Last night I went on a bit of a spending spree. I bought the Carenado C170 from the MSFS Marketplace and I bought CYBD Bella Coola and CZST Stewart – a scenery pack from Orbx that I’ve been looking at for a long time now. It wasn’t part of the current Orbx sale but I thought I’d do it anyways! And what do you do after buying a bunch of scenery packs and a new aircraft? You go and check them out!

Bush plane flying, old school

Last night I flew with some friends from CYBD Bella Coola Airport in Microsoft Flight Simulator using real time weather and time to get an experience with the new Cessna 170 from Carenado. The Cessna 170 is an older aircraft from the 1950’s that Carenado has ensured comes with a bushplane option. So what did I do? We went bushplane flying!

Launching from Bella Coola we did a little aimless flying and checking out of the local scenery. I flew west through the valley, over the Bella Coola Estuary Conservancy, and out into the fjords of British Columbia, Canada. Ahead, the weather deteriorated with low visibility thanks to rain and fog.

We turned back and picked up the rest of the group and commenced several low altitude flights along the river near Bella Coola taking the opportunity to land our bushplanes on the sandbars and admire the scenery nearby.

Then we flew south through another valley working our way up into the mountains in search for some more interesting places to land. We found them! Landing our aircraft on some of the more open hills and taking full advantage of our Cessna 170 bushplane modification and bigger tires of the XCub to land on these rough places.

It was fun, it was relaxing, and it was scenic and even cinematic.

A few Carenado C170 thoughts

I could tell from the moment I got into the cockpit that I’d like this aircraft and, by and large, my experience after a couple of hours of flight is that I really like this aircraft from Carenado. It’s beautifully detailed, it has that old school classic charm, the cockpit looks phenomenal, and the optional GPS unit adds flexibility.

There are some problems that I ran into that I hope are solved by the time I write my full review.

First, I had an electrical failure mid flight that appeared to happen randomly and seemingly without cause. I DID do my own start-up procedure so it’s possible that I did something wrong. My second flight made use of Carenado’s tablet interface to start the aircraft. I also realized that the amp meter in the aircraft doesn’t appear to be all that useful.

Second, there’s a weird sound bug on landing that appears to rev up the engine even while the revolutions and speed are dropping. It makes you feel a little out of control and it just sounds wrong.

Third, I managed to get one of my tires stuck into the scenery while landing on a rough strip. This is less of an issue than some of the others but I hope that it doesn’t happen at actual airports as well. Again, something that warrants further testing.

There are a few other minor issues that I’m sure I will get into as I fly the aircraft a bit more.

Nonetheless, this is a fun aircraft and I will be spending more time with it prior to a full review. A patch or two may take care of these issues before that comes out. I will fully explore all of that by the time my review comes out.

Screenshots

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•