NZFF

With good memories of flying the DC3 in FSX, I was pleased to see this in the 40th Anniversary MSFS. However my first few (8?) attempts had me falling out of the sky shortly after takeoff, I certainly don't remember that from the old days... So i did a bit of research, and finally managed a flight. Still a pain to keep trimmed, so a lot more study required! Even managed to put it down again, and safely park up at Taieri.

Just begging for a nice paint I still fly Manfred Jahn's rendition in P3D4.5. A great machine to fly.
I'm surprised that there is no mention on the forum that this update now includes Helicopters and Gliders. By all accounts Asobo did their homework with the developers even taking heli flying lessons to further their understanding.
I await Choppers nuts professional opinion on the helis and how the aerodynamics stack up. A great sim for those machines if they get it right.

The first thing I did with the update was try the helis, but I'll leave it up to someone more experienced to comment. I turned off the heli assistance first, and although I can fly them both, landings are 'bouncy'! I may turn the assistance back on until I'm a bit more confident. I do have the HPG H145, but of course that came long before helis were supported, so it's a very different thing -- and easier to fly.

I was planning on releasing an update for NZTI once this sim update came out, to change the parking start hacks to actual helipads. I've done this, simple enough, but there are a couple of things which I'll wait to see if they happen -- first, like runways, helipads start 'hot', whereas I'd really like the option to start cold and dark on the trolleys. Second, the H145 has a very different 'centre' so that it hangs off the end of the trolley when I start at my helipads. I have mentioned this to HPG, so I'm sure it will be tweaked to match the new default helis.

I did need to tweak the H145 aircraft.cfg so the sim recognised it as a 'rotorcraft', so that you can choose a helipad when you fly it.

Just tried a flight with the assistance back on, wow, very different experience! I still can't land on a trolley (windy today), but I can land smoothly now.

great shots

I like metallic shine on engine covers

Regards,

Aharon

Beautiful work Rob .

cowpatz wrote:I await Choppers nuts professional opinion on the helis and how the aerodynamics stack up. A great sim for those machines if they get it right.

I'm back to Indonesia on Wednesday and I've got a day of test flying in Motueka tomorrow but I will attempt to give the helicopters a crack before I go.

I just did 30 minutes in the Cabri. The systems are a bit of a mess. Usable but definitely not completely accurate. The flight controls feel a bit notchy. Picking it up off the ground, there's no movement until it comes off the ground and you have no idea until you need a heap of right pedal. The amount of right pedal is pretty accurate for a fenestron but going into forward flight, that amount should decrease to the point of having a lot of left pedal in at 70 or 80kts, this doesn't happen in the sim. The ball and the string don't match up. I haven't finished playing with the sensitivities yet but I had the cyclic sensitivity turned up to 50% and it wasn't quite right. This is of course with the assistances off. It's not fast enough either. With one person on board and half fuel, you should be able to pull MCP and get 100kts out of it. In the sim, you can only get 70 or so. There are some strange things going on with the aerodynamics that shows up when low flying particularly doing spray turns where it uses up too much sky. True torque turns are not too bad but it again, it uses up too much sky.

It's not all bad though. It's accurate enough to just go flying around in the sim and I'm absolutely sure that Asobo will make improvements. If you want a very accurate flight model, go use XP11 / XP12. If you just want to have something that flies sort of like a helicopter and look at the pretty scenery, this is for you.

Don't even bother with the 407, it's terrible all around.

This replica is a nice plane and I hope there will be many repaints. Something can be done with the machine.

chopper_nut wrote:
It's not all bad though. It's accurate enough to just go flying around in the sim and I'm absolutely sure that Asobo will make improvements. If you want a very accurate flight model, go use XP11 / XP12. If you just want to have something that flies sort of like a helicopter and look at the pretty scenery, this is for you.
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Thanks for that. Hopefully they do make improvements. I guess it is also difficult to tell if it is the add on heli FDE or the sim limitations that are the issue.

It's the helicopter FD that needs work. There shouldn't be too many sim limitations now.

Fantastic pics, thanks for sharing! I'm impressed with it's quality and level of detail despite the fact it's a free add on.

Still holding out hope your NZTI scenery may one day be available on Marketplace for console users?! It's too good not to be!

cowpatz wrote:Just begging for a nice paint ...

Yes, I shoulda been a bit patient.

Ah. Now that is very nice and indistinguishable from the real world.