Flying the Junkers Ju 52 in Microsoft Flight Sim
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You’ve probably not heard of the Junkers Ju 52. It was around in the 1930’s and was one of the first ever passenger planes. It’s just appeared in Microsoft Flight Sim. You have to buy it (it costs around 12 pounds) but I think it is worth the money. It’s just great fun to fly. We spent a very happy evening flying around Iceland hopping from airfield to airfield. Number one son found the flight plan here. Things I learned about the plane:
It has three engines. These might only be mapped to two of your throttles. They were for me. My first take-off only used two of them, so I was flying sideways for a while before I figured this out. I mapped the two outer engines to one throttle lever and the middle one to the other one. This worked for me but it may be more useful to have independent throttle control for the left and right engines because….
I found that the plane really likes to fly sideways. The rudder didn’t do a lot for me in respect of turning. Perhaps you are supposed to steer with the engines sometimes. Anyhoo, this wasn’t a problem, except when landing. I found that pointing the plane in the required direction and giving it a burst of throttle would get it going the right way long enough to land.
It will land and take off at stupidly small speeds and will happily burble along at a few hundred feet. Braking after you have landed can be a problem though. The plane loves to stick its’ nose in the ground if you brake too hard.
The cockpit is awesome. Lots of metal and leather. And the view out is very good.
There is a version with floats so you can land on water. You can take off using the floats on dry land, but it takes ages to get up any speed and you fell really bad about doing it.
It is very forgiving. At no point did it fall apart in the air or collapse on landing. It was originally designed to have one engine, then they added two more. This means that there is plenty of power on to tap to get you out of trouble at low speeds.
It may seem a strange plane for Microsoft to choose to release. Why not something fast and exciting? Well, for me the problem with fast and exciting is that you whizz past everything and find it very hard to fly in a group. With this plane we were able to stay together and admire the scenery (and each other’s planes) as we chugged over the countryside. And landing and taking off were a hoot.
Don’t try this unless you want a very slow takeoff,,,
