In 1935, the major airlines in the U.S. had a problem. They had contributed $100,000 each for Douglas Aircraft to develop a four-engine successor to the two-engine DC-3. But it was clear that the new DC-4 had problems and would be delayed. So they dropped out of the program and TWA (Transcontinental & Western Air) approached Boeing Corp. to see if it could adapt its promising new B-17 bomber into a passenger plane.

Keeping the B-17’s wings, tail, engines, and landing gear, Boeing designed a new cigar-shaped pressurized fuselage, and the result was the Boeing 307 Stratoliner. I’m here at Chicago Midway Airport (KMDW) in June 1940, where one of the five brand-new Stratoliners just delivered to TWA is preparing for the next leg of its regular service from New York to Los Angeles.

For anyone acquainted with the silhouette of the famous B-17, the Stratoliner should look strikingly familiar.

Because of its wider fuselage, the Boeing 307 has a slightly larger wingspan (107 feet, 3 inches versus. 103 feet, 9 inches), with exactly the same length (74 feet, 4 inches). The wings are metal and contain three fuel tanks each, carrying a total of 1,700 gallons. The flaps are also metal and powered electrically. The ailerons, however, are fabric over a steel skeleton to reduce the physical force the pilot has to exert to move them. The elevators and rudder are the same. They are all entirely mechanical controls that rely on the pilot’s physical strength to manipulate—no hydraulics.

The prototype of the Stratoliner actually stalled and went into a spin in March 1939, crashing and killing 10 aboard. The problem turned out to be the tail, which was redesigned and incorporated into all subsequent B-17s from that point on.

The landing gear—the same as on the B-17—are raised and lowered by the hydraulics system, which also powers the brakes. When raised the wheels still protrude enough from the bottom side of the wing to cushion a belly landing.

Just like the B-17, the Stratoliner is powered by four Wright GR-1820 Cyclone air-cooled 9-cylinder radial engines with a supercharger to perform at higher altitudes and variable-pitch propellers. They produced slightly less horsepower (1,100) than the variant used on the B-17.

The Stratoliner’s five-person crew consists of a pilot, copilot, and flight engineer, along with two flight attendants. There is also a fourth seat for a navigator in the cockpit. Directly in front of the pilot and the copilot is a typical “six-pack” of instruments, though the arrangement is not yet standardized. To the left is a radio altimeter to gauge agl—helpful when flying over mountainous terrain.

On the overhead panel are radio navigation instruments and the switches for starting the engines and turning on lights. At bottom left, an anachronistically modern autopilot had been installed. We won’t be using the modern autopilot, but instead the Sperry Gyropilot appropriate to the period, located in the center of the center panel. Above it are the engine gauges showing manifold pressure and rpm, and below are the engine temperature gauges.

The power controls—in fours, one for each engine—are on the central pedestal, where both pilots can reach them. Black is throttle, red fuel mixture, and blue propeller rpm. The large white knob locks the tailwheel in place, and the small white one turns on the Sperry Gyropilot.

The Stratoliner was one of the first civilian planes to have a dedicated flight engineer. His panel allowed him to monitor the engines, regulate the flow of fuel from different tanks (to prevent the aircraft from becoming unbalanced), and control the climate in the pressurized cabin.

The cabin could maintain a pressure of 8,000 feet—similar to a modern airliner—up to 16,000 feet. It gradually increased, however, to the equivalent of 12,000 feet when cruising at 20,000 feet—not as comfortable as today’s airliners but enough to avoid the need for supplemental oxygen.

The Stratoliner’s pressurized fuselage required extensive testing. Designers would gradually increase the pressure, covering the outside of its metal skin with soapy water and looking for bubbles indicating a leak.

Now that we’re all checked out, we can head to the main terminal to refuel and load our passengers.

This is TWA Flight 7, the “Super Sky Chief,” with cross-country service from New York LaGuardia (KLGA) to Union Air Terminal (KBUR) in Burbank, California, with three stops along the way. The entire cross-country journey takes about 15.5 hours westbound, 13.5 hours eastbound, depending on winds—about two hours faster than previously in a DC-3.

It was an overnight flight, but I’m doing it during the daytime to enjoy the scenery. It’s midmorning, and we’ve reached Chicago after starting out early from New York.

In theory, a fully fueled Stratoliner could fly a maximum range of 1,300 miles. In reality, a Stratoliner filled with passengers and luggage could only take on half that amount of fuel, significantly reducing its range. The fuel is 100-octane gasoline, exactly like a GA plane uses today.

Passengers boarding the Stratoliner enjoyed unprecedented luxury.

The sound- and vibration-proof cabin was furnished by Marshall Field’s and featured reading lights and call buttons. Separate men’s and women’s washrooms had hot and cold water. A galley in the back served hot food.

In 1940, a one-way ticket from New York to California cost $149.95, equivalent to $3,363.90 today. But a seat in one of these alcoves, which folds down to a sleeping berth, cost an extra $119.95, which works out to a total of $6,054.80 today.

Once everyone is on board, we’ll use an external power unit to start the engines one at a time to avoid draining our own battery. One by one, they roar to life.

The runway in this 1930s version of Midway is 4,925 feet long—but only half of its length is paved. At full throttle, I’m going to need almost all of it to reach my 100 mph liftoff speed. A fully loaded Stratoliner, weighing in at 45,000 pounds (20.5 tons), doesn’t soar into the air—it lumbers, not unlike the heavy bomber it’s based on.

Setting the four throttles back to 30 inches of manifold pressure and the prop levers back to 2,250 rpm, I settle in for a sustained climb. At lower altitudes, in denser air, I can maintain a climb rate of 1,000 feet per second.

The Sperry Gyropilot is simpler than a modern autopilot, but once in a climb (or in level flight), I can set to hold it. I can also indicate a desired heading and instruct the plane to bank toward it. This is the same autopilot used in the B-17 that could be linked to the bombardier’s Norden bomb site to guide the plane to its bombing target.

My target cruising altitude is 20,000 feet. As I climb in altitude, the air thins. Normally this would reduce the power produced by my piston engines, but the supercharger compresses the air to give them a boost. But the supercharger can’t completely compensate, and I begin to notice the manifold pressure, even under full throttle, starting to weaken above 10,000 feet.

I have to pull my climb rate back to 500 feet per minute to avoid a stall. I was unable to find any detailed instructions on how to lean the fuel mixture of a Stratoliner—or a B-17 for that matter—so I left the handles on “auto-rich.”

The Stratoliner is capable of climbing up to 24,000 feet, but at that altitude it would be unable to maintain a comfortable cabin pressure and passengers would need supplemental oxygen. So I’m leveling off at 20,000 feet and pulling the throttles back to 23 inches of mercury and rpm back to 2,000. At first I’m a little perplexed by the indicated airspeed—just 160 mph. But then I adjust for air pressure and temperature, and my true airspeed is 225 mph—right on target.

Technically, the Stratoliner didn’t reach the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere that begins around 33,000 feet above the continental U.S. But it flew a lot higher than previous airliners.

Without a pressurized cabin, a DC-3 carrying passengers could only cruise at 8,000-10,000 feet above sea level. At twice that altitude, the Stratoliner was able to avoid much of the turbulence encountered flying so low over the Rocky Mountains. Even so, the Super Sky Chief followed a southern route that avoided the highest mountains.

Our course is set for 240 degrees west southwest—next stop Kansas City, Missouri.

It’s midafternoon now, and after stopping at Kansas City we’re on our way to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’re back at 20,000 feet above sea level, but the land below us has risen several thousand feet in elevation. We’re comfortably above the summer rain clouds that have formed over the plains of eastern Colorado. A DC-3, in contrast, would find itself flying right through them—a jostling experience.

The Stratoliner can’t fly over all weather—major thunderstorm clouds can rise to 30,000 or 40,000 feet. But since we can easily fly over the relatively lower mountains on this southern route, we don’t have to fear that the mountain passes a DC-3 must take will be blocked by storms.

At 7:30 p.m. local time, with the summer sun nearly setting, we reached the outskirts of Los Angeles with the Pacific Ocean visible in the distance. We’ve flown for 15.5 hours but gained three hours heading west.

I pull back the throttles to descend, while pushing the prop levers full forward, in case of an emergency go-around. My target approach speed is 140 mph. Putting in the flaps reduces my stall speed, so I can land at around 90-100 mph. But it also adds a lot of drag, as does lowering the landing gear. I find I need to add back significant throttle to maintain speed.

Over the runway, I pull the throttles back to idle and flare to a gentle three-point landing. I make sure my tailwheel is locked, so I don’t wobble all over the runway. I’m landing on the modern runway at Union Air Terminal, now Hollywood Burbank Airport (KBUR), and it’s 5,800 feet long. I need almost all of it for my brakes to bring me to a complete stop.

As I mentioned, TWA bought five Stratoliners for service. Howard Hughes, the aviation-obsessed oil and Hollywood tycoon who bought control of the airline in 1939, purchased another Stratoliner all for himself for a reported $315,000 ($6.5 million today’s). It was actually the first Stratoliner delivered to a customer in July 1939.

Originally Hughes planned to use it to beat his own record flying around the world, set the previous year in a Lockheed Super Electra. But the outbreak of war in Europe scuttled his plans.

Hughes put the plane into storage, and then after the war—on the advice of actress-girlfriend Rita Hayworth—converted it into a private luxury airliner, the first of its kind, dubbed The Flying Penthouse. He tried to sell it to another tycoon, but the deal fell through and Hughes ended up stuck with it.

The cabin of The Flying Penthouse was luxurious, the forerunner of today’s private airliners owned by Arab oil sheiks. However, as Hughes drifted into eccentricity, the plane was rarely flown, and in 1965 it was damaged in a hurricane. Someone bought it for $69 and turned the fuselage into a boat.

Eventually a Florida man ended up living in it as a houseboat, dubbing it the Cosmic Muffin. In 2016, the houseboat owner donated the fuselage to the Florida Air Museum in Lakeland. But plans to refurbish it ran into difficulties, and it is currently still looking for a home.

Besides TWA and Hughes, the Stratoliner had a third buyer. Pan Am ordered three Boeing 307s to augment its “Clipper” service across Latin America. While Pan Am in this era is famous for its “China Clipper” flying boats across the Pacific, the core of its business stretched across the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, as this colorful route map from 1940 illustrates.

