Black Square Beech Starship (Pre-release Preview Thread)

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Sweet! I love the 80s synth music they chose for the trailer. Really fits the vibe. I have their Velocity and their Dukes, and they're some of my favorites in the sim. This is a must-have for me.
 
The turbine Duke and steam King Air are enough "systems" for me. The avionics in this one are more than I care to deal with. I'd love to see what might have been if this plane had been built years later with Garmin avionics.
 
The manual for the Turbine Duke is just as detailed, but you can still just light the fires and go with that one. Same withtheir other GA entries.
 
I haven't dove into the manual but I'm under the impression that it's going to have similar measures to give the end-user plenty of accessibility, or complexity depending on preference!
 
I'm sure you can just jump in and hand-fly the thing, but if you want anything more, you're probably going to need experience with FMC programming in order to get any meaningful use out of the avionics suite.
 
Holy @#*!, they've even simulated the floppy disk drive for the navigation database (complete with sounds). Though, in the video, it appears to be a 3.5" diskette in a 5" drive.

I'm going to get lost in this plane for a good long while.

 
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That last one gave me a headache!
Killbilly said:
Though, in the video, it appears to be a 3.5" diskette in a 5" drive.
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The size of the drive is correct, but the part that's off is the lever. Those were on the 5¼" drives, while the 3½" units had the mechanical eject button that popped out when the disk was inserted.
 
Tom Clayton said:
The size of the drive is correct, but the part that's off is the lever. Those were on the 5¼" drives, while the 3½" units had the mechanical eject button that popped out when the disk was inserted.
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Yes. That's exactly right. It's the lever that threw me.
 
I wonder if the 3.5-inch drive actually had a 5.25-inch-style lever to keep the disk from accidentally ejecting, given that it's a critical aircraft system? I can't find any photos of the actual installation.
 
Looking online last night, I couldn't find any 3.5's that had the lever. I doubt any maker would be willing to make such a fundamental design change for such a niche market. Besides, you're only running the disk on the ground to update the onboard database, so it's not exactly flight-critical.
 
They just released the new video on the Omega VLF Navigation System of the Starship which for those not familiar with that system, it was pre-GPS and post-Delco Carousel INS and LORAN-C. I remember one of the past MD-80 sim models having the Omega VLF system modeled which was pretty intuitive to program and use. Glad to see Nick focus on these details from that early 1980's systems complex.
 
I think Black Square is single-person operation, right? Is he really young enough that he didn't use 3.5-inch floppies? :)
 
DennyA said:
I think Black Square is single-person operation, right? Is he really young enough that he didn't use 3.5-inch floppies? :)
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Hey, my first flight simulator was on a cartridge for my Texas Instruments Ti-99 4A. Feeling my age for sure.

. . . and a nice preview flight video just dropped. I'm WAY too excited for this plane.

 
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