An air-to-air view of three Vought A-7D Corsair II aircraft in formation during Exercise TEAM SPIRIT’86 on 1 Mar 1986. The aircraft belonged to the 185th Tactical Fighter Group, Iowa Air National Guard, based at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa (USA), which flew the A-7D from 1977 to 1992. Note the extended speed brakes.

185th Sioux City Iowa ANG

Due to my consultancy demands taking me all over the US and Canada I am hard pressed to even get a few hours alone with my Corsair. But I am very pleased with the progress so far. Below you see my front panel sitting in my pit. Currently I have disassembled it to work on the pedals, seat, and side panels.

On the virtual side I have been very busy. The cockpit is only 1/3 of my project and even thou it is the coolest part I have to work on the other 2/3rds. The two other areas that I need to focus on are the simulation software that I plan on using and building a realistic virtual A-7D.

This includes systems, flight model, avionics, HUD, Project Map Display System, and not to mention the terrain customization. The master plan is for me to recreate Germany back to Cold War 1985. The story that I am going to use is that I am an Air National Guard pilot for the 185^th TFS from Sioux City Iowa. We are deploying to Germany for REFORGER. The problem is that the Warsaw Pact decides to attack during this exercise due to our forces being deployed all over Germany with out ammo and non-combat ready. So I have to fly into Brustem Belgium Air Force Base and conduct real missions in support of NATO Forces.

I have decided to use X-Plane for my simulation due to the customization capabilities and the far superior flight characteristics. Also X-Plane allows weapons delivery where as FSX does not. Once Fighter Ops comes out I will evaluate this likelihood of migrating over to that sim. Below is an image of my pit thrown together for this photo opportunity, right now it is scattered all around my garage in different stages of restoration.

Gecko6 A-7D Cockpit

Our team is working hard on building the A-7D Corsair II for use in X-Plane. Our goals are simple, build the best representation of the A-7D to date for use in flight simulation. We are focused on the attention to detail and representing the Corsair as close to reality as possible.

The end result will be a labor of love and we hope that you are pleased with the results. Keep checking back to see our progress and feel free to add in you views and discrepancies that you may find.

Lead Developer,

Darreck