User manual

Aerosoft PBY Catalina 1.00 Manual
Page 12 of 100
On the bottom of the checklist you will find click zones to clear the current page (so all checkmarks
are removed), close the checklist or move to the front/index page.
Avionics, 1940’s military cockpit
Of course an aircraft as old as the PBY Catalina has a limited set of instruments compared to the
modern cockpits and a lot of the instruments that were standard in the 1940’s do not make a lot of
sense today because they are either very complex to operate or very hard to simulate. So we
decided to lose a bit of realism in this area and make all the aircraft useable in the current simulated
world. The Sperry Autopilot and the modern equipment are highly accurate.
There are two base sets of avionics. One is based on how most of the Catalinas that fly at this
moment are equipped and one is loosely based on a 1940’s model. They share most of the standard
instruments but the autopilot, radio and navigation are different. The models that flew in and
directly after World War II had a massive amount of communication and navigation equipment that
filled the whole section where Catalinas now have 8 seats -- a fine example of the miniaturization of
equipment.
Communication and navigation
We combined the most important and most logical functions into a single panel that allows you to
navigate and communicate. We added a transponder that’s slightly more modern so you can use this
aircraft in online flights on IVAO,
VATSIM or online
communities like that. The
radios have been modeled to
look like the radios used
during WW2 and a short
period after, but with
frequency bands resembling
those used by FSX. On the VHF
nav and com radios you use
the small knob to control the 3
whole digits (XXX.xx) and the
larger centre knob to control
the fractions (xxx.XX). The
switches control if you hear the
transmission (like in a modern
audio panel). On the ADF
radios you use the centre
knobs to select the section of
the band and the rotating