The toughest parts of the network involved flying (via Lake Titicaca) to La Paz on Bolivia’s high plateau, and the link between the two southmost destinations (Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires, Argentina) over the Andes.

We’re taking off from the modern-day airport at Santiago to find out what made that latter route so challenging.

There were three Pan Am Stratoliners: the Clipper Rainbow (NC19902), the Clipper Comet (NC19910), and the one we’re flying, the Clipper Flying Cloud (NC19903). These three Pan Am Stratoliners, along with TWA’s five, Hughes’ personal plane, and the original prototype that crashed, make for a grand total of 10 Boeing 307s ever produced.

Why so few? Well, as we’ll see, first of all World War II intervened, disrupting civilian air travel and creating new, competing priorities. But even before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, the Stratoliner was running into trouble.

For all its advantages, the Stratoliner was expensive. It cost three times as much to buy as a DC-3 but could only carry a handful more passengers. TWA actually defaulted on its initial order for six, which is why the deliveries were delayed until 1940. The financial dispute actually contributed to Hughes snapping up the airline cheap and keeping one of the six planes for himself. 

Once purchased, the Stratoliners were expensive to maintain and repair. Their advanced systems were new and complex. They guzzled fuel. It cost a fortune just to insure them. Even though TWA saw a 50 percent increase in passenger traffic in 1940, and won headlines setting speed records with its Stratoliners, it still lost money on the service.

Dutch airline KLM considered buying as many as 18 Stratoliners but ultimately declined due to cost. Then the war broke out in Europe, and sales there were off the table completely. Pan Am initially planned to buy six Stratoliners, which it dubbed “Strato-Clippers,” but the shift to military production by 1940 made that impossible. It received just three.

Pan Am had a real use for the Boeing 307. The lowest pass between central Chile and Argentina reaches 12,566 feet and is flanked by peaks reaching 22,841 feet and 21,555 feet, respectively. No unpressurized airliner could cross this range without passengers facing serious discomfort.

The superchargers on the Pan Am Strato-Clippers were only single-speed, compared to the two-speed versions on the TWA versions, making it more challenging to reach and maintain 20,000 feet. Even at that altitude, my clearance above the peaks below is only a few thousand feet.

This would be more reassuring if I wasn’t being constantly buffeted by strong updrafts and downdrafts from the powerful winds winding their way around the mountains. I have to hand-fly the whole way, because the Stratoliner’s autopilot isn’t responsive enough to make all the quick adjustments needed to prevent a stall.

Even in a pressurized cabin, I wouldn’t want to be a passenger on this flight. 

Fortunately, we’re over the mountains and descending toward Mendoza. The airport there is at 2,310 feet, which means I need to lose a lot of altitude pretty quickly. Still, I saw I was coming in high and fast, and had to circle once to slow down and descend farther before I could make a proper approach.

The trip has taken a little over an hour and just 143 miles as the crow flies. But for all the plush furnishings, I doubt any of the passengers will be eager to repeat it anytime soon.

When the U.S. entered WWII, Pan Am continued flying its Strato-Clippers on strategically important routes in Latin America but under the direction of the U.S. military. TWA, in contrast, sold all five of its financially struggling Stratoliners to the U.S. Army Air Forces, where they were redubbed the C-75. The airline then operated them under contract for the Army.

The planes’ cabin pressurization system was removed to save weight. The expensive furnishings were torn out and replaced with simpler bunk beds and work tables. Extra fuel tanks were added to almost double their range to 2,400 miles.

Early in the war, with these modifications, the C-75s were the only planes the U.S. possessed capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean carrying any significant payload, Tough to carry passengers in any comfort, they’d have to cruise at a lower altitude. 

In February 1942, the newly converted C-75 made its debut, flying to Cairo via Brazil to deliver ammunition and spare parts to British forces fighting German general Erwin Rommel in Egypt. In March, a C-75 flew top U.S. generals, including George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, across the North Atlantic to London and back to begin planning Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.

Over the following months, C-75 flights over the North and South Atlantic picked up pace, ferrying VIPs and urgent cargo where they were needed overseas.

The heavier loads that the C-75 was expected to carry in military service—up to 56,000 pounds gross weight—further reduced its climb performance and put great strain on the engines, sometimes sparking fires. By 1944, the U.S. had developed newer four-engine aircraft—the C-54 (DC-4) and C-69 (Constellation)—that could do the same things, but better.

No longer needed, the Stratoliners were sold back to TWA, which refurbished them back to their luxurious former state.

After the war, however, the airlines discovered the same thing—that there were new airliners available that could fly farther, faster, and cheaper than the Stratoliner, which had shown the way. In 1951, Pan Am sold one of its Strato-Clippers, the Comet, to a local airline in Ecuador, AREA, which renamed it the Quito, to provide service between Ecuador and Miami. It later sold it to Quaker City Airlines in the U.S. for unscheduled charter flights. Plagued by maintenance issues, it was being converted to a crop duster in 1958 when it caught fire and was destroyed.

In 1951, French airline Aigle Azur bought the Pan Am Strato-Clipper Rainbow and all five TWA Stratoliners to service routes in the Mediterranean and Indochina. We’re taking off from Nice in southern France, reregistered as F-BELU, after it was assigned to the Aigle Azur subsidiary Airnautic in 1955.

Aigle Azur removed some of the fancier fittings to increase the Stratoliner’s passenger capacity from 33 to 48. While the surroundings may have been glamorous, by the late 1950s the planes were handling mainly chartered flights.

Flying conditions in Southeast Asia, as the Vietnam War raged, were dangerous and difficult. One by one, the once-glorious Stratoliners fell prey to crashes and mishaps, and were put out of commission.

Finally, there was just one.

In 1954, Pan-Am sold the Clipper Flying Cloud, which we flew over the Andes, to Haiti, which used it as its president’s version of Air Force One. Later it hauled freight back in the U.S.

In 1972, the National Air and Space Museum bought it and Boeing helped restore it. But it nearly didn’t make it to the museum. In March 2002, it ran out of fuel during a test flight and ditched in the bay off Seattle. No one was injured, and the airplane was repaired.

Today you can see it on display at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport (KIAD)—the last intact survivor of the 10 Stratoliners built.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the “Local Legends” Boeing 307 Stratoliner add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Red Wing Simulation’s “1935” series of airports and sceneries, airport add-ons purchased from Orbx, LVFR, and Vuelosimple, and liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post The Bomber That Created a Bridge to Modern Airliners appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Born in 1882, Geoffrey de Havilland was the second son of a village pastor. At an early age, he displayed a mechanical interest and pursued a career as an automotive engineer, building cars and motorcycles. Frustrated at work, in 1909 he received a gift of 1,000 pounds from his grandfather to build his first airplane, just a few years after the Wright brothers had made their first flight.

By World War I, de Havilland was working for Airco, where he designed a number of early warplanes, which enjoyed varying success, and flew as his own test pilot. In 1920, with the support of his former boss, de Havilland set up his own independent company and embarked on a series of aircraft named after moths, inspired by his love of lepidopterology, or the study of butterflies and moths.

• READ MORE: Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII

In 1932, he introduced the DH.82 Tiger Moth, a variant of earlier aircraft designed specifically as a military trainer for the Royal Air Force (RAF), as well as other air forces. Like many aircraft at the time, the Tiger Moth’s fuselage is constructed of fabric-covered steel tubing, while its wings are made of fabric-covered wooden frames. I’ve seen a single person lift a Tiger Moth by the tail to take it out of its hangar. The Tiger Moth was powered by a de Havilland Gypsy air-cooled, 4-cylinder in-line engine which produced 120-130 hp, depending on the version.

Like most trainers, the Tiger Moth had two seats, each with its own set of controls, with the student in front and the instructor or solo pilot in back. One of the major changes introduced to the Tiger Moth, at RAF insistence, was folding door panels that made it easier to enter and exit both cockpits. The feature was absolutely essential when a student or instructor needed to quickly bail out wearing  heavy parachutes.

The silver knobs on the left control throttle, fuel mixture, and aileron trim. The knob on the right enables “auto slots,” slats on the wings that automatically deploy like flaps to provide additional lift at low speeds and high angles of attack. Notice that there is no artificial horizon. However, there is a turn indicator (in the center) as well as a red column that indicates the aircraft’s pitch. It is currently showing nose-up because the plane is resting on its tailwheel.

The compass, situated just in front of the stick, is a bit tricky. You can either keep it pointed toward north and look to where the line is pointing, or you can rotate the compass ring to show the current heading at the top and follow that by keeping it centered.

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In addition to the cockpit gauge, there’s also a mechanical airspeed indicator on the left wing. Red shows typical stall speed range (below 45 mph).

I’m at England’s Upavon Airfield, a few miles north of Stonehenge, which was home to the RAF’s Central Flying School, founded in 1912, and where the first Tiger Moths were delivered. It is now a small army base (hence the vehicles) and is also used as a glider field. With no electrical starter, the Tiger Moth is hand-propped to get it started. The turning of the propeller, by hand, engages the magnetos that send charges to the spark plugs, starting the engine.

This particular Tiger Moth, N-6635, is based on the one on display at the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, near Cambridge. It’s actually a composite that was put together with parts from different Tiger Moths.

The engine is modeled realistically. If you overstress it on full throttle for more than a few minutes, it will overheat and conk out. If you let it idle for too long, the spark plugs will foul up. With a small engine like this, the left-turning tendencies are not pronounced. However, the trickiest part of takeoff for most tailwheel airplanes is still when the tail comes up. The descent of the rotating propeller causes a gyroscopic precession to the left.

The Tiger Moth gained immediate popularity as the RAF’s primary trainer—the first airplane a would-be pilot learned to fly after ground school before moving on to more advanced fighters or bombers. It gained a reputation for being “easy to fly, but difficult to master.” In normal flight, it was forgiving of mistakes. On the other hand, the Tiger Moth required great precision from a pilot to learn aerobatic combat maneuvers, without going into a spin. However, it recovers easily from spins, which meant it highlighted a student’s shortcomings without (usually) putting them at fatal risk. Though I did notice that when flying upside down (or going through a roll), the engine sputters, probably because gravity messes with the fuel flow.

During the 1930s, between world wars, students selected by the RAF took about nine to 12 months to earn their pilot wings, building up about 150 hours of flight time, about 55 with an instructor and the rest solo. Their instruction included night, formation, and instrument flying, along with gunnery and aerobatics (for combat).

