MSFS20 Piper Tomahawk Dreaming... (35 years VH-TLA and many more)

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So long time ago in a land far far away, 35 years ago as I was learning to fly at the RAAF Queensland Air Training Corps (QAirTC/AirTC now AAFC) in Australia, I spent a lot of time in VH-TLA...

As I was 16 there was one point I was almost grounded until I learned my checklist by heart, and I was relegated to a large blow up A3 sized sheet with the diagram of the cockpit.

As I was in the early days of the sim, FS 4.0 and the only custom aircraft available were from the Microsoft Aircraft and Scenery Designer add-on for FS4, I could only hope and dream of having a simulated cockpit for the PA-38.

Years later after I got my pilot's license, FS98 had come out (I had 5.0 and 5.1 and also used FSFW95 but didn't get to use them) I was finally able to do up a mock cockpit layout using the 2D Cessna panel as a backplate and arrange the instruments as per the Tomahawk. Eventually someone did up the Tomahawk in a 3D model and I was able to do a rudimentary paint in VH-TLA's colors.

It wasn't until Alabeo/Carenado's PA-38-112 for FSX/P3D that I would again get to fly the Tomahawk, and someone had done up a livery similar to TLA, but it had a roundel on the empennage which we didn't have in Queensland. Finally with FlyInside I was able to fly in VR with the Oculus Rift CV2 and boy was that a game changer. The only drawback to the Alabeo Tomahawk was they had one of the fuel gauges the wrong way around, I don't know if that was due to their reference aircraft in south america having had the left hand gauge installed on the right hand fuel gauge slot, but it was an annoyance.

I never was able to get the PA-38-112 for FSX/P3D from JustFlight and wasn't quite sold on it at the time, especially with news of MSFS coming out. (sidebar: MSFS has almost all of the stuff I wrote in the Game Design Documents for Dovetail Games Flight Simulator Flight School and Flight Simulator World). DTG had sent the FSX code off to be converted to 64 bit, and they also were implementing new sky and water models as well as changing the start screen interface which has carried across into Asobo's development process, but I digress.

Shortly after MSFS was announced or released Just Flight teased an upcoming release of the PA-38-112 and boy was I excited. I had been waiting literally decades to fly the Tomahawk procedurally. Little did I know it would be a 2-3 year wait, but a wait that was well worth it.

A few weeks ago they released her, and after seeing several awesome repaints I finally decided to get back in after many years in the scenery development world, and do up VH-TLA. Boy howdy have the paint kits gotten way more advanced. So for the last 3-4 days I've been laboring away at giving VH-TLA all the love she deserves. Many of us who learned to fly in TLA have such a love for her and have dreamed of a decent version for MSFS.

Well, I'm near the end of the cycle for release 1.0 of the repaint, the orange lower fuselage still needs a lot of love to make 100% accurate, but I'm just going to roll with what I have until i can really get the cheat lines perfect, especially where it tapers off and around the nose (I have ideas on how to straighten the line as it curves around the nose).

Oh and also I discovered the flight_dynamics.cfg was a 100% copy of the Asobo Cessna 152 which explains the twitchiness and severe stall characteristics in the flight model. I've gone through and added as much accurate data as I can for the moment, outside of going out to a real aircraft and measuring the flaps and other components to do the aerospace engineering calculations for the flight model, but for now I've got her flying in clean config at about 99% accurate to how she really feels in real life.

So with no further ado, here's some preview shots of beta 0.9 of the repaint...

 

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Spent the last couple of days perfecting the base paint, all registration numbers for VH-TLA and VH-FTI are complete as well as under wing registration.

Variants So Far...

• VH-TLA 1990 (AirTC & White Dome)
• VH-TLA 2000 (AirTC & Orange Dome)
• VH-TLA 2010 (AAFC & Orange Dome)
• VH-FTI 2000 (AirTC & Orange Dome)
• VH-FTI 2010 (AAFC & Orange Dome)

I flew VH-TLA between 1989 and 1991 and she was the first in the RAAF training colors. The funny thing was the Russians called the govt here to ask why military aircraft were parked at a civilian airport (YBAF) lol.

VH- FTI was still in the factory white with red stripes markings between 1989-1991, I'm not sure when she was done up in the RAAF training colors.

At some point TLA's underside dome (I'm guessing transponder) went from white to orange. I've noticed VH-UAL was white. Due to not having better reference photos I'll likely do up different variants.

