, but for us a link to something man-made and a pointer to our next destination. Longreach We could have flown directly to Mt Isa from Roma. But this diversion is only slightly off the main track and being way out here you can't miss the chance to pass by a bit of history. Longreach is part of the birth of QANTAS or "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services". Which was founded in November 1920 in Winton 177 kilometres (110 mi) northwest of Longreach, it began flying international services in May 1935. Between these small god forsaken towns an airline that took on the world was conceived out of necessity more than profit, as again the aircraft was the only real means to cover these impossible long distances. There is a museum here to the airline which moved its operations here in 1921, called the "Qantas Founders Outback Museum", which includes amongst its displays a decommissioned Qantas Boeing 747-200 aircraft, registration VH-EBQ, "The City of Bunbury." and QANTAS's first jet aircraft VH-XBA (formerly VH-EBA), a Boeing 707, "The City of Canberra.", Douglas Corporation DC-3 VH-EAP and the heritage listed original Qantas hangar, combining historical artifacts. Yes they landed that huge B742 in knowing it would never leave here again, It was a close landing... very close. The midday sun is hot here and in opening the small side windows on the B200 you would think would let in some cooler air, but it just made the cockpit worse as more heat came in than the hot cockpit had in the first place. Cloncurry The next leg was to Cloncurry at 284.44nm. It should have been a breeze but it wasn't. It was hot and airless on the ground at Longreach, but once we had reached our normal 10,500ft altitude the gusty winds made the ride rough and tough. They were blowing at 19knts and it was tough going, At higher altitudes the wind force was even higher at 23knts and so after a fair while of being bounced around we dropped the aircraft down to under 7000ft and the lesser of two evils at 14knts of gusty winds that was not as hard on the aircraft. The red ore like landscape is the reason that Mt Isa is way out here. It is a mining town, a rough and tumble place were fortunes are made and lost. After still following the Landsborough Highway and passing over Winton until it joined up with the other trans-state Flinders highway over Central Queensland, Cloncurrry was now visible and the very last leg to "The Isa" was only a short 64nm after a heading turn west. Liveries You have the standard Carenado white livery and 6 HD (High-Definition) liveries to choose from in 5 Civilian and one military in the Swedish FLYGVAPNET... Sounds are as expected very good. But the main outside high buzzy whine can give you a headache after flying for the many hours as I did here. I ended up with a set of headphones on if I had the aircraft on flying over the scenery which was getting more and more interesting as the fading light was now showing the immense ripples of the formations of rock lying below us. You can understand why this B200 aircraft is so important out here. It has the speed and the range to cover very large distances and then land on a rough runway on a homestead or cut out of the bush for the RFDS next to the highway of which there was many over the distance of the Landsborough and Flinders Highways. It is a very nice aircraft to fly, but that T-Tail has to be respected. Sounds The 3d surround sounds are overall excellent. But there is a buzzy high whine with the main side on outside view that tired out my ears and gave me a headache after many hours of flying. From that point on I needed the headset on to stop the buzzyness to give my ears a rest if I was flying over the landscape and if I wanted to view the vista below. Mt Isa Lake Moondarra gives you a focal point to aim for and a turn over the far side bank of the lake gives you a direct lineup to Mt Isa's YBMA RWY16, By now though the several landings with the B200 have learnt of how it behaves and how the aircraft feels like at the lower speeds. And enjoy the slight touch landing... The engines have a reverse thrust/prop to help the drop down the speed, but in most cases you don't need to use it as the aircraft easily drifts off the speed. Sadly X-Plane does not render "The Isa" backdrop very well, The town is an industrial skyline of company mining infrastructure, X-Plane only gives you the usual low housing estates of California. It has taken the B200 only two flying days to cover the the 979.31nm from Archerfield to Mt Isa. Impressive for a general aviation aircraft and it was how the aircraft covered the distance with ease. The aircraft still has on this journey another 660nm still to go to the RFDS base at Alice Springs, no doubt that would have to be completed in one flying hop, but you have no issues with that sort of distance as the range at 1600nm is phenomenal for an aircraft of this size. In those few days you almost become one with the aircraft, In this case it was easier than most. Summary There is always going to be with both these King Airs the controversial comparison between the C90B and the B200. In most cases they share most of exactly the same equipment and both have the same excellent EFSI (Electronic Flight Instrument System) and sitting behind the panel it is hard to tell them apart. No doubt the B200 is the far more powerful and the larger of the two aircraft. And that comes through with the way the aircraft behaves, the differences are subtle but there are still small very noticeable differences, The power to climb and cruise is much more apparent