The Tiger Moth was sold to 25 air forces from different countries and proved popular to private buyers as well. It was a big commercial success for the company. A total of 1,424 Tiger Moths were produced prior to the outbreak of WWII, most of which were manufactured at the de Havilland factory in Hatfield, north of London.

Slowing down while descending to land can be difficult. I found I usually needed to cut the power to idle and glide in. Power-off landings were a very typical method in that era. It’s nearly impossible to see forward in the Tiger Moth, especially when landing. It’s best to lean your head out the side, while keeping one eye on controlling the airspeed at around 60 mph (about 15-20 mph above stalling).

• READ MORE: Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

There are also no wheel brakes. So once you do land, you just have to let friction slow you down. It’s easier in a grassy field like this.

The success of the Tiger Moth led to Geoffrey de Havilland being awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1934. But its story was only just beginning.

Welcome to Goderich Airport (CYGD) in Ontario, Canada, about 2.5 hours north of Detroit on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. In 1928, de Havilland set up a subsidiary in Canada to produce Tiger Moths to train Canadian airmen. This Tiger Moth, #8922 (registration C-GCWT), is based on a real plane that belongs to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, Ontario, and is in airworthy condition.

With the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the British government realized that Britain itself was an unsuitable location for training large numbers of new pilots. Not only is the weather often poor, the airspace over Britain was quickly becoming a battleground between the beleaguered RAF and the German Luftwaffe—the last place you’d want a student pilot to learn how to fly.

Canada, in contrast, offered vast areas far from enemy activity, where pilot training could be conducted. To take advantage of this, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) was created to instruct thousands of airmen from Britain and across the Empire in safer locations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, and South Africa. The yellow “training” livery was typical of the BCATP, though the real-life airplane was also equipped with a plexiglass-enclosed cockpit to permit winter training.

Many of the small airports dotted across Canada from east to west—as well as some large ones—got their start as part of BCATP, commonly referred to as “the Plan.” I selected Goderich to fly from because after it was built in Canada in 1942, this plane, #8922, was used to train pilots here at the No. 12 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS), as part of the BCATP. The same airplane later went to No. 4 EFTS at Windsor Mills, Quebec, an airfield that no longer exists.

Eventually, there were 36 elementary flight schools across Canada, in addition to dozens more devoted to training bombardiers, navigators, and gunners. At least 131,533 Allied pilots and aircrew were trained in Canada under BCATP—the largest of any country participating in the Plan—of which 72,835 were Canadian. The program cost Canada $1.6 billion but employed 104,000 Canadians in air bases across the land. De Havilland produced 1,548 Tiger Moths in Canada, by war’s end, to help stock these flight schools with aircraft.

While training pilots in Canada was safer than in Britain, lives were still lost. From 1942 to 1944, a total of 831 fatal accidents took place, an average of five per week.

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BCATP training was by no means limited to Canada. I’m here at Parafield Airport in Adelaide, Australia, which was home to that country’s No. 1 Elementary Flight Training School and received its first Tiger Moths in April 1940. This particular Tiger Moth, A17-58, was built by de Havilland in Australia in 1940 and apparently still continues to fly. Australia eventually had 12 elementary flight schools (plus a host of other schools) as part of BCATP, which was known there as the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS).

Prior to BCATP, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) only trained about 50 pilots per year. By 1945, more than 37,500 Australian aircrew had been trained in Australia, though many then went to Canada to complete their more advanced training before going into combat. Most Australians in the RAAF went on to fight in the Pacific Theater, though some joined the RAF to fight over Europe. De Havilland built a total of 1,070 Tiger Moths in Australia and even exported a few batches to the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Royal Indian Air Force.

The BCATP was one of the largest aviation training programs in history, providing about half of the airmen who flew for Britain and its dependencies in WWII. The ability to train in safety, away from the combat zone, gave Allied pilots a crucial advantage over the Germans, who typically went into combat with roughly half the training hours of their  counterparts. The program was so important that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who called the U.S. “the arsenal of democracy,” dubbed Canada “the aerodrome of democracy” as a result of its contribution to training Allied airmen—many of them in the Tiger Moth.

Tiger Moths were not only used to train pilots during WWII. Some were deployed for coastal patrols. I’m here at Farnborough, Britain’s former center for experimental aircraft development (southwest of London), to investigate another interesting purpose they served.

No, it’s not a mistake—there’s a reason why there are no pilots visible in either cockpit. This aircraft, LF858, was what was known as a “Queen Bee.” British anti-aircraft gun crews needed practice firing at real targets. But flying an airplane with people shooting at you is, well, rather dangerous. So de Havilland figured out a way to put radio equipment in the rear cockpit that could receive messages for an operator on the ground and work the aircraft’s controls accordingly. In other words, it was the world’s first “drone” aircraft.

Besides being able to fly by remote control, the main difference between a regular Tiger Moth and a Queen Bee is that instead of metal tubing for the fuselage frame, the latter used wood (like for its wings) to save money. The objective wasn’t to shoot down the Tiger Moth—that would be wasteful. Gunners used an offset to hopefully miss, so the airplane could land and be used again. But if they did hit, no pilots were at risk.

About 470 Tiger Moth “Queen Bees” were built during WWII. The term “drone” for a pilotless airplane derives directly from the Queen Bee program and refers to a male bee who flies just once to mate with a queen then dies.

By the end of WWII, nearly 8,700 Tiger Moths had been built, 4,200 of them for the RAF alone. It continued to be used by the RAF for training until it was replaced by the de Havilland Chipmunk in the 1950s.

The fact that so many people across the British Empire had learned to fly in a Tiger Moth made them immensely popular after the war, among private pilots and enthusiasts. An estimated 250 Tiger Moths are still flying, including this one based out of the small airstrip near Ranfurly on the southern island of New Zealand.

A number of Tiger Moth clubs exist around the world. The late Christopher Reeve, of Superman fame, once joined one of these clubs and learned how to fly the Tiger Moth. Reeve even made a movie about it, which you can find on YouTube. He said it took some time getting used to how slow they approach and land.

Tiger Moths have appeared in several films, often disguised as other biplanes. For instance, the plane in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was a Tiger Moth, decked out to look like a German Fokker. The silver biplane in The English Patient (1993) was a Tiger Moth (the other, yellow biplane in that movie was a Stearman). It’s worth mentioning that the biplane in Out of Africa (1985) was not a Tiger Moth, but the earlier and very similar Gypsy Moth, also built by de Havilland. Apparently there was even a movie in 1974 called The Sergeant and the Tiger Moth (1974) about a guy and his girlfriend who aren’t even pilots but build and fly one anyway. I have no idea if it’s any good, so please find and watch it for me.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing Ant’s Airplanes Tiger Moth add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Recreating the de Havilland Tiger Moth appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Innsbruck is one of the most beautiful and spectacular places on earth with an airport that can support a variety of airline equipment up to a small widebody such as the Boeing 767-300ER. I have traveled to LOWI for my entire “sim life” but sadly haven’t been able to see it in person yet.

To demonstrate this magnificent place, I chose horrendously gusty winds by manually editing the weather in both X-Plane 12 (XP12) and MSFS2020. I wanted to test terrain-induced dangers with modeled shear, downsloping, thermals, and maybe some rotor effects. 

The results were good and depicted simulated wind over steep peaks equally well. Both sims have enhanced their ability to handle wind flow over terrain and objects, such as buildings. Each will delight and tantalize you into taking risks you would not in real life. However, if you find yourself in a real-world situation that demands all your wind-battling skills, I am confident some, if not most of which you experience in either sim, will translate to useful skills. 

• READ MORE: Ultimate Realism ‘X-posed’ in 747-200 Classic

I started this exercise using the closest thing to a large bizjet I could find, which in MSFS 2020 is the Aerosoft CRJ 550 series with corporate livery. I enjoy this model and use it often, as I have seen these converted to private use in the real world.

I began and ended all my flights at LOWI to test terrain, feel out the winds aloft, as well as terrain-based wind flows and shear. 

The CRJ is interesting to fly with a lot of trimming required as it’s a long-bodied jet with a large swing either side of the CG. I have not flown one in real life, but I find flying pitch with stab trim almost entirely while hand flying. I mean, all jets I have flown are like that, but this is fairly sensitive to pitch, power, and flap configuration—all requiring lots of trimming. Taking off in violent winds was a task. The small aileron “tabs” were not doing a great job in crosswind ability.

Using live weather in my first view patterns was wild enough. On the downwind to the westerly runway at LOWI, I experienced a lot of up and down drafts, shear, varying winds, and sloppy controls. Even some unstable virga bursts were in the valley, corresponding to the actual METAR at the time. 

Snow cover is supposed to be realistically placed, and if it was, the coverage seemed quite believable. Snow still was deep in most elevated regions and spotty in the valley floor by the airport. Also visible was green grass and flowering trees. 

For the final approach, I calculated V_REF of about 128 was fought with much shear, with airspeed variances of up to 20 to 30 knots, providing a wild ride. In the CRJ you can not hear any engines from the cockpit, making for an odd audio sensation. You must look at your power settings only. This makes it easy to get behind the “power curve,” and often I found myself overcorrecting or undercorrecting on speed control. 

I imagine this is how a real CRJ pilot must feel. To me, engine sounds are extremely useful and one of the senses you can not operate without. I imagine MD80-style pilots are used to the same sensation.

I love comparing sims, so I loaded up manual weather in XP12 to mimic the same windy conditions, as live weather in the sim works well. 

I wanted unlimited visibility and no rain. Live weather in XP12 has a defect where it rains all the time, regardless of actual METAR. With a lighter corporate jet, that is powerful. As is often the case with swept-wing jets, sometimes extra drag is required beyond gear and flaps. In this case, I ran the speedbrakes often on final, as gusting winds often increase speed and put you high on the glideslope. 

It definitely was a jarring trip and was often violent with bank angles going beyond 40 degrees. Landing was wild, leading to the aircraft’s big wings striking the ground at times in the crosswinds approaching 35 knots. Its powerful reversers worked great, and slowing down was not an issue. The same monster engines worked great on climbout also, blasting through the shear layers.

Lastly, I tried the heaviest aircraft I could use at LOWI that I had in my library: the 737-700 BBJ models from PMDG and LevelUP for XP12.