Also planned to do are the wingtip nav/strobe lights, right now they're painted orange but a lot of the time they were metal colored. Again not enough reference photos. UAL has both orange and metal versions in the photos.

 

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New Piper based variants... I seem to have been learning the history of VH-TLA ever since it left the Piper Factory...

Actually further to that, tracing several aircraft that arrived in Australia brought in by Royal Aero Club of New South Wales...

Now at 17 repaints at various stages, some may need to hire someone on fiver to do up logos from 30+ years ago...

Also need to do the orange and green Tomahawks from Iron Eagle that are seen on the tarmac, have the rego for the orange one, but not the green...

VH-AFR 1980 & 1990 (needs Sunland Logo)

VH-BVK 1980 - As delivered to Royal Aero Club of New South Wales

VH-BVK 1985 - Royal Aero Club of New South Wales (Prepping Custom Textures such as tail logo, fuse logo and cowl logo)

VH-CNT 1980 - As delivered by Piper (note there is one someone else has done that is awesome, but with limitations of the current cheat lines the rego location was non-standard to these)

VH-FTI 1980 & 1990 - This is the scheme she wore when I learned to fly in her. However there is another scheme that was used for promo with a bunch of flying schools on it. Too complicated to do that one.

VH-HAW 1980 - As delivered to Royal Aero Club of New South Wales

VH-HAW 1985 - Royal Aero Club of New South Wales (Prepping Custom Textures such as tail logo, fuse logo and cowl logo)

VH-MIR 1990 - This was the first Tomahawk I ever flew on my 16th birthday for a trial introductory flight. She was operated by Air Training Centre at YBAF and received a new custom paint scheme years later

VH-TLA 1980 - As delivered by Piper

VH-TLA 1985 - Royal Aero Club of New South Wales (Prepping Custom Textures such as tail logo, fuse logo and cowl logo)

 

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Okay I think I opened up a can of worms... I'm now up to 35 repaints from "complete" to "still working on" in process... It's all because of VH-TLA, VH-FTI, VH-AFR and VH-MIR...

VH-MIR, FTI and AFR were some of the Tomahawks I learned to fly in, they came with standard Piper Factory paint schemes. VH-TLA by that point had been painted in RAAF traing colors.

So after seeing a user request at flightsim.to for an early 1980's version of VH-TLA in Royal Aero Club of New South Wales Colors (i.e. the scheme I am assuming was the one AirTC purchased the aircraft from), I noticed the fuselage was still in the Piper colors but they had custom painted the Tail, added fuselage logo for RAC NSW and a Piper Flite Centre logo to the noses of the aircraft.

Well the process was I had to step it back to the base scheme which I already had for FTI. So I took TLA to factory colors, and then started work on the reddish orange tail base paint (which had a lot of intricacies)...

Well I couldn't just leave it at that now as RACNSW had BVK, FTX, HAW, HAY, KHF and TLA and 3 had brown factory stripes, one blue and one green. So of course I had do them as well in the 3 variants (factory, factory plus fuse logo and nose logo, and then tail logo)... So all up that adds up to 18 paint schemes throughout their history. (I haven't even checked on more recent variants from RAC NSW days other than TLA...

Well seeing as I had now done the green factory stripes I figured I may as well standardize VH-CNT which someone had already done, but create a factory scheme without the leading edge black, and also standardize the registration location as the other version was too far forward (due to the base JF paint factory stripes not being 100% vertically position wise). But seeing as I also had the green, I figured well I should do up the Green and Orange Tomahawks as seen during the Snake sequence in Iron Eagle, complete with colored nose spinners. So I dove back into the movie and in HD I could only see one registration number which was on the orange aircraft and it looked like N99051, but a search didn't show anything. I figured due to the paint schemes looking like the aircraft were ordered by the same entity they must have sequential c/n numbers. The only c/n numbers that matched N9905 was N9905T and N9906T... I knew the 9905 was correct so what I thought was a 1 was actually a T. Now there were 2 other N990 registrations, N9902T and N9910T. They may have also had those at L00 at Rosamond SkyPark where the airport doubled as Alta Vista Airfield, but I can't be sure, so I figured it was safe to assume the green tomahawk was N9906T.

