Overland A330-300

The Airbus A330 is a twin-engined, medium to long haul wide-body commercial passenger jet aircraft. Airbus launched the A330 in June 1987 together with the four-engined A340, as a single aircraft program. Airbus intended the A330 to replace the A300-600R and compete with the Boeing 767. Many airlines replaced older wide-bodies such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with the A330, which is 38% more fuel efficient than the DC-10. Although the four-engined A340 is the real long-hauler, the A330(-200) has an impressive range of 8890km (4800nm), with an option of even 11,850km (6400nm).

The A330 and A340 have nearly identical airframes and systems, apart from the engines. The A330 is certificated with General Electric CF-6-80E1, the Pratt & Whitney PW4168 and the Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines. The A330-300 made its first flight on November 2, 1992 and entered service with Air Inter in January 1994. The ten frames shorter A330-200 first flew in August 1997 and entered service with Canada 3000 in April 1998. More than 1,000 A330's have been ordered so far.

Simmer's sky is a label of the japanese company Overland Co.,Ltd. Along with a few other products, they sell the Fly into the sky! package, which contains many Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

This Airbus A330-300 is a beautiful designed aircraft, the shape of the fuselage represents the A330-300 very well. The Fly into the sky! package contains two A330-300 liveries: China Airlines, China Airlines Butterfly Orchid special livery, Garuda Indonesia, Korean Air and Thai Airways, but there are many beautiful paints downloadable from websites like AVSIM. The 2d panel is framerate friendly, but doesn't have a FMC. For full IFR flights, you need to use the default Carmin GPS unit. ILS Approaches are no problem, just enter the course/ILS frequency and use the LOC and APPR buttons. The virtual cockpit is a bit simple, only the most important systems are modelled. But it looks nice and is framerate friendly too. There is also a wingview model for even better framerates.

The flightdynamics are ok, but the ground effect is minimal, which can result in bumpy landings due to the little effect of the flare. Another thing is the main landing gear. Like almost all other overland aircraft, the main landing gear seems to float for a bit over the runway upon landing and finally sinks to the ground when rolling out. This is a common problem in FS, especially landing gear sets with four-wheel bogies or even more wheels. The wingflex is lift based, which is great, because the wings bend up and down in turbulent weather.

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