Back in town for a few days to catch up on paperwork before Simon and I head out on v1.0 of The Great Escape, and I just couldn’t resist trying out the new Carenado Cessna 210 Centurion. I only had a few opportunities to fly this model back in the day, and this would have been in the late 60s/early 70s, but one such aircraft does stand out in memory. The aircraft belonged, if I recall correctly, to the University of Nebraska Agricultural Extension Service and had been used for heaven only knows what, but the beast had a wing mounted radar in a bulbous fairing mounted out on the leading edge of the right wing, about two-thirds the way out, and it was a turbo-charged model, red and white and with thick, flat black paint on top of the engine compartment. She was a working girl, and it showed.

Flying this deceptively large Cessna single was a real education, too. One thing was immediately clear the first time I went up in that 210: this old gal didn’t handle anything like the Skyhawks and V-tailed Bonanzas I was used to. First of all, she was fast. I mean F-A-S-T. Deceptively so, and she could get away from you too. The black panel was all business, the radar very foreign feeling in a single. There was a built-in oxygen system as the turbo version had a hideously high service ceiling (and Cessna would eventually crank out a few pressurized variants of the 210, noticeable visually by very small windows). Flying from Dallas to El Paso in a 172 was a grinding affair in summer, the skies from Ft Worth out toward Alpine are the stomping ground of those really big West Texas Thunderstorms (also known as “frog-stranglers”, and the much more troublesome “worm-worriers”) and sweating along at 8-10 thousand feet at speeds a BMW 5-series would laugh at got real old, real fast. In the 210 it was a whole new ballgame. Up at 16-18 thousand feet the air was much cooler, not as convectively active, and I doubt even a Porsche 911 would have been able to keep up with that old 210.

I was smitten. While I only made a half dozen trips in this a/c, mostly between Dallas and Aspen, Colorado, I’ve always thought this was the perfect aircraft for that run. The 210 had the muscle to take on crossing the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Independence Pass, and could handle the take-off from Pitkin County with four well fed Texans and lots of luggage – and on a hot August afternoon, too! Climbing out VFR over Aspen for Mt Massive to pick up the radial from Colorado Springs was a breeze in this aircraft, and in those days few other a/c could equal the 210 in mountain performance.

So, that brings us to Carenado’s Centurion. How does she stack up to the real deal?

The short take? “Pretty good.” I never laid eyes on a 210 that had a panel this good looking (but I never flew a late model bird, either), and I seem to recall the cheesy looking molded black plastic panel in every version I saw (like that found in the Carenado Skymaster, imaged further down). I definitely like Carenado’s new take on the panel, and the rest of the interior is lovingly crafted with all the bells and whistles we’ve come to take for granted from Dan Klaue and Team Carenado. With the HD Cessna 337, Carenado really upped their game with panel lighting and sounds, and this new HD series Centurion carries the brand forward with even better panel lighting and truly excellent exterior textures. The sounds left me a little flat, however: I remember the 210 having a deeper, more resonant sound than what I heard in this file. Even with good headphones on, sounds in the file seem little different in tone/pitch than what you hear in similar GA single files, but overall sounds are decent, a bit better than average. Anyway,  I’m sure the fact that I’m old as hell and that my hearing stinks has nothing at all to do with this impression! Listen up when cruising, try to fathom if the sound loop is too short or if you can pick up an annoying click as the file cycles. Could be better, in my book anyway. But golly-gee-willikers, that night panel is just grand!

Well, “grand” or “pretty” is all well and good, but how does it work?

Hmm. The short answer is “pretty good”. “Competent”, “well crafted”, and “confidence inspiring” are all thoughts that came to mind after a few hours in the file, and yet even so it was this last impression that troubled me.

