It’s Canada Day and I thought I should help celebrate the day with the recounting of a couple of recent flights that I’ve done with yet another new airliner in my personal hangar – the Aerosoft CRJ. The flights are of course done in Canada with the Air Canada Express livery on a short hop. Let’s fly there and then back again!

London to Toronto…

I’ve recently done a few flights with my recently acquired Aerosoft CRJ series. Some of those flights have not been a success as I learned the ropes. Others, like these two, have mostly gone well for me.

Two scenery packages helped to make these flights feel more real. London International airport (CYXU) and Toronto Pearson International (CYYZ), both available in the Orbx store, amped up the visuals. So too did the weather conditions that we’ve been experiencing. I’ll explain!

My first flight was several days ago and it was a typical southern Ontario late June day with heat, humidity, and the ever present threat of convective thunderstorm cells. Add some instability to the air-mass and southern Ontario can rival the kinds of destructive wind storms and tornadoes of our southern cousins.

That’s the environment I flew into as I made the shot hop from London to Toronto. The flight went mostly smoothly with me having ironed out some of the quirks from prior flights and keeping a close eye on the speed indicator (overspeed has gotten me a few times). On the way we passed through a developing thunderstorm with a few brief flashes of lightning. Then it was time to line-up on Toronto’s runway 05 for a landing.

The CRJ has some challenging attributes to its flying – namely a supercritical wing that really doesn’t like to stall and when it does it needs nose down attitude to gain lift. I had to fight with that a bit as I misjudged my speeds on arrival and managed to make a bit of a mess of things. Still, I managed to make it on the ground, taxi the long way around Terminal 1 and 3 and then park in my assigned spot.

…and back again!

Today I decided to do the return flight and route myself back to London from Pearson International in Toronto. Today’s weather remains hot (28c hot), humid, muggy, and with the threat of afternoon thunderstorms but throw in some wildfire smoke which, yes, Microsoft Flight Simulator does incorporate into its visibility system.

My departure took me off from the same Runway 05 and then off on a bit of a lazy route that took me over downtown Toronto, down the lake to Hamilton, and then on towards London.

Although no thunderstorms were encountered, I did see plenty of turbulence and the almost ever present smoke that reduced visibility. Fortunately, London was in the clear when I got there and I made a semi-smooth landing on runway 15.

Would I want to be a passenger on any of these flights. No! But I’m getting there and having some fun.

The CRJ first impressions

I thought I’d also take the opportunity to provide a few first impressions of the CRJ from Aerosoft.

Not everyone knows this but the CRJ started life as a Bombardier product. Designed and built in Canada, the CRJ (Canada Regional Jet) project is now Mitsubishi owned but I’ll still take some pride in this being a Canadian product originally. Aerosoft brought it to life as one of the first detailed high fidelity airliners for the sim and it has good points and bad ones.

I’ve already run into some long standing issues where manipulating the flight plan mid flight can sometimes cause the aircraft’s simulation to stop. The rest of the sim is functional but the jet itself stops responding, stops being interactive, and … just stops. It’s a known issue but not a solved issue.

The jet’s ground handling is also disappointing with it feeling very flat and unsophisticated compared to everything else that I’ve flown. Sometimes it feels like it’s bobbling around on a top while you’re rolling on the takeoff run.

There’s more but I need more time to get into it. I will say as well as the modeling both inside and out are superb and the sounds are quite good too. It’s a jet that I’ll be spending more time with for sure!