The “V tail” has always been one of my favorite planes of all times! Ever since a friend of mine brought a picture of one when I was in Elementary school. My first thought was, “How can a plane with no rudder fly?”

Well, Beech did it a long time ago… Late 1940’s to be exact. Today, we can find lots of V Tails for Flight Simulator in Internet. One of them is from Abacus’ Premier Collection. http://www.abacuspub.com/  

Abacus offers this plane (and many others) in their exclusive program “fly before you buy”. This will give you a chance to test the aircraft (with all options) for 7 days. After that, you can buy a registration key and unlock the plane for unlimited use.

The installation process is simple. You download an 8 MB executable file, run it, follow two or three simple prompts and hit Finish. You are done!

Documentation? Well… there is a link in Abacus website that will take you to a webpage that will tell you to hit “CTRL-E” to start you engine, stick back will rise the nose, stick forward will dive the nose, left will turn left and right will turn right. Pretty simple stuff for the novice simmers. The 21-lines document also includes Rotate speed, Approach speed and Stall speed.

Once installed, the first variation that comes into view is a disappointing one (in my most humble opinion). I really don’t know how Pavel Thoman ever considered including this color scheme into this beautiful plane.

Walking around the airplane gives you notice of the beautiful piece of metal on your side. The lines are clean, but somehow, looking from above makes you think you are in a metal cylinder with windows. (In fact you are, you just don’t want to be reminded about it!)

When in the Pilot’s seat, you can’t help but think of it as unreal. It just doesn’t feel right.

When switching to the Virtual Cockpit, the panel becomes a plain photograph. Aside from the yoke, there’s no sense of depth. I must say, though, that everything works, except the engine’s indicators. They stay static always.

The exterior look is good in general. Nice detail, all control surfaces move, and of course, your copilot’s door opens. There are small gaps between the moving surfaces and the static ones, which lead to rendering errors. You can see through the wings or you get small lines that’ll show the color under the wings.

The panel needs some work, again, in my humble opinion. All of the subpanels show up in the upper left, which, to me, is a problem. Some panel modding will solve the issue.

Taxing keeping her aligned with the middle line on the taxiway is easy. She won’t pull to one side or the other. When taking off, she’ll jump right into the sky, so be careful and keep an eye on that attitude indicator. You have to control the ascending angle very careful.

Looses speed quickly while ascending in steep angle, but once you are in level flight she feels soooo nice! Gotta keep an eye on that trimming wheel though!

Turning this baby is a charm. She’ll go with you, no questions asked, and descending is also nice with a nice flap and wheel deployment. Again, trimming constantly is a must.

The sounds are good, and I love the variations when trimming and throttling back and forth.

Landing feels unstable. Not uncontrollable, but unstable.
My guess is that, for 10 dollars, you get your money worth of plane. Abacus gives you a fair chance of trying the airplane, so if you end up buying it, is because you feel the plane works for you.
You can wok many of the details in it, which will make it a more valuable plane for you and end up with a pretty descent airplane for only a few bucks!

-All pictures are originally posted in Abacus website.