The F4B-4 was ordered into production in 1931 and started serving onboard the"Lexington" in 1932. It was one of the last of the fixed gear fighters serving until it was superceded by the first of the retractable gear Grummans. This model is painted to represent the fighter group onboard the Lexington. The color scheme was provided by Tim "Spike" Prendergast (Capt. USN). Spike got me hooked on landing on carriers so I was reasonably successful in developing an .air file that simulates a very short carrier landing if desired (see Controls, below) This project was designed with FSDS for FS2000; however I have successfully installed and flown it in my 2 day old copy of CFS2.
INSTALLATION: Unzip F4b-4.zip into a temporary folder. Copy and paste the file F4b-4 into the FS2000 aircraft folder. Open the F4b-4 folder and find the gauges folder. Open the gauges folder and copy the gauges into the FS2000 folder. Close everything and fire up FS2000. The plane should show in the aircraft list as Boeing F4B-4.
PANEL: I am indebted to Jack Hill for letting me modify the panel bitmap from his excellent Curtiss F11C2 for this project. I would also like to thank Chuck Dome for his hand throttle gauge.
SOUND: I aliased the Cessna 182 sound to keep the file size small; however I heartily recommend the sound file from Fred Banting's recent FS2000 Beavers. This file has a certain "blat-blat" sound that I like and think is appropriate for the straight exhaust stacks on this plane.
CONTROLS: PLEASE READ: This plane is controlled like any other with the following exceptions. Please note the carrier hook is actuated with the Flap control rather than the spoiler control. The hook has no impact on flight dynamics. The plane lands like any other unless you wish to land on a "landable carrier". I modified the spoiler dynamics in the .air file as follows: I reduced the spoiler actuation time to 0.5 seconds then I gave the spoiler a lot of drag. So to land on a carrier make an approach as low and slow as possible and when you come over the deck and the wheels are just about down hit the spoiler key (/) and the plane will quickly drop and stop in about 200 feet. This is not an original idea, Dino C. did the same general thing with his great F-14"s. If you accidently hit the spoiler key in the middle of a flight the plane will literally fall out of the sky. Note; A good landable carrier for FS2000 is the "Saratoga" cv602v10.zip. I suggest you include the 2 updates.
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 a simple credit would be nice. This file should not cause problems with your computer, but I accept no responsibility if you think it does.