and you feel the difference of that large T-Tail, this with the added slightly different CoG (Center of Gravity) and the extra length is noticeable in the handling which makes the B200 a very nice aircraft to control, except certainly in gusty winds were it gets very twitchy. On this journey I certainly got to understand the aircraft better the more distance I put on the airframe. However more time would allow you to find still more of those subtleties, to find even more control at the limits of the low speed handling. The aircraft needs constantly a firm but fair hand. The aircraft however behaves like the B90C with strange effects on the frame-rate. It does not like added special effects like the autogen and any weather and that is not down to the textures either as it reacted the same at the high autogen of Archerfield as it did once it felt the far smaller autogen arrangement at Mt Isa. The "Instrument Indirect lights" adjustment on the OVH for the main panel also was a sucker of power when it felt like it and so a 20fr loss will come and go at a whim for no reason and it will be interesting how much difference the X-Plane 10.30 upgrade will effect the aircraft and take away these niggles, even with the weather upgrade I feel v10.30 would would give you an substantial improvement here. If you have the power to overcome this, then it is not an issue. It is noted that you do require 1gb of VRAM to run the aircraft correctly, other than these niggles I didn't have problems with that with my 512mb limit. Carenado's quality in their aircraft is always a sign of the depth of design over any other developer. The B200 certainly comes with all those hallmarks of the sheer design quality that you expect, and the aircraft is on a top level with any other quality aircraft, it is one of the best in X-Plane in this category. In a few areas like the inside lighting it excels. In systems the EFSI package is simply excellent for flying those really long distances like we have done here. When the X-Plane 10.30 upgrade to the GPS is released it will be a significant advantage to the B200. The framework is already in place for the new GPS and that will then give the aircraft an excellent way to fly these very long routes without only just the select few NDB's and VOR's to chose from in these sort of open distance areas (you can use a basic route now in the current Garmin GNS430, but it is just that... very basic). The B200 has excellent features with great effects in that rain drops move realistically in accordance with airspeed, and then are cleared by wipers, and repopulate after wipers are shut off. Ice can be cleared with de-icing options and the internal lighting is above the usual HDR standard, all animations and intimate detailing here is simply first-rate. Overall the Carenado B200 is one of the best of current series of larger aircraft that are being released by this outstanding developer. It is certainly a highly distinctive and dramatic aircraft in flight with its tall T-Tail arrangement and slightly longer fuselage. For an investment you would certainly do no better as the aircraft would deliver many years of great flying with its outstanding natural abilities and excellent features. The Carenado B200 HD Series is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store. Price is currently US$34.95 : Get the - B200 King Air HD Series - Here. Documents and Install, Download is 207.50mb, that is unzipped into your General Aviation Folder of 265.20mb. Developer Site: Carenado Review By Stephen Dutton 6th May 2014 Technical Requirements: Windows XP, Vista 7 or 8 (32 or 64 bits) or MAC OS 10.6 (or higher) or LinuxX-Plane 10.25 (or higher - 64 bit compatible) Not compatible with X-Plane 94GB RAM/1GB VRAMVersion 1.1 (last updated May 5th 2014) updated store# Review System Specifications: Computer System: - 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27” - 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3 - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb Software: - Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.2 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.22 (final) Addons - Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle Scenery- VOZ Australian Scenery by B Roberts - Aussie Scenery Packages (you do also need to download the AussiePak7)

Aircraft Update : Carenado C208B Grand Caravan - Super CargoMaster to v3/10.30 Both these aircraft are in the Carenado Sale 50% off till the 21st December 2014! : Of all the releases and all the different types of aircraft that has been released by Carenado... One still stands out above all the others. Well two really, because the C208B Grand Caravan comes in two variants in the standard passenger version and the cargo version called the Super CargoMaster. If you want success then these two Caravan aircraft dominate almost everything. It is a big question why. I'm not forgetting the later great releases by Carenado of the B1900D or any of the King Air series aircraft, they are exceptional as well. But there is something totally special about the Caravan that just hits you in the chest around the heart area. Like the rest of the Carenado series of aircraft the Grand Caravan/Super CargoMaster has been updated to v3 and compatible with the current X-Plane version of 10.30+ (10.31 at this point). Voices of "But yes, but when are you going to update the Caravan?" with me included showed really on how little the Caravan has had any attention since its initial release. But only one thing really mattered? the installation of the new Garmin GNS430 GPS that