Review of the CL-215

Link: flightsim.com

After spending a bunch of time watching the really nice television show Ice Pilots I decided to take this bird for a spin. The Candair CL-215 aircraft is a very nice piece of work and the model by Massimo Taccoli, Michel Gerard, Dennis Seeley and Dave Eckert.

Panel
Well this is one really nice part of the package. It holds a very nice and fast loading virtual cockpit and a nice 2d panel with good and logical subpanels. I guess the only thing I could think about is that it would be nice to have a moving yoke in the 2d panel but hey now I'm just being picky. It has a nice function that lets you lower or raise the viewpoint.

Sound
The amazing sound set of Dave Eckert is really, really nice it brings those big Pratt & Whitney R-2800-83AM 18-cylinder radial engines to life and what an amazing sound it is when you start them or when you accelerate down the runway.

Visual model
It is a beauty here too. There exists a number of repaints the one in the pictures are the Buffalo Airways. But all you have to do is do a search at flightsim.com for CL-215 and you will find a bunch of them.

The visual model is detailed and works great, there is even a ladder that is attached to the aircraft when you shuts it down. Very nice indeed.

Dynamics
This is a plane that is good to handfly, the only thing I found hard with it is the trouble I had to trim it. It needs a lot of change in the trim before you feel it and a lot of trim change between the different stages of flight. Maybe a new fde might be in order?

Overall this package is really good and if I gave it a grade it would be 4 out of 5, absolutely worth the time and effort to learn to fly this aircraft.