I have had a love affair with Grumman's pudgy little biplane fighters since I was a kid. I really enjoy their bright pre WW2 color schemes. I created one for FS98 a couple of years ago. (It was my last AF99 project.) I thought it was time for a new model so I hauled out Martin Dickinson's 3 views for a 1938 issue of Air Trails magazine (remember those?) and fired up FSDS. I chose the colors for the flight leader of section 5 of VF-2 which was assigned to the carrier Lexington in 1938 and 1939. The canopy has a linear slide thanks to SDLEdit and is controlled by the Flaps controls since the real airplane didn't have any. I used a combination of Aircraft Animator and SDLEdit for a reasonable facsimile of the complex Grumman gear retraction cycle. The tail hook is actuated with the spoiler key"/". This FSDS project was compiled into FS2002 Pro. Usually I can copy my own designs into CFS2 and they work just fine (sans dp files of course). However when I copied the F3F-2 into CFS2 the animations became very "jerky" I was unable to solve this problem. I do plan to compile this project directly into CFS2 and see if that helps; if so I will create a simple dp file (at least put the guns in the right place) and upload it for CFS2. Please don't ask what the time table is.
INSTALLATION: Unzip F3F.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the folder Grumman F3F-2 into the Aircraft folder of FS2002. Copy the contents of the gauges folder into the FS2002 Gauges folder. Close everything and fire up FS2002. This airplane should show under Grumman as the Grum F3F-2 in the aircraft selection list.
PANEL and SOUND: I was not really happy with the panel I made for the FS98 version, but I could not find any dedicated F3F panels on the web. I did find a nice F4F panel by Arne Bartel and Jean-Pierre Langer. This is actually the CFS2 F4F panel converted to FS2002. I took the liberty of removing the Flaps gauge since this model didn't have any. I aliased the default F4U-1 Corsair sound file.
LEGAL: This project is released as freeware. You may modify it, repaint it, etc., upload to another website as long as it is not for profit. You need my written permission to use any of these files for commercial purposes; otherwise just give me credit for the original design. This airplane should not hurt your computer but I am not responsible if it causes problems.