Using 130,000 pounds as my test weight, I kept the same weather parameters going, with equally set manual weather in both sims, featuring the same winds. Hand flying the circuit, I blasted through the shear with ease, but the big wings made it even more noticeable in rolling motions and aileron slop.

I have noticed when flying big jets in my sims, the longer wings and winglets of newer airliners tend to “right the jet” quickly as it creates a stable platform in roll. However, it often results in necessary “tugging” or more force to start or end a bank. Older jets without winglets or shorter wingspans are much faster in roll and lack some stability in bank.

• READ MORE: A Better Virtual Flight Deck

I only have my real-world corporate jet experience to draw upon, but I do believe this is true. I have flown “wingleted” Challenger 300s and non-wingleted Falcon 2000s, Hawkers, and Beechjets. Of those, I found the Challenger 300 has a more stable roll and is more sluggish as well in that axis. When I flew Beechjets, with short stubby wings and no winglets, I realized it would simply roll off into oblivion if pushed more than 30 degrees over. There was no inherent stability. 

Some circuits were done taking off downwind. I could actually feel the requirement to push forward on the yoke, keep the stab down, and “dive away from the wind.” That technique works here as well. By neutralizing the yoke, I lost the ability to steer and attack whatever crosswind component was evident. Pushing too far down made steering overly sensitive, but pulling toward takeoff made steering impossible. It was a battle and balance that is realistically conveyed in both sims. 

Initiating the PMDG 737-700 BBJ was equally satisfying in XP12, with more fantastic weather modeling. The “violence” was real, and two landing attempts were met with sudden go-arounds as crosswinds, sudden sink rates, and warnings were severe. 

After a 50-degree sudden roll over at 500 feet, I was done and practiced wild go-arounds. This was in XP12. In both sims, if your sound settings are accurate, you can really hear the gusts on the windscreen on final as power is relatively low. This is something that is present in the real jet I fly.

Once again, I must tout the amazing XP-Realistic Pro, available at www.x-plane.org, for XP12, or the FS-Realistic Pro for MSFS2020. Both enhance and add necessary sound and visual effects for each sim.

Unexpected rolling motion hit me in XP12—and I loved it. Downwind washing wind flow is the reason I suspect, but I can imagine how nauseating this would be in real life. As a captain of jets for many years, I am OK while up front, but as soon as you make me a passenger, all bets are off for my stomach.

Even in the default XP12 scenery you do get the feeling of new worldly locations, with the local-style architecture and buildings changing. The European look is quite evident in Austria, creating an immersive experience, although not quite as dramatic as in MSFS2020.

Doing multiple takeoffs and landings to and from such a beautiful place is fun and satisfying to watch on the replay mode of XP12. I hope Asobo Studio will include replay into future versions of MSFS2020. You can learn a lot from sims, and being able to watch every aspect of it over and over during challenging situations is a great tool. 

The post Simulated Austria Is Wild, Wonderful appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Having been a flight sim enthusiast in the decade before, but inactive since Microsoft Flight Simulator X and X-Plane 9, I decided to launch into building my own home flight simulator with the goal of pairing it with the freshly launched Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020). My goal was to create a cockpit that featured the avionics equipment that I wanted to learn when I could eventually go back to flying in real life, and I wanted my simulator to replicate all the switches and buttons found in most GA aircraft. After three years of building and customizing, my flight simulator reflects the missions and aircraft I like to fly while also allowing the practice of basic maneuvers and procedures at home. 

When the opportunity came to review the Yawman Arrow, I was apprehensive about an all-in-one hand controller designed for a mobile or minimalist home flight sim setup that seemed a world away from the cockpit I had purposefully built. 

The Yawman Arrow team took on the audacious challenge of condensing all of the major flight controls that flight sim pilots have in their home cockpits down into a single hand-held controller. It features two Vernier-style sliders on the bottom center. On the bottom left of the controller is a trim wheel. All the way to the right side are two conventional throttle sliders. Above them is the “six-pack” of black buttons. On the top left of the face is a thumb stick used for the yoke. Directly below and in the center-left position is a five-button switch, and a multidirectional hat switch sits in the center-right position, directly below the six-pack of buttons. At the very top of the controller is the most novel component of the Yawman Arrow—two rudder controls operated by each of your index fingers that are linked together like the rudder controls of a real airplane. When you depress one side, the other side moves in the equal and opposite direction. Two additional buttons near the rudder controls can be assigned to various tasks like the parking brake or for changing Yawman Arrow menus so that more than one function can be paired to a single button. 

While plugging in the controller and jumping into a quick flight is possible, I recommend spending time getting acquainted with the controller’s default button assignments. The Yawman Arrow website has pre-built these so you can print them out, or you can keep them on a second screen as a helpful reference for your first flight. Note that it is best to double-check the button assignments in the control options menu in MSFS2020 (and the equivalent location in X-Plane 11 or 12). I found that some default control assignments differed from the printable document available on the Yawman website. 

To effectively fly with the Yawman Arrow, I needed to spend time sitting in my home flight sim cockpit seat, looking at my controls and then making a plan to determine what assignment to give the most important buttons and sliders. Sitting in my cockpit allowed me to make a visual inventory of the controls, assign them, and then verify the assignments in the MSFS2020 control options menu to make sure I completed the process correctly. It went quickly once I had determined what controls I wanted to assign to the Yawman Arrow. I kept as many of the default settings as I could, only editing what I needed. 

• READ MORE: Setting Up Your Sim

For my first flight, I loaded into the Cessna 172 at KPWM and planned for some basic maneuvers out over the waters of Casco Bay, east of the Portland International Jetport in Maine. I used standard weather and light winds to minimize external factors influencing the aircraft. Preflight and taxiing were no problem once I set the necessary buttons for wheel brakes, parking brake, and flaps. Taxiing using the rudders was enjoyable. The linked rudder controls were my favorite feature of the Yawman Arrow. As a habit, I squeezed both rudder controls at the same time to bring the airplane to a stop near the end of the taxiway before remembering that I needed to use the braking button I had previously mapped. 

Takeoff proved to be more challenging than I anticipated. As I am used to using a realistic, full-size VirtualFly yoke, I needed to acclimate to the relatively small control deflection offered by the thumb stick of the Yawman Arrow. Add to that the effects of P-factor on the aircraft when under full power during takeoff, and my fingers were dancing between the action of rolling the trim wheel, pulling back the yoke hat switch and moving the rudder controls. It was an exercise in small movement motor control, which didn’t take long to get used to. In subsequent takeoffs, I spent time dialing in the yoke/hat switch control sensitivity settings and keeping an eye on my Air Manager display to double-check how much trim control I was using. I was challenged to find the control harmony on takeoff and believe there is more work to be done between dialing in the default sensitivities “out-of-the-box” in MSFS2020 on the Yawman Arrow and simply spending more time getting used to the way aircraft must be flown using the controller.  

Once airborne over the practice area, the 172 was stable, and I found the control harmony between the yoke and rudder controls on the Yawman Arrow was sufficient for slow flight and recovering from power-on and power-off stalls. Satisfied after completing a few basic maneuvers, I returned to the airport to practice a visual approach to a full-stop landing. I set up for a 5-mile, straight-in approach to Runway 29, having flown it before as an active private pilot in real life. I enjoy coming in over the waterways surrounding the city of Portland and MSFS2020 provides some great visual landmarks. 

On a 2-mile final, I set the power for the remainder of the descent and focused on fine-tuning the pitch using the trim wheel. Backing up my trim inputs again visually using the trim display instrument on Air Manager definitely helped. Setting the trim is a critical ingredient of a stabilized approach, and being able to do this consistently is key to making the Yawman Arrow an enjoyable companion or primary controller. The landing was satisfactory, and I felt that I had adequate control authority. Landing provided a good place to try the controller, as it combines relatively slow air speeds with a need to have your fingers near the trim wheel, on the yoke, on the throttle, and up at the rudder controls. This is easier than it sounds given the controller’s natural position in the hand and the thoughtful location of the aforementioned controls. It made me curious to see what a larger version of the Yawman Arrow would feel like, with just a bit more room for hat switch, trim wheel, sliders, and buttons. 

Yawman Arrow founder Jon Ostrower and I discussed the trim wheel in one of our exchanges, and he recommended using it when flying most GA aircraft but to then map the electric trim controls to the second hat switch if flying an aircraft that primarily uses electric trim controls—such as a Cirrus or any small, medium, or large jet—to better simulate how those controls would be moved in the real aircraft. It didn’t occur to me that the trim wheel could be set as a dial for other control uses, such as changing the settings of the autopilot or tuning radio frequencies. It was a reminder that the Yawman Arrow can be set to control nearly any function you need. Other buttons can serve as menu buttons that can be held so that the same button can have more than one function. Here’s where spending time with the default button layouts from the Yawman Arrow website and manual, watching a few how-to videos for tips, and really working through your own customized setup will pay dividends in terms of finding the correct controls at your fingertips when you need it. 

Since I mainly fly GA aircraft in my flight simulation adventures, I loaded up a few of the landing challenges in MSFS2020 that didn’t feature strong crosswinds, so I could better acquaint myself with the Yawman Arrow as a primary controller for jet aircraft. The Aspen, Colorado, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, landing challenges are favorites of mine and served as good test flight profiles as controlling airspeed is the primary objective once the aircraft is lined up correctly on short final. If flying jets will be your primary use for the Yawman, be sure to set controls for the landing gear, speed brakes, flaps, thrust reversers, and other key controls that you’ll need to execute your landings.

Final Impressions  

Overall, I believe the Yawman Arrow controller is a good value for the cost—especially if you’re the type of user who must have a minimalist cockpit setup based on your budget, or you’re someone who travels a lot and desires a portable sim solution. Like any new flight sim equipment, I continued becoming more comfortable as I flew with it, even though I wish I had spent a bit more time with button assignments. I never managed to get the takeoff behavior harmonized to my liking, but I recognize that we’re still in the early days of the Yawman Arrow, and I know that the team behind its development and the flight sim community will begin sharing their collective knowledge to help tune the sensitivity of the yoke and trim settings and make it a bit more intuitive right out of the box in MSFS2020. Note that I limited my testing to MSFS2020 as I currently don’t use X-Plane 11 or 12, so controller sensitivity and differences in the aircraft’s flight model behavior can vary widely between both flight sim software titles. 