came with the 10.30 release from Laminar Research. So what has been updated? v3.0 list of changes: -Added scroll wheel support to knobs, so now knobs have click/drag/scroll functionality all in one. -Installed X-plane 10.30 GNS430, along with all 3D cockpit manipulators and assets -Improved Autopilot VVI/ALT preset instrument -Eliminated noise during load with engines running and reduced Doppler-related pitch intensity (noticeable before during fast camera switching) -Fixed playback issue relating to above sound fix. -Implemented auto-toe-brake for those without hardware toe brakes. (Automatically senses toe-brake hardware and disables plugin-based system, to avoid conflicts) -tweaked flight dynamics -Pre-compressed livery files to .dds for faster livery load times -Removed v9-related files Yes the GNS430 GPS is in there which is great news, but the big news or bad news to users of XPlane9 is that, that this X-Plane version is not supported by Carenado any more. As a simulator we are now moving a long way away from the XPlane9 style of simulation. But in a way it does make sense because v10.30 does change a lot of the simulator's fundamental basics. It also makes the C208B aircraft not a compromise anymore between the two X-Plane versions, and like the rest of the v3 Carenado range that has already left XPlane9 behind, this v3 version does feel and fly far better or most more efficient that the compromised versions. C208B Standard Passenger Grand Caravan I flew a flight in each variant. First the standard passenger version from YPDO - Devonport, Tas over to YMLT - Launceston Airport, Tas (Australia) to feel out the new version. Setting up the Caravan is extremely easy because of the menus. You can set out from the start your static ground items and open and close all the doors to get the aircraft ready for flight. On the Caravan you have the option of a "Cargo Pod" under the fuselage. I usually fly without it attached, and you have that option, but open one door on the pod and every compartment door hangs down. You can configure in seating arrangements inside as well, with either an 8 passenger single seat set up or eleven passenger seats with a double bench and a single per row (except for the last row of single seats). The more bums on seats you fill then the heavier the aircraft gets. Detailing is simply superb, you can't get better in than this. Like all v3 aircraft you now have 4K textures but they are highly optimised for faster load times and are frame-rate lite. There is a huge selection of liveries now available for the Caravan series, and always one you need and many can be found here "Carenado Paints-X-Plane.Org". Starting up is a without a key and a push of a switch on the panel by the pilots left hand. Flick the switch and you sit there wondering if it is actually working... it is and slowly the whine from somewhere starts, it grows into a turbine whine and finally the propeller then turns into action, and gives you a roar that has serious business on its mind. What is simply great about the Caravan is the way it sounds. It is totally earth-shattering in its growls, whines and roars. 3d surround sound can make it as realistic as you want it to be, and it sends the hairs on the back of your neck into a shear enlightenment, you certainly don't need to go to India to find that higher plane, but to just hear to this Caravan at a full roar is to go straight there. You have to adjust the condition (red knob) to idle to tame the power a little, if not the aircraft will taxi way too fast, and is quite hard to handle at slow speeds, just don't forget to put it back up to takeoff? v3 comes with the new manipulator "scroll" feature. This combines the scroll of a scroll wheel mouse (or gesture mouse/pad) and a manipulator. I only use a standard Apple one click mouse, and for that the feature is slightly problematic? You can't scroll of course so the panel lighting is either on or off and so you have no dim adjustment. Adjust any of the knobs or buttons and it is not consistent either. On the GNS430 you can't adjust the range up, but can down or adjust the VOR/NAV1 frequency correctly, you can the smaller frequencies but not the larger ones. The pop-out of the GNS 430 is fine and gets around the issues. So the new manipulators are great if you use the scroll functions. But my mouse would rather prefer the standard manipulators of which unlike other v3 Carenado aircraft you can switch the scroll function off and use the old standard version. Taxi away and the power settings are great in idle as noted, but you need a little more power for tighter turns or a brisker run up the runway to turn around for take off. Power up and the noise grows, and you will need to control all that power as the thrust will easily push you off the center line with just the very large wide three-bladed one single prop doing all the work. It can be hard work even in light winds to keep the Caravan (damn) straight... but that is part of the experience of this aircraft. It climbs away easily and the balance is very neutral. A turn to YMLT and a climb rate of 600ft per-minute is quite adequate. You have a great Autopilot that can be easily be set with the altitude and vertical speed you want to climb very efficiently to the correct height. On balance the C208B is quite standard on the main panel for a working aircraft. Anyone that can fly even a smaller GA aircraft would have no problems in here, and I think that is the Caravan's main attraction, you really only have to adjust your flying to the weight and bigger size of the aircraft, because instrument