Mini-Review: Sky Simulations DC-9

Flashback to February 1965. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded at around 900 points. Gary Lewis (son of comedian Jerry Lewis) and his band the Playboys had the #1 hit in the U.S. with a song called, "This Diamond Ring." In aviation, a significant milestone was reached when the very first DC-9 prototype took to the skies for its maiden flight.

Over 44 years later, the Dow Jones Industrial Average now trades at somewhere around 8,000 points, down from an all-time high of over 13,000 points. Gary Lewis reportedly lives in relative obscurity near Rochester, New York. However, the DC-9 remains a venerable workhorse in commercial aviation in the United States, comprising a significant portion of Northwest Airlines' domestic fleet. In addition, the DC-9 spawned two additional derivatives: the highly-successful MD-80/90 series, and the Boeing 717 (originally MD-95) -- both of which also continue to see action in the skies all over the world.

Sky Simulations has lovingly reproduced the DC-9 for Flight Simulator X (and soon, also Flight Simulator 9), so we sim pilots can appreciate firsthand this plane whose illustrious career spans nearly five decades. Every model in the series is represented, from the -10 through the -50, including freighter variants. Here is a shot of the DC-9-30 in action, sporting a Northwest Airlines livery:



The Sky Simulations DC-9 sports a very nice set of 2D panels, for pilots who prefer to fly in that mode. Here is the main 2D view from the captain's chair:



And here is the first officer's view:



One interesting thing about this is that there are certain controls that are only accessible from the first officer's panel: note in particular the light switches across the top, and the hydraulic switches near the lower center. Hydraulics are modeled very faithfully on the DC-9: if you do not switch on the hydraulics, important systems like the flaps will not function!

Fortunately, the DC-9 ships with a pair of PDF documentation files: the first one being essentially a tutorial/checklist walkthrough, and the second one being a more detailed operations manual.

Continuing our tour of the 2D panels, here is the center pedestal (throttles, flaps, etc.):



Here is the overhead panel:



Here is the autopilot and radios:



Note that the autopilot is an old-school Sperry SP-50A. Fans of the 727 will pick this one up in no time at all, because it functions almost identically to the 727 autopilot. There are no LNAV or VNAV modes here: you are responsible for managing the vertical ascent/descent on the aircraft, as well as horizontal navigation. As is typical for these kinds of planes, you should generally plan on hopping from VOR to VOR. Fortuntely, DME is available, so you can find airspace fixes relative to VORs fairly easily.

Here is the panel for operating some of the doors and systems on the DC-9:



Last, but not least, Sky Simulations also makes available the standard FS Garmin GPS unit as a concession to the modern era:



This is helpful if you are trying to locate the glideslope on an ILS approach, but not necessary.

The DC-9 also has a very nice 3D virtual cockpit:



And while not shown here, the cockpit is also available in grey, in addition to the blue color seen in these shots.

Prepping the DC-9 for takeoff can be a fairly complicated affair, but the tutorial document does a fairly good job of walking a new pilot through the procedure. Note that the DC-9, being a 1960s era plane, lacks a lot of conveniences taken for granted in modern airliners. Many pilots prefer it this way! This means that you will have to manage navigation, ascent/descent, and even the pressurization of the cabin manually. Do not expect to be bored when flying this bird!

The sounds in the DC-9 are relatively faithfully modeled, too. Everything from the GPWS ("Pull Up!") and the Stall alarm/sirens is all there. In addition, Sky Simulations have provided several free add-on liveries spanning all variants of the type, including the Northwest Airlines livery featured in the screenshots here. This is a very nice touch, at a time when some companies are moving toward charging customers for extra liveries. Surely more free liveries created by hobbyists will appear at places like AVSIM in the future.

I do have some complaints about the DC-9, which I hope will be addressed in future bugfix updates:

• I could not get ILS approaches to work on the autopilot, for the life of me. I can't tell you how many times I stalled the aircraft and crashed short of the runway. The radios will pick up the glideslope, and I can see the glideslope bug, but I cannot get the autopilot to descend with the glideslope, no matter how closely I follow the approach procedure in the tutorial. Either I am missing something that is unclear, or there is a bug with regard to ILS approaches.
• Speaking of stalls, the stall speed in the DC-9 seems high. I have had the plane stall at 160 KIAS at flaps 40. Really? Seems like the flight model needs to be tweaked a little bit.
• There are a few minor graphical glitches here and there. One example is tuning the NAV1 radio, when going from 108 MHz to 109 MHz: the text shows up as "119" rather than "109". The actual value is correct (109), but the text displayed is wrong.
  

These defects aren't terribly surprising for a 1.0 release, and I would be willing to overlook most of them if the developers make good on their promise to address them in a future release. The flight model seems a little off, though. I had a terrible time trying to land the DC-9, crashing it quite a few times on final approach before I was ultimately successful.

I leave you with some money shots of the DC-9 flying past the Chicago skyline enroute to O'Hare from Minneapolis:









Enjoy!

Rating: *** 1/2