Looks like it could be a port over of their FSX offering. Hard to tell by the pics provided. Any brave souls willing to take the dive to see if she’s worth it? Especially with IndiaFoxTecho’s A-4 series in the works?
I flew her in FSX. It was a very pretty plane, but had a number of shortcomings.
I went to their website and found the manual for it. Just to see what the fidelity was. Too many concerns for me to make the purchase.
Biggest one was a note something along the lines of “MSFS doesn’t simulate drag from speed brakes so it’s not implemented.” Uh there are several planes that have this in MSFS. Sure maybe it’s a hack to make it work in the sim but that’s ok to me, the end user.
Also from the manual - the taxi light doesn’t cast light in the ground? And no tail hook functionality when other fighters have this.
Maybe I’m being too picky, but this was enough to put me off from buying it.
4 Likes
27€ ? At least we can be sure the price tag is ported over from FSX 
4 Likes
There are enough other nice aircraft in MSFS by now.
3 Likes
The free one in DCS is pretty good
3 Likes
I really want to get this, because I love the A-4.
But wow, the manual comments about airbrakes not being supported on MSFS and tailhooks not being functional make me wonder if Phil has actually done any exploration of what others have done on the sim. It reads like he’s just depending on the (severely lacking) SDK documentation. Even the MS Top Gun F/A-18E has a working air brake and tailhook. Carriers aren’t included in free flight but there are add-ons to enable the MS carriers, there are commercial add-on moving carriers, and there are freeware carriers. You’d think Phil and team would want to support this stuff to make the product more attractive. It’s not required, certainly, to support third-party add-ons, but you’d think you’d look at the ecosystem and see what would make your product more attractive.
I want Virtavia to succeed here. I want that F4D Skyray. I want an F3H Demon, an F7U Cutlass, a B-36, and so many of the other awesome planes they’ve done over the years. But those manual comments read like they downloaded MSFS and ignored the ecosystem, resources like FSDeveloper, etc.
I hope this stuff gets fixed and that future products reach the state off the art established by devs like IndiaFoxtEcho and DC Designs, so that Virtavia is successful enough to keep their library growing.
Even as-is, it’s 1,000% better than the MScenery Skyhawk, of course. But I look at the Laborie F-8 Crusader I bought that never had its flight model updated to current standards and it’s archived and never flown. I don’t care if textures aren’t the most detailed they can be, but I do at least want basic functionality like airbrakes on a military plane, and that lack of support is due to a lack of understanding on the dev’s part and not any limitations of the platform, as a dozen-plus other add-on jets have shown.
7 Likes
even the m20r that carenado released 3 years ago had that function working (mapped as spoilers in-game, if we want to get pedantic, but they did provide significant braking/ drag, theyre sold for the real thing as speed brakes SpeedBrakes for Mooney - Precise Flight Inc.)
just flight bae 146 has clamshell speed brakes
so i dont know where the idea that “airbrakes not being supported in msfs” comes from, but it seems demonstrably incorrect
1 Like
I hope others have read the manual by now. I promise I don’t want to say bad things about a product unless I feel it’s truly warranted.
The manual for those interested:
1 Like
Ok let’s ditch the ridiculous statement about speedbrakes.
About Carriers: I’m not a dev, I’m not selling a product that can operate on carriers, I only use military planes from time to time and… I have a bunch, bunch of carriers in MSFS.
How can a developer that makes money from MSFS be so indiferent about basic things? Buy some carriers, test your product, have the decency to at last have what your users have to test your products…
We need better devs, whoever wrote this in the manual does not deserve a single dollar from us.
4 Likes
are any of your A-4 Skyhawk coming to Xbox?
They seem to have taken the speed brakes not working statement out of the manual….
Anybody know if this is coming to Xbox? Huge A-4 fan here, and I’m still going to get the indiafoxtecho one when it comes either way.
1 Like
Confirmed with Phil that the speed brakes have been implemented in the 1.2 update, so I bought it and can confirm they do indeed work as you’d expect them to. Now you can fly a realistic approach.
Tried to use the IndiaFoxtEcho carrier add-on to confirm that the hook’s working okay now, but I suck at carrier approaches without a proper ball to call, so I can’t verify one way or another. But that’s not Virtavia’s fault, it’s my mediocre Naval flying skills. 
5 Likes
Decided to buy this on a whim, mainly as I’ve got tired of waiting for an A-6 or F-5. For me this was the replacement for the Asobo L-39’s and is definitely better than them. Worth the £26 I paid…votes out on that one.
Took it on a group flight a few days ago and it’s a very fun plane to fly. I’ve set the review bar with this quite high as I already recently purchased the GotFriends Wildcat which costs about the same.
This aircraft is definitely not to the GotFriends quality standard but I will say when flying, everything that needs to work seems to work. The Wildcat for all that I love it, has far to many features I don’t care about (bombs, guns, etc because I can’t use them in the sim and the flare is well even more pointless…maybe all set for FS2024), this aircraft whilst basic has a fairly realistic old-fashioned terrain following radar which I’ll give the dev some credit for because I can actually use it.
