Flight1 Pilatus PC-12 and Misty Fjords Page 11

By SimHQ on October 19, 2005 in _air4, hide

The “Real Estate” section of the Misty Moorings site has all of the free downloads listed with excellent instructions on how to install them. This is the Totem Bight Operations Center which features a full bush flying base for seaplanes and a short asphalt strip for normal operations.

This cannery (Doug Linn), Klinkwan Fish Camp (Doug Linn), and Blue Lake scenery (Leon Lewis) are just a couple examples of the many awesome enhancements to the Misty Fjords scenery that are freely downloadable.

In summary I think the Flight1 Pilatus PC-12 is a great product. In particular I really like the 2D instrument panel and avionics and feel that the PC-12 makes an ideal aircraft for practicing instrument approaches. The PC-12’s excellent slow flight capabilities are ideal for instrument pilots that need a little extra time to sort things out on the approach. At 70 to 80 knots the approaches unfold slowly and give the pilot plenty of time to set up radios, monitor the instruments and track the progress of the approach. In the clean configuration you can fly the approaches faster if you so desire. The one quirky thing about the PC-12 that I found is that if you fly just 10 knots faster than the recommended approach flap settings the aircraft has a very distinctive tendency to “wheelbarrow” and the nose down pitch required to fly the glideslope becomes excessive (up to 20 degrees pitch down!). I don’t know if this is a characteristic of the real PC-12 that has been duplicated by Flight1 but I’ve never flown an aircraft where such a small deviation from the “normal” approach setting results in such a large pitch difference. In any case, staying on the numbers with flaps out results in a nice flying machine. I do feel that the Flight1 PC-12 (and ALL FS2004 add-on aircraft) should have implemented a 2D landing view that shows just the top of the instrument panel with the majority of the view taken up by the outside view. This would reflect more realistically the way a pilot transitions from being “inside” to being “outside” on most approaches. Several other add-on developers have implemented this type of “landing view” and I’d suggest that all future products have a similar feature.

The Flight1 PC-12 product I received was a boxed version that already had the post release patch applied and I found the product to be bug free and a solid piece of software. The only flaw I found was the strange flight model behavior when the default passenger and cargo loadout was significantly altered but as long as changing the fuel loadout doesn’t have any deleterious effects I don’t have any heartache over this small problem. In my research I also found some users complaining that the indicated airspeed hold function of the autopilot doesn’t faithfully reproduce the proper operation of the system in the real aircraft. Much like the B200 and Citation V I fly in real life, IAS hold is maintained by aircraft pitch via the autopilot, not by power management via auto-throttles. The Flight1 PC-12 has modeled IAS hold via an auto-throttle type of implementation which isn’t technically the correct way to do it. In real life I almost never use the IAS hold in the aircraft I fly so the work-around method that Flight1 chose doesn’t bother me since I’ll never use it.

The EFIS and instrument update rates in the Flight1 PC-12 are outstanding, which is why I enjoy flying instrument approaches in the aircraft. The pop-up panels and external 3D model is top notch; this is a beautiful airplane inside and out. Sound effects and avionic-specific sounds are very good. That Pilatus Aircraft Company signed off on this product is a testament to the research and attention to detail that went into this product.

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Reviewer’s System Specs: