Barefoot Pilot Chronicles: Tahiti

I took a break from unpacking all my stuff I sent from abroad and took some time to fly offline (I rarely do fly offline) because I wanted to test my new FSX freeware acquisition.

Today’s short flight was going to be about 30 minutes in a two-engine Turboprop in FSX.
My flight was going to be out ofNTAA (Papeete, Tahiti I) at dawn. Because this flight was in the French Polynessia I was in full attire for such pilot (well sort of), shirt, shorts and (Havaianna) sandals. You know, you have to be ready to come out of the aircraft and swim. I don’t swim by the way :).

This plane I wanted to test, it is a DHC6-400 Twin Otter and is wonderful. The –400 (Viking) is the latest model of this trusted aircraft brought out by the manufacturer and unlike the other models (-200/-300) it sports a glass cockpit with the latest in avionics!
In our simulated world this model of the DHC6-400 was done by Premier Aircraft Design and was flown with British Airways livery. It has a full 3D cockpit which looks nice and is fully functional (most of it) but kind of difficult to read. The 2D panel is hidden, it does not appear in the Cockpit menu, instead you have to do Shift+1 but then the 2D panel will be superimposed on the 3D panel :(
I took off from runway 04 and flew around the big island. Later I tuned NAV1 with the localizer frequency (109.90) and set the course (on the PFD, there is no knob for that on the 3D panel) to 042 degrees. Apparently the rose had some problem in indicating the vicinity to the localizer so I watched the GPS and turned right. Only then it came active. Flying it was a pleasure, especially from this 3D glass cockpit.
The other problems I found were that even with the Saitek throttle in full position I didn’t get full power, I had to use the F4 keyboard shortcut for that. Another was that at cruise level if I set throttle to the middle position rather than maintaining level flight it would descend. Basically to maintain level flight I had to put the throttle at full (which is not really 100%, see above). Although I never flew an a/c in real life this one seemed to be properly modelled in dynamics.
Landing was also nice although the power was an issue, you have to keep the (Saitek) throttles nearly at full otherwise you will lose altitude fast. I did a soft landing on the same runway (04) using ILS and then taxied to the apron. In FSX I could see a van driving around the apron. Another rather serious issue is flying in low light conditions, when you turn on the (panel) lights there is little difference and reading the panel is quite an eye strain.

Aircraft Type: DHC6-400 (Twin Otter)
Location: NTAA (Tahiti I, French Polinesia)
FS Aircraft Modeller: Premier Aircraft Design
Simulator: Microsoft FSX
A/C Rating: 3.5 out of 5.