Just as a side note, I checked Google Trends shows a steady strength at Carenado...

 

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=carenado

 

Note that most of the traffic is from Spain, Argentina and Chile.

It actually looks like since June 2012 things have stayed relatively flat if you average the peaks and valleys, also would be interesting to know if their sells figure match this trend....

I have a number, clearly the most if allocated by vendor, of Carenado aircraft. Of the 48 aircraft in my hanger, 12 are Carenado along with 5 more from Alabeo. I also have A2A (the Comanche is a marvel, and the Mustangs are just a gas to take out and terrorize the countryside), RealAir (please, Sean, release the P3Dv2 versions of the Legacy and Duke - pretty please!), and MilViz (the long-in-waiting 350i is a beautiful model, even in its current alpha state).

 

In general I like them. I can do cold and dark starts, can wait until things warm up a bit, and generally enjoy the flight dynamics. As others have observed here the PC-12 just doesn't do it for me - must be the Swiss precision - but I enjoy the Phenom, the Hawker, and the new Navajo, all of them enjoyable aircraft to fly. The auto pilots are more than sufficient to keep her level and steady, and since I am not a real life pilot I am unaware of any quirks - they just operate as they do so I know what I need to do to go up and back down. And since I use Plan-G for flight planning and hand fly all approaches (sometimes more successfully than not!), the omission of things like ILS and other three-letter acronyms don't bother me at all.

 

I think FSXextreme summed it up quite nicely in his comments on the Hawker review from the main AVSIM page: Carenado produces a lot of aircraft, some with more quirks than others, but if we had to wait as long as we have waited for other vendors to produce fun-to-fly, good-looking aircraft our hangers would be very bare indeed.

I tend to agree Carenado is light on systems and can be buggy, but I can't say they are any more or less guilty of this than any other aircraft from PMDG ($120) to A2A ($80) to RealAir ($40) to Majestic ($60) ... what I find interesting is that XPlane buyers welcome Carenado with open arms, yet the FSX/P3D users tend to go out of there way to post their displeasure with Carenado (again and again and again, this certainly isn't the first thread and will not be the last).  I'm not trying to deter any opinions either, this is a civil thread with people repeating their opinions of Carenado, all fair/good.

 

What I do appreciate from Carenado/Alabeo is that they don't distinguish price based on platform used FSX or P3D or XP10.  As a primary P3D user with some occasional XP10 use, it's refreshing to see a company not penalize me because I choose P3D as my platform.

 

Cheers, Rob.

I love and still fly some of their earlier aircraft like the Mooney and  C185 tundra in P3D, but I think my last purchase was the KingAir 90 and 200. Although I am looking forward to their release of the Aero Commander 500 because I really like that aircraft and they are the only ones doing it  B)

Not to derail the conversation, but there's been a freeware commander out for quite some time for FSX. It's in the avsim library. I used to fly this AC back in FS9 many moons ago and it was pretty good for it's time.

Not to derail the conversation, but there's been a freeware commander out for quite some time for FSX. It's in the avsim library. I used to fly this AC back in FS9 many moons ago and it was pretty good for it's time.

 

It was indeed!  But just wait for the new version to come out, and the comparison will be interesting..

 

We have now become used to visuals in the VC, that are light years ahead of what FS9 could offer..

Yes, use to fly Milton Shupe's Commander in both FS9 and FSX and now looking forward to having an updated version in P3D, and Milton is also really looking forward to this release according to his comments on FB.  I hope Carenado has consulted with him and if they can replicated his flight model with some system funtionality along with Carendado's great visuals it should be a great aircraft. B)

 

P.S. Looking forward to the first Bob Hoover livery!!

 

Cheers

Martin

 

 

 

Are expectations of Carenado too high for this community?

 

 

Think of it this way, if I bought a toaster oven that looked gorgeous with nice stainless steel exterior and a non-stick interior, however it sparked and popped circuit breakers every time I used it or always burned my dinner because the temperature regulator was off would it be my expectations were too high to expect a toaster oven to work like a toaster oven or would it be the manufactures fault for producing a flawed product.

