Intro

The P-51 is a single engine, singleseat, long-range, low-wing fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft builtby North American Aviation since the early 1940's. The aircraft is oneof the most iconic aircraft of the WWII and the D-model is probablyone of the most famous versions and often shown in movies of thatera.

The D-version features a very powerful V-12 Packard V-1650-7liquid-cooled engine that uses a 2 stage intercooled superchargerproviding the P-51D with 1,490 hp at 3,000 rpms however, applying theWEP (War Emergency Power) the engine could produce 1,720 hp but onlyfor a limited amount of time. The propeller used for this monster ofan engine was a Hamilton Standard, constant speed and variable pitchpropeller with a rather huge diameter of 11 ft 2 in (3.40m).

More that 15,000 P-51's were built since the first flight inOctober of 1940 and the aircraft was primarily used in service duringWWII and the Korean War and here with great success.

General Information And Aircraft Specs for the P-51D

• Produced by: North American Aviation
• National Origin: United States
• First Flight: October 26th 1940
• Introduction: January 1942 (RAF)
• Role: Fighter and Fighter Bomber
• Built: 15,000+
• Status: Retired from military service

• Crew: 1
• Length: 32 ft 3 in (9.83m)
• Height: 13 ft 41/2 in (4.08m)
• Wingspan: 37 ft 0 in (11.28m)
• Empty Weight: 7,635 lb (3,465kg)
• MTOW: 12,100 lb (5,490kg)
• Power Plant: 1x Packard V-1650-7 liquid cooled V-12
• Propeller: 1x Hamilton Standard, Constant Speed and Variable Pitch

• Max Speed: 440 mph / 383 kn / 708 km/h (at 25,000 ft / 7,600m)
• Cruise Speed: 362 mph / 315 kn / 583 km/h
• Range: 1,650 mi / 1,434 nmi / 2,656 km (w/external tanks)
• Service Ceiling: 41,900 ft (12,800m)
• Rate of Climb: 3,200 ft/min (16.3m/s)
• Wing Loading: 39 lb/sqft (192kg/m2)
• Power/Mass: 0.18 hp/lb (300W/kg)
• Lift-to-Drag Ratio: 14.6

Purchase, Download And Installation

I purchased this add-on through the new FlightSim.Com Store and thepurchase and download went perfectly and with ease. The entiredownload was completed within a very short time due to a very goodserver and internet connection.

The file downloaded was named ATS-525 and the file is a zip file of165 MB which is actually not a huge file for an aircraft of thecomplexity and quality that I was expecting. After the download wascompleted I activated the installation process which also was veryuser friendly and only took about 15 seconds to install the completefile. The installation wizard features an 'Auto-Find' the correctplatform and installation location, which you of course manually canoverride to select a specific installation location if you wantto.

The version that was installed was the v18.8.27.0 but after theinstallation was completed the wizard searched for an update to theaircraft and found the v18.12.22.0 - this update is a smaller updateof additional 29.53 MB which I of course also downloaded andinstalled.

After the installation was completed I opened up P3Dv4 and wentinto the virtual hangar where I found the P-51D perfectly placedfeaturing one version with three liveries - the three liveries are the'Blondie', the 'FF-064' and the 'Kwitcherbitchin'.

Together with the aircraft add-on there is also installed two manuals- one is the Pilot's Manual featuring 77 pages and the other is theAccu-Sim Manual featuring 99 pages. Both manuals are created asPDF files and can be viewed/opened using Adobe PDF viewer.

Both manuals contain a lot of specific information where e.g. thePilot's Manual primarily focuses on the variants included, the overallsystems, the specifications and in general how to fly the aircraftaccording to real data. The Accu-Sim manual instead focuses more onthe in-depth and detailed explanations of the engine and the systemshow they work etc.

To get started I would certainly recommend taking a look at thePilot's Manual, but the Accu-Sim Manual is also a great read if youare interested in more in-depth knowledge of the P-51D.

The manuals can be accessed through either the Windows Start-Menuor on this location:

C:\USers\'Your User Name\Documents\Prepar3Dv4 Add-Ons\A2A

On the same destination you can also find a file named 'Tools'where the Input Configurator is placed. This tool can be used toassign functions to a joystick, throttle or similar if you do notwish to use the standard P3D assigning tool.

External

Taking a look at the model was a very nice experience for sure. Themodel is beautiful and certainly it is a high quality model, featuringan abundance of unique detailing like the wing-shape, thebelly-air-inlet and the rather small vertical stabilizer. Everythingis created beautifully and according to real life imagery that I foundon the internet. The resemblance of the model and the real life imageswas spot on and the model absolutely features the same high qualitythat I have also found in several other A2A Simulation aircraft.