Although this is just a nitpick, I would have preferred a grippier outer surface and potentially a larger form factor, like an “XL” size. Given Ostrower’s deliberate design choices, I am sure these factors were given considerable weight, and they amount to subjective personal impressions of my time flying with the Yawman Arrow. Also, I suspect that the controller would pair well with popular head tracking units, such as TrackIR or Tobii Eye Tracker, which would allow those small glances around the cockpit to check the trim and flaps settings. Using them compliments a minimalist setup and would increase immersion. I relied on my copy of Air Manager running on an adjacent screen to help me verify my trim wheel inputs. 

Although the Yawman Arrow won’t be my primary controller, it does offer even the most hardware-obsessed among us the chance to break it out for quick, casual sightseeing flights. It also provides a chance to use your flight simulator while you’re traveling and  to do more intense jet flying with it if you’re committed to learning the control bindings. It is priced at $199.99 and available at Sporty’s Pilot Shop. That price is $79 below that of a Honeycomb Alpha yoke and about in the middle of the cost range of popular joystick HOTAS options. 

Default settings for Yawman Arrow can be found here. 

Pros:

• Best feature is connected rudder controls.
• The Trim wheel is  a novel addition to the hand controller. 
• There are two options for throttles (vernier style or slider).
• Basic camera movement and autopilot controls worked effectively.

Cons: 

• Since there is no wireless function, it must be plugged into your PC or laptop.
• Yawman Arrow does not work with Xbox. 
• A grippier outer material and potentially larger form factor would be preferable.

The post Taking a Virtual Flight with the Yawman Arrow appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Competition is good, and before 2020, we all began to think Microsoft was out of the game, and X-Plane creator Austin Meyer would be the savior, keeping this hobby alive forever. Certainly not swayed by Microsoft’s offerings, Meyer and his team forged ahead, putting the finishing touches on X-Plane 11. X-Plane 12 was released earlier this year after a long beta period. Not forgotten here, or elsewhere, the X-Plane series is continuously updated and developed. In fact, Meyer’s team at Laminar Research is the largest it’s ever been—tiresomely working on X-Plane 12.

I won’t hide the fact that MSFS2020 is gorgeous to look at and has the most stunning aircraft to visually drool over. Photorealistic qualities abound both in the cockpit and view outside. Worldwide satellite imagery turned 3D being fed to you as you fly makes for the most gorgeous earthly renditions I have ever witnessed on a PC. There’s worldwide live weather, even clouds that look real as they are fed via satellite imagery at high resolutions and a fast frame rate. But this can be detrimental to some that lack high-speed connectivity.

Offline play is also nonexistent. The MSFS world will only load well if you’re on a super internet connection. Otherwise, it will struggle and run too poorly to enjoy. Many of the installation issues or updating problems users experience is because of the lack of quality internet connectivity in other parts of the world. With X-Plane, you can still fly offline, anywhere, anytime, hassle free.

But I want to get into detail on one thing. The flight quality in MSFS—although improved since its release—still feels somewhat “too easy, or rail-y.” The development team has openly discussed how new programming of wind on terrain, weather, active thermals, and lift/drag all have improved flight models, and, yes, you can certainly feel the improvements over previous versions. But still something is missing, at least on some default flight models. The lack of momentum, lift being produced on individual surfaces, weight, and weather conditions at hand don’t touch the “blade element theory” X-Plane has rallied with since the beginning.

A Different Model

The realism of the flight model and the pure feel of flying any machine in XP12 is just pure joy. If you have high quality hardware, it’s even more noticeable. As I write this, I am flying a 747-200 with the masterful Honeycomb yoke and a throttle quadrant supporting up to four engines. (Sporty’s Pilot Shop is the place to go for the starter set and run it on a Doghouse Systems Flying Edition core).

I have fallen in love with the Felis 747-200 classic add-on, available for purchase from the x-plane.org online store. This to me is the absolute greatest example of top-end flight dynamics quality, resulting from the XP12 programming. Flying the greatest airliner of all time and being able to feel every aspect is what I love.

You can really feel the momentum to get moving and power required to break away on the tarmac. The sway, moving on body gear steering, is all there all while monitoring your brake temperatures from the flight engineer’s position. The entire cockpit is modeled with every system and switch performing some function with consequences.

I am not a 747 pilot nor engineer, so I really need to spend a lot of time studying all this from profiled documentation or many resources available on the internet. It is a dream to just “do patterns” in this beast—at light weights, pretty agile yet rock solid.

Flying the Felis ‘742’

When considering the Felis “742” in XP12, the lighting, sky, and weather depiction is improved, but jagged shadows and somewhat grainy textures still exist around the cockpit at times. The Felis 742 has an EFB that will calculate the necessary speeds, with corresponding flap settings, takeoff power, etc. This beast will react to weight extremely realistically, and you’ll feel it while hand flying.

The takeoff is the most realistically pleasing of any flight sim aircraft I have ever used in 40 or more years as a simmer. Partially because of XP12 itself and its brilliant modeling, and partially because of this particular aircraft add-on’s quality. As you go barreling down the runway, (don’t forget XPrealistic for the shaking and sounds not included in XP12 by default) the rattling and vibrations come to life. At V_R, you pull hard on the yoke and wait. Nothing happens right away then slowly the “Queen of the Skies” will relinquish her grip on Earth, bringing the nose up to takeoff attitude, and moments later the main trucks will unplant themselves and she’ll break ground. You can feel this with your eyes, and vertical speed, and even with your controls. It’s absolutely amazing—with wings bending and lifting, external flyby views are the best at these moments.

Magnificent in every way, the 747-200 for XP11 and XP12 demonstrates dominating realism—it could be the best rendition of any heavy jet for any flight sim. In cruise you’ll be constantly fiddling with the four power levers to tweak precise fuel flow just like the real 747-200. Holding four levers in your hand with real hardware ups the immersion 10 times, or cheat and use the primitive autothrottle. I will have to wait until the PMDG Simulations team releases its 747-400 series, sometime in the next year I believe, to see if it can outdo this model with the MSFS base. PMDG is the master of flight dynamics for the Microsoft franchise, featuring the 737NG, 747-400, and 777 previous version. But until then, the Felis 742 can not be touched.

Improving X-Plane

The current state of X-Plane 12 is under constant improvement. The folks at Laminar Research are working on some internal graphics enhancements to mesh with all the extra VRAM optimizations currently undergoing to bring XP12 to the next level. I’ve been told that the problems I have experienced with jagged edges, or blocky shadows, etc., will be drastically improved, but it all takes time. It’s a puzzle of memory allocation and individual pixel related algorithms.

Meyer’s efforts are to continually produce the most realistically accurate flight simulator in the world, not a scenery sim or one that showcases your home and driveway below. As we know, those things are in “the other sim.” For now, I have also been enjoying the proven XP11 with the Felis 747 and other top quality add-ons I have purchased over the years. They all perform flawlessly in XP11, from the standpoint of flight dynamics, in a world that is still tried and true. I have no doubt XP12 will dominate everyone’s XP world in the upcoming year or so, sending XP11 to the closet.

What XP12 now offers is a completely new scenery base model, with greater variability of the “plausible world.” The biggest overhaul was with ambient lighting, weather modeling, and effects such as standing water, puddling, spray, and ground icing and its effects on the aircraft at hand. The weather is so cool that I have often placed myself on a ramp, engine off, in silence to hear and watch an incoming squall line blast me.

To take a flight sim aircraft model and place yourself in an area on the ramp in silence, with no engines running, to watch and listen to the weather inbound is a testament to its realism. The roar of thunder, wind, pouring rain, and lightning flashes are the best I have seen. The same with icing, snow squalls and slippery runways, where water will freeze up on you—either all manually driven or via live weather. The XP thunderstorm model will destroy you if you choose to tangle. The MSFS thunderstorm may look good but is weak in comparison. There’s a feeling of danger in XP when it comes to the weather.

Weather Realism

Using live weather will dynamically change as you fly the globe. It’s accurate, fast loading, and works well on a weak internet connection. But a fun exercise is to build the weather manually. X-Plane doesn’t interpret METAR visibility well in automatic weather, limiting it to only 10 miles by default since that’s the upper limit on worldwide METAR reports. This is very annoying, as in-flight visibilities often go far above 100 miles. The XP world always looks too hazy. By taking auto weather off, and manually controlling it, you can enjoy all the preloaded winds aloft, etc., and then raise the visibility to something more fitting.

• READ MORE: Testing Live Weather and Winter Wonders Along the Way

Manually building more believable cumulus clouds and thunderstorms is great. For those of you who don’t like the automatically made clouds, try making a scattered layer of cumulonimbus with no rain, no change, and steady state. You’ll get some very believable puffy clouds on an otherwise nice day. Be sure to manually add thermals below the bases as well for typical daytime chop. Then make the clouds deteriorate on their own for the next level of greatness with the thunderstorms XP so perfectly demonstrates.

The X-Plane pucker factor wouldn’t be what it is without the ability to set up more than 500 combinations of system failures anytime, anywhere. This powerful tool is another feature that has made XP so incredibly real for flight training, awareness, and other real-life “big picture” skills that home simulators can perfect. From bird strikes and the resulting random damage to faulty maintenance that could lead to an aileron coming off sometime unexpectedly, it’s all there. Not for the faint of heart, yet absolutely necessary for one’s skills and processing strengths as a sim or real-world pilot.

The add-on market of available fully detailed systems for loaded aircraft is strong. Operating them in the X-Plane world (either version) gives the desktop pilot the best feel for what that particular real-life aircraft counterpart flies like.

This feature first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Ultimate Realism ‘X-posed’ in 747-200 Classic appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I am often inspired by the real locations and weather I experience when I am on a real work trip. With ForeFlight by my side, it’s fun to test the realism of the sims and how they’re interpreting live weather worldwide. Both X-Plane 12 (XP12) and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020) do a pretty good job of keeping up with it and both have shown continual improvements. It seems each month the message forums are showcasing live weather questions, observations, frustrations, and praise. 

I feel the most accurate live weather award currently goes to MSFS2020 as most of the flights I take, with ForeFlight next to me, are startlingly accurate. The altimeter, visibility, and clouds are really spot on. Locations of rain or snow are pretty accurate too with virga and visual depictions often having me saying “wow.” 

