Aero-Works Aerolite 103 for MSFS

In principle, I don't intend to buy many add-on aircraft (nor scenery) and rather work with what we got from Asobo. I don't need yet another prop engine aircraft; not even yet another airliner. But I do make an exception for things that really add a different perspective to the experience like (a glider, perhaps a fighter jet, a zeppelin? or helicopter, but we will probably have to wait first for those to be properly supported by the sim itself), so I was interested in this one. Still, I was a bit reluctant to buy it, as there were no reviews, so I did not know if it would be of good quality.

Fortunately, I have not been disappointed! The model has been made with a lot of attention to detail: wires, struts, and the engine itself that is completely exposed to the view look completely realistic and so do the textures, with a little wear to add that touch of authenticity. Moreover, it is a true addition to the fleet in "My Hangar": due to its low speed and very open structure, it is a delight for sight-seeing the beautiful world that MSFS offers.

The plane is not very forgiving though, you have to fly it with care: with a Cessna 152, you can easily make a very steep turn to get a better look at that feature in the scenery, but with this Aerolite, it can be difficult to get back in control. Moreover, it is easy to reach the "do not exceed speed" and crash the plane. And due to its low airspeed, crosswind landings are much more of a challenge too. A crosswind of 4 kts is not at all significant for any other airplane, but with the aerolite, you really have to account for it, even in a "Calm winds" scenario. These are good things though: it really feels like you are flying with a fragile plane, so the modeler did a really good job making this toy feel realistic.

I do have some points of constructive feedback though, but they are really minor points:

1. the instruments are rather small and hard to read in the default view, in particular the compass, so I have to come in at the start of each flight to be able to read it. - if you view the plane from a little distance (in the pre-flight animation or when using the drone camera) it suddenly turns red, ignoring the livery that you chose, which is a pity if you want to make a nice screenshot.

2. talking about the liveries: at first, I was a bit disappointed because the miniatures for the liveries don't do them justice, so I thought they were just one plain color, not as interesting as shown in the screenshots on this website. The names are a bit off too, the one called "Green-Red" looks more like Orange and Yellow to me and the one that I liked so much from the advertised screenshots (with orange and blue wings and a touch of grey) is called "Grey-Blue", so at first, I thought it wasn't there. But once you fly, you see that you did get the beautiful liveries as advertised.

3. you don't get any feedback on stalling (on my first landings, on a car park near my parents in law, I probably fell out of the sky like a rock, as I was trying to reduce my speed as much as possible to allow a landing on such a short strip ;-). That is probably realistic for a plane like this, but maybe adding a green arc on the airspeed indicator could help? But then again, I would only want to suggest this if it would be there for the real airplane.

4. The plane comes equipped with an ADF, but no COM radio. Still, you can interact with ATC using MSFS's ATC window, so that does not really feel realistic (and wouldn't a COM radio be obligatory for all aircraft in real life?). It would be nice if you could add a COM radio that can be operated manually instead of working with the ATC menu.

5. It is nice that you get to see the setting if you hover over the (flap/engine) handles. It would be even nicer if it would be possible to operate the flap handle in the VR cockpit. I tend to use buttons to control them, so it is not that big a deal, but that means I can only increase flaps in discrete steps, but I would assume that this plane would allow you to set the flaps at any intermediate setting, wouldn't it?

6. Talking about the flap handle: I had some trouble finding it at first. It is just outside the view in Instrument View 2. It would be nice if you could see it because now you can only find it using Freelook.

7. If you hit the brakes, you get a nice squeaking sound, but you also get that sound if you hit the brakes while in mid-air (which is something I do regularly, as I customized my joystick trigger so it brakes on the ground, but in the air, I can combine it with other buttons to set various other controls, such as the flaps).

8. MSFS does not seem to know that this airplane has fixed landing gear. If you have piloting tips turned on, it will remind you to raise the gear after taking off, even though that's not possible of course.

9. There is hardly any effect when flying this airplane in the rain. There are some splashes that appear on the windscreen, but I miss the sound of the rain ticking on the windscreen, wings, and fuselage (as well as the feel of the rain hitting my face ;-).

These nine points may seem like a lot of critiques, but as I said before adding these points, they are really just minor issues meant as constructive feedback to make this model even better than it already is! I would have preferred to give it 4.5 out of 5, as it is not entirely perfect yet, but that's not possible on this site and 4 out of 5 would not do it justice, so I choose to rate it as 5 out of 5. I can definitely recommend this plane to anyone who would like to augment their fleet with a uniquely different plane to explore the MSFS scenery with a light, slow, open and fun airplane to play with.

I fly a similar ultralight (Quicksilver) IRL and enjoy the aerolite in Xplane so I got this one too thinking it would also be flyable. There's something terribly wrong with it in MSFS. At full throttle it only gets to 3100 rpm and can only climb at 50-100fpm. Even the slightest turn and it tries to stall. Also the engine sound is so bad.

At the time I bought this plane, it was not available yet in the in-sim marketplace. By now it is. In fact, I saw that one has been updated a couple of times already by now, but here it's still the same version I bought originally. Does that mean that, in order to get updates, I would have to buy the in-sim version as well?

Aircraft is okay except for the engine noise, does not sound like a 2 stroke at all, more like a Harley Sportster stuck at idle and it is louder than the propeller noise which is sort of a turnoff for me.

The throttle no longer works for me unless assigned to throttle 1. This is a pain as I need to assign it universally. Apart from that it’s nice for slow speed exploration..

Brakes make noise, even if you're not moving. Also they make a sound in the air, when you press the brake pedals. Other than that, it does fly nicely.