Aerosoft Beech 18

Over 9000 of the low wing twin were made in seating configurations of 6 to 12, cargo variants, VIP sleek tourers and military navigation trainers. If you haven’t heard about it, let the 20,000,000 flight hours do the talking.

With Aerosoft’s 9.99€ (£6.50, $12) price tag on many products, how could I say no to what seems to be an accomplished package. An aircraft in 5 builds, 11 liveries and a photo scenery package seems to add up to good value.

Exterior

Aerosoft have a strong reputation for quality and the modelling on the Beech can certainly be put into the ‘solid’ category. Smooth lines, detail where it counts and nothing out of place set the tone on this one. The Pratt and Whitney Wasp engine is modelled in good detail along with good detail on the gear, fully animated pilots that look around/check maps and lots of aerials, pitot tubes and all the other bits and bobs.

The fabric control surfaces all move correctly along with the door. With the parking brake on red check flags appear and blow in the wind while engine covers…cover the engines. It is a shame though that these aren’t removed when the engines are started, because frankly: ‘that ain’t right’.

All the exterior textures come in 32bit quality and all at a high level of shine – which is a bit odd as many of these are work horses and therefore coated in dirt. A quick trip into DXTBmp and editing the alpha quickly solves this. The textures are fairly simple, but cover the skin in a high resolution glow. The floatplane seems to get the best treatment with a few sets of detailed, less-shiny numbers while the Expeditors look a little slick.

The variants each get one of three interiors – a passenger, cargo and navigation trainer. They look good and add a nice touch when taking a peek to the rear.

2D

I don’t use the 2D panel with this add-on, but what is there is very good. The gauges are bold and at a high resolution. The bitmaps and six sub-panels are all very good too and slot neatly into the main panel when opened via mini icons. For those with only a small monitor most instruments can be clicked in the centre to zoom in and get a good look.

Annoyingly the environment sounds are to me nothing but a nuisance. By default (or error) you get the sound of jets flying over – which is odd obviously when out in the back and beyond. This gets irritating when it can’t be switched off. Opening the sound panel (last on the drop list) and switching environment on and off has no effect whatsoever so the sounds will keep going until the engine gets going. There are also no swish night lighting effects, just the standard ‘glow’.

3D

This package was designed to be flown from the virtual cockpit and what a nice place to be it is. The variants differ little – only minor things like which windows can be opened or roof escape hatch and as Aerosoft state: this was designed to be analogous and not set on specific aircraft as almost every Beech 18 was different. Like other aircraft packages from Aerosoft (courtesy of that modeller now at SibWings…) the Beech has a sort of cartoon style I can’t put my finger on – brightly coloured with no real intention of being realistic and I really do think it works well on your PC which this add-on also does in another way; with lots of clouds you can still churn out top FPS.

The VC features fully 3D, moving and click/drag controls – all the switches, knobs, levers and handles can be pulled or moved including the complete pedestal, centre console, parking brake, windows, windscreen wiper and everything else that’s in there apart from the circuit breakers.

The gauge refresh rate is fairly poor but perfectly clear with the exception being difficult to read radios (infact they’re not too good in 2D either). I swapped these with others and still found them a little hard to make out. The panel isn’t so big and i’m sure it could have been optimised better for an increased gauge refresh rate.

Other small problems are the beacon light being very visible throughout so you’ll need to edit the .fx file and there is a lack of night lighting bar an ugly red floodlight.

Flight

As you’d guess this aircraft is designed for the experienced and beginner so the flight envelope seems a little exaggerated. Milton Shupe’s simulation of the Beech is very nimble with a brisk though controllable roll rate – and we have a similar situation here. With a bit of altitude you can actually perform some acrobatics…but I wouldn’t for the sake of your passengers or cargo.

The aircraft responds well to trim and can hold a heading and altitude well – but of course a (very nice) autopilot is fitted with the basics. If you’re on a long enough flight to deem it necessary to use autopilot then you may as well use the ‘CD Player’ that you can quite easily open up a folder of music and play. Aerosoft have kindly included some tongue in cheek ground music while I prefer linking to iTunes. There is of course a performance hit but with at least 1GB RAM you shouldn’t suffer too badly.

For the most part the aircraft is easy to handle in the air, but on the ground the flight model shows numerous flaws. Taxiing is very difficult, the plane wants to spin around with very little force on the tail wheel, so either a light touch or config modification is needed. When on take-off roll I always find it a bit of a struggle, the aircraft causing a stall warning despite not being off the ground then just pitching nose up into an actual stall. A minimum of five to six degrees of downward elevator trim is needed to keep a controllable though still awkward ground roll.

There are many levels of flap adjustment and a surprisingly low stall speed if you go into the larger degrees so landing ca be a little tricky if you haven’t decided on a speed – if it’s a short runway you’ll want full flaps and 60knots or perhaps you might just go for half flaps and 80knots, either way decide quickly because there is little chance of any late slowing down with this slippery customer.

Martha’ Vineyard

Included is half an islands worth of photo scenery with some rich autogen and many custom objects. The area itself is well represented with one larger airport and 2 small uncontrolled fields to find. I’m not quite sure of the link between the plane and this area, but the scenery is of good quality and fun to fly around. The small airstrips are very hard to spot from the air, but with a keen eye you may make out the narrow grass amongst the fields or the runway markings – circling round is usually needed to work out the correct heading, but you can also take a look at the static gliders, cars and custom buildings. The larger airport seems pretty basic to look at, but is always buzzing with AI traffic and littered with better than default buildings and static regional aircraft. I can’t say I really have any desire to fly within the area as it isn’t that interesting but I had a few hours buzzing round or coming in from the mainland.

Overall

I’ve enjoyed this package andf feel I got my £10 worth. It sounds and looks good all over with simplistic operation. The virtual cockpit is a very tidy example of what a basic cockpit should look and perform but suffers badly from the gauge refresh rate. For the money this is a very solid package and although the scenery didn’t add much for me some of you may enjoy it – especially if this is your first payware or photo scenery. There are irritations with the flight model which spoil it and as such the gap between Milton Shupe’s fantastic photo real and free Beech 18 is very narrow.

Summary

2D Panel: 4/5

Virtual Cockpit: 3/5

Exterior: 3/5

Dynamics: 2/5

Sound: 4/5

Performance: 4/5

Value for Money: 4/5

Price: £12

Website: www.aerosoft.com