Just one from today..P.D.'s Lancastrian

[Paul K]

Getting on a bit now, but still beautiful and still great to fly !

[Garry Russell]

Love the low angle Paul...looks like you've crawled under the fence for that

Nice one

[DaveB]

Yes.. a nice shot

As long as you don't try and fly that model to 'the numbers'.. it's still worthy of blowing the dust off. I still take out the Lancaster but not, sadly, the Lancastrian

ATB
DaveB

[speedbird591]

It looks imposing in that shot. Very nicely placed, Paul. Thanks.

Ian

[Paul K]

As long as you don't try and fly that model to 'the numbers'.. it's still worthy of blowing the dust off.

How do you mean, Dave ? I'm always open to new flying tips.

[DaveB]

Hi Paul

It's nothing too drastic as I remember but significant if flying on the VA. When we introduced the Lancastrian on the VA, I was keen as mustard.. at last, an opportunity to make use of the model Comparison tests between the PD model and the freeware model showed significant differences in performance and fuelburn however and further investigation showed the freeware model to be very close to the numbers. Fuelburn in particular is very lean on the payware model.

They're only small points and for every day flying, who cares but on the VA, the chap flying the payware model would be at a distinct advantage being able to cover distances faster while using a lot less fuel. In the end, I only ever flew the freeware model and that's the one I did the VA fleet repaints for When I'm dossing around being Guy Gibson, it doesn't matter what fuel I burn as long as those dams get blown up

ATB
DaveB

[hobby]

For Dave:

Which is your favourite Lancaster for FS9? PD or AH or any other freeware model.

Just been messing about with the numbers on a freeware Lancaster to make the aircraft geometry in FS9 fit with the DVD "Exploring the Lancaster" by flyingzone direct.com

[Paul K]

Thanks for that Dave. Yes I can see why such things would be important for a VA. You say performance was better on the PD Lancastrian - presumably you mean speed, yes ? Do you recall what the difference was, compared to the freeware one ?

As for fuel burn, would it not be possible to impose a limit on the fuel the PD aircraft can carry; e.g. a calculated percentage of what the freeware aircraft carries when its full ? Would that be a way to compensate for the discrepancy ?

[TSR2]

FD's in Flight sim are a black art. Usually if you get it flying by the numbers the handling goes out, you fix the handling at it wont climb, you make it climb and the fuel burn goes again. Its a balancing act.

I tried to fix the Alpha Belfast. I bought a copy of the pilot notes, bought a cockpit DVD and some other notes, put all the numbers into the model as they should be and it wouldn't fly. If there is a model out there that is accurate (or near enough) to the numbers and still "feels" like it should, the developer deserves a load of credit. Its one thing to build something pretty, but a whole other ball game to make an FD that's even close to the real thing

[DaveB]

James..

I used DG's old Lancaster pretty much all the time until the PD Lancaster. Both I and Brian Withers were on the beta team for the PD release and were pretty happy with how it turned out

Paul.. yes, you can fiddle with a lot of things in FS. I tweaked the fuelburn on the PD Lancastrian to make it burn more but in the end, I felt the freeware models FD was closer all the way along so I stuck with that. We didn't offer the Lancastrian to the VA until the freeware model had been released.. no room for elitism

ATB
DaveB