| Just Flight VLJ Business Jet |
| Friday, 04 May 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2
So let’s move onto flying the VLJ. There is no need to worry about having to spend ages configuring the flight plan before you fly, the flight plan you have selected in the FS Flight Planner is automatically loaded into the GPS. The engines are started by clicking a switch and they fire into life. Just make sure that you have got the parking brakes set or you may end up crashing into the terminal when they. The sound’s of the engines are good, although after a while the noise of them got a bit annoying because they are so loud, even with the engine sounds turned down in the settings menu. When taxing around the airport, take notice of the suggested taxi speeds in the manual, they are there for a reason. After consulting the manual, it suggests a take-off thrust setting of 74%, do as it says or you will find that you cannot control the aircraft when airborne. I found that if I opened the throttles straight up to 74% the VLJ squirmed around on the runway and was difficult to handle, slowly advancing the throttle solved this problem. When you are in the air, maintain the 10o nose up attitude until you are instructed to follow your flight plan by ATC. This just keeps the speed at a more manageable level for the first phase of flight. Because biz-jets are flown into smaller, more remote airstrips, not all of these airstrips will have autoland facilities, so how the VLJ handles when flying by hand is of huge importance here. I found that once you have managed to harness the responsiveness of the VLJ, flying by hand was a very easy thing to do. I flew quite a lot of flights during the process of this review, and would say about half of those were flown without the autopilot. One problem I did encounter that I couldn’t solve was that the aircraft always wanted to turn to the left when flying without the autopilot. I re-calibrated my joystick several times and still couldn’t solve the problem. After a while this becomes a little annoying, especially when trying to line up with the runway to land.
The VLJ’s party piece that makes it such a good alternative to aircraft such as the 737 etc... is that it can cruise only fractionally slower than the heavier aircraft, yet those speeds can be reduced rapidly to enable landing at 75kts, about half the speed of the heavies. Although the tutorial flight suggests flying the final approach at 85kts, I found approaching at this speed almost impossible because I couldn’t see the runway as the aircraft’s pitch was so high. The view points from both the VC and 2D cockpits are slightly low to start with, I had to raise the eye-point a couple of notches in both cockpits just to be able to see where I was aiming on landing. I flew my final approaches at 105kts, and when over the runway, pulled the throttles to idle and was still able to land and stop easily.
Now that you know how the VLJ handles, how does she look? I was impressed with the outside views of the plane, but it isn’t a plane that makes you go ‘wow’ when you load her up. That said, the lines are very smooth and the aircraft has a very good appearance to it. When on the ground through various commands you can have a truck re-fuelling the aircraft, open the engine and wing-tip covers and have someone carrying your bags to the aircraft. If you have the fuel truck there though, just double check that is has actually disappeared before you try to take off. Taking off with the fuel truck still attached is not a good idea! When you load up the aircraft and the hydraulics are turned off, the elevators and ailerons will droop down. The boxed version I reviewed comes with 13 add-on liveries, all of which look great on the aircraft. If you are going to arrive to that business meeting in style, you don’t want to do so in an ugly plane! There is also a paint-kit included for those of you who like to create your own liveries. Sadly though the manual doesn’t cover the re-painting side of things, but it’s easy enough to acquire the info you need by searching the internet.
On the back of the box is a comment ‘The F-Lite range has been designed to provide aircraft that are not only extremely high in detail and visually impressive but also less demanding to fly than complex procedural simulators. If you just need to go flying you just need to go F-Lite’. Do Just Flight and CLS achieve that with this package? The answer is a resounding Yes! You can just jump in a fly this aircraft, it is high in detail and visually impressive. As far as systems management goes, it is less demanding that other add-ons, but it is still quite demanding to fly, especially on final approach and with it constantly wanting to turn to the left when flying by hand. Will I use this aircraft again after this review or will it just gather dust in my hangar? I will definitely fly in the VLJ many more times. Even though it has some problems, the quality of the package shines through and makes me want to go back and fly her again. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this add-on proves to be one of Just Flight’s best sellers Now if you would excuse me, I’ve got a meeting to get to PAY8156
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
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