Just Flight previews the Piper PA-38 Tomahawk for MSFS
It’s late September, which means we should be about to see the Just Flight Hawk T1/A landing at any time in Microsoft Flight Simulator. While that doesn’t happen, Just Flight decided it was a good time to preview another aircraft that the team has been working on for MSFS, the PA-38 Tomahawk.
On a short notice on Just Flight’s social media, the development studio unveiled the first images of a new GA aircraft for MSFS, a category that has proven to be very successful for Just Flight. Besides the handful of images, no additional details were given. However, the Tomahawk is a praised Just Flight product in X-Plane, FSX and P3D, so there’s no reason to expect otherwise from an updated version for MSFS. Especially considering the tremendous job they have done with the Arrow III/IV and the Warrior II.
Just Flight promises to unveil additional details about this project soon, but we reckon a highly detailed visual model and accurate flight dynamics are in the pipeline. It will be interesting to see how the developers implement the Tomahawk’s known spinning capabilities, a requirement in the development of the real aircraft to meet flight instructors’ demands for a more “spinnable” aircraft. This was in contrast to the Cessna 152/172, which were designed to quickly recover from a spin without pilot input.
These capabilities were crucial to make the Tomahawk a popular choice for flight training, a role that it still plays today across the world.
As for the first images of the PA-38 in Microsoft Flight Simulator, they show only the airplane’s exterior at this time, although from a good variety of different angles. Needless to say, the exterior model looks stunning, full of detail in the textures in what appears to be the now well-regarded “used” look from Just Flight’s models. Authentic!
We will surely know more details soon about this new MSFS project from Just Flight. In the meantime, you may want to check other upcoming airplanes from the British team, in a list that keeps growing with a variety of interesting proposals such as the aforementioned Hawk T1/A or the F28 Fellowship.
BARRY SADLER
Beauty, lots of instructing time in Tomahawks, some of my best friends are PA-38s! Simple to fly but takes students time to handle one smoothly, a great trainer. The Australian Boomerang was an advanced design following on from Piper’s but couldn’t match the price of available second-hand machines.
BH3841
This is the plane I learned to fly in and, as such, I have a soft spot in my heart for her. But it’s definitely love-hate as, prior to an AD adding inboard stall strips (in addition to the default outboard ones), this thing was PURE EVIL in a stall. Her natural and expected reaction to a stall was to roll completely over and then flatspin so fast you were stuck in a corner of the seat. And she’d keep spinning until she bent or broke unless you applied opposite controls quickly; just releasing the controls was no help. And it was physically difficult to reach the opposite rudder pedal against the lateral Gs. This is why she earned the nick “Traumahawk” and killed many folks who got too slow in the pattern. This plane beat DMMS into my head decades before Dan Gryder made it cool. Keep the thing above stall speed and no complaints, though, except she’s VERY hot inside on a sunny day due to the bubble canopy. I hear the AD tamed the beast’s very traumatic stall-spin characteristics and training now teaches focuses more on stall avoidance rather than spin recovery, so maybe all can now be forgiven. But if this add-on models the beast in her original configuration, be prepared to die if you ever stall in the pattern.