Samdim Design Group An-26

The Antonov An-26 is a twin-engined light turboprop aircraft and is the (military)-transport and cargo version of the very similar An-24 passenger aircraft. The An-26 was the first Soviet military transport aircraft to have a fully pressurised cargo hold. About 1410 An-26s had been built when the production ended in 1985.

The Samdim Design Group is developer of various Russian aircraft for FS2004 and FSX. Their Antonov An-26 has been released back in 2003, so that's a long time ago. The model was developed for FS2002, but works well in FS2004 too. FSX is not supported. The exterior looks nice, as do the three liveries that are included. The panel looks a lot like the panel of their An-24RV. Unfortunately, there are no english popup tooltips, so you really need to read the (small) manual to know which button or switch does what (unless you understand russian).

The engine sounds are not so great and can use some improvement. The An-26 has all the usual animations plus opening doors, opening cockpit windows and maintenance mode. There is no virtual cockpit and the wings/engines are not modeled in the vc mode either. This results in a very frame rate friendly aircraft that should run well on any system that can handle FS2004. The main landing gear is floating on takeoff/landing and the nose wheel is sinking into the ground, especially when you hit the brakes. I'm sure that these issues will be addressed in the new version that is under development.





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