As requested a brief writeup of the Flying Iron P-38.
She’s a pretty bird, with some of the polished liveries looking amazing.
The cockpit allows for the GPS to be fitted, which is quite handy since the only other nav tools are a heading indicator and two compasses.
Overall the graphics are very solid, and in general everything looks very good.
A brief note, these switches located to the left of the seat MUST be set on and emergency as shown if you want fuel flowing to the engines above 10,000’ SL.
Handling is good and the FM is reasonable based on what I know. She is a very fast climber, and in general a very smooth handling AC. The linked turbo-superchargers allow you to simply set the manifold pressure and forget it to over FL300. You will still be getting 50" of manifold at FL30 at 2650 rpm. It’s pretty amazing how easy it is to manage the engine compared to some of it’s other brethren. Speaking of this model does feature some limited engine damage modeling if you run the engines too hot for too long. You’ll start to see vapor trails from the engines, and eventually smoke and engine failure.
The problem is that this all seems to be a function of manifold pressure. Playing with the different shutters seems to do very little, and you will always be running on the very edge of the green zone on the gauges even with a very conservative power setting. Visually the supercharger radiator doors do open and close when the switch is toggled, and if you fiddle enough you can get the oil cooler and coolant doors to open too, but that don’t seem to affect temps any.
There is a tablet you can access which has been updated from release that has plenty of data on it including temps, etc. And a basic heading and altitude autopilot. Lastly you can use it to set fuel loading, which will add or remove the drop tanks.
The dive flaps do exist, and they do work. They also will absolutely not save you if you dive too fast from too low. Not that I found that out or anything…
With some upgraded systems modeling Flying Irons version of the P-38 could be amazing. As is, it’s sim lite on the engine, but still a gorgeous ride. For fast air tourism, it’s really hard to beat a prop job that can do 300kias at FL300.
If anyone wants more pics let me know and I’ll take some more screen shots.