Custom Modifications to the JF PA-38 Paint Schemes:

• Developed blue Sensenich Prop Sticker Logo (This is the most common propeller marking for the PA-38)
• Fixed the front right cabin glossy texture (corner of window and nose) for default JF models (there was a shiny square that was missing from the surface.dds texture map)
• Grip Tape and Tire shine mods (from https://flightsim.to/file/73571/just-flight-pa-38-tomahawk-better-griptape and used with permission from BurstixTV) - I also fixed the step grip and surface texture as the JF ones wrapped around
• Generated a new Albedo Ext 01 surface texture to make the nose black paint all matte
• Generated a new Albedo Ext 01 surface texture to make the nose for regular painted aircraft glossy (note: the JF models all used the same matte surface from the one model that had black on the cowl)
• Generated temporary full Piper Cheat Lines for Blue, Red, Orange, Green, Brown and Black (no more gap) - I'll release the paintkit for others for them to use
• Added metal albedo texture for the pitot
• Removed red fuel marking on decal texture as well as the footprint (all part of the Sensenich detail texture mod, I'll do up all variations for people to choose from for their repaints/mods)

A few things I need to do before release to flightsim.to:

• I need to metalize the surface texture mapping of the pitot
• I need to add custom weights to VH-TLA, FTI and UAL as per the RAAF Amberley Flying Club data
• I need to finalize cheat lines for the orange lower fuselage by taking it into blender to paint that line (as it's wrapping around curved surfaces) - UPDATE - COMPLETED
• RAC NSW aircraft fleet - I need to add the Piper Flite Centre Logo to the nose of the aircraft - UPDATE COMPLETED
• RAC NSW aircraft fleet - I need to add the fuselage logo (emailed them today to see if they may be able to supply some form of old logos)
• RAC NSW aircraft fleet - I need to add the tail logo (possibly have to generate the vector graphic by hand) for the tail logos
• AIRTC VH-UAL - build custom variation as the RAAF red, white, blue bars are in a different location, and the orange cheat line on lower fuselage is different to TLA and FTI, it goes back to the next row of rivets

Nice to have things for future updates:

• Shrink the cockpit registration numbers to a reasonable size - INVESTIGATED - MAY ABANDON IDEA
• Beyond that remove the black dynamic registration plate, and build custom registration plates for the little indent below the fuel selector as per real aircraft - ABANDON FOR NOW - GLTF MODEL BASED
• Manually re-paint the Piper two stripe cheat lines to be 100% accurate to the real aircraft, release to community - ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER INTERNATIONAL MOVE
• Move the Tomahawk tail logo slightly forward so it aligns with the panel as per real world - ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER INTERNATIONAL MOVE
• Investigate whether I can move the ADF gauge to below the NAV 2 gauge as per real aircraft I've flown (I don't know if I can, I think it may be possible but haven't tried as yet) - INVESTIGATING
• VH-TLA, FTI, JAM & UAL in yellow and blue paint scheme (will need to go out to YAMB for a photo mission) - ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER INTERNATIONAL MOVE
• Serial number plates for all aircraft, have all numbers other than AFR - ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER INTERNATIONAL MOVE

The "to release" list so far:

1. VH-TLA 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
2. VH- TLA 1981 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
3. VH-TLA 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos & Tail Paint Logo - ON HOLD - NEEDS LOGOS
4. VH-TLA 1990 - RAAF Training Colors "AirTC" with white radio/nac dome - COMPLETE
5. VH-TLA 2000 - RAAF Training Colors "AirTC" with orange radio/nav dome - COMPLETE
6. VH-TLA 2010 - RAAF Training Colors "AAFC" - COMPLETE
7. VH-FTI 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
8. VH-FTI 2000 - RAAF Training Colors "AirTC" - COMPLETE
9. VH-FTI 2010 - RAAF Training Colors "AAFC" - COMPLETE
10. VH-UAL 2000 - RAAF Training Colors "AirTC" - COMPLETE
11. VH-UAL 2010 - RAAF Training Colors "AAFC" - v1 COMPLETE - WILL DO UP A MORE ACCURATE TAIL AND CHEATLINES FOR V2
12. VH-AFR 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE (NEEDS C/N INFO)
13. VH-AFR 1978/9 - Sunland Aviation Services Logo - ON HOLD - NEED LOGO, REFERENCE PHOTOS & C/N (none exist)
14. VH-AFR 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
15. VH-BVK 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
16. VH-CNT 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
17. VH-FTX 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
18. VH-HAY 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
19. VH-HAW 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
20. VH-KHF 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
21. VH-MIR 1978/9 - Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
22. N9905T - Iron Eagle Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
23. N9906T - Iron Eagle Piper Factory Colors - COMPLETE
24. VH-BVK 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
25. VH-FTX 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
26. VH-HAW 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
27. VH-HAY 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
28. VH-KHF 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
29. VH-TLA 1980 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - COMPLETE
30. VH-CNV 1980'S - Looks like it may have been part of the RAC NSW fleet - COMPLETE SANS RACNSW TAIL - NOT SURE IF IT WAS A PART OF RACNSW
31. VH-BVK 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO
32. VH-FTX 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO
33. VH-HAW 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO
34. VH-HAY 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO
35. VH-KHF 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO
36. VH-TLA 1985 - Royal Aero Club of NSW Logos - ON HOLD - NEEDS TAIL LOGO

