Carenado Beechcraft T34B Review FSX

Welcome to another Carenado review by Flight Simulator Reviews!

Today I am going to review one of the first ever packages by Carenado the Beechcraft T34B Mentor for FSX.

I would like to thank Carenado team  for supplying the aircraft for reviewing today - and I big thank you to all my viewers that have have made June a massive record breaking month for Flight Simulator Reviews!.

Background Information

The T-34 was the brainchild of Walter Beech, who developed it as the Beechcraft Model 45 private venture at a time when there was no defense budget for a new trainer model. Beech hoped to sell it as an economical alternative to the North American T-6/NJ Texan, then in use by all services of the U.S. military.

 

 

Three initial design concepts were developed for the Model 45, including one with the Bonanza's signature V-tail, but the final design that emerged in 1948 incorporated conventional tail control surfaces for the benefit of the more conservative military (featuring a relatively large unswept vertical fin that would find its way onto the Travel Air twin-engine civil aircraft almost ten years later). The Bonanza's fuselage with four-passenger cabin was replaced with a narrower fuselage incorporating a two-seater tandem cockpit and bubble canopy, which provided greater visibility for the trainee pilot and flight instructor. Structurally, the Model 45 was much stronger than the Bonanza, being designed for +10g and -4.5g, while the Continental E-185 engine of 185 horsepower (hp) at takeoff (less than a third of the power of the T-6's engine) was the same as that fitted to contemporary Bonanzas.
Following the prototype were three Model A45T aircraft, the first two with the same engine as the prototype and the third with a Continental E-225, which would prove to be close to the production version. Production did not begin until 1953, when Beechcraft began delivering T-34As to the United States Air Force (USAF) and similar Model B45 aircraft for export. Production of the T-34B for the United States Navy (USN) began in 1955, this version featuring a number of changes reflecting the different requirements of the two services. The T-34B had only differential braking for steering control on the ground instead of nosewheel steering, additional wing dihedral and, to cater for the different heights of pilots, adjustable rudder pedals instead of the moveable seats of the T-34A. T-34A production was completed in 1956, with T-34Bs being built until October 1957 and licensed B45 versions built in Canada (125 manufactured by Canadian Car and Foundry), Japan (173 built by Fuji Heavy Industries), and Argentina (75 by FMA) until 1958. Beechcraft delivered the last Model B45s in 1959. Total production of the Continental-engined versions in the US and abroad was 1,904 aircraft.

Download and Installation

Because this is one the first packages ever made from the Carenado team for FSX you don't have any keys that can affect the installation process. I got the link via an email from Carenado (like the link in the Orders box of your Carenado account), to which again you get a very small download time before the file is ready for installation onto your computer. After clicking on the installer.exe you are shown the standard Carenado installer which is great installer which can process file movement very quickly!

What's in the package?
So what you do you get for your money? - You get a manual/checklist as well as the aircraft installed onto your FSX directory. Upon finding the aircraft in the list you are given 2 liveries to choose from, the US Navy Yellow or the bare metal colour scheme. As this was just an aeroplane just built primarily for use in the navy it comes as no surprise to me that you don't have a great choice of liveries to choose from, but that's OK.  That's pretty much all you get in the package its nothing major like PMDG would have to offer but then again it's a small plane at something like a 1/4 of the price of a PMDG.

First Impressions
My expectations of this aircraft are of very high quality as usual with Carenado aircraft. When the aircraft finished loading up in Brize Norton airport in the UK. I immediately took a look outside the aircraft to see what Carenado have gave us customers, they have gave us an amazing representation of the real aircraft with great resemblances to the Carenado Beechcraft Bonanza (made a couple of years after the T34B release), panning around shows off this true aircraft's heritage with the old style bubble canopy and tandem seating it is just a stunning aircraft especially in the UK morning sun! Looking inside the cockpit is very primitive, but what do you expect of a training aircraft that was used for US Navy Training! The main thing is that is seems to come with everything that a pilot would need to under go normal operations in this plane for example the airspeed indicator and the horizontal indicator etc. Because the software that Carenado use to created their aircraft have changed over the years it is not exactly the same as the latest releases but it is in still great detail even for a very basic aircraft!

The Bare Metal version of this aircraft

Exterior Model

As mentioned earlier the exterior model is stunning right down the the rivets on the wings! But it doesn't end here. On the ground the plane looks elegant just like a old naval trainer should look like with the big bulky canopy and the tandem seating with real pilots inside. Carenado ha vent missed a detail off the external model of this aircraft. In flight the propeller animation is amazing just like all Carenado aircraft along with the gear animation everything just seems to work and work well for that matter. The flaps are motorized on this aircraft so listening out for the sounds and the gradual deployment of flaps is yet another tick in the box for this external model. The main flight controls work effectively in flight and the animations are smooth and seamless between full left aileron and full right its a piece of art rather than and add-on!

