X-Plane 11 Screens

Ahh the John Denver killer! Them be funky.

Be nice! Great design. Doesn’t scale up very well, but great.

Dan, I think it is hard to blame the airplane design on John Denver’s unfortunate accident. I’m afraid that one sits squarely on the shoulders of the pilot, although the fuel selector was in an awkward place in his particular aircraft. .

@smokinhole, as I was flying this today in VR (which I finally have working nicely in XP11 now), with a cheezy grin on my face, I thought to myself that this may not be a Pitts, but I bet Smokinhole would have fun flying this one in VR. :slight_smile:

Agreed Paul. But don’t you mean the left shoulder? Not to make light of the event, but if memory serves, that was where the original builder had placed the fuel selector. Probably not the best location in tight quarters. Anyway, very interesting design and I have admired those that I have seen at fly-ins. The cockpits tend to be a snug IMO, and I’m not sure that I could achieve the gymnastics required to mount an EZ. How do you find it to fly?

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I’m sure it was awkward for him to reach, but generally the idea is not to run one side dry before switching tanks, and I believe he didn’t have a whole lot of fuel onboard when he took off.

The cockpit is indeed very snug. I haven’t flown one but when I was working as a line guy at a small airport in Ohio, one of the hangar tenants had one. It was beautiful, but I’m with you, it would be a bit of a squeeze to get into it.

The simulated version is a lot of fun to fly, especially in VR because it is so small and snug, yet the visibility is great. There is a simple autopilot with Alt hold and Attitude hold (that can be adjusted up down left and right). No Heading or Nav modes though, which will make it a bit of a pain to fly a long cross country, which is a bit unfortunate. It handles nicely and doesn’t need a lot of runway. Stalling characteristics are interesting as the canards are designed to stall before the main wings, so you end up with a bobbing motion if you just try to hold it in the stall. It’s very benign in that regard. The fuel selector is right in front of you in this airframe, so no problems switching tanks, and you can feel when there is an inbalance.

If it is worth the $27? I think that is really down to what kind of flying you enjoy but I can say I am having a lot of fun with it so far.

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Love Rutans designs!
Canard designs are so Swedish… :wink:

But, @PaulRix,


Is this 3D water…!?
I mean, do the shadows rest on the seabed? :astonished:

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To be clear, the fuel selector was not where Rutan had placed it. Funny, just a few days ago a guy came up from Florida to buy my old engine. He has a long-easy now (which he built) and is building a Defiant. Obviously, he’s a fan. His day job is running the Guard’s F-35 program out of Randolph (I think) and until recently he flew F-16s. Super nice guy and really into aviation. He stole that engine from me but I was desperate to get it out of the hangar. I asked him about the F-35 and the helmet specifically. He said, “Everyone seems focused on that helmet. We use the exact same helmet in the F-16. It’s like the least impressive thing about the F-35!”

Well anyway, I have always loved the Rutan planes. Unfortunately, the only one I ever flew was the Beachcraft Starship which was a spectacular turd. I need something “non-helicopter” in my lineup and maybe this is just the ticket.

Really? Wow…that’s kind of cool even though you didn’t like it. I saw a few back in the day at Stevens Aviation in Greenville, SC. If memory serves me correctly, Beechcraft tried to reacquire all of them so they could scrap them for some reason.

Regarding the Long-EZ…looks like a fun and nifty little airplane. Is there any storage at all in it…because that does sorta limit its utility.

I read an article somewhere about a few faithful diehard owners who are still out there. One guy bought two others just for parts. It flew ok but it was slow, noisy and landed jet-fast.

The “drop tanks” are in fact for storage and are removable. I’m sure there isn’t a whole lot of room in there but enough for a small bag each side I would guess.

As a devout introvert, storage is the other seat. Plus I fit enough in the 2 sq/ft turtledeck to camp through a contest weekend. If you know what you are doing, space becomes a liability.

Yeah, most of the EZs that I’ve seen have it on the floor between the pilot’s legs. I should have added that John Denver was a huge talent and the day was a sad one for aviation and American music fans.

Paging mr. @PaulRix.
Question for you, above.
I need to know, man…

X-Plane 11 Screens - #602 by Troll

The water certainly appears to be 3D. As soon as I get home this afternoon I will take a closer look and change the time of day to see if the shadows on the sea floor move. It is pretty convincing as you fly overhead.

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Inspired by your post Paul I downloaded the FSE and testing

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Looking good! Are you using Reshade or just FSE on it’s own?

without Reshade

@Troll… So, a quick test shows that the water does have some depth, but the boat shadows are painted on the bottom and are fixed in place, no matter what angle the sun is at. Another weird thing is that the surface of the sea is actually hard, as in you can taxi onto it, which was a bit of a shock when I tried to land a seaplane in the bay just beyond the runway. The plane’s shadow is projected onto the sandy sea floor though. It still looks good if you just fly over it.

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Ok… So they made a sort of glass surface?

That would be a good way to describe it. Pity really as it would be a great place to use a seaplane.