wise and the control set up it is really all quite standard. The panel however is beautifully done by Carenado, clean and so efficient. In the air the aircraft powers along and is supremely nice to fly, a little noisy but that comes with the territory. Your passengers have great large windows that give out great views if you like to sit in the back and enjoy the flight from that perspective. X-Plane 10.30+ gave us the excellent GNS430/530 GPS system and one aircraft that really benefits is this workhorse Cessna. Here you have the GNS430, which feels a little small in here, the GNS530 would have been far better. This flight is only 20 minutes so a big flightplan is not really required. But I do have that option if I need it now... and I will soon. I am going to use the Caravan to do the bastion of every initation that every X-Plane user really has to do to be qualified as a real simulation professional in that I am in 2015 going to fly right round the world in X-Plane in a GA. (Flying in a big airliner is cheating), and the Caravan is ideal for such a journey. That idea was not possible until now because with the few long overwater sections you would need some sort of GPS tool, so now I have that. With YMLT now in sight I fall into a landing pattern at 1500ft that takes me down and past runway 32L/14R to loop back to 32L. You have to find the right speed to drop the flaps, as so to have enough power but not to balloon the aircraft, once the first 5º setting is done there is not much difference to the other 10º and 20º settings but just the lowering of the speed. It is best to handle the throttle constantly to get the perfect approach and descent speeds, it is quite easy to do once you are familiar with the aircraft, slow turns are perfect with no loss of height and control. and the same with the alignment with the runway, the "Course" runway alignment is perfect for the job here. 80knots is a nice approach speed and one on terra-firma use that powerful reverse prop thrust to slow you quickly down, the Rev thrust is throttle responsive! Then a quick taxi is all that is needed to secure to the GA ramp office. and deplane the passengers and their luggage.... job done, It is just to easy with this aircraft. ________________________________________ Super CargoMaster The CargoMaster is a variant of the standard version. To fly the CargoMaster you have to have purchased the standard version first. It is not a complete aircraft, and you have to also convert the supplied files to a duplicate of the standard C208B to get the Cargo version. It is quite easy to do and well worth not only the cheap conversion price of the variant, but for the versatility of what you actually get is really quite a different aircraft for a very different role, but still have the same way of flying the aircraft as the C208B version. You get the same menus as the standard aircraft but with a difference in that you don't change the seating arrangements but instead load in cargo (Boxes). 1607lbs pounds of cargo actually and you load or unload the cargo configurations via the "options" menu. put the cargo on and note the extra weight on the aircraft... your going to move all that weight? There is the same "Cargo pod" option as with the standard aircraft, and here I keep the pod attached. I'm at Prestwick - EGPK in Scotland in a mercy dash to deliver supplies up the Scottish West Coast to Oban - EGEO in a snowstorm! Yes you heard that right a snowstorm in X-Plane. Since the move to X-Plane 10 there has been a few but not many comprehensive ways to have a snow-bound landscape. "WinterWorld" by Tom Curtis was very good but not updated for X-Plane 10. and that really "left us out in the cold"... pardon the pun. Well now there is with "Winter_Package 1.1" by Albert who does the default scenery autogen textures for Laminar Research. So the winter look goes to the core of the simulator. It is tricky to install, but there are now a few extra options in switching around the summer and winter files. But the effect is simply totally amazing, and pull down your visibility, up your precip and storms and let the weather close in around you at a minus -15º and go out to battle the extreme winter. I had everything running in the cockpit, heaters, blowers and every anti-Ice and wing lights running. But I still had to fly to Oban in near zero-visiblity. I carefully taxied around to RWY13 via taxiways T, M and J (a long way around) to set myself up for departure. Once clear of the runway then it was almost due north to Oban. There is a VOR (Oban OBA : freq 110.55) that gives you a direct line to the airport, but I locked in OBN (freq 404) NDB as a backup, so I didn't use a flight-plane on the GNS430. So really even in close to zero visibility I only had to follow the pointer of the NDB to home on into, as I got closer the airport showed up on the GNS430 as well as a visual guide. Otherwise the gutsy CargoMaster was earning every bit of its Jet-A as it pushed on in the wind and snow. In areas the weather let up a little bit and winter views was simply extraordinary. I loved it and certain gives X-Plane a really big new dimension of flying. I powered on north until I saw EGEO and decided to do a left hand pass and then circuit back around to land on RWY01, It is easy to get the wrong runway at EGEO, as there is an angled parking area that looks like a runway from the air, but 01 is it. You have to be careful as there is some high ground coming back over the coast to the south and then also on approach to RWY 01 at EGEO. The bright white winter textures can hide these sort of