Ken Rand's small, single-seat, retractable-gear homebuilt, built using Styrofoam and Dynel/epoxy model aircraft techniques. This model was designed using FSDS v3.51, principally for ai use, so there is a relatively low polygon-count main model, with several LOD models and a reduced-detail shadow for optimal fps. Not a short-field aircraft, it's quite streamlined and there are no flaps, so the stall speed is quite high for a small 'plane, 45kts., but as it's such fun to fly I fitted a basic VC with a functional panel using mostly default gauges. This is a "slippery" little aircraft, needing rather more runway to land than you might expect, so line up early and get your speed down if you don't want to have to go around. The flight dynamics were prepared with Gerry Beckwith's AirWrench, but, as is the way with many homebuilt aircraft, the figures I worked from, hence my final result, will probably vary from other published data. The aircraft sits very close to the ground, (the undercarraige is only 17" tall), so be extra careful not to lift the tail too high on your take-off roll or to be at all nose down when landing, else you'll hit the prop on the runway. On such a small hi-performance aircraft, raising and lowering the gear has a significant effect on the flight characteristics, so you'll need a bit of "a heave" on the stick to get it off the ground, then the nose will rise of it's own accord once the gear is raised. The aircraft is in fairly neutral trim (approx 5%) at cruising speed. Similarly on landing, lowering the gear will cause a noticeable nose-down effect, requiring a little extra back-stick to compensate, so don't leave it 'till the last seconds to drop the wheels.

Due (probably) to the fairly radical flight characteristics of this aircraft, Flight Simulator's AI engine doesn't cope very well with the flyable aircraft, so I've included a rather more "sanitised" set of flight dynamics for use for ai that include a set of "virtual" flaps to help get the thing back on the ground. Please note, these still require a reasonable length of runway to land. Touch-&-go's won't be achieved with much less than 2000ft of runway. The real aircraft has no suspension in the main gear, other than the tyres, so needs to be landed fairly smoothly. I've tried to emulate this as best I can, but Flight Simulator seems to expect at least a modicum of springing, and as the AI engine appears to leave aircraft to their own devices, once they are over the runway, this model does bounce a bit on touchdown (put it down to an inexperienced pilot ;-) but at least it doesn't just crash and disappear!

INSTALLATION NOTES:
To save disk space as much as anything, I've aliased the model for the AI aircraft to the model in the flyable folder. If you just want this aircraft for ai, you'll need to take the contents of the Model folder of the flyable aircraft and put these two files into the Model folder of the ai aircraft, overwriting when asked.

As usual with this sort of thing, feel free to do what you want with it except charge for it. If you enjoy it, an e-mail would be nice, if you don't like it, I'm sorry I wasted your time.

Chris Eve.
chris.eve@2e2.je
