One of the iconic fighters of World War II, flown by the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force aka the Flying Tigers. The Curtiss P-40B's claim to fame was probably due to the fact that at the time, it was the best that could be fielded or produced by America.
Released for FSX as part of the Wings of POWER series by A2A, it is advertised as being both accurate and realistic, something that most products claim to be but few manage to deliver.
So we gave it a thorough evaluation to see if it lives up to the claims of its publisher.
to read our review - click on the poster or the Read More link.
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For us the challenge was to decide how realistic this add on is. Ironhand and I are not real life pilots while Zorrin and Hitman are, we all are Lock On veterans and have experience with FSX , and while none of us obviously ever flew the real thing, we aimed to be able to decide if A2A accurately rendered it in a Flight Sim like FSX.
I don’t have much cockpit time in this bird but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time so far. Much to my surprise, it makes a great sightseeing platform. With the exception of straight down to the left or right because of the low wing, you have great visibility to the front, rear and sides. If your goal is to meander over the countryside, this is a great aircraft to do it in.
On the other hand, if you want to push the limits, you need to pay close attention. The uninitiated will find themselves falling out of the sky as soon as they push past a limit--and there are many. This is where the documentation comes in handy. And reading it is well advised. Yes, you can get away without it but the aircraft will seem far more tricky than it really is to fly.
For instance, taking off without wandering all over the runway is fairly easy but only if you stand on the brakes while advancing the throttle. You want the manifold pressure to be roughly 39 in Hg. before you start to roll. Otherwise the prop is not providing sufficient air flow past the rudder to control the torque induced yaw. Until it does, you are out of control. It wasn’t until I read the documentation that I stopped using the entire airport--grass, runway, and whatever--to get myself into the air.
Especially enjoyable are stalls. Or, at least, I enjoy them. Admittedly, I’ve only had time to fly a dozen or so clean stalls (wheels and flaps up). But those were a lot of fun. As advertised, tail buffet sets in somewhere around 70 knots. And the aircraft will try to spin at around 60. But throttling back, applying a touch of opposite rudder and centering the stick catches it quite well. Build up airspeed, apply throttle slowly, and you’re flying again.
Based on my limited cockpit time to date, A2A has done a great job. This is an aircraft in which I will spend a great deal more time. It is, quite simply, fun to fly.
by Rich 'Ironhand' Sorochak
Installing was easy to do and the first thing I noticed besides the very good model was how well made the cockpit is. The Warhawk 'office' seems accurately rendered with a true 3D feel.
Nothing in this cockpit looks flat or phony and it is fully functional, I got a real feel of being in a fighter - with the eye-line set high so as to give very good all around visibility. It is also FPS friendly without stutters when looking around.
The only thing I missed is having the option to ‘view pilot body’ while flying. But this is not something available in any add on for FSX.
By the way, the P-40 goes around as the P-40 Warhawk or Tomahawk or as the Kittyhawk - all depending on who was using it.
Something to be prized is good cockpit lighting at dusk or dawn. And this P-40 has it. The cockpit is illuminated as you turn on the left wing floodlight, which is more than enough to make all the dials clearly visible.
The screenshot below is a good example of how the cockpit looks without the instruments being back lit, not every model in FSX can claim to be as good in every kind of lighting situation as this one, some are very dark and poor by comparison.
The P-40 can be flown in AVG/China AF, USAAF, RAF and Soviet colors and all are very professionally made skins with an accurate weathering that gives the right kind of operational feel to the model, all animations are top notch: flaps, rudder, undercarriage, cockpit and pilot are all excellent.
It also comes with an outstanding rendition of its engine and mechanical sounds; deep and clear sounds with the right pitch that I discovered were recorded from a real aircraft.
Thanks to the Su-25T in Lock On I learned the discipline of steady constant flying and it helped me to master the P-40 at once, as I avoided stalling it or getting into violent maneuvering. Perhaps all that time flying the FSX DHC-6 Twin Otter took a toll... I found the P-40 quite steady, landing is not that difficult if you keep your speed low and align properly with the runway, although, I could not see the runway on approach because of the approach angle. After touch down… Well then it is all a question of steady braking to avoid tipping the aircraft over and ending up in a nasty crash, something I did quite a few times.
Ground handling is quite easy if you use the external view. But, from the cockpit you get a great view of the sky but not of the way ahead.
by Thomas D. Weiss
Kevin's work schedule did not allow him time to write down his review , but he sent us this video :
by Kevin "Hitman" Utley
A first glimpse at life with the P-40 from A2A.
A2A has a whole host of payware vintage war birds and is currently working on a P47 that should blow us all away. We got our hands on the P-40 that retails for $29.99. Is it money well spent? Let’s find out…
What do you get for thirty-bucks?
You get ‘four’ P-40 color schemed aircraft. A single P-40B and a P-40B AVG (as flown by The Flying Tigers), as well as two Tomahawk IIBs. The differences for the aircraft lie in the fuel and gun sight setups. The P-40B’s fuel capacity is larger (159 USG) than the AVG and Tomahawks and is naturally measured in US Gallons. While the AVG and Tomahawks have a lower fuel capacity (130 Imperial Gallons for the AVG/112.5 Imperial Gallons for the Tomahawks) because of the self-sealing tanks and carriers a drop tank, or at least according to A2A.
