I finally got the PC-12 out of the paint shop in Greenville (with the newly installed GTN 750 and new paint) and decided to fire it up and head out for the Christmas flight. For a short test, I took her on a short 67nm flight from GYH to one of the iconic airports of North Carolina…Mountain Air (2NC0). A golf retreat nestled in the high mountains of NC - it is not an airport to be messed with in poor weather or gusty winds.
I do love the GTN 750 - it is really, really nice…
…but I’m learning quickly that @chipwich is spot on with the PC-12 and after this short flight, the problems I’m encountering with it outnumber my love for it. The taxiing with the current engine modeling is really difficult to deal with (low idle and lots of beta seemed to help)…
But gosh…it is a beautiful aircraft (some Carolinas Ortho going on in the background there)…
Passing over Lake Lure just southeast of Asheville, NC…
Asheville, NC off the left side…
Coming up on the Black Mountains, which holds Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi in the Continental US (for some reason, people think the Presidential Range has higher mountains)…
Coming across Mountain Air to set up for a visual approach. I featured this airport in a Challenging Airports article once - a fun little strip with a ton of slope, carved out of the side of a mountain. The package is not totally compatible with all my add ons (ortho, mesh, etc…) so some of the slopes bordering the airport aren’t true to life…but it’s close enough.
The airport itself is modeled nicely…that is the actual slope of the runway, and why everyone lands uphill…
On the downwind over the valley…
Gear going out…
Rolling out on final, full flaps, gear, settling around 95 knots…
Not a lot of room for lateral deviations at Mountain Air…
Touchdown, plus slope, plus braking and prop reverse bring us to a stop in just five or six hundred feet. You usually have to add power just to get up the hill…
Time for a round of golf…!
But I regret to say I’m probably going to have to park the PC-12 until a true XP11 version comes out. In addition to the really quirky ground model, I feel there are lots of problems with the engine modeling, electrics, and there are some pretty frustrating “Carenado-isms” in the cockpit with the scroll wheel and the odd way they choose to manipulate things that actually really turn me off to this aircraft despite the love/hate feeling I have.
So I might have to run it over to Asheville, put it on the market, and pick another aircraft for the Christmas flight. I know…time is running out…!!