Find aircraft background, systems descriptions and manuals for the aircraft you are researching. Each note keeps its source and version context close by.
Simulator manuals describe the developer’s implementation. Aircraft background is research-based; pilot accounts describe an individual’s experience. Coverage here is limited to the selected notes and linked resources, not the full contents of every manual.
Beechcraft Duke
The Beechcraft Duke combined turbocharged piston engines with a pressurised cabin and retractable landing gear. Its swept-looking tail and compact low-wing airframe give it a distinctive outline. It entered the market between smaller touring twins and turbine-powered business aircraft.
Royal Turbine conversions replace the piston engines with PT6 turboprops, creating a materially different aircraft. Black Square models both branches with different engine behaviour while sharing a broad selection of period and modern navigation equipment. The individual variant is essential to any systems or performance discussion.
Aircraft / family
King Air 350 · Airfoillabs · X-Plane 12
Avionics choices and custom automatic flight
Airfoillabs's King Air 350 v2 combines avionics options with custom autopilot logic, including VNAV and approach behaviour. The product description also covers engine simulation, pressurisation and ice-protection systems. The reviewed current branch is for X-Plane 12; older King Air releases need their own version context.
King Air350 v2.0.3 December 2025; XP12 · Avionics & Autopilot; version and requirements
Beechcraft King Air family
Beechcraft's King Air range grew from the 90-series aircraft into a broad family of pressurised utility and business transports. The later 200 and 300 series were originally marketed as Super King Airs. Their T-tails provide a quick visual distinction from the smaller 90-series lineage.
The C90 and 350 aircraft gathered here differ in airframe, engines and systems. They also span conventional instrumentation and modern avionics. The aircraft's appeal as a reference subject is that variety: the shared name opens the door, but the individual variant explains the details.
Aircraft / family
Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing
The Model 17's negative wing stagger gives it its name and its distinctive profile. First flown in 1932, it combined a radial engine with an enclosed cabin and retractable landing gear. It served business transport and racing as well as wartime military duties.
The Staggerwing belongs to the era when a fast executive aircraft could still be a biplane. Its mix of polished cabin transport and fabric-covered lifting surfaces makes an interesting counterpart to the open-cockpit trainers and later all-metal touring aircraft in the catalogue.
Aircraft / family
Beechcraft Model 18 Twin Beech
The Twin Beech is a low-wing, twin-engine aircraft recognisable by its twin fins and, in its familiar configuration, tailwheel landing gear. Production began in the 1930s and continued for decades. Operators adapted it to a wide range of commercial and military jobs.
Different Model 18 derivatives can carry different undercarriages, cabin layouts and equipment. The type sits between a light private twin and a larger airliner, offering a useful view of how small-scale passenger and cargo transport worked before the turboprop became commonplace.
Aircraft / family
Starship · Black Square · MSFS 2020 · MSFS 2024
What persists between flights
State saving is selective. The guide identifies radio settings, stored routes and user waypoints, engine health and oxygen pressure among the items retained. Some primary operating switches are instead initialized from the flight's starting position. Fuel restoration also has a condition: it applies when the next flight loads with the default fuel levels. The guide records a payload-restoration limitation and notes that the simulator must shut down normally for its native saving mechanism to retain changes.
The tablet adds system visualizers and failure management. Failures can be scheduled or generated using configurable mean-time-between-failure settings, and existing failures persist between flights. These features make the tablet useful for understanding the simulated systems as well as configuring the aircraft.
Black Square Starship User Guide (2025) · PDF pp.87,128,151 · State saving, tablet and failures
206 family · CowanSim · MSFS 2020 · MSFS 2024
Two different meanings of trim
On Cowan's 206B3, engine trim adjusts the governed rotor-speed setting, while rotor trim changes the cyclic trim state. The latter has its own reset binding. Keeping the two separate avoids treating a rotor-RPM adjustment as a change to the cyclic controls. The guide also records the hydraulic-switch binding limitation for this version.
Archived document; installed package version not observed · PDF pp.4-5,9
206 family · CowanSim · MSFS 2020 · MSFS 2024
LongRanger controls have their own guide
The 206L3 manual separately documents engine-RPM trim, longitudinal and lateral cyclic trim, and cyclic trim reset. It also identifies a hydraulic-switch hardware-binding limitation. The longer cabin does not make the LongRanger's instructions interchangeable with every JetRanger package.
Archived document; installed package version not observed · PDF pp.4-5,9
Bell 206 family
Bell reworked an unsuccessful military observation-helicopter proposal into the commercial JetRanger. The resulting 206 family became widely used for passenger transport, observation and utility work. The familiar single-engine versions use a two-bladed main rotor.
The 206B JetRanger and stretched 206L LongRanger are separate branches of that story. Their cabins, engines and equipment are not identical. Cowan's simulator documentation also separates the models and their stability-assistance features, making the exact add-on name important when reading about trim or autopilot controls.
Aircraft / family
Bell 407
The Bell 407 retained a family resemblance to the 206L while adopting a four-bladed main rotor and associated structural changes. It is a single-engine helicopter used for passenger, emergency-service and utility missions.
The rotor is an immediate visual clue when comparing a 407 with the two-bladed JetRanger and LongRanger. Cockpit equipment has also evolved through the programme. Simulator implementations can therefore share the 407 name while representing different avionics and assistance systems.
Aircraft / family
B-47 · FlyInside · MSFS 2020
Engine control and helicopter phenomena
FlyInside describes a custom helicopter flight model, manual piston-engine throttle control and an optional governor for the Bell 47. The published feature list includes autorotation, vortex-ring state and retreating-blade stall. These are developer-described features; they are not an independent assessment of physical fidelity.
Product page retrieved 2026-09-10 · Flight Dynamics; Systems; Features
B-47 · FlyInside · MSFS 2020
Developer controls for a customised helicopter experience
FlyInside's Heli Manager offers settings for cyclic sensitivity, stability, realism and engine-failure behaviour. These are add-on configuration controls, not original Bell cockpit equipment. The guide explains their relationship to the simulator's own axis settings.
document snapshot; exact installed package not observed · PDF pp12,15-16