I made my way westward recently from the East Coast to encounter winter spots. The first was a stop into Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (KCLE) using a 787 Dreamliner. KCLE is known for lake-effect snow and this day didn’t disappoint. Snow bands were flowing west to east, and my flight session, down the ILS to an eventual autoland, took me right in the heart of it all.

Various moments from the cockpit view included bursts of snow whooshing past, some varying visibility, and not a lot of turbulence. Even as shown on ForeFlight, the snow showers ended east of the field near the city, allowing for an almost completely visual approach. As I got closer, some definite wind shear jibs and jabs made the wings bounce, something the 787 is famous for with its dampening, flexing wings.

Testing live weather was a success in this scenario. Let’s see the next one. 

I proceeded westward a few hours to the Dakotas and upon reaching there had some very windy weather and snowy bursts to contend with as well. I was using the amazing Learjet 35 I recently featured and it was a blast to feel this one out in surface winds gusting to 40 knots. The Learjet has enough fuel for about 1,500 nm tops, and in this case I traveled about 1,000 miles. I set out for a field in the North Dakota-eastern Montana area for fuel and aircraft change.

The somewhat higher elevations and wide-open areas with some gradual terrain will start making shear. The bumps were noticeable but not yet overly crazy. The wind flow over terrain effect within MSFS is remarkably accurate. 

For the next leg of the adventure, I chose the default Cessna Longitude bizjet, with more range and modern avionics to attempt a “visual” in horrendous weather, surrounded by dangerous terrain. Revelstoke, British Columbia, in Canada is spectacular as it gets, so I went to go check it out.

I vectored myself onto the arrival below the terrain. I would be landing on Runway 30 with the poor weather conditions, so I decided to use the modern technology at hand.

Following the 3D view with an eyesight-enhanced vision system on the Latitude, I could see right through the clouds and snow, down the river in virtual visual conditions. Now, I don’t think pilots with this avionics package do this yet, but I could see someday in the not too distant future the ability to just fly a visual approach in something horrendous.

I was led right down the shoot to the breakout point and runway in real visual conditions at a low altitude I would say was near ILS minimums.

In the real Challenger 300 I fly, similar to the Longitude, the reversers are so effective and rev up to such a high percentage, we don’t even touch the brakes until almost walking speed or something under 40 knots.

MSFS has great icing modeled with effects on performance. It doesn’t always come off cleanly, and sometimes even windows don’t get cleared very rapidly.

Continuing the adventure, I got into an A321neo (LatinVFR available on sim marketplace) for the rest of the journey westward. There is no better, more scenic place than Juneau, Alaska, and an unusual weather event was occurring at the time—clear skies! Alaska in winter is usually terrible with huge rain storms likely along the coast or wet snow blizzards. Apparently a cold snap following some heavy snows was occurring the day I tried this, and the built-in live weather matched the conditions almost to a T.

I have to stop somewhere, because the adventuring available in Alaska is endless. Maybe I’ll do this  again later this winter as there is so much to discover and tinker with. Setting up manual weather to something wild and dangerous is also fun, especially in mountainous regions. Using the variety of GA aircraft available in the sims opens up a whole new avenue of bush flying, where icing dangers are more noteworthy. 

As always, I have to link the “must-haves” as you fly: 

FS Realistic Pro for the best add-on ever made.

Sporty’s Pilot Shop for all the flight controls imaginable and an easy home setup.

ProDeskSim for the coolest affordable add-ons to the Honeycomb throttle quadrant that will leave you drooling. 

The post Testing Live Weather and Winter Wonders Along the Way appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This is also the story of the Schneider Trophy, one of the most prestigious prizes in early aviation that sparked fierce international competition to develop the fastest airplanes in the world. The trophy was the brainchild of Jacques Schneider, a French hydroplane boat racer and balloon pilot who was sidelined by a crash injury. Originally an annual contest, starting in 1912, it promised 1,000 British pounds (more than $100,000 today) to the seaplane that could complete a 280-kilometer (107-mile) course in the fastest time. Interrupted by World War I, the contest resumed in 1919 with a new provision: Any country that won three times in a row would keep the trophy permanently. The prize quickly became the focus of intense international rivalry.

Until 1922, the contest was dominated by flying boats—with their fuselages serving as the floating hull—and by the hard-charging Italians—led by the companies Savoia and Macchi, which came close to walking away with three wins and the trophy, scoring average speeds just over 100 mph. But starting in 1923, the Americans introduced floatplanes (streamlined biplanes on pontoons) and took speeds to an entirely new level. Jimmy Doolittle—the famous racer who later led the first World War II bombing raid on Tokyo—won the 1925 race at 232.57 mph, putting the U.S. one step from final victory.

The sole British victory had come in 1922 in a flying boat built by Supermarine Aviation Ltd. Founded in 1913, the Southampton, England-based company had a disappointing record designing aircraft during WWI but since then had enjoyed some limited success ferrying passengers across the English Channel. The company’s chief designer was a young man still in his 20s named Reginald Joseph “R.J.” Mitchell. Desperate not to be shut out by the Italians and Americans, the British Air Ministry backed Mitchell’s efforts to experiment with some radical new designs.

The Supermarine S.4 (the “S” being for Schneider) was a streamlined floatplane, like the American entries, but a monoplane instead of a biplane, constructed mostly of wood and powered by a 680 hp Napier Lion engine. In 1925 it set a world speed record of 226.752 mph, but it proved highly unstable and crashed during trials for the Schneider Trophy race that year. Two years later, Supermarine and Mitchell were back with a revised design: the Supermarine S.5. Three were built and entered in the Schneider competition, numbered 219, 220, and 221. I’ll be flying No. 220 today.

I’ll talk about some of the differences between the S.4 and S.5, but first let’s set the scene. The Schneider Trophy race was hosted by whichever country won the last time. The Italians were victorious in 1926, so the 1927 race was held in Venice. This time, not only was the British government providing financial support, it also sponsored a team of Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots to fly the airplanes.

One of the more curious conditions of the Schneider contest was that the aircraft first had to prove they were seaworthy by floating for six hours at anchor and traveling 550 yards over water. I found taxiing, takeoff, and landing quite bouncy. With its powerful engine and high center of gravity, the S.5 had a tendency to porpoise up and down over the smallest waves.

For all the entries, just keeping the fragile airframes together and the high-powered engines functioning was half the battle. Often, the finicky aircraft broke down or crashed (like the S.4 did in 1925) before they could even begin the race.

The crowds still came. It’s been barely a few months since American Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, creating a wave of popular enthusiasm for aviation. More than 250,000 spectators have gathered to see the 1927 Schneider race. The course itself is located outside the lagoon, along the Lido. The airplanes must fly seven 47-kilometer laps around the course for a total distance of 320 kilometers (just over 204 miles).

And here we go at full speed across the starting line across from the Hotel Excelsior.

We fly south along the shoreline of the Lido, past the lighthouse at Alberoni, and toward Chioggia.

A steep 180-degree turn at Chioggia, a miniature Venice that built its medieval wealth on its adjoining salt pans…

…then north on the seaward straightaway.

Another hard left turn around the San Nicolo lighthouse…

…then back across the starting line to begin the next lap.

Unlike the S.4, the S.5’s wings are strongly braced by wires. These may add unwanted drag, but they keep the airplane from breaking up under the stress of those high-speed turns.

The S.5 I’m flying, No. 220, is powered by an improved 900 hp Napier Lion piston engine, delivering 220 horsepower more than its predecessor. It has 12 cylinders, arranged in three lines of four cylinders each in the shape of a W, creating the three distinct humps along the nose. The propeller has a fixed pitch.

Fuel was carried inside the two floats, while the oil tank was located inside the tail. The engine was cooled by water, which circulated its heat to copper plates on the wings that served as radiators. Corrugated metal plates along the fuselage served as radiators for the engine oil.

The cockpit is mainly designed to monitor if the engine is overheating—and little else. The goal is to keep rpm close to 3,300, radiator temperature below 95 degrees, and oil temperature below 140 degrees. I’ve found that while the engine may not be air cooled, the flow of air over the radiator surfaces matters a lot. So maintaining a relatively high speed at an efficient engine setting actually helps keep things cool. There’s an airspeed indicator, but it tops out at 400 kilometers per hour, well below our racing speed. There’s no altimeter, and only a rudimentary inclinometer (bubble level) to indicate bank. It’s also nearly impossible to see straight ahead over the engine cowling.

In the cockpit to my right, I have a paper punch card. Every time I pass the finish line, I poke a new hole in it to keep track of how many laps I’ve completed.

Another little twist in the rules: Twice during the race, the aircraft had to “come in contact” with the water—typically a kind of bounce without slowing, which could be very tricky at high speed.

It so happens that  every single airplane except two—both Supermarine S.5s—failed to finish the race in 1927 for one reason or another. Our No. 220, flown by Flight Lieutenant Sidney Webster, finished first with an average speed of 281.66 mph.

The British had won the trophy, but they would have to repeat their performance two more times to keep it for good. To allow more time for aircraft development, participants agreed to hold future competitions every two years, with the next race coming in 1929.

The contest would take place in Supermarine’s home waters off Southampton. The company entered one S.5 and two S.6s. The latter, which had roughly the same design, were now all-metal planes with a new engine with more than twice the horsepower—the 1,900 hp Rolls-Royce R. To keep this monster engine cool, the S.6 needed surface radiators built into its pontoons as well as wings. Not only did one of the S.6s win the 1929 trophy with an average speed of 328.64 mph, but just before the race it set a new world speed record of 357.7 mph.

The British were now one win away from keeping the trophy for good. But with the onset of the Great Depression, the Labour Party-led British government pulled its funding and forbade RAF pilots to fly in the next race in 1931. The decision was wildly unpopular and led to public outcry. Into the fray stepped Lady Lucy Houston, a former suffragette and the second-richest woman in England. Fiercely critical of the Labour Party, she personally pledged to donate whatever funding was needed for Britain to compete in the race.

Backed by 100,000 pounds from Houston (and renewed participation by an embarrassed British government), Supermarine entered six aircraft in the race—two S.5s (including No. 220, which won at Venice), two S.6s, and two brand-new S.6Bs. The S.6B had redesigned floats, but most importantly, an improved Rolls-Royce R engine that delivered an astounding 2,350 horsepower. As it turned out, no other countries entered the competition that year. The S.6B raced alone, achieving an average speed of 340.08 mph. The next day, the S.6B set a new world speed record of 407.5 mph.

