Discover the challenges of flying one of the lesser-known yet successful airliners of the 1950's and 1960's, a Canadian-designed derivative of the Douglas DC-4, powered by four of the famous Merlin engines.
History
Towards the end of WWII, Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA) and the Canadian government began looking for an airliner to meet Canada’s post-war air transportation needs. It was decided that the tried and tested Douglas DC-4 would fit the requirement, and a licence was obtained from Douglas to build the aircraft. It was also decided to incorporate some components from the newer DC-6, just then becomming available. Under the licence terms TCA would be allowed to decide the power plants to be used on this hybrid aircraft, and after much deliberation the Rolls-Royce Merlin 620 was chosen. License requirements from Douglas, who did not want the North Star to compete with their new DC-6, stipulated that the North Star be sold only to Commonwealth countries.
Design development began at Canadair in 1944, and was designated the DC-4M (M for Merlin). First flight was on July 15, 1946, in Montreal.
Fundamentally, the North Star had the Douglas DC-6 nose, landing gear and fuselage (shortened by 80 inches), DC-4 empennage, rear fuselage, flaps and wing tips, C-54 middle fuselage sections, wing centre- and outer-wing panels, cabin pressurization (where used), a standardized cockpit layout and a different electrical system.
71 North Stars were built, in three basic variations. Trans-Canada Airlines flew the DC-4M2, in several layouts and with different engine (Merlin 622, 722 and 724) and prop combinations. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) used the C-54GM variant which retained the C-54 fuselage and cargo doors, and later fitted with radar. BOAC, using their C-4 type specifications, ordered 22 aircraft, which they renamed the Argonaut, and which flew with the airline in locations around the world from 1949 to 1960. Trans-Canada Air Lines used the North Star until 1961, and the RCAF kept theirs until 1965.
One side-effect of using Merlins was that both TCA and BOAC received passenger complaints about engine noise, and as a result both companies developed 'crossover' exhaust systems to have the exhaust pipes exit on the side of the engine away from the passengers, which reduced noise to only 93-102 decibels. Still loud, if you consider that the level at which sustained exposure may result in hearing loss is 90 – 95 decibels!
In later service, the fast and reliable North Stars were used by other airlines, such as British Midland and Overseas Airways, and several other smaller private and military operators for passenger and cargo services. Final flights of the type overall were by private cargo companies in the early 1970’s.
Only one complete North Star still exists, an RCAF C-54GM, residing at the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa, Canada.
Highly accurate VC;
Highly accurate flight dynamics;
Fully clickable and workable cockpit overall;
Working supercharger engine switch-over functions for high-altitude flight;
Dual NAVCOM and ADF radios, and transponder, plus 2D GPS for those longer flights;
Autopilot can be used;
3rd party radar gauges can be installed (instructions included);
Two different VC's, with different civilian and military navigator positions
Animated pilots (external view);
Removeable crew and passenger stairs;
Bump and spec mapping for added realism;Bump and spec mapping for added realism;
Variety of paint schemes;Variety of paint schemes;
Full flight operations manual, accurate and derived from the original;
Requirements
FSX with Acceleration (or FSX GOLD and FSX Steam). Tested with P3D up to version v3
I hope the fine folks at SimMarket will replace my earlier review with this one as it had multiple errors.
I previous thought that there were a few missing functions and features but found that they were not missing at all.
The only real problem is that a few things are miss-labeled or unlabeled. The passenger and crew stairs will not appear unless the engines are off. Restarting is another issue but probably just need to find some reading material to correct. The parking brake is labeled “Emergency Brake” which is slightly confusing when being used to all other aircraft with an actual “parking brake” label and in some cases also an “emergency brake”.
Anyway the only real issue is that you CANNOT use Pushback ever. It will cause the plane to crash. Somehow stopping a pushback causes the tail to drop backwards through the ground. CRASH Every single time. So you have to start at parking where forward motion is the way out.
Other than that stuff the plane visual modeling inside and out is really really nice. Excellent night lighting. A great attention to the sound FX of the engines makes for a realistic and loud flight especially take off! Turn your speakers up at least once to try and get a real idea of just how load these Merlins were. No wonder so many ground workers and pilots etc had hearing damage.
This is basically a faster and much louder DC4 and I prefer the Canadair overall.