This plane could be great. But, as one might come to expect, it’s half-baked at best.
First the good:
Sounds are pretty good. I just love the growl of the big v-12.
Once it’s in the air, it flies well enough. At least how you might expect. Possibly a little overpowered, but its a modern racer, so I can live with that. Ripping through the Grand Canyon in this thing is so much fun.
The model is pretty good. I can’t say anything sticks out as a real eye-sore. Except some in-cockpit stuff I’ll talk about later.
It taxis fairly well, if you’re not trying to turn it around too sharply. Tail wheel locks and unlocks as you would expect, speed seems to be pretty good.
Now the bad:
Landing is atrocious. I cannot, for the life of me, get this thing to land with any consistency. 3-point landing is near impossible. If you try landing on the mains, good luck slowing down, as any amount of braking tips the nose over. Compare this to DCS, where landing is as you would expect. Come across the threshold at 120 mph with full flaps, gently flare into a 3-point attitude and set her down easy. Just like the manual says, and what you’d see on any YouTube video you’d see with P-51 landings. Try that in this plane, and good luck.
Right side aileron and flap do not animate.
Fuselage fuel tank gauge is low-res and has no needle. Wing tank gauges are fine.
Canopy does not open. Standard procedure has you opening and closing the canopy at certain times, like right before takeoff and before landing. Not a deal breaker, but would be nice to have.
Landing gear has a significant amount of drag, more than I would expect. Trying to keep a good attitude on final with the landing gear down is a chore.
The plane feels floaty on the runway during takeoff and landing. Like the main wheels don’t have any friction. It’s a pain to keep it straight.
Making sharp turns while taxiing is a pain. Seems like the brakes are not tuned right. Feels like if you go with full rudder and brake on one side, instead of pivoting around that one wheel, the opposite wheel also locks up, preventing the pivot. It’s weird. I think this is just a thing in 2024 as a whole, cause I feel this in other planes. Can’t turn them as sharp as you should be able to.
This is all the things that really bug me about this plane. I wish it was better, as the P-51 is such an iconic bird, I would really love to fly it more.
Landing the P-51 still feels weird compared to other representations in fight sims. It seems like the elevator loses complete authority long before the plane actually stalls.
Not sure if there is any real life anecdotes about this, but it just feels like it’s impossible to really bring it to the ground in the 3 point attitude without nosing over forward on approach.
After sim update 3 this plane has still been neglected. Flap bug still exists: Only the left flap\aileron are moving on the P-51D Mustang . and the landing/stall behavior is still unrealistic. You can’t flare and touch down at 90mph like flight manuals prescribe. The nose just drops when going below 110mph..
You need to remember this P51 is not modelled on a standard P51, it is modelled on a racing plane, highly modified therefore different from the POH.
If you want a warbird P51 then look at many of the other Mustang improvement mods or offerings by other developers.
If you’re on PC I’d really, really recommend the mod on flightsim.to it dramatically improves the aircraft, with hopefully more improvements along the way. If you’re not Xbox, well I wouldn’t hold your breath, as has been stated, it took a very long time to fix in FS2020.
(You can also find some wonderful textures to replace the dire textures this unfortunate P-51 is lumbered with.)