There would be no more Schneider Trophy races. With three straight, the trophy was Britain’s to keep, and it remains on display at the Science Museum in London, though few visitors may appreciate what it means. Besides a boost to national pride, the Schneider races propelled aviation forward by leaps and bounds. Today, it might be surprising to realize that the world speed record was consistently set by seaplanes from 1927 to 1935, when the Hughes H-1 Racer finally surpassed them.

The Supermarine S-planes provided Mitchell experience and confidence with incorporating all-metal construction, streamlined monoplane design, innovative wing shapes, and high-performance, liquid-cooled engines. And the S.6s introduced him to working with Rolls-Royce, which built on the lessons learned from its “R” engine to develop a new mass-production engine, starting at 1,000 horsepower, called the Merlin. In the early 1930s, Mitchell would marry these proven high-speed design ideas to the Merlin engine to create the Supermarine Spitfire, the legendary aircraft credited with winning the Battle of Britain during WWII. As for Lady Houston, who supported Supermarine’s entry in the final race, she was later lauded as the “Mother of the Spitfire” for keeping Mitchell’s development efforts alive.

In 1942, the British produced a wartime movie called The First of the Few. It tells the story of Mitchell’s development of the Spitfire, including the key role of the Schneider Trophy races. But the raceplanes themselves were mostly abandoned and ultimately scrapped. Only the Supermarine S.6B that won the 1931 race still survives—now on display at the Solent Sky Museum in Southampton. 

In 1975, Ray Hilborne built a replica of the Supermarine S.5, which was damaged a few years later. Bob Hosie rebuilt it to fly again, inspiring a folk song by Archie Fisher. Sadly, Hosie was killed in 1987 when it crashed. Today his son William Hosie is part of a project to build a new replica of the Supermarine S.5, with hopes to have it flying by 2027. You can learn more about it here.

Meanwhile, the Schneider Trophy race was revived in 1981. Instead of seaplanes, it features small general aviation airplanes as part of the annual British Air Racing Championship.

I hope you enjoyed the story of the Supermarine S.5 and its amazing legacy. If you’d like to see a version of this article with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the freeware Supermarine S.5 add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 created by sail1800 and downloaded from flightsim.to.

The post The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

At this time, it’s available exclusively from its website. 

I had neither expected nor even heard of this release, though the company has been making fine add-ons for quite a while now for previous versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) and Prepar3d. So, I was slightly behind the power curve here, making it probably more exciting for me than others who already knew this was coming for MSFS2020. 

The corporate jet world is very limited in MSFS. The only true corporate jets of any reputable quality available are the stock Citation CJ4 and Longitude. Now, this Lear 35A truly brings a top-notch add-on to the mix. This was such a beauty I had to get this article out while it was still fresh and new. My initial flights have been easy and hassle-free. Due to its “early access” status, no manual comes with the product as of yet.

For me, a Challenger 300 captain, I believed I could figure this bird out without a problem. And for the most part, I have, from cold, dark start-ups to completing flights and learning as I go. It reminds me of the earlier days in my career flying Beechjets. Battery engine starts, fairly simple fuel management, and a pair of powerful reversers for stopping. Gimme a good pair of thrust reversers any day over the newfangled light jets that have none. Having only brakes to stop a jet is a bad idea in my mind, and maybe that’s one reason so many HondaJets, Phenoms, and CJs seem to have a lot of runway overshoots these days.

The flying and handling quality is fantastic, from what I can tell. I am not a Learjet expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn’t have the easy-to-find flaws I have run into with many other aircraft add-ons over the years. The momentum, engine behavior, flying response and feedback, and maneuverability all seem in check with what I would expect of a real Learjet.

A lot of my praise comes from the fact that a team of real Learjet 35 pilots helped create this early masterpiece, so I feel I can ride with that in my positive evaluation. I am a big proponent of sounds and sound effects, and so far, this one doesn’t disappoint. I had to watch a few real Lear 35A videos on YouTube to compare, and I especially love the add-on’s internal engine spool-up sounds. Spot on! Reminds me of my Beechjet days when those engines had a beautiful harmonic hum on climbout.

One thing that’s missing is the sound of pressurization and air vents, which can be quite loud and fluctuate with the power settings. I hope that effect is added. Reverse thrust, while powerful, creates no noise. The real jet reverser is quite a loud roar. Luckily, FSRealistic solves the reverser noises. You can get FSRealistic at an online store, such as sim market, here. 

I am teaching myself the fuel system. It’s pretty self-explanatory with a great little iPad-type of device that shows systems, weather, weight and balance, etc. With all five tanks in operation and with the clever use of a few simple switches to keep fuel in the right places, you can go almost 2,000 nm. This is only if you’re very good with fuel flow and cruise Mach, as well as knowledgeable on how temperature aloft affects performance. I only see this long cruise happening above FL 400 with temps below ISA traveling at maybe Mach 0.75. Top speed seems to be Mach 0.80 (460 TAS), but you’ll eat up fuel and reduce range to far less. 

• READ MORE: Optimizing PC Performance for MSFS2020

Hand flying this little rocket proves that it is indeed that— a rocket. After a hefty pull on the yoke at VR (with no manual or speeds to reference, I guess, and trim her off when she’s ready…like 130 knots or so) and you’re off and running, 8,000 fpm is easy. Trim nose down to something more reasonable and pull power back to MCT or something less than takeoff power for noise abatement and engine safety. Reaching 4,000 fpm is easy now, flaps up and speed at 250 knots. Very maneuverable and fun to hand fly. Precise trim and balanced controls make this a dream.

After many fun takeoffs, landings, and touch and goes to get a feel for her, it sure feels like a barrel roll is in order. I know the Lear will do this in real life, and at least in sim, FAA inspectors can’t touch your virtual license. Landing the Learjet is straight forward, fun, and easy. It takes a little time getting used to the speed and angle-of-attack gauge if you’re not experienced in jet flying. Great landing quality, and realism is a delight. It’s not overly twitchy and works great with high-quality controls. For home use, I have been incorporating the Honeycomb Flight Controls starter pack (including yoke, pedals, and throttle quadrant), all via Sporty’s Pilot Shop. 

This is such a wonderful jet to fly. It’s one of the greatest I have ever gotten for any flight sim, period. That covers 40 years of this hobby, and the corporate jet realm is extremely limited. X-Plane has certainly offered more over the years, but we are long overdue for some love on the MSFS front, and this product certainly takes the lead. For about $40 you can grab this winner and join the evolving improvements constantly being brought forth by the dedicated team at Flysimware. I’d say this is a five out of five-star quality, even at this early stage. With a product this good, I really hope the company will make more corporate jets, especially the Challenger 300 I fly for real-life employment. 

The post Exploring the Flysimware Lear 35A for <i>MSFS2020</i> appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In Part 1 of my series featuring Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 initial setup (May 2023/Issue 937), we discussed the importance of making instant views to use all the time when flying. Positioning yourself and creating the proper “captain’s eye point” is crucial in being able to fly like a real pilot would, as well as correct sight positioning and view toward the runway to enable landing like the pros.

• READ MORE: Your First Sim

For some reason, the default viewing height given is always in error, often too low to see properly over the “dashboard” or glareshield. Unless you’re a 5 year old learning to fly, the default viewpoints are always bizarre to me. After 10,000 hours of flying mostly corporate jets in my career, I can promise you that in order to get the best look and “feel,” please use the photo on the next spread to get a sense of the proper view height.

Whether it’s a transport category jet or Cessna 152,the same principles should apply: See enough of the panel to give you the PFD, or basic instruments such as speed, vertical rate, and some engine gauges, but then cut off the rest. You must see more than 50 percent of your view out of the front, as I have shown you in the image. You can have hot keys set for the rest of the panel or external views as we discussed earlier.

Once this pilot’s eye is set, the rest is not as important and can be anything you’d like to have in a “scan” or button press corresponding to all the 1-9 viewpoints you locked in before. Often people tell me if they set the view like that, they can’t see the primary gauges that well. I tell them, in real life, especially in jets where everything is bigger and farther apart, we can’t either.

Takeoff in jets is done by the nonflying pilot calling out our V-speeds. Same on landing. We actually have to scan down far away from the view outside to see our speeds and instruments. Thus, the nonflying pilot is again calling out everything we need to hear. I actually don’t see the airspeed indicator much at all in a jet on landing—or takeoff for that matter.

The Keys to It All

Onward to the important “key bindings” you’ll need to perform next in order to run your cockpit efficiently. Now, my key assignments are only an example, but they have worked great for me for more than 20 years in all simulators—and have never changed. Now with more hardware, these key assignments can be brought over to the Honeycomb system or whatever you may have at hand.

Let’s start with your keyboard F key row. I assign F1to 4 as some external lights.

Options/Controls Options/Keyboard/Filter All/SearchBy Name (insert “landing light” for example)/Toggle Landing Lights (then insert your key you want like F1)/Save And Exit

Continuing on, assign the following necessary key commands:

F5 Flaps Up/F6 Flaps Up A Notch/F7 Flaps Down ANotch/F8 Flaps Full Down

Recommended Autopilot Functions

I set up my system to actuate the autopilot using these key settings:

F9: Decrease autopilot reference airspeedF10: Increase autopilot reference airspeed

F11: Decrease autopilot reference altitude

F12: Increase autopilot reference altitude

V: Toggle autopilot V hold

Z: Toggle autopilot master

H: Toggle autopilot heading hold

L: Toggle autopilot flight level change

Ctrl-A: Toggle autopilot approach hold

Right Ctrl+=: Increase autopilot reference Vs

Right Ctrl+-: Decrease autopilot reference Vs

S: Autopilot airspeed hold

T: Arm autothrottle

[: Decrease heading bug

]: Increase heading bug

F: Flight director toggle

I have other controllers using the same commands, as often I may use a combination of keyboard and various controllers depending on if I am at home or on the road. Naturally these are just my personal choices that have worked well over the years for me. Once comfortable setting these up, you can choose anything you want. It will be easy and fast to configure.

Perhaps the most important buttons to assign in the entire program are “pitch trim up and down.” I use two buttons on my joystick for that, simulating the electric trim rocker found in most general aviation and jet aircraft of today.

