Freeware Focus - FS-Design Berlin

By Andrew Herd (11 May 2005)

light simulation gives people the opportunity to experience the history of aviation in a unique way - having read about what a plane was like, you can go fly it - which is one of the things that attracted me to the hobby in the first place. Flying classic planes is very much a rich man's sport and unless you own an oil well, have good contacts, or succeed in making a business out of it, vintage aircraft operation is for other folk.

So why is it so expensive to fly an old plane? Well, flying ain't cheap at the best of times and standing costs on modern aircraft usually exceed the price of the Avgas that goes into them, but classics take you into a whole new world of hurt. The last annual our plane went through cost something like $12,000, mostly because a camshaft bearing had failed, but that only accounted for half the expense; the rest was routine bits and pieces, like reversing the aileron rods, fixing up a small area of corrosion and replacing the windscreen. Now imagine what the bill would have been like had we been operating a seventy year old aircraft. For a start, the normal FBOs wouldn't have touched us, and we would have had to go to a specialist, which would have tripled the bill immediately. Camshaft, sir? Oh, yes, we think we can probably make you one of those. Is sir's oil company in Texas? Good, then if can you just sign over the production for a couple of months that should fix it. Aileron push rods? No problem, we can find some aircraft grade aluminum and custom build all the fixings for a couple or three thousand bucks. A side.

You get the picture. The Catch-22 with veterans is that if they aren't flown, they deteriorate, and if they are flown, they wear out - the golden rule of ownership being that since by definition you can't win, you should only own one if you love it more than any human being. Wives and girlfriends do not generally understand this, so relationships can be something of a problem.

No, with flight simulation, you get the best deal of all, even if you are denied the frisson of wondering whether this will be the year when some major component fails and breaks you financially. One of the greatest favors FS2004 did, for all that it apparently hasn't realised Microsoft's sales targets, was to legitimize the position of old-timers in simmers hearts and we have seen a flush of high quality addons, with the freeware developers in the lead, as always. Sales of addons aren't quite good enough for the commercial guys to step into the breach and with the a few exceptions, they have left this sector severely alone.

So FlightSim.Com are going to wave the flag for 'veteran freeware' and who better to feature in this series than Arik Hohmeyer and the FS-Design Berlin team behind the Lockheed 10A? The line up includes Chris Grabow, Dave Eckert, Nick Botamer, Wolfram Beckert, Dale de Luca, Steve Good and Ulf Nordin - funny how the same names keep popping up all the time, huh?

The starting point for the Lockheed 10 was the same thing that triggered the development of the DC-3 - the Boeing 247. The 247 changed the face of passenger transport in the US, because it was faster than anything else in the air and had a modern low wing, stressed skin design. I have told part of the 247 story elsewhere, but its launch set the other aircraft manufacturers at an extreme disadvantage, to such an extent that if Boeing had been able to fulfil its orders fast enough, many of them would have gone out of business. Instead, the appearance of the 247 was the catalyst that launched a series of modern planes.

Lockheed took a long look at the 247, and the DC-2, scrapped everything it had on the drawing board and set out to design a ten passenger, all metal, monoplane twin, with retractible gear and flaps that would exceed the specification of the 247 and compete with the DC-2. Had the 10 flown just a little earlier it might have blunted Douglas' virtual takeover of the medium airliner market, but despite that, the 10 was a classic plane that sired a line that did sterling service before and during World War 2. As it was, the Electra sold just under 150 hulls of all the various models, 115 of them to airlines and most of the remainder to companies who operated it as one of the first corporate planes - the same sort of customers who would nowadays buy a Citation. Though the Electra first flew in 1934, at least one was still in commercial service over thirty years later.

The package is a 12.4 Mb download (L104NWA.ZIP) and installation involves no more than unzipping the file into the \aircraft folder, locating the gauge zip and unpacking that into \gauges. After that, you should be up and running, with a plane that is complete apart from a sound set. The readme recommend the P-40 sound by Mike Hambly, which can be found in a T-6 Texan file (T6V2.ZIP) - according to Dale DeLuca, who has time in an Electra, the Texan sound file sounds just right, and judging from the thumbnail, you end up getting a nice T-6 as a bonus.

There are a couple of 'extras', which is unusual by freeware standards. The first is a really nice graphical weight and balance tool (which is hidden away in the \FSDB_L_Electra_L-10A folder - just in case you are wondering where the plane has gone after you installed it), I have seen one or two payware configuration apps which aren't as good as this one, by the way. The other is a rather fine pdf giving the history behind the plane and the project, which is fully illustrated and gives a good feel for what FS-Design Berlin is all about.

Moving onto the plane, well, I guess it isn't surprising that it picked up a Developer's Award, or that it has been the target of so many repaints. If all freeware was as good as this, some of the commercial outfits would be struggling. I guess the screenshots tell the story, but the visual model looks great and is surprisingly detailed, with some excellent animations, particularly where the gear is concerned.

You get a 2D panel and a virtual cockpit, which marks the Electra out as something special, both featuring cleanly edited graphics that stay sharp right up to 1600 x 1200 resolution. Given that approaching 50% of payware I see isn't of this quality, you have to hand it to Arik and the team. The gauges are evenly split between default instruments that early Lockheed drivers could only dream about, and some authentic looking custom units. Had I been doing the panel, I think I would have borrowed some gauges from the ACOF planes to replace the artificial horizon, the HSI and the RMI, but as it is, the Electra is perfectly instrumented out for touring.

The only jarring note is a fairly intrusive set of icons on the left of the panel, which control pop-ups, including the overhead and the quadrant - the green text you can see down the bottom is a scrolling advert for FS-Design Berlin, and why not? After all, they put hundreds of hours into this plane, the least we can do is visit their website; but check out FlightSim.Com first, because we have dozens of original FSDB planes and repaints in the library, and all of them are pretty good.

How does the Electra fly? Pretty good, is the answer. I took it out on test in Mexico, for some hot and high takeoffs and landings, as it is just the sort of place where once upon a time Electras would have flown. You need a powerful plane with good short field capability to deal with some of the stips in the highlands and the FSDB L10A did everything that I required of it.

So, from the FlightSim.Com team, a tip of the hat to Arik Hohmeyer and all the Electra team. We wish you much happy simming.