I decided to model the FH-1 Phantom in spite of its having a less than satisfactory career because I like the simple straight lines of the airplane. The FH-1 was one of the first US Navy jets assigned to carrier duty. Only about 60 were produced because it was very under powered. It was powered with 2 of the early US axial flow jet engines which just did not live up to their design goals. Other early Navy jets such as the Vought F7U Cutlass were also caught in the same "power squeeze". All was not lost with the FH-1 as the lessons learned led to the much more successful F2H Banshee.
This is a FSDSv3.51 project enhanced with Dave Nunez's FSDSXTweak program. It is a native FSX project compiled with the SP-2 Xtomdl compiler. It has the usual animations plus folding wings and an operating tail hook. The textures are in .dds format and it has reflective glass and bump maps. The 2D panel and VC are based on a photo obtained from the US Cockpits web sight. The VC has working gauges and the flight controls are animated. It is painted for VF-17A assigned to the USS Saipan in 1948.
There is an interesting note regarding landing lights. The FH-1 had only one landing light (Left side) and it was not controlled by the pilot. There was no switch for it in the cockpit; it was turned on and off by the position of the tail hook. The light was off with the hook up and turned on when the hook was lowered. Rob Barendregt of the Netherlands was kind enough to create a XML gauge that controls the landing light as a function of the tail hook position. Many Thanks, Rob.
Please note that this XML gauge requires the user to cycle through the view selections with the "S" key for it to be operative.
This project has not been tested in Vista or DX10 as I don't have them.
INSTALLATION: Unzip FH1vX.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the folder FH-1 Phantom into the Airplanes folder of FSX. Open the gauges folder and copy the 3 files into the Gauges folder of FSX. Copy them "as is"; don't open them or they won't work. This airplane shows in the Aircraft Selection Menu as the McDonnell Navy FH-1 Navy Blue.
LEGAL: This project is released as freeware. You may repaint it, make panel modifications and upload to this or another website as long you give me credit for the original design. You need my written permission to use any of these files for commercial purposes. Be advised this project will be uploaded by me to www.SurClaro and www.simviation.com. If you find it and download from another site, I am not responsible for the integrity of the files.
This airplane should not hurt your computer but I am not responsible if you think it causes problems.
Please note that Rob Barendregt's XML gauge is protected by his copyright and must not be transfered to other projects without his express premission.
