A lot of my recent simulation research has been focused on improving visuals or haptics of larger simulations. Shifting focus a little, i thought its time to devote some effort to flying GA. When it comes to General Aviation, my favorite is the Piper Cherokee family. The Archer or the Warrior would be my pick. Hence i set out to find a realistic Warrior or Archer. I first downloaded a freeware Warrior download for FS9. The aircraft turned out to be reasonably true in looks and appearance. Soon i found that flight model was not true to the real aircraft. The first discrepancy was the P-factor. It made taxiing very difficult and unrealistic. Even at slow speeds, smooth steady taxi was impossible. In flight, the plane had a serious left yaw. I tried centering the controls. It was still there. Was unable to find out whether the rudder had a center issue or the ailerons were not centered. In the end, i figured it was still engine center-lining that was causing the yaw.

The search had to be extended. A quick search showed a few products. Carenado, Australian Simulations, JustFlight were a few.

Aus Sim product is known to be a very good product and has numerous reviews. However, the company closed out operations and hence the product wont innovate any further.

Carenado is a very active with products. New products, incremental releases and rich variety are its hallmark. Their products are packaged independently for FS9 and FSX which is a little bit of an issue for those of us who use the product for either simulator. Carenado has an Archer product for FS9 and FSX.

JustFlight has a Warrior product packaged for FS9 and FSX combined. The product was on sale and it was my choice.

My larger interest in simulators is more attuned towards accuracy in procedures and flight characteristics. Given this, I am a little less concerned about the livery or about the door opening correctly.

The install was flawless and simple. The product came up on FS9 immediately without any more effort. I setup for an initial flight. John Wayne airport, the SOCAL area, runway 19L. Turned off all WXR and ensured winds were set to zero.

Taxi was very accurate. P-factor representation is well done. Rotation speed matched real-life behavior. A mild tug of the yoke and the plane began to climb. Climb was around 550 fpm. Prep for level flight – pitch, power and trim. Level flight was easy to maintain. Very life-like.

Performed a cruise climb at 87 knots. Leveled out at 2500 feet. Cleared the area with clearing turns. Performed slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls, and then steep turns. The flight model performed i would say within 10% of the characteristics of the real PA28-161. Not bad for a simulation product flight model.

Returned back to John Wayne. Performed cruise descent, approach, GUMPS check and dropped engine down to 1700 rpm abeam the numbers with one notch of flaps. At the 45 to the numbers began my base turn; another notch of flaps and plane slowed accurately to 70 knots. Called my final and dropped the third notch of flaps half way into the threshold, 65 knots all the way down to the numbers. Just over the numbers, leveled out, the nose came up nicely and i held it up just to the point where i could transition my eyes to the end of the runway. Continued to hold it up till the stall horn came on and the wheels touched. It was nicer when i could hold the nose up even after touchdown till the plane slowed further and the nose wheel came down and touched.

Will come back another day to check flight characteristics under density altitude and various wind conditions.

Taxied back to parking…. Glad to have found a realistic model of my favorite GA plane.

CPJ

Aug 30 – Edit & Update – The app works seamlessly. Just enable the device on the X-Plane settings page and then turn ForeFlight on your iOS device. The location occurs instantly. Very straightforward.
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The ForeFlight iPad app is now compatible with X-Plane 10. The integration is interesting because it brings a simple way to interface with a hardware device. More on this after I try using it when i fly.

SimulationResearch

Flight Level 370, 0640Z, Queen of the skies.
Flying over Dusseldorf, Germany en-route to Frankfurt.

The sun is just about to rise….

Yes, sunset once more. I never tire of capturing the morning rise or evening set from the flight levels. This time, its over Nova Scotia, just passing Halifax in a Boeing 747-400. The Pratt & Whitney engines are doing their job effortlessly.

After spending many many months working on the larger sim, i had this strong urge to back to basics. I wanted to go back to a basic trainer aircraft – my favorite being the Piper PA 28-161.

It started off being a small simple setup – guess everything starts off that way… 🙂 – one LCD, stick and rudder.

Within a couple of days, the idea had grown into something more.
Here is a glimpse of where it is at today. The credit for that lovely woodwork goes to my good friend – Scott. More to go on this…

Flying south-easterly over Minnesota… The numerous lakes come visible.

Along with the upgrade to FSX and high performance computing power for the visual generation, I also upgraded to Hifi Simulation’s most recent WXR generation pack – ASE2012. I have to say I am impressed with its capabilities. Of course, I find it hard to make out whether its FSX that renders WXR better or ASE2012 does a better job of doing so. The cloud layers are very realistic. The depiction and rendering is flawless. Precipitation comes across really well.

