Just Flight announced Piper Tomahawk

Thank you for the update. I know from 1st hand experience how it is when my own work is being held up by factors beyond my control. It’s frustrating as hell.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

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What worries me a bit here, is if there are these kind of problems before release. How would these affect the updating of said product after the release has happened?

Thinking if something breaks in a sim update, and the plane becomes badly affected, how quick or slow would that update be.

Extra curious since the Arrows, specially the Turbo has had the pitch jerk issues in live weather for a loooooong time and first now there are some test versions being rolled out. While for now the issue for the live planes still exist.

I think a recent YT vid that revisited the Arrow series, put it right as the planes are great but feel old. In desperate need of updates. Also pointing out that pitch stuff.

The Tomahawk having these problems before even being released is therefor extremely worrying.

Without going into too much detail…

The delayed work on the Tomahawk is on the visual side, we await new updated graphics. The main coding work is under our control and is pretty much done. Any issues post release are likely to be sim related and will be looked at and worked at by our internal devs.

The other Piper aircraft are being looked at now and progress is being made. Really difficult to get them updated with confidence when the sim is being changed/updated and breaking things on a regular basis but we’ve taken the plunge now and they are in surgery now.

Hope that helps to some extent.

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Awesome. Tbh this is very reasuring to hear. Thank you for the answer.

Speaking of pitch stability, I was researching why Piper dropped the T-tail configuration so quickly and I came across the attached article.

@SinewyDolphin74, any chance JF might consider adding this variant to the Tomahawk stable, the Kiddyhawk conventional tail Tomahawk? Could be fun and start all kinds of conversation…

Another interesting book chapter on aircraft tail design for those who want to get super technical… watch out for that “deep stall”! :slight_smile:

http://aero.us.es/adesign/Slides/Extra/Stability/Design_Tail/Chapter%206.%20Tail%20Design.pdf

A very short video, using a very early (Alpha) model of the aircraft and is in the SU11 beta. The visuals have been referenced above, this is purely for the demonstration of where the stall / spin behaviour currently is:

Stall with wing drop - flying from outside, two straight stalls with a wing drop either way followed by a spin - note that if you look closely you will see that the controls are neutralised after the spin entry and the aircraft continues to spin until recovery inputs are made. This is with CFD not enabled - enabling CFD and many hours of adjusting the entries results in an aircraft which at the absolute best does not like to stall (as in, no wing drop, hardly a nose drop, little more than a speed reduction), whilst spin entry control inputs result in a roll around the longitudinal axis of the fuselage.

For now, especially in an aircraft which has a specific characteristic it is known for, it will run with the setup that gives the best and most accurate results in terms of handling. Hopefully, Asobo will refrain from ripping out any more of the legacy elements in the flight model which have so far allowed us to create this.

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That looks nice and horrifying at the same time. Best not get slow on base turn to final eh!

Funny you post this as i had this happen last night in the Zennith, full flap, get just a tad too slow at 300ft agl, snap and nose into the ground. Send chills down my spine. I was just like one of the many people on the Probable Cause and Blancolerio chanel.

I love these things and take them over CFD if the FM is good. I think it also is very important as most planes are just too forgiving in the sim. And people get the wrong idea.

Really looking forward to this plane.

Oh interesting, never knew that thing existed. No going to lie, it looks realy good with that tail :smiley:

The i refered to is more of a MFS anomaly. Tbh i quite enjoy those T-tail characteristics. Nuances and personalities of various configurations really are a spice in flying.

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I don’t envy you guys (JustFlight) or any developer right now, because you have to deal with the moving target flight model. I know CFD is in its infancy.

Anyway glad to hear things are going on in the background on the PA-38.

That conventional-tail Tomahawk (Kiddyhawk) linked a couple of posts up is no good, where’s the fun in that? Actually technically speaking the Tomahawk has a cruciform tail, not a T-tail, because it’s horizontal stab isn’t quite to the top of the rudder, but its horstab is close enough to the top to give it T-tail flight characteristics, so it might as well be called a T-tail airplane.

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Quick update. This week has seen some progress and some new work received by our external source. It’s being examined currently but hopefully we’ll have what’s required to enable us to move forward with the project now. More as and when I can report back to you and we’re well aware the project continues to only move at snails paces to those anticipating the release. We hope that situation changes in the not too distant future. Thanks again for your patience.

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Thank you for the update. Much appreciated.

That “Kiddyhawk” mod never made it to production as far as I can see. Wonder what happened there… Not enough interest, not enough benefit to justify the cost, issues, certification?

But it does bring up one thing I hope to see simulated on JF’s Tomahawk: The Piper Tomahawk is well-known for a pretty noticeable tail shake on stall. It’s apparently pretty disconcerting in the cockpit. You have to watch pretty closely (around 0:11) to see it due to the camera shaking, but it can be seen here:

Would be cool to see that animated.

Also, free bonus, @GrimPhoenix9349, here’s a great livery idea for you. :slight_smile:

Wow, you can really hear it!

A couple of great videos there - I know SWS have the Kodiak’s tail shaking a bit under certain circumstances so it’s definitely possible, hopefully the PA38 will also.

Liveries aren’t my department, but it does look rather good doesn’t it. A bit different from the ‘norm’!

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Sooo … 2023 is here. Any news on this baby? :wink:

Yes, the same question went through my mind :slightly_smiling_face:

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Given how annoyed they’ve been with the SDK & sim updates ( see wrestling with the PA28s ) I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had to restart the FM on this one :stuck_out_tongue: don’t envy the job of trying to insert all the quirks, that’s for sure.

Waiting for this plane long time ago, many of us use it in the real life for PPL and it would be really useful to be able to practice with it into the sim.

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This is actually the one plane I check for daily being released. When I was doing my training for my ppl in 1991 I mostly flew 152, 172, PA28-140 but did a couple flights early on with this plane and stopped soon after I found out why it was called the Traumahawk. I would actually like to jump in again and recreate and relive and push the bounds of this in my mind untamable aircraft to really find out its limits.

We’re in the process of taking this project fully in-house to avoid any further delays, so expect more positive news in the coming weeks. Apologies again for the lack of progress on this one in recent months.

Martyn - Just Flight

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