hidden obstacles, but the visibility was also better here and I had no problems except for slightly bad crosswind in putting the CargoMaster down and throttling up the reverse pitch. A taxi to the ramp and soon the needed cargo was unloaded from the C208B. A quick hot dringk and I was soon airborne again and heading back to Prestwick and in an hour was back again with another load. Yes it was a great few hours of flying, and in a great aircraft. v3 Carenado C208B Grand Caravan - Super CargoMaster - Summary The Carenado Caravan series is one of the really great aircraft in X-Plane, It has something really special that makes the aircraft so very addictive. I think it is it's complete versatility, as with here I had two very different simulations and had two very different experiences, but the actual aircraft systems and flying abilities are quite easy to master... but you can do so much with that basic set fundamental principals. It sounds glorious, certainly one of the main attractions to the aircraft, but the dropping of X-Plane9 has made the aircraft also smoother and cleaner to load and fly in X-Plane10 without now any compromises. The GNS430 10.30+ upgrade is another huge bonus and welcome on this aircraft, the only downside for me was the single-click mouse actions tended to be bothersome and in some cases quite tricky in their actions. If you don't have the Carenado Caravan Series (yes the Super CargoMaster option is a must as well) then you will have a big open hole in your flying and in your hangar, As an investment then it is a no-brainer as the hours on these aircraft will very quickly accumulate. Every flight is enjoyable and rewarding and the v3 upgrade just makes it even sweeter again... One of the greatest GA aircraft in X-Plane? Certainly one of the very best. For a full (release) review of both of these aircraft then go to here: and here for the optional extension of the If you have the v2 of the 208B Cessna Grand Caravan and the CargoMaster "EXP Pack" then the v3 update is now available at the New X-Plane.OrgShop, just log in and check your account to download... or if you want to buy: Price is $29.95 - Sale price! only US$14.98 : C208B Grand Caravan HD Series sale price valid only till the 21st Dec 2014. Price is $7.95 : - Sale price! only US$3.98 : (you must already have purchased the above 208B Cessna Grand Caravan to use this "EXP" pack.) sale price valid only till the 21st Dec 2014. Update review by Stephen Dutton Copyright©2014 : X-Plane Reviews Requirements Windows XP, MAC, Linux X-Plane 10.30+ . 32 and 64bit compatible Pentium 3 GHz+ 1Gb VRAM Recommended Current version: v3 (last updated November 20th 2014) Review System Specifications: Computer System: - 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27” - 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3 - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb Software: - Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.4 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.31 Final Addons - Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle - Bose Soundlink WiFi Speaker Scenery - YPDO Devonport by VOZ (Barry Roberts) - YMLT Launceston by VOZ (Barry Roberts) - EGEO - Oban Airport - Scotland 1.0 by Renair - EGPK Glasgow Prestwick International Airport 1.1 by Golf 1 - Winter_Package 1.1 by xflyer (Albert)

Aircraft Review : Piper PA-46 Malibu Mirage HD Series by Carenado Route : EDDL (Düsseldorf) to EGKB (Biggin Hil) I sum up General Aviation aircraft usually into three categories. First is the golden age of American GA Aircraft in the 50's and 60's. Then the modern aircraft of the 70's, 80's and 90's, and finally the composite aircraft that have been produced in the new millennium of the 2000's and to date here in 2014. In that context the Piper PA-46 Malibu is a modern aircraft as it first flew in 1982. But the Malibu story is really a story of two aircraft and not one design. The original version the PA-46-310P is the 1982 version that first flew in 1984. It was a clean sheet design for Piper Aircraft and after three years of development, the Malibu became the flagship of the Piper fleet. And in a small way the aircraft revolutionized personal aviation, as the the PA-46 offered many creature comforts and many of the capabilities that are usually found in small business jets, but at a small fraction of the cost. For all its ambitions the first version of the Malibu PA-46 suffered a sudden string of seven fatal accidents, and the airplane became the unhappy target of an intensive investigation by the FAA and NTSB. The thought was that the airplane was somehow flawed and was breaking up in flight due to its advanced design problems. An airworthiness directive (AD) was issued by the FAA on March 1991 and it prohibited Malibu pilots from flying the Piper in instrument conditions, and most importantly it prohibited the use of the autopilot, also noted was the control wheel steering button and vertical trim control to change altitude. (The autopilot could still be used for level flight under the AD). Also the altitude preselect and vertical speed select was also targeted if it was installed, and if so they had to be physically removed from the aircraft. Finally, the AD stated that pitot heat and alternate induction air had to be used in all phases of flight except takeoff and landing. Then the FAA ordered a special certification review (SCR) of the PA-46. This SCR was perhaps the most comprehensive of any undertaken and required the most of a year to complete. The conclusion was that the airframe and the autopilots were in full