I flew the TA-4J many moons ago and I'd have to say that the Virtavia A-4 (VA-4 from here on) requires quite a bit more rudder than I recall in the aircraft, particularly at approach speeds. Most of the tactical aircraft I flew required very little rudder unless you were intentionally trying to yaw the nose. When you roll into a turn in the VA-4, the ball really swings out to the side, requiring a good bit of rudder to center. Even in relatively high angles of bank, where the rudder becomes less of a player, the VA-4 still needs a good bit of rudder to turn.
But I think it is a more general issue. For instance, if you take the VA-4 through a kind of wingover maneuver: raising the nose, rolling into a ninety degree angle of bank then releasing the controls; the nose will fall ballistically as it should in zero-G (or near zero-G) flight. But the ball still falls well out to the side, which it shouldn't...the aircraft and the ball are experiencing the same amount of G or at least nearly so. In fact, even with full rudder I can't center the ball. It's like the ball is directly connected to the AOB and not to the sideslip of the A/C.
Another thing I noticed with the VA-4 is the ADI's strange behavior. It's fairly difficult to perform a proper unloaded roll in the VA-4. The real A-4 shares this behavior, so that's not completely inaccurate though it does seem a bit exaggerated. But the further the VA-4's nose is from the horizon, the more the ADI swings from the proper center of rotation. What you wind up with is this:
Aircraft nose up. ADI nose down. This doesn't seem to happen with the aircraft symbol on the horizon. What I mean is that if you start rolling the VA-4 with 10 degrees of nose up, the ADI will swing in a circle and you will wind up with the ADI 10 degrees nose down even though the aircraft nose is still well above the horizon.
I checked the climb performance issue that the other gentleman was talking about as well. I seem to have it too. This is a fully loaded A-4 with wing tanks and no ordnance. Using the Bingo climb profile, I am holding 320 KIAS and waiting until the Mach changeover point at M 0.76. But I have reached my absolute ceiling here at about 24000. Any attempt to climb higher results in my decelerating below climb speed and eventually of running out of airspeed entirely.
This is way too low though I don't know why exactly. In the training command, we would fly cross country flights in the in the 30's in TA-4J in this configuration regularly. I'm not sure if the engine is underperforming or the climb schedule is off, but the sim seems a bit of a dog compared to the real plane.
I understand that Virtavia is working on some of these issues, so I'm hoping that they can iron the bugs out in the next release. It's a great rendition of the plane and I would love to see the wrinkles taken care of.
Deacon
" Funny you should mention that. Back in mid 1974 [OOPS! 1984 thanks for correction of typo - must be dialectric meself!] a stressed or dyslexic or just plain funny chap had the KIWI pointing incorrectly on the now EX-A4G 876 but only on one side (this is where the mistake can be made when working from one side to tuther - so easily done in haste I guess). Of course once the new NZ6217 reached NZed the error was swiftly corrected. Photo kindly provided by Sean Strang. Second & third photos show the newly arrived aircraft at Ohakea.
TYPO 1984 
