Well, I've taken it for a quick spin around the airport. Ground handling is pretty easy with judicious use of rudder and brakes. Takeoff was fairly uneventful and the torque is controllable with plenty of right rudder. It flies well and landing, other than poor visibility over the nose, is pretty straightforward. So it seems to handle as I would expect a Corsair to handle. I've not flown it with one of my -1 series manuals in my lap, so I can't say it's completely faithful, but it did feel right. I did notice a 4 to 7 fps hit while on or near the ground in this aircraft. Above about 1000 feet I was running 23 to 24 fps and my system is locked at 24 fps.
There's quite a bit of variation in the cockpits of the real Corsairs and it looks like this offering uses a -1D cockpit as the basis for all three versions. It's nicely done, but not entirely accurate for the -1A or -1C. The -1C has gun arming switches for three guns per wing, the center switch should be blocked off. The -1A cockpit should not have the HVAR control box. The engine priming switch should be spring loaded, not a standard toggle switch.
Now for the really bad. The exterior model leaves a bit to be desired. There are some inaccuracies in the wing root air inlets. Only early -1A's had a landing light, all Corsairs through the -4 series had the three recognition lights under the starboard outer wing panel (never under the fuselage), the white section light on the -1 series should be on the upper surface of the starboard outer wing panel, the wing formation lights are present, but completely invisible until turned on, the light on the fuselage spine should be blue on wartime -1 series Corsairs. The tail wheel doors should open further, the -1C model still has three shell ejection ports and a .50 caliber muzzle port on the starboard wing. The main wheels are definitely F4U-7/post war replacements. The antenna wire running from the rudder to the forward mast is correct, the additional wire running from the rudder to the aft mast is incorrect. None of these models have the cockpit access step in the starboard side of the fuselage, but the -1C and -1D have the late war FG-1D type step cut into the inboard flap, but it's on the port side and this should have been on the starboard side!
All of this reminds me of the package put out by Aeroplane Heaven a few years ago. A great concept, but lots of little errors that should have been caught with a little more research and little more time making certain that the little errors were worked out.
In summary, I think I've got myself a nice -1D to fly around so long as I stay in the cockpit. I'll likely comment out the recognition lights, justify the landing light by saying it was added during restoration as a safety feature and perhaps some errors can be masked with some painting. Do I regret buying this package? Not really. I love Corsairs, I've studied them since 1977 and FSX doesn't have a -1 of any variety. Who knows, perhaps some of these errors will be addressed in a patch? Anyway, I'll be spending a lot more time in the -1D.
