Samdim Design Group An-24RV

The Antonov An-24 is a twin-engined light turboprop aircraft manufactured in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) by the Antonov Design Bureau. The An-24 made its maiden flight in April 1960, with first production versions entering service with Aeroflot in September 1963. The An-24RV is a modification of AN-24 with a 1,985-lb (900-kg) thrust jet APU, that can be used as a third engine and gives the aircraft extra thrust during take-off. Although the production in Ukraine was shut down in 1978, the An-24 is still being manufactured in China by Xian Aircraft Manufacturing Company. The Chinese version is called "Y-7" and incorporates a number of modifications including a revised passenger interior and flight deck and wingtip winglets. Over 1,000 An-24 are thought to have been built. The An-24 is still in service in many countries.

The Samdim Design Group is developer of various Russian aircraft for FS2004 and FSX. Their Antonov An-24RV is a high quality freeware product. The exterior is very detailed with lot's of animations. The panel is very close to the real one with many systems simulated. Unfortunately, there are no english popup tooltips, so you really need to read the manual to know which button or switch does what (unless you understand russian).

The virtual cockpit looks nice, but there aren't many buttons and switches clickable. Also, many low resolution textures are used in the vc. The passenger cabin is also modeled in the vc mode, along with the wings and engines that can be seen through the windows. You can choose between the vc model and non-vc model, with the latter being more frame rate friendly. The engine sounds are not so great and can use some improvement. The An-24RV has all the usual animations plus opening doors, opening cockpit windows, moving window wipers and maintenance mode.

The An-24RV package is an easy to use installer and contains the aircraft, UTAir livery,a simple passenger and fuel loader and a MS Excel based Route Planner. Only a small number of liveries are available in the AVSIM Library.

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