Tonight in a small experiment I got both Skyhawk sims fired up and connected to a hosted multiplayer session. I’d done some experiments with multiplayer, but tonight was the first time I’d really tried to get my sims properly connected. By using P3D’s own multiplayer system I am able to utilise the combat capabilities which are available in P3D. Tonight was just about checking that it would all connect, while last night we flew a test flight on-the-bench to prove the multiplayer/combat system worked.

Here we have a quick capture from last nights mission. If you look closely you will see the Target Designator box locked on to Nathan’s C-130 which has smoke trailing from it after being hit in the No.2 engine by a Sidewinder missile….

Tonight, I decided to create a little motivation for myself, and fire up the PC and TV for the A-4 sim… Nothing is working apart from the PC. Flying was done by keyboard remotely, but it’s just the sort of motivation I needed.
If nothing else it brought a smile to my face!
Since this is running P3D Pro+ (Dev license) I did shoot a few missiles at Tai Tapu… for a laugh 😉 Which leads into; I am really looking forward to both Skyhawks being able to shoot at each other!

Moving house meant the Sims got somewhat disassembled. The Skyhawk was the last to be returned to flight, after getting a bit of a refresh in some areas, including improving some of the component wiring, and the integration to Nigel’s TA-4k Sim software.

First task was to mount a TV in front of the Sim. I’ve made the decision to move to TV’s on all my Sims, as it’d a simple solution with low operating costs. For the TA4 I used a TV stand which was surplus at work, and a 50″ LCD I picked up cheaply on Facebook Marketplace.

The TV gives a resonable field of view, not as good as a projector, but not bad. Next step was to get everything running again, and configure the HUD and panel images to align with the physical displays. (Susan looks on with little apparent interest)

First full-system test run with everything up and running. HUD needs to be resized but is at least functioning. Flight control calibrations showed that I really need to change the interface from the repurposed joystick internals to a Leo Bodnar for more control precision. Still, it’s calibrated, now it’d time for a test flight.

For the test flight I got the 737 running and used it as a target for some formation training. In this photo the TA-4 is running, just waiting for the 737 to push back and taxi.

Joining on the 737.. flying with one hand while trying to take photos is not my best skill….

The flight was a success but showed a few shortcomings of the Sim. I need to improve the fidelity of the flight controls as it was incredibly difficult to fly accurately. There were a bunch of other minor things that came out as well, but now it’s flying again!

This flight was logged on FSHub, and was flown in multiplayer via LRM/JoinFS which adds sseemless multiplayer to every flight I do!