In the works for over 2-years, the folks at Got Friends have build up a collection of some truly varied airplanes from their recent and quirky Double Ender bushplane to the futuristic Astro ONE and now on to something even closer to my heart – a warbird! Here are a few first impressions of their F4F Wildcat as I put this airplane through its paces.

Say hello to the Wildcat

Grumman’s Wildcat is one of those iconic airplanes of World War II. Its not painted in the same brush that the Hellcat, Corsair, Mustang and Spitfire are but its nonetheless revered among warbird fans as being the fighter that held the line at some of the Pacific Wars biggest battles – Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal spring to mind almost immediately.

Got Friends have been working on this airplane for a long time and enlisted the help of flight model expert GotGravel who has done a wide range of aircraft for mods and paid content including Flying Iron’s own warbird series, Parallel 42’s Freedom Fox and others. Here the attention turns to the Wildcat and giving it character.

First flights

To experience the F4F properly, I downloaded the Midway Atoll 1942 scenery pack freely available on Flightsim.to and promptly loaded the F4F up on the runway. With live weather enabled the airport appears to be experiencing some issues because 0 wind as reported by the real world Metar appeared to give me hurricane force winds tipping the F4F over. Oops! But that’s ok because it shows that the aircraft isn’t just glued to the ground and can tip over.

I set some custom weather and things got better immediately. Takeoff in the F4F Wildcat is very reminiscent of the last time I flew a Wildcat in a sim. This feels very much like the classic Pacific Fighters F4F albeit in a very different sim and context.

Soon we were airborne and in traditional F4F Wildcat fashion the aircraft doesn’t like to do anything particularly fast so ample trim up and back pressure on the stick was needed to get the airplane climbing. Slowly at first but more quickly over time. Typical Wildcat!

I did some turns, rolls, stalls, loops and accelerated stalls with the airplane over the next little while and had a ton of fun with it. MSFS still feels a bit more on the rails than other sims but I don’t hold that against GotGravel or Got Friends here as the Wildcat still feels extremely lively and fun to handle.

One of the characteristics of the aircraft in Pacific Fighters and other sims that I’ve flown it in is its mushy feeling before the stall and this is very much here. The Wildcat takes a lot of abuse before it stalls and then when it does it tends to tumble until you correct it. It’s a pretty forgiving warbird here in the sim and in every other sim I’ve flown it in. It also has a terrific view over the nose relative to most warbirds so landing it is easier than long nosed types like the Corsair. It feels right and everything seems to check out so far!

A few notable features

The full review will get into all of the details but the F4F does pack some features. You can crank your own landing gear 28 times or you can set it to automatic and have it raise and lower like a sensible modern airplane. You can turn on and off the gunsight (which looks spectacular), add and remove fuel tanks and bombs, open the engine cowlings, deploy the tail hook, and more. In the full review I’ll find a carrier deck to put this airplane on to make sure I’ve tested that thoroughly so look for that to come up eventually too.

The guns, bombs and jetisonable drop tanks work in this airplane too although you’ll need to buy from Got Friends and not from the MSFS Marketplace to take advantage of those features.

This aircraft also has a really solid set of animations for everything from the flaps to the cowl shutters to the shake of the engine on its mounts. Got Friends shake the whole nose of the airplane and parts of the cockpit independently of other parts in a way that I haven’t seen with other MSFS airplanes – only DCS warbirds have really done this sort of thing before. It looks really cool!

There’s more to dig into here so count this as a smattering of features. A full list of features has been published over here if you want to read all about the airplane.

Thoughts

First impressions aren’t always lasting ones but I have to say that my first experience here with the Got Friends F4F Wildcat has been an excellent one. Its in release candidate status right now and the folks are working hard towards an initial release so this is pretty close or exactly what they intend to release on their website and then on the MSFS Marketplace too.

At a planned price of $19.99 USD this airplane clearly packs a ton of value into it with a distinct focus on the flying of the airplane. The visual model looks incredible, the flight model is among the best in MSFS, the sounds appear to be good, and its clear that this is going to be a really fun flyer for many folks.

In the full review I intend to get more stick time, evaluate more liveries and experiences, and generally shake the plane out. Until then, enjoy this preview and the screenshots!

Screenshots