compliance. As a result of the review, 60 recommendations by the FAA were put forward, many or mostly related to the autopilot. The main explanation of the review however was that the problem turned out to be pilot training. The study indicated that many pilots moving into a Mirage often do not have sufficient respect for the complexity of this type of high-performance aircraft nor the harsh environment of the flight levels. The whole mess caused Piper to file in July 1991 a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. During the worst of this reorganization period, the company delivered just 41 airplanes. During this dark period in 1988 Piper introduced the Malibu-Mirage with a Textron TIO-540-AE2A 350-hp Lycoming engine, and a new wing. In reality the choice between the original PA-46 and the Mirage is the choice in engines and it was not due to the ongoing investigation. Once the aircraft was recertified by the FAA. The PA-46 became an extremely successful aircraft with its turboprop cousins the Meridian and the Matrix - and the series is still in production today at 1050 deliveries (in 2004). Performance : Maximum speed: 234 kn (269 mph; 433 km/h), Cruise speed: 196 kn (226 mph; 363 km/h) at 55% power, Stall speed: 58 kn (67 mph; 107 km/h), Range: 1,555 nmi (1,789 mi; 2,880 km), Service ceiling: 25,000 ft (7,600 m), Rate of climb: 1,143 ft/min (5.81 m/s) Carenado's PA-46 Malibu Mirage The Malibu Mirage HD Series is the latest release in X-Plane from this outstanding developer of clever General Aviation aircraft. As always from Carenado the Malibu Mirage is an excellent quality aircraft. For me it was a perfect aircraft choice to fly from Dusseldorf (EDDL) to Biggin Hill in the South-East of the United Kingdom. At first you would think that to fly from Germany to the UK would be an extremely long flight. But in reality it is only 263.30nm in distance and the flight is easily completed in a few hours. Departure is by Düsseldorf's RWY 05R, and takeoff is using full throttle and 2,500 RPM to gather the best acceleration, watch out for the pull of the single engined propeller thrust which here is quite pronounced, and you will rotate at around 80 knots. Gear up, then climb at 120 knots, and at 1,000 feet AGL reduce throttle and switch off the fuel pump. This configuration will give you about 1000 feet per minute. Direction to Biggin Hill is easy, it is directly west at 270º. Panel and Interior As with all Carenado's, the Malibu's panel is simply first rate. Highly detailed and finished with quality, it is quite crowded with instruments and dials. It is highly functional as well, as everything can be tuned or adjusted. Panel lighting is excellent with the tiny glow lights giving off the same reflections as the Cessna Caravan. First you will notice the lovely chunky Yokes, yes they can be hidden as well... which is a good thing because they cover some some lower placed dials. A look over your shoulder will present a very highly crafted cabin, with high quality materials and the same comfort that you would usually find in a small executive jet. It is all very luxurious, with a pull out table and excellent blinds that pull down over the rectangle sized windows. The lighting, set high and to each side is all separately switchable. At the very rear is a small baggage area, but there is no bag that is usually sitting back here this time from Carenado. The slit like windows makes the cabin feel more spacious than normal, but it is an optical illusion as the size is 49.5 in. wide and 47 in. tall, with 38 in. and 37 in. of headroom in the front and rear seats. The glass reflections are first rate, very realistic. On the whole the cabin is a very nice place to be. The high front window shades drop down only and don't cover the side windows. I climbed to 9,500 feet, The aircraft is pressurized and that can mean it can fly as high as 25,000ft. And that makes the Malibu Mirage very versatile for longer distances. You are not short of instruments and information of the aircraft systems. There are more dials than you can absorb on the condition of the aircraft. On the pilots side you have the standard six instruments, but the Artificial Horizon and the Heading instruments are grouped together as one above the other in a black panel. Two items (lower right, down) which is a gauge and a dial are related to the pressurization of the cabin, two other instruments left of the standard six, and going down are the Acceleration dial or G-Force dial and the VOR-OBS (VOR 2), clock and the ADF/NDB locator needle. The left/center on the panel is dominated by a set of ten dials in rows of two, these cover items of MAP, RPM, TIT (True Engine Temperature or sometimes Turbine Engine Temperature), FF (Fuel Flow in Gallons Per Hour), OT (Oil Temperature), OP (Oil Pressure), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), VAC (Vacuum Gauge), and the very lower two show the Fuel in the left and right tanks. Above these combinations of gauges is the EMIS or "TRANSICOIL ELECTRONIC MODULE INSTRUMENT SYSTEM", which is a precision measurement and display system containing both analog and digital displays of engine related parameters. The EMIS is comprised of two parts: -- Dual Analog Module Indicators, and the Enhanced Digital Indicator (EDI) display. And you can switch through 5 modes. It shows mostly the same as the analog gauges set below the EMIS, but in a digital form. The radio stack is split into two complete radio stacks with each set out at the top with a set of warning lights (left) and early (green) LED selection buttons (right) for the