The AVG and US version of the aircraft use a floor-mounted N-3A gun sight while the Tomahawks use the British GM-2 Mk2 gun sights. Attention to detail is obvious when you take your first flight in this, although some of it can be rather subtle.
Installation is easy with the .exe and the digital download is around 78mb. I am running Vista and had no issues whatsoever.
But enough of the boring stuff. What is she like to fly! Put simply, she’s a real handful and will catch you out the moment you stop paying attention.
Because it only has 1,040hp from the Allison V-1710 the Hawk can feel rather sluggish when compared to other war birds but its handling characteristics are, as you would expect.
Rudder use is not optional and although I flew this with a tired old Microsoft Sidewinder 2 I am sure that a set of pedals under your feet will give you an added advantage.
The swing on takeoff is sudden. You are opening the throttle and have to be ready to catch the yaw, which doesn’t set in straight from the onset.
As you would expect the P-40 needs a good gentle bootful of rudder as you take off and opposite aileron to keep her level as you accelerate, of course it helps if you remember to lock the tail wheel. Which unfortunately is easier said than done. After many wild take-offs it turns out the lock is on the stick… Which isn’t obvious when you are looking down on it from above!
Now I am a great fan of FSX’s virtual cockpit, however, if I am in it I need tool tips. I don’t have the luxury of “flying” FS on a 50” TV and a complete lack of mouse tool tips really puts you on the back foot. Yes of course this can be overcome by meticulously studying the cockpit layout in the manual but like all of us the first thing I want to do when I get my hands on a “new bird” is fly it.
It is truly evident the amount of time the developers have spent on this and the cockpit looks gorgeous plus the pilot model is fantastic too. And the fact that the pilot’s head moves to look in the direction of the turn (although he does an incredibly fast snap when you go inverted during a roll) and he puts on an oxygen mask above 8,000ft is testimony to A2A’s attention to detail.
The thing is an animal in the stall. Try as hard as I could, I could not stop it entering a spin. You can stay on top of her for a few seconds but this sees you going from full deflection on one side to the other with no remorse.
Now obviously no one has been mad enough to let me loose in the real thing. The only thing I can compare it to is the de Havilland Dh82a Tiger Moth, which with its 130hp Gipsy Major engine had nothing of the performance… But it has all of the handling characteristics of the 1,000+hp birds; this is why it was used as a trainer. The Tiger when not fitted with the slats is a handful in the stall, and you have to be quick to catch the rudder before she throws you into a spin. I can confidently say that when comparing the Tiger’s stall characteristics to that of A2A’s P-40 it is incredibly good. I actually found myself wide-eyed the first time it got away from me.
What about the aerobatics? It’s a handful but once you get used to its intricacies of rudder balancing she can fly gracefully through the virtual skies. Be warned however, when she spins, she spins and can easily end up on her back, which makes life rather awkward… She will eventually recover by herself if you let go of everything and responds well when you unload the stick forces at the stall.
Coming in to land… Well it pays tribute to the old adage that you never stop flying a tail dragger till you’ve switched the engine off. Now realistically these aircraft are not designed for the tarmac runways, so I haven’t tried. I did however fly a few flights from Andrews field in the UK (EGSL), which offers 799m of grass. It certainly keeps you on your toes, as you would expect.
The modeling is fantastic and the only letdowns can be blamed on FS. The aircraft does occasionally feel as if it is on rails. Yet, the aircraft’s performance above 10,000ft is atrocious – much like the real version is claimed to be…
This add on does offer a real sense of immersion. The sounds sound good and you get that real war bird noise that always makes you look up. The virtual cockpit is fantastic but there is not alternative. The 2D cockpit is a joke. It’s a thin bar across the bottom that is about as useful to the average simmer as a pair of slippers were to WWII ace Douglas Bader. But if you want a sluggish fighter that would appear to replicate its real life counterpart than you could do a lot, lot, worse than getting a copy of this.
Based on the P-40 (and the Bf109 that I owned anyway through an impulse buy…), the work that A2A is doing on its next add on the P-47 is nothing but promising.
While the P-40 does give you the clicky pit and some nice sounds with a gorgeously detailed model it does lack a certain ‘pow’ factor. But that’s not because A2A did a bad job, in fact it’s because its add on is so well done that you are feeling the shortcomings of the aircraft’s design.
The supporting documentation is a meager 36 page PDF, but it does include the fundamentals of a few checklists plus some great background info that should appease the mind of the historians out there. A lot of work and effort has gone into this and it truly shows.
by Phil "Zorrin" Nasskau
FSX-A, ASA, FEX, REX, Samoshin Natural World Trees 2, ORBX Coff's Harbor, ORBX Australia and Aerosoft Dillingham scenery were used.
Screnshots were taken by ThomasDWeiss on a DX48BT2 Core2Duo 3.16Mhz, 4 GB 1333 RAM, 2x500MB RAID, WinXP Pro, Nvidia 8800GTX - and were not edited in any way other than resizing.
As always, we do not profit from any sales of anything we review.