The textures are high quality, multi-layer textures that providethe model with a very realistic and authentic look. The aircraft looksold and used as expected with a certain degree of wear and tear, butat the same time it also looks freshly polished and shiny.

The detailing is superb and even the metal plates and the rivetsused for mounting the metal plates are nicely created and integratedinto the model providing a very realistic look. You also find anumerous number of markings and writing all over the fuselage andwings which definitely add greatly to the experience and theauthenticity of this old classic bird.

Various animations are of course also added to the model like thecontrol surfaces (elevator, ailerons and rudder) but also the flapsup/down, the canopy open/close, the gear and gear suspension up/down,the rotation of the wheels, the tail wheel up/down, etc. are alsocreated beautifully. The motion is smooth and realistic and keeps thesame high standard as the model.

Included are also some effects like the propeller, the lights andthe engine smoke upon startup. The propeller effect is veryrealistic and it does change a bit according to various rpm settingwhich is really super. The smoke upon startup features first a smallburst of dense black smoke followed up by white and less dense smokewhich is then blown away by the propeller. Hereafter you only seesmoke if you set the values of the engine incorrectly e.g. causing theengine to perform badly with a wrong mixture setting. Actuallyanother effect when starting up the engine is the shake-effect whichis absolutely perfect and authentic both viewed from outside andinside the cockpit.

The lights are excellent and feature a clear and bright shine whichalso seems very authentic.

You can also customize the load-out of the aircraft simultaneouslywith viewing the aircraft by selecting the 'Shift+Number keys'. Thiswill open up a variety of unique windows and one of these are thePayload and Fuel Manager 'Shift+4' - here you can select eithervarious bombs on the inner pylons or fuel tanks, you can also selectbombs on the outer pylons as well as to load ammunition for theguns. When you change the load-out you will immediately see the changeon the model and also see the weight difference between the variousload-outs - awesome!

If you click the 'Shift+7' key you will open up the maintenancehangar, well if certain criteria is fulfilled like being on the groundand with the engine off. The maintenance hangar is similar to themaintenance hangar of other A2A Simulations aircraft however theoptions for this one are limited to checking the engine and performinga complete overhaul - everything else is done through the Payload andFuel Manager, such as changing the oil, the coolants and other fluids,oil-type, pilot's weight, etc.

Internal

Jumping into the cockpit I now found myself sitting in a veryrealistic and authentic environment. The quality that I found in themodel is absolutely also found in the cockpit. There is no 2D cockpitfor this add-on, only the virtual cockpit, but the quality is reallysuperb so in my opinion there is no need for a 2D cockpit for thisaircraft.

Looking around the cockpit I just kept on finding new details -both major details but also very tiny details that just add up andprovide the simmer with a sensational experience. E.g. the legendsthat are placed all over the cockpit and within the gauges, the steelframe for the seat, the wire that is connected to the throttle,rivets, small screws that are used to mount the various panels,etc.

The textures used are high quality multi-layer textures featuringboth a clean but also a slightly dirty look meaning that there are acertain degree of wear and tear all over the cockpit environment as Iof course also expected. The degree of wear and tear is sparse and thecockpit do look newly renovated however, the wear and tear is visiblenumerous places like on the edge of the throttle quadrant and on someof the steel plates where the paint has been worn off. The wearand tear in my opinion helps creating the authentic atmosphere andcertainly improves the experience greatly.

The gauges are the old steam gauges which are nicely modeled andfit the cockpit perfectly - I did notice the IAS gauge which seems tobe a modern age IAS gauge and not the original gauge, but that isperfectly okay and just supports the idea of this bird beingrenovated. The focus has certainly kept a high level to insure thebest possible experience of this classic warbird.

The 3D performance works beautifully and the finish in the completecockpit environment is simply just stunning. This is absolutely anexcellent and beautiful cockpit that is fully operational and with 99%working systems, buttons, switches and levers.

There are several animations included like the controls, thevarious extra levers, the needles in the gauges, the toggle switches,push buttons, canopy, etc. All animations are created with a realistictouch and feature nice smooth motions.

Another animation is the panel itself - the panel shake uponstartup of the engine which is awesome and very realistic, but alsothe shake when taxiing over a rough surface or performing stalls.This animation again just adds to the experience and realism offlying this awesome aircraft.

The add-on also features droppable objects like the various bombswhich can be activated directly in the cockpit - dropping a bomb willalso affect the weight of the aircraft and thereby the flight dynamicswhich I will take a closer look at later in this review.

There are also a few effect in the cockpit environment such as thelighting as well as the visible smoke from the engine uponstartup. The effects are good and contribute positively to theexperience.

Sound

The sound set for this aircraft is an advanced and high qualitysound set featuring both a complete engine sound package as well as acomprehensive environmental sound package.

