Born in 1932, the 'Model 24' was a radical move by Fairchild to gain a strong hold on the Private Pilot sector. With an interior designed by famous American Industrial and Automobile Designer Raymond Loewy, the 24 featured things like roll down windows, automotive door knobs and cranks, comfortable seats, and many other automotive-style features, making the 24 one of the most classiest and comfortable planes to buy back then.
Another feature of the 24 Series was the rugged, massive landing gear. Looking something more like a Fiesler Storch, the landing gear enabled one to land in terrain locations without runways, making the 24's uses broader. During World War II, the 'Argus Edition' was created for military duty and many were sent to Europe. In the United States, the Argus saw duty as coastal spotters, keeping a lookout for Japanese and German submarines. The Argus could carry two 100 pound bombs and it was successful in more then several confrontations with German U-Boots.
The airframe of the Fairchild was welded steel tubing in the fuselage area with wooden runners which created the shape top and bottom, wooden shaped leading edges of the tail sections, and wooden framed wings and a high rated wood spruce spar beam in the wing section as well. The airframe was covered with cloth/Dacron throughout and nicely finished.
Today, Fairchild 24's can be seen at many Fly-In events, usually having been totally restored down to the bare frame. The Fairchild Owners are unique, like this aircraft, having a bond with their planes. They are truly an American Classic of the Golden Age of Aviation in America.
This aircraft package features everything from stock, early, vintage production planes, to the WWII Argus Series, to restored impeccable, waxed versions with no oil or chips on them, to very rough lived Bush plane examples. Each plane has custom interior schemes, variations that even include panel paint scheme customizations. This is a massive package with over 36 versions and variations. Another neat feature is that you can turn off / detach the wheel skirts and the suspension of the landing gear is converted to the bush plane version. We also have float planes in both the Ranger and Warner editions.
I hope you like flying and classic planes, because if you do, this is for you!
FEATURES:
High resolution 2048 textures
37 Total Variants
2 versions of landing gear models; Classic Skirt Fairings and Skirtless for Bush Landings.
Float Variants for both Ranger and Warner Editions
4 Bush Planes with loads of mud and wear and tear, fading and chipped paint. As rugged as it might get!
Several paint scheme versions of Instrument Panels, including rough, military gray, and fine wood venner.
Vintage instrumentation including the Mark12 Narco Com/Nav Radio
Many versions of interiors, too numerous to note here
Glass over gauges
Roll down windows with sound effects
Clickable air vents with sound effects
High detail 1940's style manual booklet 'in' the virtual cockpit (popup feature)
Cool 1940's style checklist also in 'popup mode' which includes a traffic angles calculator
An extreme number of interior and exterior cam shot viewpoints
Rugged main landing gear for rough field landings
Dual clickable/changeable air speed indicator (ASI) which is either vintage MPH or modern dual MPH/Knots
Animated male pilot with different clothes for some of the paint scheme variants
Features 'one' black krinkle 2D Panel for those that must fly in 2D panel mode, (no throttle or special controls in the 2D panel mode. Instrumentation only. Sorry).
Garmin GPS system with NAV2 / COM2 systems
VOR Homing gauge linked to the Narco Mark12 radio (NAV1)
No engine crash mechanisms
Brilliant custom soundpacks of both a radial Super Scarab and inline aircraft engine.
Canoe that can be hidden on the Float Plane only
For FSX and Prepar3D
Requirements: 4 Gigs of RAM Minimum, good up to date graphics card for handling the high resolution 2048 sized textures. One can compress/resize grahics to 1024 for better performance on older computers.
Ein wunderbarer nostalgischer Flieger. Die Motorsounds beider Varianten (Reihe und Stern) sind
sehr gelungen. Keine Piste ist kurz genug für den Start. Ob man die vielen Lackierungen wirklich braucht sei einmal dahin gestellt. Es ist natürlich ein Vogel für den Sichtflug
der auch noch ein recht sparsamer ist. Aber da liegt auch gleich das einzige Problem, man
hätte ruhig die schwer zu erkennende Treibstoffanzeige ins Minipanel aufnehmen können.
Ansonsten ein toller Oldi, dem man doch ansieht das ein Autobauer sein Hand im Spiel hatte.
Fazit: lohnenswert für Sichtflieger.
A lovely vintage bush plane that has the atmosphere I've been looking for. Fantastic HD interiors (lots of versions) with nice little treats like a hidden GPS, hidden autopilot, removable leader strips, "rollable" windows, canoe on the float version, etc, etc.
BTW, the float version is the best handling float in FSX to date IMHO (taxiing, take-offs and landings).
I love the big old radial, so I don't fly the Ranger version that much, but hey, it's there if I wanted to.
I couldn't find anything wrong with it so far :)
Great work again Bill, keep it up!
Dan