Already I am very happy with what Carenado have offered in this package - although the sounds are the best in the world you can still tell that it is quite a beastly pison power plant!

The Cockpit

This aircraft comes with both the 2D cockpit and the VC cockpit. However in this review I am going to solely concentrate on the VC cockpit as I believe that to make the most out of this aircraft you are going to have to use it in this view to enable yourself to do the aerobatics if you want to of course, but the 2D cockpit in-corporates everything that the VC does.

The cockpit is modeled from the front seat and as of yet I am still to find an actual hot spot or key that can allow you to fly it from the behind seat but this doesn't matter at this point in time. You are sitting in front of what has to be the most basic cockpit that I have ever seen in the world of simming. It has a black background with the instruments set into that and instead of the compass on top of the dashboard you are shown a 'G' counter which gives you a rough idea of what this aircraft is capable of ranging from +10G's to -4.5G's you can clearly tell this was an aircraft built for aerobatics and flight training! Panning around you get the full effect of being enclosed in this very WW2 cockpit with the spars coming around from the side it seems to be allot like a soviet aircraft like a Yak52 - panning around through 180 degrees you see the headrest and the 'instructors' top of dashboard before coming back around again to the cockpit! The canopy is fully operable from the inside of the aircraft and the animation is also smooth! Furthermore the FPS is amazing! I am hardly seeing an affect on the frame rates at all and it is stable pretty much at about 50FPS!!

The Test Flight

Today's test flight is going to be testing the flight model to the edge - instead of commentating and review what she's like to take off and land I am going to start this review right in the deep end with me cruising at 4000ft QNH over the Brize Norton Aerodrome ready to perform some basic aerobatics in this beast - after doing a few I figured that a trainer isn't going to have quite the roll rate performance of the modern day aerobat e.g. Extra 300 however she still performs well never the less. So the first maneuver that I am going to do is a basic stall just a normal power off nose up stall and see how it reacts. So pulling the power back and just raising the most bleeds the speed off rapidly as this plane is quite heavy being made from the materials it is! The stall warner goes off and we start dropping - dropping the nose and applying full power gains speed quick and we are back into straight and level flight pretty much 3 seconds later. So generic stalls it can cope with - what about a barrel roll. Because this aeroplane isn't fitted with weights that make it easier for aerobatic pilots now days to pull of high g turns after passing 90 degrees of bank I was pulling an impressive 5G. In inverted flight it acts like it was made to fly upside down - the flight dynamics are quite impressive in the inverted mode and rolling again to get level attitude. In the whole maneuver I only lost 200ft of height and that was probably due to my flying skills as I am no aerobat of the skies. The final test that I am going to do is a power on loop the loop. Coming into the maneuver at 150knots I pull back fully on the yoke and make sure that the wingtips are on the horizon as I come up over 90' degrees nose up I pull the power back and let gravity to the job for me - coming back around the aircraft is still in a wings level condition with normal attitude regained as I climb back up to 4000ft.

Now that I have completed the flight test - I want to get back to Coventry. But how? Surely this aircraft doesn't have autopilot that can follow a track on the GPS? Your right it can't. However you can still navigate back home with a twist. Instead of trying to think of the frequency of the nearest VOR and take a radial like they did in the old days when these babies were flying for real you can simply open up the default FSX GPS and do a direct to function. Although you have to open it in a new window within flight simulator it still allows new comers to the flight simulation experience a familiar way to fly around the skies where as it gives the veterans something to panic about!

Overall I think for an aircraft of its ages and its simplicity Carenado have done an amazing job of reproducing this aircraft for us to fly on the simulator. I would like to also say that this review has took me 10 hours to make and this aircraft is also very forgiving during touring and general A to B routes across the world as well as the twist and loops you may do yo excite you passenger on the way!

What I like about this product - I like that fact that it is a old aircraft that has come to life again and allows us to get a real feel for what it was like to train back in the 40-50's!

What could be better - Maybe just a general overhaul on the whole package is requited just to bring it up to the Carenado standards that we see in the latest releases. Also maybe they could offer the Jet or Turbo version of this aircraft as well at a later date.

Thanks for reading this review from Flight Simulator Reviews! I hope it has helped you!