Abacus has released the Cessna 162 SkyCatcher for both FSX and FS2004. This is how they describe their plane: “The Cessna 162 SkyCatcher is the first Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) to come from the venerable Cessna Corporation. This new two-place LSA made it’s first flight in 2006 with initial deliveries are slated for 2009.
The SkyCatcher is made mostly of aluminum with a fiberglass cowling. With an upward swinging door and fixed tricycle landing gear and control sticks instead of yokes, the SkyCatcher departs from design of earlier high-wing models.
The engine is a Continental O-200D that delivers 100hp of power to a two-blade propeller. The main avionics are provided by a Garmin G300 and we’ve included three manuals to help you learn the new navigation suite.
The low-cost Cessna 162 is intended for flight training and personal use.“
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You know, if someone other than Abacus had released this, I would be all over it. But with the quality of Abacus products….
I’m betting that Flight1 will come out with the Cessna 162 LSA in the near future… 🙂
I know what you mean. Although: I know of at least two outstanding products they offer: World & USA Extreme Landscape Bundle, which I prefer to GlobalX, and “In 80 flights around the world”, which has a very thought out route.
Abacus has a try before you buy program. I’m test flying the 162 now, and I like it. I’ve noticed the following:
In FSX
1) If you have multiple monitors and want the PFD & MFD undocked and moved to the second monitor, that does not work so well as the images of these two items are not cropped to the edges of the PFD & MFD. You could do one easily, but they can’t overlap.
2) I’ve noticed the text on the PFD, specifically the altitude in the upper right hand corner corrupted for lack of a better term and unreadable for certain altitudes. I noticed this at 3900 ft.
3) The autopilot controls can be difficult to click.
4) The manuals say you can use the keyboard to type in direct to’s, but that did not work for me.
5) I change the tail number to N402PD but the model still reflects the OEM “N” number
6) No repaint kit or utility like you get with Flight1 aircraft (the only other aftermarket planes I have experience with).
7) The recovery parachute is not modeled!
8) At this point, I see no way to check fuel (other than the “red text” method) Surly this thing has a gas gauge.
In FS9 – All of the above plus:
9) Clicking the enlarge PFD button on the panel crashed FS9
Please bear in mind some of this could be me, Vista, the fact I’m running x64, my 10 year old CRT monitors, the moon, Bill Gates, George W. Bush 🙂
Overall, I like the airplane, I LOVE the fly before you buy. I intend to purchase. I am working through the FSX for real pilots training book as I’d love to get my Sport Pilot Certificate! This aircraft is built for that.
If Flight1 comes out with one, I’ll probably buy that one as well.
I downloaded the free 7 day trail of this plane. It works fine. Actully it was a pleasuer to fly on my sim. I am trying out a few sports planes in order to see which one I might use when I take up flight training. FYI my system is Windows 7 64 bit (much better than 32bit vista. Q6600 bosted to 3 Ghz, 4GM RAM and two hard drives, one for the system and one for FSX and the 12 extra DVD’s of add ons.
Using Saitek yoke and switch, CH peadals (not impressed by them). On a standard secondary 19″ TFT and a full HD 37″ LD.
I would love if someone released a sports pilot package with a few sports pilot planes and some training missions.
There are some LSA’s available for FSX, both freeware and payware. Zenith Aircraft builds real world LSA’s, and have some models available for FSX. Run a google search and you should find some…
The issue’s you’ve run across on the Abacus plane is typical….they are all rather half-baked in quality and features.