various cabin and de-icing functions. Early Malibu's had a mostly Bendix/king layout, but here in this aircraft it is the later GARMIN version. Top of the right stack is the standard COMM radio, Then a S-TEC 55x Autopilot system (which we will come back to in a moment) then two Garmin GNS430's (top is VOR 1, lower is VOR 2), On the left stack is at the top a modern Garmin GTX 327 transponder - then below an older Garmin GTX320 transponder?, then a Bendix/king KR 8T T50 ADF radio and finally a large Bendix/King weather radar (later Mirages are fitted with a WX-1000 Stormscope™) that shows just the X-Plane default weather pattern. The Norton radar pod for the system sits on the right wing and is built just for the Malibu, it uses a 10 inch (10") radar antenna. The S-TEC 55x Autopilot system (now Cobham Commercial Systems) is in three units, and it is also known as the one is the main centre unit that has all the functions - HDG, NAV, APR, REV, ALT and VS. The VS (Vertical Speed) is adusted by the knob in 1, 2, 3 increments meaning 100ft, 200ft, 300ft... and so on. There is a smaller readout display to show the mode up to your right. Just right of the readout display is the Altitude Selector, and you can select here the same button functions. There is no secondary ALT target to press, you just adjust the altitude and then the VS and when the aircraft arrives at the correct selected height it will just level off at that position... very easy. This system is known as the Altitude and Vertical Speed Selector (AVSS). I found that adjusting the heading bug it was out by about 5º, but in later flights it corrected itself? You turn the Autopilot system on or off via the rocker switch above the Artificial Horizon, A three way mode that gives you - OFF, FD (Flight Director) and finally both FD and AP. The co-pilot has just the Standard Six instruments. And lower - central of the panel is an excellent pedestal with a single throttle lever, propeller pitch, mixture and the vertical (Elev) and horizontal (Nose) trim wheels. Detailing of the left and right side panels is excellent and mostly fitted out with banks of fuses, Above your head is a row of switches, electrics on the left and lighting on the right. And also by these switches are two front overhead cockpit spot-lights with blue globes, they can switched (or dimmed) directly on the lights or by the knobs either side of the overhead switch panel. External From most points of view you realise the shape of the fuselage is different, from a distance the long thin single engined machine looks the same with the usual Piper nose. But this rear cross-section shape however is more common today in it being rounded and bulbous like on a small jet airframe and then viewed from the correct angles. So you can certainly see the modern forward step that was taken in this design in the 80's. And how smooth it it really is. This also highlights the excellent reflections in not only the fuselage but also in the very well created glass. Carenado do certainly do this sort of quality of depth very well. Liveries You receive one (default) white livery and five others, four American and one Brazilian. A few European liveries would have been nice though? Quality is again very high in this High-Definition (HD) Series, the colour and depth is first rate and the frame-rate is very good considering the depth of the high-def textures. Night-Lighting Internally at night the Malibu is a nice place to be. There are those lovely spot lights along high along the cabin and all separately switchable. Those twin blue cockpit lights throw a wonderful glow over the front seats, that is compounded by the excellent panel lighting. Yes it is all very nice, but it comes at a cost. HDR off and the frame-rate is fine. HDR "on" and your frame-rate goes almost to zero if you have a low VRAM count like me (512mb), as the aircraft doesn't move below 630mb in VRAM, and so the HDR destroys it. With 1gb of VRAM you can get 22fr with the HDR on, which is out of your dangerzone, but just. Overall I had no issuses with great frame-rate flying the Malibu (41fr usually) but HDR on, 3fr was the average. From the external view the cabin looks sublime with the blue and standard lighting mixing together. The other external lighting is also very good with beacons (two way switchable in beacon and anti-collision), Strobe (the new brighter flashing design), Nav and one taxi light on the front landing gear strut with two landing lights on the far out reaches of the wings. Flying the Malibu-Mirage You will hit a true airspeed in the Mirage of just over 200 knots, and burn 20 gph (Gallons Per Hour) in any of the flight levels at an engine speed of 2,500 RPM. 800nm is the max range at these settings and the PA-46 handles well above and below 18,000 feet mark. the handling and control is surprisingly good all the way up to FL250. You won't let the TIT exceed 1650 nor the CHT 400 in any condition, and to avoid a fuel imbalance of more than 10 gallons per side, a switch between left and right tanks will be necessary during the climb. If you want to extend the range, go to 2,400 RPM, and the fuel burn will then be around 18 gph. One downside of the long, high-aspect-ratio wings is a low maneuvering speed. In a normal descent, staying at or below Va is nearly impossible. In descent at say starting at 20,000 feet, you would adjust the VS 120 miles from the destination using a leisurely 500 fpm rate and then reduce the power at a lower altitude. The high aspect-ratio wings span 43 feet, making for a good high-altitude ride, but also making the plane a