IA 58 Pucará

[deeknow]

Whilst looking over the "Lower than a snake's belly" photos linked to by steelsporran yesterday I noticed a shot of an aircraft I'd never seen before and knew nothing about. Now, this isn't an unusual experience for me, there's so much knowledge about obscure machines here at nzff.org I'm often surprised, but catching sight of this one was a real delight. The shot was of an Argentine IA 58 Pucará.



I think I'm in love !!!

What a gorgeous looking machine, especially given the prototype first flew in 1966. It looks as good as anything I can think of in production today. I'd love to hear any tidbits anyone here can share about them (don't seem to be any posts here at nzff) but in the mean time here's some info courtesy of good ole' Wikipedia...

QUOTE

The FMA IA 58 Pucará (Quechua: Fortress) is an Argentine ground-attack and counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft. It is a low-wing two-turboprop-engined all-metal monoplane with retractable landing gear, manufactured by the Fábrica Militar de Aviones. Development began in August 1966, with the construction of an unpowered test vehicle. The IA-58 was designed to be able to operate from small front-line airfields... It has a tandem cockpit arrangement... and impressive STOL capabilities... Its armament loadout is two 20 mm cannons with 280 rounds each and four 7.62 mm machine guns with a total of 3000 rounds, coupled with 3 hardpoints[/quote]



Seems like they had their limitations, and were certainly up against it during the Falklands war (their main claim to fame being taking out a UK recovery chopper). Turns out a bunch of them were taken back to the UK after the Argentinian surrender and are on display at museums over there. They certainly look fun to fly, check out the following vid:



The pics I've posted above and below are of a model by Kazunori Ito, original panel by JRLucariny, and FSX compatibility tweaks by Daniel M. Berges. You can download the machine from: http://www.flightsimulatorarg.com.ar/aviones_fsx.htm and there are a bunch of additional repaints at flightsim.com. Following should be a shot of the 2D panel. It does have a sort of VC view but its a low res texture with no working gauges. Either way the 2D panel is nice and clear and does the job...



Not quite sure how well the model and dynamics have been translated to the Sim in this case, the stall characteristics are wrong as you can throttle off and glide for what seems like forever and only stall at about 80kts with lots of nose up. Ground handling seems ok but she does seem a little top heavy, probably a result of the narrow rear wheel spacing. Exterior texture detailing is very FS2004 era but pleasant enough. Polygon count isn't super high but looks fine at the usual viewing distance. The sound.cfg is aliased to defaults so if you have a decent turbo-prop sound-set installed you'll wanna look at substituting that. All in all for a freebie its nicely done.



If you're interested in any higher-res copied of these pics feel free to check em out on my flickr set here. And do check out some of the freeware Argentine scenery on the following site, lots of mainland airports and some stuff for the Falklands as well (or Malvinas as the guys on the site call them, they are Argentinians after all ) That last shot above is me patrolling over Stanley Bay tonight.
http://www.flightsimulatorarg.com.ar/xescenarios.htm

So, who's up for a Falklands multi-play some time?

Last edited by deeknow on Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Ian Warren]

The things you find , the weird and wonderful -Guns Guns Guns yip shot down a little Westland Scout killing the pilot but recall the observer survived , when they over ran the FOB they stocks of Napalm ready for the use but due to the Harriers harying the airfields with strafing runs the many Pucara's were put out of action , wars end one was recovered and taken back to UK for trials now think it resides in a museum , I have the GR3 , a Falklands multiplay could be on the cards not forgetting tonight Rhys'J7G' is having a go to night ... Argie Huey's maybe

[J7G]

I hope she's as good to fly as she is to look at. I've got an A-1 I downloaded the other day, similar role, terrible to fly.

[bjocque]

on the same island that i took my previously posted tornado photo's, there were "several bits n pieces" [TIC] of one of these lying around.

apparently the old boy of the family was a bit of a ham radio buff and used to play a bit of mischief with the argies........ until they triangulated him, paid a visit, gave him a kicking and smashed all his kit. trust me, he was tough as old nails but he didn't have a good word to say about the whole scenario 15 odd years later