I flew the Dash 7 in real life for 6.5 years. Loved it. I didn't watch the entire video but I watched the take off and departure. You mentioned the flaps. The approved take off flap settings are 15° or 25°. You mentioned that 45° is probably not used for take off. That's absolutely correct. An interesting thing about the Dash 7 is that even if you selected 45° for take off the plane wouldn't allow it. Any time the torque gauge goes above 2650ft/lbs the flaps automatically go from 45° to 25°. This is a safety feature in the event of a go around. As soon as the power is increased for the go around the flaps automatically move up to 25° to decrease the drag. This safety feature also means that you can't take off with the flaps at 45° because as soon as you bring the power up above 2650 the flaps will retract to 25°. I didn't get to see the landing but the approved landing flap settings for the Dash 7 are 25° and 45°. For a normal landing we'll use 25° and for a short field landing we'll use 45°. Enjoy the plane! Edit: I just watched the landing and I can see that they didn't correctly model how the flaps operate. When you selected the flaps to 45 it took about 6 or 7 seconds for them to get to 45. That's not accurate. They go from 25 to 45 in about one second. The flaps use screw jacks from 0 to 25 which is why they're slow but from 25 to 45 they use hydraulic pistons so they move quite quickly. Also as I mentioned above when the flaps are at 45 they will automatically retract from 45 to 25 any time the power goes above 2650 and that happened a few times on your approach and they never retracted. So that's incorrect as well. Finally, the flaps have another special feature. When you land with the flaps at 45, which again is only used for short field landings, they are designed to automatically retract to 25 once the weight on wheels switches sense that the plane is on the runway. This is to allow the plane to settle on the tires more quickly to allow the brakes to be more effective.
Thank you so much for stopping by. Apparently the developer noticed as well because the latest patch added the automatic flap retraction and I got it to work, so it's nice to see feedback from the community result in updates!
Good review, I agree with everything you said. JayDee posted in the thread in the MSFS forums about this plane a little hack to enable a beta range which takes away the complains of the ground handling for me. This plane isn't perfect - but really if they would give me a combi door, fix the AP lights not working, and do an offical fix for the beta range it would be a very rock solid $20-25 plane. Gives us more than the MS planes they release. The "inertial seperators" are the blue lights on the dash labelled "Intake Deflectors". As far as I can tell, even from the real plane's pictures, there's nothing that opens or whatever when they are turned on.....however it does affect your engine torque a little when using them. Other thing I notice reading through the POH is that bleeds are off on takeoff as they rob power etc. Lots of little things add up on this plane - the more I fly it the more I'm seeing the smaller differences. Fingers crossed that Pilot's continues to fix and push this thing to better and better places!
I used to fly the Dash 7 in real life so I can clarify a couple things if you don't mind. For a normal take off the bleeds are in fact on. You're correct that it does rob power from the engines so we must consider this when doing our performance calculations. Thankfully the Dash 7 is such a great performer on the runway that we rarely ever needed the bleeds off for take off. Typically only if you're really heavy and it's really hot out. Regarding the intake deflectors they are located just inside the engine nacelles. They do in fact move but probably pretty difficult to see and I'm not sure if it's modelled in this version of the plane.
Wow! I know Tindi has 13 of the 100 or so that were made. No idea what happened to the rest, but I would imagine a lot of them were scrapped. Seems like a perfect plane for Denmark!
I think a lot of people were expecting something a bit more study level when it was (iirc) just SWS making it. Or at the very least all the news about for it when it was announced focused more on SWS, from what I remember at least. I don't remember if Pilots were involved from the start or not, but heaps of people seemed to focus on it being an SWS product. Heck even I thought it was, as I had forgotten Pilots entirely. SWS made the model, and that's it as far as I know. I really really wanted this, but the lack of PMS750 (I have the TDS, but I don't use it because the Navdata update issue and conflict with a couple other planes) and these reviews have put me off some... like the engine sounds? the autopilots lights not illuminating properly? The Autopilot not seeming to work properly. These are pretty important issues, hopefully they get fixed in a patch. The price is good though, fix the bugs and It'll be a lot more attractive. I may pick it up still, but the quality is a bit hmmm, atm.
One more thing I wanted to mention regarding the departure. We don't climb the Dash 7 in VS mode. We used IAS mode. This prevents your speed from getting too low during the climb out.
Thank you! Generally I do climb out in IAS for that reason, no idea what i was thinking. Your comments are incredibly valuable. Thank you so much! There is no real manual with this plane, so we are all guessing how to operate it
Good review. Just a point, Pilots just ignore the B317, l asked about having the FF gauges actually working, it was promised months ago but nothing, very disappointing, that's why l'm glad l didn't get this, the arm rest alone will annoy me enough
Did they abandon it? There haven’t been updates, but did you see that they announced nothing further for MSFS? That is sad if true. And yes, the armrests are a minor issue but a major inconvenience.
I like the B314, I agree it is a shame if they abandoned it. I loved it in FS2002/2004 but it never really became my favorite in FSX/P3D. I still have high hopes they will make some repairs to it for MSFS. It needs it.
@@GrizzlyAir l edited my comment, abandoned was maybe the wrong choice of word. I asked about the fuel gauges on a post of Pilots on 28th May, they said it "was on the list", but then said they need to check because their B314 measures MPH not KTS, but last time l checked, FF is in units Per Hour?! So for me it's a good as a lost cause, shame