I’ve been away from XP for a while (again!) but with the very latest beta of XP on board things almost seemed a bit too easy. Was this “ease of use” factor inherited from the revised sim, or is this the way the 210′s flight model had been crafted by Dan & Carenado? Or – is this really just the true nature of flight sims in general? Ultimately I opened Carenado’s C172II and C337 and flew them both around a bit for a quick comparison, then jumped back in the 210. There IS a noticeable difference, and true to life the 172 feels jumpier, while the 210 and 337 feel more “solid”, “heavier” if you will. Even so, there’s a sameness between the 172 and her larger brothers that’s hard to get away from. Does XP “seem” better these days in letting the “feel” of an aircraft come through, or does, as I suspect, this differentiation in feel come from developers getting more adept at “dialing in” the handling characteristics of different aircraft as they get more experience?  I’m beginning to think this “sameness” can be chalked up to the fact that we create a little environment on our desktops that has to stand in for a Cessna or a Boeing, and our hardware simply lacks the necessary feedback to carry any SIM to the next level. Dan? Care to chime in?

Here’s a passing thought. When taking off in a 210, or a 337 or even a Cardinal RG for that matter, when the mains retract in an RG Cessna anyone sitting in the seats just behind the pilots will go wide-eyed when the main gear retracts – and kicks them in the ass. As the pilot you’ll invariably get a tap on the shoulder and a polite query that goes something like this: “Uh, gee Cap, I think something just fell of the plane…” or the ever more interesting  ”What the hell was that!” Think hearing a sound like “whir-r-r-r-r-ka-THUMP” followed by a real whack in the ass as the mains slam home and you’ll know what I’m gettin’ at…and then consider there’s no SIM out there anywhere that can replicate this bit of nonsense. Airplanes generally stink, too. Sweat…tobacco smoke…maybe a few barf bags that tipped over and dumped their contents into the carpet…on a hot summer afternoon…

And aren’t you glad?!

Anyway, I flew around Helsinki for a bit, then moved a bit west to Aspen (KASE), Colorado. Aspen/Pitkin County is a high altitude airport (if you consider around 7000′ MSL “high”), but even now there’s not a really good v10 airport file for this facility… Sheesh! Note that AeroSOFT has had an Aspen package out for FsX (for eons now) that really does a good job of making that precious town come to life, but once again XP continues to wallow along in it’s glacial pace of development and not being helped at all by the less than resolute developers who seem less than content to let a golden opportunity slip through their fingers… So important destinations like Aspen continue to have no airport files, and needless to say Aspen itself in XP bears absolutely no resemblance to what’s on the ground in Colorado. Textures on the other hand are improving: the alpine landscapes look better overall and even mountains are taking on more accurate shapes. Pyramid Peak, seen just below when turning S from KASE, looks remarkably accurate, yet the nearby Maroon Bells, as seen in XP, look nothing like what’s on the ground. Of course Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass are all bare…no ski areas, no base villages, and still…no seasonal landscapes. And let’s just keep those embarrassing clouds out of the picture…lots of sunny days in Colorful Colorado…

I flew a circuit around Aspen, heading south to Gunnison/Crested Butte, then NE toward Buena Vista, and finally back down into the valley while crossing the Rockies at Independence Pass. I dialed in some radials to check function but by and large just eyeballed my way around…and that impressed me. I flew around these mountains over the course of 30+ years and the landscape XP renders is almost good enough to “bring it all back”. It’s certainly good enough to fly “Bluebirds” VFR without resorting to NAVAIDs or GPS…as long as you know your way around using a few key landmarks…and that’s a key point to make here. XP10 gets most of these landmarks down good enough to make this possible, something not always possible in V9.

In the image just above, Mt Massive and Aspen Mountain are shaped “just so”, and any pilot who’s flown in and out of ASE a few times will know these profiles well. Show me an image of just those two peaks, and in this orientation, and I’ll know exactly what I’m looking at and can get oriented quickly. Approach Aspen from the W and Mt Sopris will guide you right in to the Highway 82 junction at Basalt, and as you line up on the Roaring Fork River head along the highway ’til you catch the lights, red Castle Rocks off your left wing-tip. XP puts that part of the puzzle into play, and does a fair job of it. So far so good.

And Carenado does the rest. Admirably. Easily. The flight model inspiring confidence all the way, and with XP providing an adequate landscape to guide you. Whether in a 172 or a Skymaster, the experience is remarkably good. In the Centurion, it’s even better, the most “fluid” flight model I’ve felt yet in XP.