 

Carenado makes some great light general aviation products that work fantastic. IMHO they have stumbled crossing from light airplanes to turboprops and jets. The systems complexity increases on these big GA airplanes to the point of being as complex as a jetliner. Add in the complexity of modern avionics and every product becomes a monumental process to produce.

 

Carenado likes to advertise their airplanes and the systems they provides but then fails to document the products. Often it is the customers who are left in the gulf of "how did they mean for this to work." Thus Carenado is 100% responsible for not managing expectations of their products. If the expectations are too high it is Carenado's fault.

 

I did not and will not purchase the Hawker 850 from Carenado. I realized that while Carenado makes some beautiful looking aircraft, their gauge programmers are not up to the task of building an accurate representation of a Pro Line 21 cockpit that would meet my expectations. Carenado is also bad about making the same mistakes again and again. i.e. IAS climb and/or FLC in the automated flight systems.

 

What is interesting is that their products are good enough that we have a dedicated group of freeware developers who always seem to take on the challenge of fixing Carenado's bugs or adding highly sought features. Bert is one who has made Carenado products worth the purchase price, but it find it unfair to expect that every Carenado product will be fixed by Bert...

 

We have now become used to visuals in the VC, that are light years ahead of what FS9 could offer..

I've got a few Cerando aircraft for both fs9 and FSX and both VC's are pretty well identical. So not sure about the lightyears part.

 

Either way, I use the Aeroworx KA which is still light years ahead of most if not all MSFS aircraft for complete all round package of everything. Haven't got any Carenado aircraft that are even in the same universe as the Aeroworx.

Well, I have several of Carenados aircraft, but the only one I am interested in is the Malibu PA46. It has several flaws as does all of their stuff, and I have contacted them several times with littlo, or no results. Just a passive type promise to "fix things", with the famous words,"trust me when we say the matters will be addressed". When?? It's already been over 3 or more years, and very few results. I know thye have many customers. They seem to be converting stuff to Xplane quite rapidly, and I'm sure there are many more FSX flyers than Xplane. Seems their assembly line approach doesn't even check for bugs, as it were. The newer stuff, I'm not even interested in. I don't think they read any of these forums because they don't even answer their own emails of inquiry most of the time. If they looked here and other places once in awhile, they would see what needs "fixin'".

@JSMR - Another Jon_aus?  How many accounts Jon_aus do you have?  I removed your ability to post for a few weeks because of your trolling and now you show up again with another name.  Okay, JSMR is no longer active.  I remind you that AVSIM does not allow multiple accounts.  Let me know if you have anymore.

 

 

What is interesting is that their products are good enough that we have a dedicated group of freeware developers who always seem to take on the challenge of fixing Carenado's bugs or adding highly sought features. Bert is one who has made Carenado products worth the purchase price, but it find it unfair to expect that every Carenado product will be fixed by Bert...

 

In this odd upside down flight sim world we manage to have praise after praise heaped on Carenado over the years. yet at the same time the undisputed " bug" fest that is Carenado is hated by an equal number.

Hi Polk, 

 

I am not sure the numbers are even. Just like in real life, there is likely to be a vast "silent majority" out there that is quite satisfied with Carenado, et al, yet do not feel the need to praise them from the rooftops.

 

The vocal minority, however, is very vocal!   

I only bought the Carenado Grand Caravan EX because it seemed to be the only detailed Caravan on the market. And as an aside, can anyone tell me where I might find a better one? It was a disappointment, mostly because I've been spoiled by A2A, RealAir and PMDG. I couldn't even make it work with LINDA. Even at $40 USD, it could have been better. Way cool that I can open the table in the salon - not way cool how the avionics work and the flight characteristics.

 

Won't go into details, but threads like this one have saved me more money with Carenado. I only spent $40 so I'm not too disappointed/

I think therein lies the problem. We're ALL spoiled by the likes of PMDG (which has come up through the years and wasn't always top notch. re. B1900D), but when you look at their development cycle of YEARS before they produce a single plane, Carenado has done more releases for people to enjoy. Carenado is like documentation: when it's good, it's really good, when it's not, it's better than nothing.