AIRPLANES > EAGLET FOR FSX available soon
The Eaglet light sport aircraft addon for Flight Simulator X is now available. This small high wing, all metal 2 seater is powered by a Rotax 912 engine and has a cruise speed of 105 kts. There are two different panel versions available. One with normal analog style gauges and the other with an Electronic Flight Instrumentation System (EFIS). These aircraft are based on the real world VH-DBJ and 24-7600 which are based at Redcliffe Flight Training. Special thanks to Mahl and the team at Redcliffe for their help in developing this aircraft.

BUY NOW
FlightSimStore Price $19.95 AUD
Simmarket Price 17.25 EUR (14.20 without tax)
PC Aviator Australia Price $19.95 AUD
PC Aviator USA Price $19.95 USD
FS PilotShop Price $19.95 USD

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- Getting the EFIS autopilot to follow a GPS flightplan: If the HSI display is not showing press either of the outer buttons on the EFIS to switch to showing the HSI. Press the 5th button (the second from the right) to show the HSI menu. Press either the 1st or 2nd button to change the NAVSRC between NAV (SL30 nav com radio) or GPS.

- Changing the vertical speed of the EFIS autopilot: This is not possible in the EFIS autopilot. In the real world unit the vertical speed is set as part of the installation process and in normal use is not adjustable. I have chosen to use 500 fpm as the default as it is a nice number. If you'd like to change this you can edit the aircraft.cfg file, look under the [autopilot] section and change  "default_vertical_speed= 500.0".

- There are no shadows in the virtual cockpit: FSX requires the cockpit to have completely closed geometry to display shadows correctly. In the interests of better frame rates I chose not to make this model compatible with virtual cockpit shadows.

- Uninstalling the demo version: I recommend that you uninstall the demo version before installing the full version. Use the "Uninstall Ants Eaglet" program located in the root FSX folder or accessed via your Start menu under "Ant's Airplanes". In theory, the full version should happily install over the demo version without any problems but it's better to be safe than sorry I say.

- Cannot see Strobe and Landing Light effects in virtual cockpit: This problem occurs when in windowed mode (in full screen it seems to be fine) and is due to the FSX clipmode. Because the airplane is so small the effects are too close to the viewpoint and get clipped by FSX. The fix is to add "ClipMode = Minimum" to the end of the "Title = Virtual Cockpit" entry in your camera.cfg file. This file is located in the same folder as your FSX.cfg file.

- Error 5 using the Eaglet Setup Program: This error indicates that the files cannot be opened to save your settings. The most common cause of this problem is Windows 7 preventing the setup program from writing files. If you right click on the Eaglet Setup program and select "Run as administrator" this should tell Windows 7 that it is OK for the Eaglet Setup program to write files.

SCREENSHOTS
All screenshots are high resolution (largest is 1920 pixels wide) and unedited except for cropping. Screenshots will open in a new browser window.

FEATURES
- Native FSX model
- Incredibly detailed model with full animations and completely clickable virtual cockpit
- Silky smooth 3D gauges
- Custom gauges including radios, GPS and autopilots
- Two different panel setups, EFIS glass cockpit and normal analog gauge cockpit
- Lovely Lotus style landing lights
- Virtual cockpit rain effects
- new Realistic Prop Torque effects
- 7 real world liveries plus 4 with user adjustable registration numbers
- Genuine engine sounds
- Hot swappable RPM (engine/prop rpm) and airspeed (knots/km/h) gauges
- Animations for tiedowns, wheel chocks and pitot covers
- Animated pilot and passenger models which can be displayed or hidden (pilot head individually switchable in VC)
- In game Animation Manager
- Separate Eaglet Setup program to set preferences*
* Note that the Eaglet Setup program requires Microsoft's .NET 4.0

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
 - Microsoft's Flight Simulator X SP2, Acceleration or FSX Gold.
 - Windows XP SP3, Vista or 7
- 250MB free hard drive space
This aircraft was developed with the Flight Simulator X SP2 SDK. You therefore need either Microsoft's Flight Simulator X SP2,  Acceleration or FSX Gold. The minimum PC specs are more difficult to be exact about as even similarly specced PC's can give such varying performance. I can only recommend that you download the demo version. This is exactly the same as the full version and will give an accurate indication of how well the full version will work on your system.

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO VERSION

With this demo you can find out exactly how well the Eaglet will run on your particular system. The demo includes the full documentation and is the same as the full version except for the following things:
- Only white repaint included
- Demo written in inconvenient places
Everything else is exactly the same as it is in the full version. The download is approx 47MB in size and requires approx 144MB in hard drive space.

REALISTIC PROP TORQUE EFFECTS
New in the Eaglet is the Realistic Prop Torque Effect. One of the problems with FSX is the poor simulation of propeller torque. FSX will simulate prop torque upto the stall speed but it then slowly reduces the effect as your airspeed increases. I have attempted to recreate the effect of prop torque for these higher speeds. With the realistic prop torque effect on (you can use the Eaglet Setup program to choose whether you use it or not) you should notice that adjusting the throttle will have an effect on the roll axis of the aircraft. During climb you will need some right stick, at cruise with cruise RPM the aircraft will be balanced but reducing the RPM to idle and you will need some left stick. How does it work? For slower speeds the FSX prop torque is still working but for higher speeds a bit of simple maths is used to dynamically control the aileron trim and thus simulating the effects of prop torque.

PAINTKIT
The Eaglet paintkit can be downloaded here: Eaglet Paintkit
The paintkit is approx 15 MB in size and contains layered textures saved in photoshop format. The paintkit uses an auto installer as this is able to compress the files to a very small size.