I will say that the Carenado A33 Bonanza remains my favorite GA file, but it’s not an HD file and is looking a little, well, dare I say it, “dated”? Still, as good as these Carenado files are, XP’s dreadful clouds and faltering pace of scenery development continue to drain away apparent enthusiasm for the product. But think about something for a moment, from my perspective first, but think about this: I have several truly good ACF on hand now, and a few very good commercial airports too. What I don’t have is something akin to Orbx’s Pacific Northwest, or AeroSOFT’s hyper-detailed Mega Airport Series files, or the über detailed city files you can routinely find for FsX. And this kind of development just isn’t happening the way we hoped it would, is it? Do you feel now that we’ll not see this level of development for XP, ever? I have to admit I’m beginning to see this as a possibility, and that hurts.

Why?

Well, a year and a half ago PMDG stated they’d develop for XP but still no hints, no rumors about what they’re up to, and what does that mean for the SIM. Too, the “usual players” remain painfully silent about new product releases, but at the same time enthusiasm continues to build with each new enhancement for FsX/P3D…even as enthusiasm for release dates from X-Aviation vis-a-vis the Saab and NorCAL ortho series seem to drift along in fogs of indifference. But wait a minute…think about it…because truly, what does it matter? XP is certainly now good enough for most of us, Carenado and AeroSOFT have helped keep the SIM from slipping off into the abyss, so my guess is that even as FsX/P3D continue to evolve and mature, and perhaps even as a cutting edge NEW SIM takes center stage in the very near future, XP will slip back into niche player status. So, those of us confined to the Mac platform will just have to make do, as we always have, with XP…warts and all…yet I suspect we’ll be happy. It’s certainly better than nothing, and indeed Dan Klaue and Carenado have made it a fun place for us old GA pilots to putter around in…but increasingly it looks like the future of SIMming belongs to someone other than Laminar Research. C’est la vie, but long live Carenado, because as long as these guys are around XP will do well enough. If the IXEG 733 is half as good as we hope it is, the tubeliner guys will be more than happy too. So we’ll have crappy clouds, and Cairo, Illinois will look like Cairo, Egypt, but all we really care about is snappy asphalt on those runways, right?!

So, back to the Centurion. Who’s the 210 best suited to? Well, GA pilots looking for a capable high end GA single for VFR and light IFR training, with the added capability to handle moderate high altitude NAV regimes. New pilots looking to move up from a basic trainer will find the 210 much more complex, but much more capable of increasing experience levels, and so should be consider this an ideal second or third GA file. If I was starting out in XP with an eye toward working on real world flight training, here’s where I’d spend my money:

1. Primary trainer: Carenado Piper Archer or C150
2. Next step, advanced VFR training: Carenado Cessna 172II
3. Advanced VFR, introductory IFR training: Carenado Cessna 210
4. Advanced IFR: Carenado F33 Bonanza
5. Multi-engine: Carenado Baron

With these five files, any aspiring pilot can garner enough SIM experience to ease their way into real world flight training and have a very good time in the process. Old farts can relive good times with the above too, but one last plug for the 210 before we sign off. The file has what may be Carenado’s best panel yet, and the night lighting is grand. The only hitch? Because this is an HD series file, framerates will be an issue on low end computers, and even moderately powerful PCs may strain running the 210 if XP’s settings are dialed up a bit, or if a rich airport file is used. Note, if you open this file in XP10, be sure to open the v10 ACF file, and not the v9 file! Documentation is adequate, but frankly, old timers won’t need to bother to go over much more than autopilot OPS.

Limitations? None, really. This is a Top Shelf file, one of the best from The Best. Assuming you have the hardware to handle the file, and good airports in mind to use the 210 with, you ought to find the only limitations this file presents come from a lack of imagination. Yours!

Oh, today’s soundtrack? The new album from Southern California’s “Spock’s Beard”. Check out the song “I Know Your Secret”, and take in the heavy synth/bass line about four minutes in, with some Beach Boys styled vocal riffs that fold into the mix just after. Pretty heavy stuff, but catchy.

Well that’s all for now. Thanks for coming along. C