The aircraft has two types of speed breaks, the “normal” ones at the tail-end work as expected to slow the aircraft down and on the models where they are implemented the wing spoilers come down on landing but don’t know if they have effect, I’m not bothered if they do anyway.
I would like to see a functioning gunsight, mainly because the switch is there and the HUD just looks stupid with it blank. GotFriends have proved that it can be done.
I’ve given it the nickname of the jet-powered taildragger as with that high nose wheel, it’s about as stable as any Spitfire i’ve taxi’d in a sim on the ground, don’t try and turn above taxi speeds. I find this to be a unique challenge in a tricycle jet and have no idea if the real aircraft is as bad so it’s quite fun.
The main issue I’ve found (and it could be me), following the checklist I can’t get the engine to start. Has anyone else seen this issue?
I have pressed the button on the throttle so it shifts to the inboard (right) position before anyone asks
If I do a quick-start, shutdown the engine then restart it again I can get the engine to start again at the checklist specified 20% RPM but from cold-and-dark I’ve held the button either (a) until approx 27% RPM or (b) until a subtle note change in the engine. Neither has worked. Maybe there is an extra step not covered in the checklist?
When the quickstart runs, you hear a different note change and then the button animation moves to no longer being pressed.
This is how it looks just before I release the start button and the engine shuts down:
Not really getting anywhere with the dev but at least they are replying.
I’ve put together a video to demonstrate the issue, is anyone else able to replicate?
Virtavia A4E Skyhawk - Manual Engine Start Problem - YouTube
I’ve been flying this aircraft routinely without issue, here is my approach:
- Ensure controls interaction is set to lock, not legacy, mode in order for the ground radar and the radio switches to function correctly.
2. map a button or control to enrich your fuel mixture, and ensure it’s “enriched” prior to the next steps.
-
turn on battery.
-
turn on beacon light and others as desired.
-
ensure parking brakes are on.
-
press the inboard throttle button to move it to the right position.
-
press and hold the starter until the engine successfully lights/engages.
Note: Under control interactions on “lock” rather than “legacy”, I noted that Ctrl-E autostart wasn’t working. For some reason it’s detecting a need to enrich an invisible mixture.
Unrelated: The developer gave me an edit to enable ground splash of the taxi light, as well as a faint whisp of engine smoke at higher power. Recommend asking the dev if they wish to share that further.
1 Like
You’re an absolute legend…
On initial start, I used spad to check the mixture setting … would you know it’s zero:
Mixture on a jet?
I then did the auto-start and towards the end it got moved to 100. This likely explains why any subsequent engine starts work without issue.
Normally I’d have controls mapped for mixture but as it’s a jet I just had my basic HOTAS setup, no chance of conflict with any other controls then…or so I thought.
As you suggested I used the mixture controls to increase the hidden fuel value:
And this is then shown in spad:
Following the documented procedure then works exactly as expected. Hope this is helpful to anyone else.
Thanks again
2 Likes
Some final closure on the manual start issue, I reported this back to the dev and they’ve said they would try and fix it (although I don’t think this was a 100% commitment).
In case no one has Spad to check this sorts of thing, there is a debug window within the developer tools that would have highlighted this issue. May help for future aircraft as well
As much as the developer has been open to feedback (which is more than can be said for some), I stand by my previous comments that at £25 this aircraft isn’t really to the quality now expected of FS2020 aircraft. It ticked the box I had for a cold war carrier-capable jet in my hanger but that’s about it.
I would like the developer to continue to make aircraft but they do need to consider the price point they aim at in this competitive market as for the same money you could get something from the likes of GotFriends (I’m looking at you Wildcat) which generally are of much higher quality. At £15 this aircraft would have been far more reasonably priced.
I’m off now to see how it behaves with SuperCarrier Pro from Miltech.
1 Like
Update released to Simmarket that fixes the engine start issue amongst other things:
A-4E Skyhawk updated to version 1.3
- Taxi light ground splash: now working
- Exhaust smoke trail (faint) : added
- ILS needles stopped working after MSFS update : working again
- Boarding ladder top wrong angle : now level with ground
- Auto mixture-rich on starter : added
- Mysterious go-faster stripe on center tank when zoomed out : removed
- Camo vanishing off A-4G wing tanks when zoomed out : fixed
- Missing wheel wells on LOD1 model : fixed
- Too-small throttle grip : enlarged
- Pipes poking though cockpit floor : removed
- Default pilot view position : improved
I can also happily report that the aircraft seems to work fine for catapult launch from the Miltech SuperCarrier Pro.
1 Like
Question for folks with this aircraft. I’m painting a Blue Angels 1 version of the clean A-4, and am wondering if there is a way to pull up the front slats while on the ground. They seem to be automatic, based on airspeeed.
The Blues nearly always taxied with the slats up. Thanks