Another piece of news from the MRC blog last week, pics are emerging (photo on this post by Royal S King) of the second AirNZ B789 in the new white and black livery making its first public appearance at Paine Field before delivery..
Air New Zealand’s Boeing 787-9 ZK-NZF MSN 34335 has broken cover at Paine Field these last couple of days as it prepares to make its first flight and be delivered to Auckland during the third week of September.
As reported on Mike Condon’s blog last week, Airwork have just finished converting one of their 737s from PAX to Freighter config, a couple of nice pics and some background on the blog post. All we need now is for the QWings team to get around to releasing that 737 Class model they’ve been working on…
Following the landing accident of Airwork/Toll Boeing 737-300 freighter ZK-TLC at Honiara on 26 January 2014 and its subsequent scraping the operator delivered ZK-JTQ to Florida for reconfiguration to a freighter and it departed Brisbane for Apia and Kona on 23 March. It was noted again 17 August (NZ time) in transit at Long Beach, no doubt having arrived from Florida, and continued onto Kona.
Interesting release a week or so back by Flysimware of a NZ designed and built lightweight, single-seater helicopter for FSX and P3D. Modelling detail looks decent and the textures are fairly good but could do with a lick and polish I reckon. Haven’t splashed out on this myself but would love to hear from anyone who has. Looks like a fun machine…
The Mosquito is one of the worlds lightest manned Helicopter that has been designed and developed over the last 10 years to deliver performance, reliability and ease of flight. Flying the Mosquito will have you hooked right away and the visibility as good as a bird. Flysimware’s model was designed to mimic a real Moquito XE. We have included all standard gauges and features with a few upgrades. All moving parts are fully animated to mimic real world operations including a custom code for an accurate swashplate effect and a high quality bones animated pilot. Make room in your private hanger as this model will give you many years of enjoyment and helicopter knowledge.
Check out the SimMarket product page if your interested.
As announced by Graham Eccleston in an Orbx forum post last week his team have released an update for the AU/NZ AI pack with a bunch of P3D v2 compatibility improvements..
Here is a small update to the FTX AU AI traffic pack for Prepar3D V2. This update is limited to a cleanup script to delete the temporary files included in the earlier versions of this pack to cater for the issues with the HTAI Cessna aircraft in P3D V2. It also includes updates to the Control Panel plus the User Guide to be consistent with the changes contained in this patch. There is no new content included in this update and it is now in line with the most recent FTX AU AI Traffic pack released for FSX
As a long distance destination for Pacific Airlines (AirNZ and Qantas included) Heathrow is one of those mega airports you just have to splash out on at some stage. For some time we’ve had the excellent offering from UK2000 which has recently had a major update, and now we’re spoilt for choice with the soon to be release SimWings Heathrow. The word from SimWings developer Thorston…
Now we´re getting very close. Expect a release in one or two weeks. I hope it was worth waiting
follow the thread here
Some pretty excited kiwi simmers about the place (myself included) now that JustFlight have come good on their plan to release the 50-70 series models for their DC8 airliner. This aircraft was originally released with the 10-40 models and with this new pack they include an Air NZ livery as operated by the airline in the 70’s. Not 100% sure if the earlier model is required, it’s not clear from the website, but there’s plenty of interest in the forums, no doubt it will sell pretty well. Certainly looks the part…
The classic ‘short fuselage’ DC-8 first flew on 30th May 1958 and covered the -10 to -50 series but in 1965 a stretched fuselage series was announced, starting with the -60 series. This FSX and Prepar3D collection covers the short fuselage -50 series up to the ultra-long stretched -73 series and includes three distinctive cockpit variations from the classic round-dial analogue version through a part-modernised version to the modern ‘glass cockpit’ variant in the later models.
Tyler Walter has published a review of the RAZBAM Metroliner over at Aerosoft this week. If you haven’t bought this machine yet you should take a squiz at this review, its positive in almost all respects, and the machine is well represented in real-world in the Pacific… go on, you know you want to..
The Metroliner is much bigger then the Cessna C172, but it flies so easily. You can expect it already; all the flight phases including the landing where a success and while I’m taxing back to the ramp, I can look back to a great aircraft. Great in modeling, a gorgeous virtual cockpit and I think, realistic flight characteristics. Well done RAZBAM! This plane is well simulated, and would function well in my opinion in both of the categories of transition aircraft from general aviation to passenger liner, and good domestic airliner rather like the Dash Q400. I would say that this is a good stepping-stone from general aviation to full commercial airliners.
Just been away for a week and a half ski holiday down at Tongariro staying in Ohakune and making a few side/day trips along the way. One of those diversions was to stop in at Huka Falls in Taupo and check out the once mighty, now static, Mil Mi-8 which is parked up next to HelicopterTours office. Supposedly the machine was used to do some heavy-lift forestry work in NZ after it was imported and in a former life is alleged to have been a personal transport for Fidel Castro.
What an amazing machine, and great that the tour company allow punters to have a peek inside. Check out my flickr photo set for a few internal shots, including cabin and cockpit, to get a sense of the scale of the monsters. Very cool.
RAZBAM have discounted their excellent rendition of the Fairchild Metroliner (FSX & P3D) to $20 usd. At this price it really is a bargain, a number of included and 3rd party Kiwi / Aussie liveries available as well. This machine seen more commonly in Australia these days but also operating in NZ on overnight postal duties and as an air ambulance. At this price you’d be crazy not to grab it if your a fan of retro turbo props
The Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner or the Fairchild Aerospace Metro is a 19-seat, pressurised, twin turboprop airliner first produced by Swearingen Aircraft and later by Fairchild at a plant in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The Metroliner was an evolution of the Swearingen Merlin turboprop-powered business aircraft. Ed Swearingen, a Texas fixed base operator (FBO), started the developments that led to the Metro through gradual modifications to the Beechcraft Twin Bonanza and Queen Air business aircraft, aircraft he dubbed Excalibur.
see the RAZBAM store for details
Whadya mean you haven’t bought a 737-100/200 series for your FSX sim yet? With two excellent models on offer from CaptainSim and Milviz there’s no excuse. You better check out the following review by Rick Desjardins of the Milviz offering just in case you’re still sitting on the fence. NZ and Oz liveries as operated real world are available for both:
The B-737-200c model depicted in this package is a highly detailed replica of its real-life counterpart. The model was created by using high quality digital photos, plans sourced directly from Boeing and many, many countless hours of testing, revising and testing again… I thoroughly enjoyed flying the Milviz 737-200c and highly recommend it. I felt that the overall look and feel of the aircraft were realistic and that the developers found a good balance between complexity and usability making it a great fit for every level of pilot, and also very importantly lots of fun to fly.
read the full review here