The engine sound is awesome and features all aspects from startupto shutdown and all various rpm settings within. Actually you can alsohear what sounds like the engine going from max power (100%) over toWEP power, which is the extra boost the engine can get to deliveradditional thrust for a short period of time. The engine sound whenstarting up and running at idle is really authentic and makes youdream that you were actually placed inside the cockpit and ready forflight; then throttling up the sound gets louder and louder with moredepth and base which really is very exciting and gave me the goosebumps on my back when using my 7.1 surround sound setup.

In regards to the environmental sound set then this sound setfeatures all sounds created by moving the various levers,clicking the various buttons and switches, etc. but also the windoutside which is very clear when the engine is at idle or even offwhen performing an emergency landing. The wind is also veryintense when stalling the aircraft which absolutely provides a morelife-like sensation of an aircraft stalling and going into a spin.

The environmental sound set is also high quality, very realisticand certainly a great addition to the authentic atmosphere youexperience inside this amazing cockpit.

I tested the sound set in both ordinary stereo with front speakers,also using a 2.1 setup featuring front speakers and an activesubwoofer and finally a complete 7.1 surround sound setup. The soundperformed perfectly in all tests and the sound varies nicely whenwalking around the aircraft as well as when jumping inside which issuperb.

Flight Dynamics And Characteristics

Now to the fun part which of course is the actual flight tests -No, I haven't flown this old classic bird in real life, but certainlywould love to try it one day. Therefore my opinion of the flightcharacteristics and dynamics rely on my experience flying real lifegliders, motor gliders and GA aircraft.

First part is the taxi, and this aircraft is on that part verychallenging. You don't have a great forward view due to the tail-wheelconfiguration giving the aircraft a high nose position and this makestaxiing quite challenging. The best way for me was to taxi like I wasdrunk meaning going slightly left, then right, then left,etc. Performing this taxi I used the wheel brakes a lot since I didn'treally figure out if the aircraft could be controlled by the tailwheel - I don't think it can so this was great practice.

Performing the engine test prior to take-off I discovered that ifyou throttle up too rapidly the engine will cough which I assume is dueto the lack of fuel reaching the engine in time. This is great and Ithink very well in accordance to real life. I also noticed that thecockpit panel had various degrees of shaking according to the rpmsetting which really is a superb detail.

Now ready for take-off I throttled up to max power rather quicklywhich resulted in a strong torque with which I had severe problemscounteracting which my rudder, so in desperation I had to also applywheel brakes - this I had to try a couple of times before realizingthat the best way to overcome this issue was simply just to throttleup slowly. By changing the increase of power to a slower motion gaveme more steering capability of overcome the heavy torque. Quitereasonable when you think about it, because throttling up too rapidlyprovides a huge torque very quickly without any speed / wind-pressureon the rudder, and this changes if you increase the throttle slowerbecause you then build up speed / wind-pressure on the rudder more tocounteract the torque...

When the speed started building up I could lower the nose and get abetter view and after a few more seconds I was airborne. The firstthing that I discovered was that this aircraft needs to be flown allthe time; it is very much alive and you feel all the thermals, all theturbulence and bursts of wind - I can recommend spending some timetrimming the aircraft properly otherwise you do get drained of energyjust trying to fly a straight course.

During my flights I tested if lowering the flaps would haveany impact on the stalling speed or the nose position as you wouldexpect from a real life aircraft, and of course this was a part of theflight characteristics of this aircraft. I found a difference of about20 MPH in regards to stalling speed from flaps up vs. flaps down. Alsothe nose position lowers when the flaps are lowered which again isalso superb and true to real life.

On the top left of the cockpit there is placed what looks like ahorn - but I didn't get any stall warning - maybe there is a switchwhich can turn that horn on/off which could be the reason for me notgetting the stall warning.

The same goes with overspeed - I am quite sure that in real lifethere is no overspeed warning in the P51 and I also didn't hear one onmy test flight, however there is actually what you could call anin-built overspeed warning and that is the fuselage and wings making alot of cracking noises. Works well enough for me!

I of course also wanted to test the stall and spin capabilities ofthis aircraft as I always do when testing an aircraft. What Idiscovered with the P51 is that this aircraft likes to spin and it isnot always that easy to recover. I often experience difficultiesrecovering if I had applied engine power, and for some reason it wasmore likely to make a good recovery with the engine at idle - maybethis has something to do with the heavy torque generated by theengine... Stalling the aircraft was a superb and very realisticexperience, because you could hear the wind getting silent, the panelstarted to shake, the aircraft started to make cracking noises, therumble outside as the aircraft crossed the stalling point, the lack ofcontrol and then the loss of lift going into a spin with the volume ofthe wind outside suddenly increasing rapidly - Awesome experience andvery true to real life.