little bumpy in turbulence. Yaw dampers are certainly a must. Each wing contains 60 useable gallons - Note the very efficient De-Icing boots along the forward edge of the wing. On the real aircraft it uses the Smartboot™ system by BF Goodrich, which detects and measures ice buildup,and indicates when to activate the de-ice system, and verifies that ice has been removed. The landing gear is certainly an effective speedbrake, and be lowered at around 170 knots. Once down, the gear can be left out to nearly the top of the yellow arc (Vne). The PA-46 can dive with the best of them if necessary with your gear down and the flaps up. But lowering the gear at altitude is not advisable unless you need to get down to the ground quickly. The first notch of flaps (three stage) can be lowered at the same time as the gear for more stately descents. As detailing goes then look at the underside of the aircraft with the wheels locked down. Carenado's design work on the undercarriage and inside of the gear bays is simply first rate. It is beautifully constructed landing gear. Landing at EGKB is on RWY21 is conventional with no surprises. You intercept the localizer with 2,500 RPM at 120 KIAS. Gear down and first notch of flaps at your glideslope intercept will that give you a 300 fpm descent at 100 KIAS, right down the beam. Full flaps and 80 knots over the numbers set will set you up for a good landing. Stall speed is very impressive at only 59 knots. I found the ILS not very consistent. I selected the heading bug directly in position, but when I pressed the APP, it then went slightly to the left (The ILS alignment is correct, I checked), several approaches gave me different positions on the beam, mostly all to the left.The main undercarriage track is quite wide, so you have to make sure the aircraft is very level before putting the wheels down, if not you can bounce on one wheel then bounce over to the other one. Once you are on the tarmac the speed drops away very nicely to a good taxi speed. The taxi is uphill from the end of runway at Biggin Hill, time to let in some fresh air. Sounds are very good and are 380º in a doppler effect, some nice throaty sounds are used on approach, but like many aircraft the cruise is slightly monotonous. On the ramp after shut down of the engine you can have use of the (O) Options menu (Left-side of your screen), here you can select - Window Reflections, Static Elements, Passenger Door (rear), Instrument Reflections, Baggage Door (front). All are excellent extras, but still no bag in the baggage compartment... Which the forward baggage space just behind the engine is of limited use due to CG limitations anyway (100 lb max). The other menu is the standard © Carenado Camera or views options. Conclusions So where do you place the Piper PA-46 Malibu Mirage in your hangar? Even though it is thought as a propeller competitor to a small plush jet. It isn't because it is far too slow for that, but luxury it does have. It doesn't compete with the Caravan either because this aircraft isn't a workhorse like the Cessna, but it will fly very high (in smooth weather) and the range is okay for a longish sub-1000nm journey, but at that speed it will take a fair while for you to get there... and yet the Malibu is a very nice cruiser and great for going point to point in sheer comfort, the good news is that you can spend more time in there doing so. The equipment set up is very modern and the autopilot is very good and simple, yet I miss a VOR2 range display that takes out the boredom of a long flight. Being a Carenado. Then quality is always a given, and again the Malibu does not disappoint. It is beautifully created and comprehensive in detail. Certainly you are going to need 1gb of VRAM to get the very best out of the aircraft as it never dropped under 630mb in use, but that seems the current trend anyway in computer hardware nowadays. I had no real problems with 512mb, but there you do have accept there are limitations with scenery and the HDR because of that 630mb load. It is a lovely aircraft to look at, smooth and regal even with that pressure vessel shape. And the the tail juts upwards to 11.3 ft. This plane sits very impressively on the tarmac. You can just picture yourself standing by the wing to have a photo done for the office wall, all proud and contented. Good value... Yes certainly, it is very good and you will find many uses for the Malibu-Mirage, It is a great aircraft and a great purchase. The PA46 Malibu Mirage 350P is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store. Price is currently US$29.95 : PA46 Malibu Mirage 350P HD SERIES Documents and Install, Download is 238.10mb, that is unzipped to your General Aviation Folder of 310.70mb. Developer Site: Carenado Review By Stephen Dutton 15th March 2014 Technical Requirements: Windows XP - Vista - 7 (32 or 64 bits) or MAC OS 10.6 (or higher) or Linux X-Plane10.21 (or higher) 2.5 GHz processor - 4GB RAM - 1GB VRAM - 300MB available hard disk space Version: 1.1 (Last updated March 12th 2014) Review System Specifications: Computer System: - 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27” - 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3 - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb Software: - Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.2 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.22 (final) Addons - Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle Scenery - EDDL - Düsseldorf by Aerosoft - X-Plane.OrgStore US$27.53 (Airport Düsseldorf) - EGKB - Biggin Hill by Chars - free (EGKB - Biggin Hill (XP10))