Beechcraft Super King Air

This was my first flight with my new airplane, the Super King Air B200 by Aeroworx. I wasn't very much a turbo prop simmer and I was initially looking for a twin-engine GA airplane for scenic flights and for trips around the more exotic spots of the globe. Fellow simmer and good friend Al came up with his great advice, as always, and recommended the Aeroworx B200. Al and I share the same interest in systems-depth as far as add-on aircraft go so I went forward and got the B200 without a doubt.

Just as I had predicted, this baby turned out to be a "complete" aircraft with many systems simulated. I fooled around in the cockpit for a few hours reading the manual at the same time to get an idea on how to do an initial flight with her. After a couple of touch and go's on a familiarization flight I decided I knew enough (or almost!) to take her for a full trip.

In real life it takes weeks of training to get a pilot rated for a certain type, in FS, we simmers tend to do this in a few hours and impatiently hop in and try to fly. I say "try" because in my case the first flights are full of mistakes and are very sloppy. This one was no exception, I even forgot to turn on my recognition lights!

Most of my mishaps were due to the reason that I don't have many hours in turbo props so all the prop related procedures are new to me, such as autofeather, prop sync, condition levers and so forth. Checklists are extremely useful in this situation but after the relatively easy steps in airliner jets, this one proved to be a handful with all the feathering and syncing, not to mention keeping an eye on the engine dials.

Taxing to the active, the panel is beautiful


Actually, I fly GA aircraft from the VC but I wanted to check out the 2D panel in this one first, it's also easier to learn in the 2d panel in my opinion.

To give some information on the flight, it was from LEMG to GMMN. Casablanca because from now on I will fly to/from the latest visitor country on my blog, the idea belongs to my supportive girlfriend, by the way. (Thanks Honey!)

Departure weather was nice, clear skies, 19C and winds blowing from the East, few clouds at 2000 and scattered at 7000.

After take-off I proceeded to my initial waypoint, the TTN VOR. For the record this was a VOR to VOR flight. Block time of this 250NM trip was 1 hour and 40 min.

Enjoying the Mediterranean view


Climbout was uneventful, or it seemed so because I was trying to go through the climb checklist all the while keeping an eye on navigation and on the annunciator panel. The B200 climbed easily to today's cruise altitude of FL200.

Note the slightly deflected aileron


The Aeroworx B200 panel has magnificent bitmaps and looking around is very fun, the panel is also very easy on resources so great job in that field too.

I didn't pay much attention to the weather enroute so I hit a storm over GMTN, the aircraft was thrown around pretty bad and my airspeed indicator went dead. Oh, shit! I forgot to turn on the pitot!

The turbulent air was over in a couple of minutes and the airspeed indicator came back when I switched on the pitot heat.

Thunderstorm over GMTN


On a side note, if you've flown over this part of Morocco you might have come across the annoying automated weather report which airs in on the same frequency as Casablanca Center, making it impossible to contact ATC Ughh!!

Downwind for the ILS 35L


Arrival weather was winds 315 at 15, 23C with clouds scattered at 5000. I came over the CBA VOR, followed the outbound radial 175 and then at 22 DME I turned left to intercept the localizer for the runway 35L per the published approach at GMMN.

Not surprisingly, my approach was sloppy, not very smooth because I was trying to complete the the approach and landing checklists. Not knowing where the various buttons and switches are didn't help either!

Short final


Handflying this B200 is a joy and she is very easy, the trim feels exceptionnally well for an FS aircraft, I loved every second of it. My landing was quite good too, I just touched down a bit right of the centerline but I have to say, the winds were pretty tricky.

I loved the F/O callouts too.

On the ramp, I made it, phew!


I'm not much of an external model buff in Flightsim but this one is really cool. I'm glad I took Al's advice and got this aircraft, it's absolutely beautiful and a real joy to fly whether with the A/P or manually. I still have a lot to master as far as the systems go and it will take some time for me to get proficient on this B200, but it's huge fun and you will probably be seeing her a lot on my blog, especially in that UN livery which is the icing on the cake, perfect for flying in South America or Africa.

Thanks for viewing