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Captain Sims C-130

By Supah - 10th Jul 2007
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When the first YC-130A Prototype took to the skies in August of 1954 few would have imagined that the design would still be being built and flown operationally 52 years later with many airforces throughout the world and has seen mission roles ranging from raining destruction on North Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as a gunship to bringing needed food aid to many starving peoples in developing nations under the UN's flag. Together with planes like the DC-3 the hercules is a plane that uniquely continues to fill a niche more then half a century after its conception.

When the first YC-130A Prototype took to the skies in August of 1954 few would have imagined that the design would still be being built and flown operationally 52 years later with many airforces throughout the world and has seen mission roles ranging from raining destruction on North Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as a gunship to bringing needed food aid to many starving peoples in developing nations under the UN's flag. Together with planes like the DC-3 the hercules is a plane that uniquely continues to fill a niche more then half a century after its conception.

Published by JustFlight, Captain Sim's C-130 is officially licensed by Lockheed Martin (the guys that make the plane in real life) and the royal Air Force (it's largest non US user). It comes in a sturdy DVD box as all JustFlight releases do and has a decent manual explaining the various systems in the cockpit. The planes modelled are of the E,H and K subvariants and the addon also comes with a scenery of RAF Lyneham, the RAF's main base for their C-130's. Recently more sub version have been released by Captain Sim like the KC-130 tanker version etc. but it looks like you will have to buy each one of those seperatly.

As with all Captain Sim releases the aircraft comes with a program called the Aircraft Configuration Editor which allows you to install paint schemes and choose aircraft configurations for them. For instance if your paintscheme is for a C-130E you can quickly install it to the right model, choose from which seat you want to fly it in the 2d cockpit, whether you want classic "steam guage" engine instruments or the more modern EICAS style instruments and glass reflections. You can choose whether you want external tanks and configure the payload. The paintkit is one of the most usefull I've come across, it consists of fully layered PSD's which allow you to quickly make your own schemes

Externally the quality of the textures is the first that catches the eye. The highlights and shading are amongst the best I've seen this far in FS2004 addons. They do however appear to be not all that accurate. The colour of the norwegian airforce livery is off and the dutch paint schemes serial number is fictional (G-173 doesn't exist, G-273 and G-275 are the only correct serial numbers) and the green portions of the scheme should be dark grey instead.
Also the type of hercules it's applied to is wrong in the RNLAF case as the dutch hercules are of the stretched variant. These are the biggest errors I could find as these are the two schemes I am most familiar with. The addon comes with a slew of schemes to chose from from many operators, both civilian and governmental.

Animations include the cargo ramp, the doors, paratroop doors, wheelchocks, remove before flight ribons (which actually sway in the wind!!!!) The virtual cockpit looks very good and the gauges are very readable. The 2D cockpit includes pilots stations, passenger wing views and a rendition of the navigators panel. The rendition of Fat Albert, the US Navy display team the Blue Angels, even has working RATO rockets used to decrease takeoff distance. Handling is as to be expected, autopilot behaviour is good, no surging like in the PSS/JF Boeing 777.


All in all this addon adds an aircraft to your FS9 stable that has been a workhorse of military cargo aviation for years and will pbb continue in its role for many years to come, a true aviation classic! Quality is good, as with all Captain Sim products, even though there are some small issues with paintscheme accuracy but as some of them have been made by third party texturers Captain Sim isn't really to blame for that. CS gets a well deserved 5 out of 5 for this one from me!