Whether or not you have a simple or complex set of actual hardware to use, I would recommend attaching an Xbox 360 or Elite controller to the mix. It’s an inexpensive but very effective piece of hardware that in my case becomes a portable autopilot unit. The sim will take any number of hardware pieces running in harmony. This simple device can be used for basic flying, but I chose to disable all the default flight functions on my Xbox controller and have introduced many of the autopilot functions I just spoke about (see sidebar below).

Amateur, But It Works

In addition to either my joystick (THQ Airbus side-stick) or the Honeycomb yoke, I have my landing lights, strobes, nav lights, and taxi lights assigned for quick access. Speed brakes can be assigned to a joystick traditional throttle slider or fancier throttle quadrant unit.

Once you purchase your first set of controllers, MSFS2020 will by default load many of the most common functions, especially if using a name-brand throttle quadrant with panels and buttons built in. The Honeycomb system does just that, with obvious systems, such as landing gear, already mapped properly.

Now that hopefully you have set up your controls and views the way you like them, you are indeed ready to fly and explore the entire world in minute detail. Be sure to be safe, plan, and treat it like it is oh-so-very real.

One last necessary item I’d recommend is the added immersion you’d get by purchasing FSRealistic, available online. It adds the necessary vibrations, noises, head-shaking motions, and so on, that I myself as a real pilot find extremely necessary when flying the sim. By default, MSFS2020 is not that animated, but this add-on takes care of the necessary things I feel that I can not live without in a realistic flight sim environment. Give it a try.

Recommended Autopilot Functions On an Xbox Controller

On my Xbox controller, I have assigned the following:

LEFT FORWARD BUMPER: Flaps up a notch

LEFT STICK PUSH DOWN: Lower flaps a notch

RIGHT FORWARD BUMPER: Reduce throttle (used for engine reversers on jets if you don’t have a throttle system that specifically does this—normal throttle forward from any device will remove reverse thrust)

PLUS PAD UP: Heading hold

PLUS PAD RIGHT: Increase heading bug

PLUS PAD DOWN: Altitude hold

PLUS PAD LEFT: Decrease heading bug

RIGHT STICK PUSH DOWN: Gear toggle

Other buttons I have are dedicated to Autopilot master toggle, Flight director toggle, etc.

This article first appeared in the July 2023/Issue 939 print edition of FLYING.

The post Setting Up Your Sim appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Claude Dornier, born in 1884, was the son of a French wine merchant and his German wife. Dornier grew up in Bavaria and graduated from engineering school in Munich. He went to work for Ferdinand von Zeppelin at his base in Friedrichshafen and soon rose to become the count’s top technical adviser, helping design dirigibles and airplanes. In 1914, Dornier formed his own airplane company, also based in Friedrichshafen. A museum is located on the site today.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, all aircraft production in the country was prohibited. Dornier continued to design aircraft but had to produce them in Italy. The Dornier Do J flying boat represented his first major success.

The Do J was powered by two piston engines placed in tandem (front and back) over the wing. A variety of different types of engines were used, depending on availability and needs. These are British-made Napier Lion 12 cylinders, putting out 450 hp each. The engines were accessible via a ladder on the platform behind the cockpit.

The floats on either side of the fuselage, supporting the wing struts, are Dornier’s patented “sponsons,” which made it more stable in the water than the more common side pontoons.

The cockpit itself was completely open and exposed to the elements. Keep that in mind during the long journey ahead. What’s more, sitting in the cockpit, that big propeller is turning right above your head.

Inside the cockpit, the main pilot’s seat is on the right, not the usual left. The throttle and fuel mixture levers for both engines are on the pilot’s right side. Note the mechanical wires and pulleys connecting the controls to the control surfaces. The position of the instruments, directly behind the “wheel,” makes them a bit difficult to see.

The Dornier Do J made its maiden flight in 1922. The nickname “Wal” means “whale” in German.

The specific airplane we’re looking at right now was called the “Plus Ultra.” And we’re joining it just as it prepares to take off from the Rio Tinto in front of Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain for a historic flight on January 22, 1926.

The pilot was Captain Ramon Franco, brother of future Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Both were officers in the Spanish army, though in 1920, Ramon had joined the country’s new air force. The co-pilot was Captain Julio Ruiz de Alda, who later helped found Spain’s fascist Falangist movement and was executed by anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. There were also two more crewmembers, a lieutenant and a mechanic, who I presume were located inside the hull.

Their goal was to fly from Spain across the south Atlantic to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a series of stages. Their point of departure, Palos de la Frontera, was symbolic because it is where Christopher Columbus sailed from on his first voyage to the Americas.

Rio Tinto is also the name of a large British mining company that operated the famous copper mines here, just outside of Huelva, starting in the late 1800s. These were its loading piers below me. At the very tip of the peninsula, where the rivers converge, is a monument to Columbus’ voyages.

“Plus Ultra” means “further beyond” in Latin and is the national motto of Spain. The first leg of this journey was 1,300 kilometers to the Canary Islands, all by sea. Weight is everything on a journey like this. Before departing Spain, they actually discovered a stowaway on board—a newspaper reporter—who could have ruined their plans.

The journey to the Canary Islands took eight hours. Consider that’s an awfully long time to be in an open cockpit, completely exposed to the elements, over the ocean.

We’ve arrived at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The Plus Ultra landed a bit farther south along the shore, at the Bay of Gando, where Gran Canaria’s modern international airport is located.

On the 26th, they took off from Gran Canaria on the second leg: 1,745 kilometers to Cabo Verde, off the western tip of Africa. This time, the journey lasted nine hours and 50 minutes over the ocean before reaching land. I’m arriving at Praia, at Cabo Verde, just as the sun is setting.

From Cabo Verde, the Plus Ultra took off for the third and longest stage across the Atlantic to Brazil. On this leg, the airplane ran into serious headwinds that slowed its progress considerably and pushed it off course.

Almost out of fuel, they fortunately came across the tiny islands of Fernando de Noronha, 350 kilometers off the northeast tip of Brazil. It must have been an extremely welcome sight. Today the islands are still very remote and mainly popular for ecotourism. They had traveled 2,305 kilometers in 12 hours and 40 minutes.

I have no idea how they refueled here, but somehow they did, and by January 31 were ready to depart on their next stage. You’d think that the next leg, 540 kilometers to Recife on the mainland coast of Brazil, would be easy by comparison. In fact, the rear propeller broke and had to be fixed in mid-flight. Unless they landed in the ocean, I assume they had the mechanic climb up there while still in the air. I tried it, and the plane can still fly on one engine—barely. After three hours and 38 minutes, though, they made it safely to Recife.

From here it was a matter of following the coast for 2,100 kilometers to Rio de Janeiro, which took 12 hours and 15 minutes. They arrived in Rio to a rapturous welcome on February 4. The crew of the Plus Ultra were not, in fact, the first pilots to fly across the south Atlantic to Rio. Two Portuguese aviators had done so, from Lisbon, in 1922. But they had used three different airplanes. This was the first crossing in a single plane.

From there, another 2,060 kilometers to Montevideo, Uruguay, greeted by another huge crowd on February 9. And, finally, across the River Plate to their destination: Buenos Aires, Argentina. It had been a journey of 10,270 kilometers in 59 hours and 30 minutes in the air, at an average speed of 172 km/h.

Their arrival in Buenos Aires on February 10, 1926, was a major news event in Spain and throughout Latin America, which was now linked to Europe by air. The Argentinian songwriter Carlos Gardel composed a popular tango to celebrate the flight of the Plus Ultra, “La Gloria del Águila” (Glory of the Eagle). The Plus Ultra itself is preserved in a museum just outside of Buenos Aires. The crew returned to Spain as national heroes.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

Ramon Franco’s subsequent story is a curious one. Far from sharing his brother’s right-wing politics, he entered that realm as a left-wing republican anarchist, involved in conspiracies to overthrow the monarchy. But blood proved thicker, and he sided with his brother Francisco in the Spanish Civil War. Ramon was killed in 1938, when his seaplane crashed during a bombing mission against Valencia.

The journey of the Plus Ultra was not the only famous voyage undertaken by the Dornier Do J. Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen attempted to fly two of them to the North Pole in 1925. Amundsen took off and landed them directly on the polar ice sheet but unfortunately landed somewhat short of his goal. Their plan was to fly two (N24 and N25) to the North Pole, transfer the fuel, and fly only one of them (N25) back, which they did. Their failure to reach the North Pole opened the door for the American Richard Byrd’s attempt the following year, which I covered in another post on the Fokker F.VII.

Like the Fokker F.VIII, the Dornier Do J also served as an airliner. The passenger versions had a cabin in the front of the hull, pushing the cockpit back a bit behind the front propeller. Here’s a look at the interior of the Dornier Do J’s passenger cabin.

Passengers and mail would arrive on other airplanes down from Europe, transfer at Bathurst to the Dornier Do J for the ocean crossing, then once in South America, catch yet another airplane to their final destinations.

Lufthansa competed with the predecessor of Air France on what became known as the “Southern Mail” (from Europe to Latin America), though the French did not fly Dorniers. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, famous for writing The Little Prince, flew this route for the French rival to Lufthansa. His books imbued the Southern Mail with an aura of romance and daring.

Initially, the Dornier Do J couldn’t make the crossing in one go. It has to land in the ocean midway to meet up with a prepositioned ship to refuel. However, landing and taking off in the deep ocean swells proved hazardous and also consumed a lot of fuel. So by 1934 they were making the flight directly, though the airline maintained support ships if needed.

Claude Dornier went on to build even larger seaplanes, including the 12-engine Dornier Do X in 1929. Dornier also built bombers and other aircraft for the new German Luftwaffe, including the Do 17 “Flying Pencil” that took part in the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of Britain. In contrast to Hugo Junkers, who opposed the Nazis and lost his company to them, Dornier joined the Nazi Party in 1940 to secure his aircraft contracts. 

Dornier escaped prosecution as a war criminal but was classified as a Nazi “follower”—an ignominious end to his career. He died in 1969, but his company still exists in various forms, as subsidiaries of larger firms, including EADS Group.

I hope you enjoyed the story of the Dornier Do J Wal, an airplane whose bulky, boat-like shape belies its pioneering role in the history of early aviation.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the Dornier Do J Wal add-on to MSFS 2020, along with sceneries produced by Romantic Wings, as well as by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post Simulating the Voyage of the Plus Ultra appeared first on FLYING Magazine.