AusFlightSim - The Aussie Flight Simulation Site for Enthusiasts Around the World!

The Grumman Goose first took to the skies in 1936 during the golden years of aviation and was immortalised in the TV series "Tales of the Gold Monkey". Within the sim fraternity there have been a number of addon versions of this classic aeroplane and Microsoft"s rendition of this rare and famous aircraft leapt into our simulated skies towards the end of 2006 with the release of the final version of their long running simulator series - FSX. The Grumman Goose itself is extremely rare with only 345 airframes produced. There are approximately 60 remaining in service throughout the world today and the number of pilots with endorsements on this type are few and far between. We have been lucky enough to have access to a pilot who has flown the Goose and has been able to assist with our remodelling of the aircraft"s performance files. The Goose has proven extremely versatile and has seen operational service as a freighter, passenger transport, military transport and even as a flying yacht installed with bars and toilets. It has held roles with Army, Airforce, Navy, Coastguard and has served around the far flung, four corners of the world. Microsoft"s model of the G21A Grumman Goose has been a sleeper; well received in certain quarters but providing generally ho-hum graphics and flight model. It had a bland interior and was crying out for some high quality paints. When the team at AussieX started investigating this aircraft for our HD Redux treatment it was also discovered that the performance files for this bird were derived from an assortment of different Goose models; a lot of fine tuning was going to be required to get this bird to behave as close to the real life aircraft as possible. We think we have succeeded with this ambitious tasking. We offer two different models of the Goose - the original model with 450hp Pratt & Whitney radials and an uprated version dubbed the "HP" (High Performance) with more powerful 650hp engines. Both models have had significant performance tweaking to make them behave as much as possible like their real life counterparts. In addition to this remodelling of the flight characteristics we have overhauled the interior of the aircraft with high resolution virtual cockpits. Engine gauges have been recalibrated for both engine models of our Goose and there are a number of different virtual cockpits available in our aircraft. Finally we have provided six high-definition paint schemes for this aircraft in both 450hp and HP-650hp versions. These 4096 pixel textures include every rivet, screw, dent and panel-line hand placed on normal, specular and diffusion texture maps. What this means for you the pilot is a gorgeous rendition of the metal framed G21 Goose just waiting to grace your monitor with realism and authenticity. Please take the time to download our freeware update to this rare and beautiful aircraft and let us know how much you enjoy her by posting your screenshots and stories. IGNORE the 3bytes file size, for the moment the file has been placed on a CDN to cope for the initial download hit, when you click on it, your download should start immediately with a file that is ~160MB large. Click HERE to download.