The use of SimConnect makes it even more smoother. The one thing that i used to find annoying with ASE and FS9 was that when the WX was edited, it wouldn’t always render it immediately. ASE2012 and FSX do it very well.

This time, however, I planned to place the WXR station in a location that allowed for networking but also allowed easy access to the PC when i wanted to change the WXR. That has helped immensely. It also serves as a pilot station.

The winds aloft depictions are far more accurate. The inclusion of a full-fledged flight planner is very helpful.

The graphics system was the piece that i liked the most. The ability to install wxr-influenced graphics is a very nice feature. The colors are a vibrant and match accurately.

Before i conclude, a note on performance. In my setup, i find that not only does it boot up quickly, but it also synthesizes and depicts its first update rapidly. Subsequent depictions happen flawlessly. There used to be a small stutter when updrafts were felt, but by following the advice provided in their manual, that problem went away.

The product faithfully reproduces weather when you drag and drop weather over the map.

HiFi Simulations have done it again. The product works very well.

SimulationResearch

I have recieved some questions of the  specifications of the system that Jetline built. Here it is…

Jetline HellFire GT2 Custom Flight Simulation System

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit OS
HAF 912 Mid Tower ATX
ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Intel Core i7 3770K (4.4GHz Overclock) Quad Core Antec 620 Single Stage CPU Cooling
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM 1866MHz 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 560
750 Watt Power Supply
7.1 Integrated HD Audio
600GB Western Digital Velociraptor 10,000 rpm HDD 802.11 N Wireless Network Card
Gigabit High Speed Ethernet Port

Every item in here has been designed with some design principle in mind. More importantly components have been selected either to max out price/performance ratio or with the clear understanding that moving to the next level would need a significant price increase.

For example, the GTX560 was chosen over the 570 or 580 only because benchmarks are indicating that next perceivable improvement would only come with the newly released GTX680 which also included TH2go functionality on board. But the cost would go up by 400 dollars and i had recently bought a digital Matrox Th2Go which would also go waste. Hence the decision to stay with 560. Of course we used a GTX 560 with 2GB instead of the 1GB board that is also available.

Hope this helps…

CPJ

I received my customized Jetline Hellfire PC last Thursday.

I have been an avid flight simulation enthusiast since 1985. I still have my MSFS ver 2 user manual with me. Back in 1999 I started building out my 737 simulator. I am in my third generation of the appliance today with a 14″ diameter widescreen, triple projection system, image warping, with 90% of the systems modeled and enhanced haptics and feedback control. I had persisted with FS9 because my earlier attempts at FSX had resulted in less than a satisfying experience.

About 10-12 months ago, i realized that not being on FSX was precluding me from using certain software given that they were only available on FSX. For FSX though, a high end  computing system was a pre-requisite. A google search for flight simulation PCs brought your company up. After reading about Jetline and their focus on high end systems, I had made up my mind that when I did buy my next simulator PC, it would be from Jetline.

I called Jetline in the third week of May to inquire about my need. It was a conversation that I will remember for a while. It was more about my need and what I wanted to do with the PC than Jetline wanting to make the sale quickly. I got a quote from them the very next hour.  I took a week or so to make up my mind on what configuration I needed and finally the PC arrived last week.

The entire process working with Jetline was seamless. Speaking with someone with deep knowledge and being able to have a conversation about it was very useful. They reworked the configuration a couple of times to accommodate my requirement – all the time ensuring that he was designing a system that would achieve its goals.

All of us have experienced deterioration of the notion of customer service over the past decade. I strongly feel that knowledge and experience have disappeared from our environment. Even more importantly, people with passion  for what they do, have become a minority. In such circumstances, working with Jetline has been a breath of fresh air.

The experience did  not end with the making the sale. A day after the PC arrived, I did call back in with a question, after I had spent a full day setting it up with my software and hardware ecosystem. the individual i working with demonstrated the same zeal, perhaps even more, to help out with my question. We setup some time that afternoon to speak about my questions. During that session, Jetline’s model of remote support was very handy. He not only spent time looking at and fixing the issue, but took the time to explain the context.

In that session, after answering my questions, he took the initiative to look at my FSX settings and tweaked it for improved performance.

The result –  a flight simulation environment like I had never experienced before. 60 frames on average with the sliders turned up all the way; 30-35 frames in extremely heavy airports.

I was absolutely  reassured that I had made the right choice in choosing Jetline.

I want to thank Jetline for their help. I want to commend Jetline for their distinctive focus on specialized systems especially in a commodity market and, further, for committing themselves to customer service.

Overall it has been a very gratifying experience…

CPJ