Future Releases:

1. VH-TLA 2015 - AAFC Blue & Yellow Air Force Cadets Scheme - FUTURE
2. VH-TLA 2024 - RAAF Amberley Flying Club Blue & Yellow Scheme - FUTURE
3. VH-FTI 2015 - AAFC Blue & Yellow Air Force Cadets Scheme - FUTURE
4. VH-FTI 2024 - RAAF Amberley Flying Club Blue & Yellow Scheme - FUTURE
5. VH-JAM 2015 - AAFC Blue & Yellow Air Force Cadets Scheme - FUTURE
6. VH-JAM 2024 - RAAF Amberley Flying Club Blue & Yellow Scheme - FUTURE
7. VH-UAL 2015 - AAFC Blue & Yellow Air Force Cadets Scheme - FUTURE
8. VH-UAL 2024 - RAAF Amberley Flying Club Blue & Yellow Scheme - FUTURE
9. VH-MIR 1991 - Air Training Centre Colors - FUTURE
10. VH-MIR 1990's - Arena Aviation Colors - FUTURE
11. VH-CFR 1990's - Arena Aviation Colors - FUTURE
12. VH-CFR 2020's - Debranded Arena Aviation Colors - FUTURE

Iron Eagle N9905T @ L00 Rosamond Skypark w/ Iron Eagle Scene Mock up

PA-38 Nose De-Matted Paint

 

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Exceptional details, the washers under the screws are making me crazy!

 

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Exceptional details, the washers under the screws are making me crazy!

I just noticed the oil smear on the front right of the cowl. I thought I'd messed up something but it's actually in all their models... Eventually I'll rework the dirt for v2, but I gotta get moving packing up and selling up... Time to prep uploads for flightsim.to

I did up all the thumbnails, turns out I've done up 37 variants of each aircraft over the years, found out VH-FTI was the demonstrator aircraft that listed all the aeroclubs on it that were initial customers in Australia for the Tomahawk...

 

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Finished up the paint schemes for VH-TLA, VH-FTI and VH-UAL today...

Base release is 8K but have also now included 16K textures for users with 11GB or higher video cards, 2080ti is sufficient, I believe the 1080ti should also be fine as they have similar performance, just not RTX on the 1080ti. Will finalize screenshots, brief docs and upload to flightsim.to tomorrow hopefully... Still need to do one final quality control check.

Snagged a few release screenshots tonight before going for a fly from YAMB to YBCG...

VH-TLA & FTI AirTC Tail Logo

VH-TLA & FTI AAFC Tail Logo

VH-UAL Tail Logo is different than TLA & FTI in terms of positioning, I will do up the orange top of the tail later once I'm done prepping to move

Custom Sensenich Prop logo. It seems JF added the wooden prop sticker to the aircraft, but every Tomahawk I've seen has always had the blue and black logo, Will also release that as a separate mod for others.

VH-FTI in Piper Factory Colors as she was when I flew her between 1989-1991

VH-FTI sometime after she got the RAAF Training Colors in AirTC markings

VH-FTI in the later AAFC markings

Matted cowl and nose complete as accurate as I could get. New Sensenich prop sticker.

New grip textures thanks to BurstixTV who created the Just Flight PA-38 Tomahawk Better Griptape + Tire Deshine mod. I'm sending him over my step grip mod update as well for him to release.

Customized C/N plates, I had to go in and do a lot of artwork on the normal map as all of the JF tomahawks use the VC same norml map with the same registration number burned in and different albedo text overlaid. This is still a work in progress but I'll get to perfecting it after I've moved back overseas.