After testing my skills of stalling and spinning this aircraft Ialso went on to perform various aerobatic maneuvers. Here I foundsomething rather interesting. First I tried performing a simple loopbut I always ended up stalling the aircraft about half way around andcould not understand why. This even though I entered the loop with maxairspeed - I thought OK, then I just have to pull a bit stronger makingthe loop shorter in diameter, but that only resulted in stalling theaircraft over and over again.

The reason for my troubles was that I had a more or less overloadedaircraft with full internal tanks and pilot but also a full armamentand external fuel tanks making the aircraft extremely heavy. This doesmake good sense that I experienced these problems, so when changingthe load-out to the clean or moderate weight I could now easilyperform the loop, the roll and other maneuvers. I very much like thatthe flight characteristics and dynamics are dependent of the weight anddrag of external armament because this just makes the experience morelife-like and authentic.

So to be honest - on all my test flight I did not always recoverfrom the spins and aerobatics which several times resulted in a crashlanding. This however was also an experience because the aircraftwould be banged up with bent propeller and now was unable tofly. Also when re-starting the flight the aircraft now started out asI left it meaning smashed and with a bent propeller. The reason forthis is that an in-built feature for this aircraft is that theaircraft state, fuel, other fluids, propeller, etc. are as the lastflight ended hereby forcing the pilot to perform maintenance thoughthe maintenance hangar and load manager. Really an awesome detailwhich I think could be rather irritating for some simmers that justwant to get up in the air, but I like it very much. It makes you takemore care of the aircraft and how you fly it.

Flying the aircraft you can of course set up bomb targets, etc. butthis aircraft also features the release of armament such as a bomb,meaning that flying towards a target you can actually release the bomband by doing so the weight of the aircraft changes a bit and impactsthe flight dynamics. Awesome!

This aircraft is absolutely a challenge to fly but this just makesthe experience even better I think - but landing the aircraft was evenharder. You cannot fly an MD11 type final with this aircraft because yousimply can't see enough straight ahead. I had to make amedium/high final giving me the best forward view and then whenflaring the aircraft the nose would again be so high that I couldn'tsee anything straight forward, now just hoping that the line that Ihad the aircraft on before flaring, would still be right - of course Icould keep my eyes on the left and right edge of the runway, but yes,this aircraft is also quite challenging to land.

Conclusion

To sum up my experience with the add-on aircraft from A2ASimulations, then this is an amazing and awesome, authentic and trueto real life rendition of the classic warbird, the P-51 Mustang.

The model is extraordinarily well modeled, the virtual cockpit isamazing, the quality, the textures, the detailing is superb and thisaircraft is the best P51 add-on aircraft that I have tested for anyflight simulator ever. The effort and time put into creating arealistic environment and to create so realistic flight dynamics areadmirable. This aircraft is absolutely the same high standard and thesame high quality as I have previously seen on other A2A Simulationaircraft. Awesome job!

I very much like the maintenance hangar and the payload / fuelmanager and the idea that you as a simmer are forced to take care ofyour aircraft. I didn't see the A2A pre-flight inspection option as Ihave seen on other A2A Simulation aircraft - this I did miss. If itwas included and I just didn't find it, then I am sorry about thiscomment.

If you are into flying an aircraft featuring so much realism, beingquite complicated and challenging to fly this will be a perfect birdfor you. Even more if you like old classic warbirds, then this is amust have. I absolutely recommend this aircraft to my fellow simmersand I rate this aircraft with a 4.82 out of 5 rating. Thank you A2ASimulation for this incredible awesome classic warbird - keep up thegreat work you do and I'll be looking forward to see your nextcreation.

Raymond Andersen

Rays Aviation

Purchase A2A Simulations - Accu-Sim P51D Military for P3D v4 Academic

Purchase A2A Simulations - Accu-Sim P51D Military for P3D v4 Professional

Also available for FSX

Review Computer Specifications

• Windows 10 (64-bit)
• Windows 7 (32-bit) (secondary system)
• Intel Core™ i7-4790K 4x4.00GHz (Turbo 4x4.40GHz)
• Asus Maximus VII Ranger (ROG-series)
• Antec Kuhler H20 650 Water Cooler
• Kingston HyperX Beast-series 32Gb DDR3-2133 RAM
• 500Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD
• 3Tb Seagate Barracura (7200rpm, 6Gb/s)
• Asus GeForce GTX 980 Strix OC 4Gb
• 150/150Mbit Fiber Internet Connection
• Prepar3D v4+
• REX SkyForce 3D
• X-Plane 11
• FSX + Acceleration Pack
• REX Overdrive for FSX