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30 March 2011

Carenado Piper Archer II FSX

Piper Aircraft Limited, brought in the first ever PA-28 in 1960 having a 4 cylinder 150hp engine pulling her through the skies. The Piper Archer II didn't make its entrance into the world of aviation until 1975 having an upgraded 180hp Lycoming O-360-A4M or O-360-A4A engine. The Archer II differed itself from the Archer I due to its tapered wing. This being only the major adjustment that Piper made to the Archer I.

Carenado finally brought this fantastic aircraft to our screens and virtually filled worlds in 2010, bringing along with it what seemed to be its first of its High Quality sound packs as well as DX10 certified as standard with Carenado for FSX products. After purchasing the package from FSPilotShop.com for $25.95 the installation ran a treat thanks to Carenado's user friendly installation interface. Within a few minutes the Archer was good to go.

The External Model.

I thought I'd start this review off with the external model. Which has been very well captured by Carenado in this case. I run my graphics on full slide bar on FSX along with HD screen settings, and does it pay off? Yes, you can clearly tell that Carenado have put allot of time and effort into this one the pixels are sharp and no-where on the aircraft are their any tell-tale signs or any blurring on all the liveries which compared to the Carenado Mooney is outstanding! The animations of the flaps are life like the the real Pipers (which I have a PPL on) as they get manually get lowered by pilot input. The elevator and trim work in harmony like in real and the ailerons likewise. However I did find one little glitch on the external model, when opening the doors they open and then close shut without any key command after installing and re-installing the product I still had the same affect. However don't let this put you off the time and effort that has been put into the external model

Cockpit (3D)

The cockpit is like any Carenado plane, not brand new looking but not tatty also a well looked after and maintained cockpit is what you see in front of you. Despite the fact that the tacho reads 0000.00. However, all the gauges are in the correct position in the dashboard this consists of the standards Airspeed Indicators, Attitude, Altimeter, Turn Coordinator etc. etc. This combined with the stock Garmin GPS which is cleverly placed by Carenado on the left hand corner seeming to be attached to the windows, as aircraft based around the time that the Archer would not have had GPS! This is all bundled together with a very nice interior, and has that feeling that you are really sitting in a PA-28 Cockpit.

Trial Flight

As mentioned before I am a PA-28 pilot so being used to the speeds and stall speeds etc I positioned myself at the end of Runway 23 at Coventry (EGBE). After completing my power checks (which is hard to do as the FSX parking brake doesn't hold you still). I powered up to full revs taking into account the sound of the High Quality sound set. I rotated through 69 knots to continue my climb out at 80knots like on the real thing. I climb to 1500ft where I leveled off to do some low level stalling, after pulling the power back the airspeed reacted in the same way as any plane would and that was to decrease! Stalling at 40knots was a bit slow for a Piper but as I have not flown the Archer they may have been different. Shame that you don't get and buffet instead FSX has made an un-realistic stall situations which makes the plane shake left and right then hard bank to the left which is not Carenado's fault at all. After completing some circuits in her I felt like I was flying the real thing, even with glide approached Carenado's Archer acts in the same way slowly but surely makes it back home.

Overall

Overall I think that for just over £15 you can get an amazing Piper Simulator with no bugs and glitches (except the door) that you will get hours of fun out.

I would rate this:
- 4/5 Stars
Total Flying Time - 10 hours

What I like - The HQ sound set makes flying this aircraft a joy.

Things I don't like - The door glitch can get annoying if you want to view the plane from the outside with all its doors open.


Next In the review series - Carenado C172