History

In early 1957 a strange aircraft took to the skies over Burbank California. The craft had four turboprop engines with four-blade propellers, and a wing that seemed too small for the airplane. The wing, in actuality, had enough wing area; most of it was just covered up by the engine exhaust, which extended past the trailing edge of the wing. It was called the Lockheed L-188A Electra, named after the other successful Electra that that same company made in the 1930’s. It featured many innovations like, Fire handles that would 1.) Cut fuel and oil to the engine 2.) Feather the props, and 3.) Deploy the fire extinguishers. This all took place in about 1-2 seconds, in one of the older prop-liners this took about 10 seconds as the pilot and crew did all of that manually. The aircraft had so much reserve power that pilots said that it climbed like a fighter. Even the passengers loved the Electra; it was quieter and smoother that the rest of the propeller driven planes of the era. The airlines called it “A revolutionary new airplane.” But then, the “revolutionary new airplane” started to kill people. A large number of L-188’s broke up in mid-air due to a phenomenon known as “whirl mode”. The whole engine nacelle was redesigned and the wing spars strengthened by Lockheed, but it was too late; the flying public had lost faith in the new plane and airlines lost money. The U.S. Navy however, realized the potential of the L-188, for it needed a replacement for the P-2V Neptune already in service. They added a Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) boom in the tail and Lengthened the fuselage. With new avionics and a crew of 10 the Lockheed P-3 Orion was born. Some of the other features of the military P-3 were a sonobouy launcher in the rear of the fuselage that could carry up to 35 sounobouys, a bomb bay for aerial torpedoes and, under-wing pylons for Harpoon anti-ship missiles. There have been numerous versions of the Orion here is a general list;

P-3A-The original version of the aircraft

P-3C- An improved, longer-range version of the plane

CP-140 (A or C) Aurora-A Canadian P-3A or C

EP-3C ARIES II- An ELINT (electronic intelligence) aircraft (one of these was downed over China in April of 2001.

The Visual Model

Usually the first thing that I look at when I download any aircraft is the visual model. My first thought when I loaded this plane up was “WOW!!” The Shape of the aircraft has been captured perfectly. The textures are amazing and the props look excellent while they are spinning. The MAD boom is proportional and not exaggerated as on other P-3s. The fowler flaps, ailerons, and rudder, all worked smoothly. The nose gear turned in sync with the rudder. The description listed “airbrakes” as a moving part; I kept tapping the spoiler key, but no visual spoiler was deployed. I didn’t notice a spoiler worked into the flight model either. The nose contour of this aircraft was hard to judge, from most angles it looked right and from some others it looked slightly distorted. One nice touch is how the nose landing gear light turns off before the wheel is pulled into the well. The aircraft is also carrying Harpoon anti-ship missiles on all of the external stations. I would have liked to see a moving exit or bomb bay but the lack of that doesn’t detract from the model at all. One thing that would have been nice is 3-D gear bays, they are just textured black on the ground. However as I just acquired a copy of G-max, I know how difficult designing a plane can be.

Flight Model

This is also an important aspect of any FS model. Without good flight modeling, what is the point of another aircraft in your hanger? I have found that a large percentage of the FS downloads have either a great visual model, and a flight model that needs improvement, or vice versa and then you have some that are good in all aspects, which creates a overall great airplane. This P-3C falls into the first category. The aircraft is okay in most flight regimes but some problems did arise with the one that I downloaded.

1.) When I throttled down on final approach, the engines stay at full power! I’ve tried selecting engines and such, but to no avail.

2.) It flies somewhat faster than I would expect a P-3 to.

My main concern was the first one listed. The second one however is nice on long-distance trips. In a real P-3 the approach is usually flown at about 140 knots indicated. I couldn’t slow the aircraft down to 180!

Textures

The textures are amazing to look at. They are photo-realistic and fit the aircraft perfectly. On engine start up the textures on the props transfer smoothly from the individual blades to the disk of blurred props. The paint scheme is the toned-down gray found on most all navy aircraft today. Unfortunately there are no spinning wheels on the aircraft.

Panel, Sound, and Virtual Cockpit

The aircraft does not come with a panel or, sound. The sound is aliased to the Cessna 172, which is somewhat distracting because it doesn’t sound anything like the P-3’s turboprops. I looked all over and downloaded some C-130 sounds since the P-3 and C-130 use basically the same Allison T-56A engine and similar props. The virtual cockpit is a major disipointment. It isn’t textured at all. The windows are there but the window lines are wavy, and the whole thing is just black. I would have preferred that it be left out.

Final Conclusions

It is evident that Mr. Olsson has put much effort into the Lockheed sub-hunter. I think that the aircraft has many positive things and some things that could be improved upon. Here is a consolidated list;

Positive things

Excellent visual model

Textures

Correct fowler flap action

Correct nose contour

Things that can be improved

Airbrake (either it isn’t there or I am not looking hard enough)

Virtual cockpit

Sound should be aliased to a turboprop (such as the King Air 350)

Flight model as mentioned above

Click on picture for bigger screenshot

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FS2002 Lockheed P-3 C Orion now!

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