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My first flight across the pond with the Jardesign A330. It went fairly well Zurich to Montreal (what else )

Here's a picture to show you guys that I am still working on the project. It shows the autopilot section which I redid. It's always fascinating to see how much time even or especially the small details require to get them right. Next on the list are the side consoles, which are very annoying due to their weird geometry. Despite doing all the modeling and having a normal life with a regular job and a wife I'm building my own A310 yoke. I bought a yoke from a real plane maybe a year ago and I've been working on converting it to a pc joystick ever since. If you'd like I can share some photos with you. Take care! Martin

Hey guys, VHHH Project is frozen until we've finished and completed projects established earlier. So sorry for the wait!

Sunday Beaver Update 24 Hey, Time for another Sunday Beaver Update. The last week has been very productive and I was able to implement quite a few things and I had lots of fun doing it So probably you would like to hear what I have been busy with since last Sunday. Okay, here it comes: I know that there are people out there who would use an AP when flying the Beaver and therefore I implemented the S-TEC 50 AP and I guess you have seen it on the screenshots before. This week I spent some time to make all the modes working as they are supposed to work and when I was happy, I did the tuning of the different modes. The result was very satisfying and the AP behaves nicely. As the AP is located in the lower part of the cockpit, opearing it can be a challenge. Well, not really a challenge, because I even have a view available which zooms in, but I guess you would like to be able to operate the AP while still looking out of the window. Or you want to disconnect the AP at minumums after flying an automatic approach and you wanna do this without looking down, snice you are close to the ground. I hear you and this is the reason why I created a 2D pop-up with which you can control the AP in the same way as with the 3D part. It looks like this... Sounds got some attention as well, and I added doors sounds and the pumping sound when you operate the flaps. Then I spent a lot of time on the ground model behaviour in strong crosswind conditions. As you all know, standard X-Plane behaviour is kind of poor in this area, due to the strong weathervaning effect, but with some plug-in code, I was able to improve this a lot. The Beaver's max demonstrated crosswind component is 10 kts, but I was able to take off and land in winds up to 15 kts now. However, I really had to work hard, in order to not screw up, especially during the landing and slow down phase. I like it a lot now. Another thing that I never liked so far was the fact that you could often land an amphibious plane with the gear down on water, without any negative impact. This is not reflecting reality though and I had to solve this thing. Also here, my plug-in code came to the rescue. Do a landing now in the amphibious version, with the landing gear down on water, and you find yourself in a world of trouble... The following sequence of pictures of a landing accident was taking in Juneau around lunch time today. Well, fortunately the single pilot survived with minor injuries, but the aircraft will be out of order for some time now. Almost forgot to mention the ropes on the wings. They are animated and swing in the wind, depending in airspeed, power setting etc. Also this week, I had a lot of fun with this new feature again. The feature that was specifically developed for Beaver floatplane pilots. It is so much fun ,that I am thinking now "Who needs a runway when there is so much water." I guess I will talk about it next week or the week after Finally a word on XP9. Well, I have the feeling that there are a lot of bush and general aviation pilots out there who are disappointed that the Beaver won't be available for XP9. Well, I hear you guys. I have to say, that I developed the Beaver so far with only XP10 in mind and also the model and textures are setup for it. For example, I am using now 4K textures for the external model and XP9 is not supporting that. Re-doing the work again to make it work with 2K textures again was a no-go. However, I did a quick check and reduced the external texture map to 2K and was afraid that the result would look bad, but it does not. Even with a 2K map, the external model looks pretty nice and sharp. So that resolved a big issue for me. The cockpit and interior was on 2K maps anyway, so that is not an issue either. You can have a look here. The SMS Beaver in XP9. Therefore, I decided to create a version for XP9 as well, but unfortunately it won't make it to the initial realease, because I am very busy to finish the XP10 version. There might be a lot of people thinking "Why is he looking at XP9 while most of the user are on XP10 now. Why is he spending time on this, instead working on new features". Well, I am here to serve you all and I know that there is a decent number of XP9 users out there. Especially bush pilots, who enjoy the fact that XP9 has a lot more water, lakes, rivers at the correct locations, while XP10 is still missing a lot. Also a lot of pilots are using older machines which are barely able to handle XP10 at higher settings, while they can fly XP9 with high setting and high frame rates. So in order to not let these people down, I will work on the XP9 version as well. If I can make a person smile or give him or her a great time while still using 9, I am a very happy person too. So that's it for today. I hope you all have a great Sunday! Pete

Oh...no way..the panel looks new from the distance. This is what it looks like close up

Here are pictures of "The office". Landplane Cockpit Amphibious Cockpit

Sunday Beaver Update 23 Hello, Time for another Sunday Beaver Update. I made some great progress during the last week and I wanted to share what I did and also show some screenshots. Well, I finally added some cold and dark pre-flight elements to the Beaver like the pitot-heat cover, wheel chocks and some heavy gear to fix the aircraft on ground in these strong alaskan winds. I also added a pilot to the cockpit now and he is only visible when you view the aircraft from outside. Did I add some fancy head and body movement yet? Nope, I didn't, because this is not one of my priorities for the first release. Will I add it down the road? Most probably. It is not that hard to do. If you are not spending hours watching the pilot from the outside in awe, I guess you appreciate more that I rather spend my time to work on a more realistic pitot-heat and icing simulation, instead using the standard X-Plane one. From my point of view this is adding much more value than having this little guys dancing around. He is there, he looks good and that's it for now. As you know I was talking about having three versions for the first release. The regular tire version, the cargo version and the amphibious version. That is still the case, but rather having these kind of fixed models, I added more flexibility. When you fly the tire version, you can decide via a menu, if you like the regular tires or the tundra tires. In addition to that, you can now have three different cabin configurations. Also these can be controlled via a menu without reloading the aircraft. I will make it so, that you can save your settings, so that you don't have to reload your prefered setting every time. The cabin configurations are the following: Full Pax Version Pax / Cargo Mix Full Cargo Version I worked on a few other cool things too, but I will report about them in one of my next Sunday Updates. All in all I am really happy and that I made it this far after the last 2 years. Along my journey to my first X-Plane product, so many obstacles have been thrown in my way that it would have been easy to say "Okay, Okay, I understand, I guess this X-Plane thing isn't supposed to be. I am going to quit and let it go." I have to admit that I had these thoughts too and was very close to just do that, but thinking about why I am doing all this and adjusting my mindset helped me a lot. The goal to produce the best bush plane simulation out there and to deliver great value to you as a customer pushed me through these hard times. I have the feeling that obstacles are thron in your way for a reason. It is a test of how bad you want something, your character, your passion and if you are aligned with what you do. I promised to deliver the Beaver and I DO WHAT I SAID I DO. This is one of my bigger forces driving me. Putting somebody down who was waiting for the Beaver, following me all these years by saying "The Beaver project is dead"? NO WAY! So the Beaver will be availabe for you in a few weeks and I am really pushing hard to make this date. I even implemented some features that were not planned or on my radar, but htey were far too cool to leave them out. And one of the coolest feature will be kind of a "First in X-Plane" and I will report about that in one of my next Sunday Updates, but it is something bush pilots will enjoy for sure. Oh by the way, the Sunday Updates will now become EVERY Sunday Updates again. So stay tuned and spread the word. You all have a great Sunday, Pete