Horizontal Staberliser
 

Ive got the key mapped for it but it isnt working...any ideas?

Same problem here... was just about to post when I saw this.
I could have sworn it worked the first time I toggled it... but then never again.

And if you find the answer please post it!!

Same here, mapped but not working! HELP!

I heard it's bugged like everything else...

Oh, a polemic!

If you mean the single axe autopilot, it is working!
One just has to be patient as a mechanical system with a slow reaction (dampening) is simulated. No instant success like in 1946.

It is supposed to work with bombers only. No fighters at all.

Interesting. Could your provide some details please?

The reason i'm asking is that i keep pressing the key i have mapped to it but i don't even get the kind of confirmation that i get for other controls (the blue text on the right-hand side of the screen that tells me for example, that i switched my fuel tanks to main or turned on my lights, etc). Maybe it is tied to the realism setting for bombs, preventing us from using it if the setting is on? I'm just guessing here by the way.

I'm also very interested to see the implementation you describe, since in the real thing most of the times the manuals advised pilots to trim for level flight before engaging the autopilot and not expect it to work all by itself.

I can't wait to start experimenting with some level bombing :grin:

yes please, i would also like to know how exactly to use it :)

Have not tried it, but from 1946 experience I remember that the name of the actual command was not what people expected.. the translation was off and people were thinking they were enabling one thing when they were actually using another..

Hi everyone...
well after trying over and over again to get the horizontal stabilizer to work with no success i came across this thread about how it might be a matter of time to active it and all that as previosly suggest here. However, time also doesnt solve the problem, at least not for me... and i've tried keeping the button pressed down, taping over and over again during the flight, but nothing happened. I guess this is really a bug (sorry if someone has already sad that and im just repeating it). Nevertheless, while trying to figure it out i've noticed some other issue regarding bombers: It is impossible to manually drop the bombs when controlling the bombardier, even if u open the bomb bay doors and activate all of your ordiance, it just wont leave the plane (note: the key Drop Ordinance is set). Dropping the bombs in the automated mode, using the Toggle bombsight automation, is working just fine.

I guess thats it for now... Hope they can fix these problems since a lot of us enjoy flying bombers and it would totally ruin it for me if we couldnt fly them as before...

It was called 'level Stabilizer' in 1946 i think?

Yeah... thats what it was called.... but no stabilizer in COD, none that works anyways....

let us wait for this guy again. for further explanations.

Ok, here is "this guy" :-D

In my game its in german, i'll try to translate correctly
The keys are " Einachsiger Autopilot - Modi durchschalten" single axis auto-pilot switch modi
"Einachsiger Autopilot - Kurs nach links anpassen" single axis autopilot - adjust course to the left
"Einachsiger Autopilot - Kurs nach rechts anpassen" single axis autopilot - adjust course to the right

You trim the plane for level flight and switch on the autopilot.
Now you adjust the course until the autopilot - instrument has the moving marking under the center of the 3 fixed vertical markings.
Now let the plane settle.
With minuscule course adjustments you can steer your plane relatively stable.
Your joystick is still active! leave it alone!
Now go to bombardier, do your adjustments and look as far forward as possible.
Do your course adjustments very careful and wait for the plane to settle.
good luck!

What you are explaining has some merit to it... I will try it out. But I wanted to avoid hitting Auto pilot and have the plane radically change course or the engine settings to be changed. But if it functions this way and I can pickle my bombs... then what the hell.

But you would need a long time to set up your bombing run. I mean a very long time right?

At least I have something ro do now. :-P

Tricky but it functions
Pretty good tip!

yep, but with this kind of support for online bomberpilots the diveability of the Ju88 will be a very often used feature...

well, one could play together with a friend as bombardier, he can command you via teamspeak.
Next time you are the bombardier :-D
See it as "slightly enforced teamwork" :-D ;-D
And for the long time needed, that should be no problem with the full sized map :-)
Final approach to target 50 to 100 km.

robtek, do i need to set up beams towards targets? or just adjust it with them buttons?

Thanks

Robtek... you know you can 'steer' with gyroscope input?

No, didn't know that, but it fits with the complexity of this sim.
I just did adjust the course with the buttons, it worked -> next problem :-D
For me it don't has to be perfect, good working order is ok for me :-D

Robtek many Thanks....Hi saintblu, hope you dont mind me posting your quote here from another thread...think it will help others!

I think its better like this actually, makes it look ,more realistic, especially if your a movie maker! i actually watch my he111 gain height after bomb release...great for immersion!

Nice tutorial... thxs all.. now lets get some bombing done!! :grin:

Well guys, i just tried all of that and it did actually work, but still it is nothing like the real level stabilizer. This just takes a long time to set and it is very easy to "untrim" so im guessing this is not the real way the stabilize the bomber for the bombing run, correct? Is there a real level stabilizer in this game or is it bugged too?:neutral:

There's currently no way for me to do precision level bombing in this sim. Even with a perfectly trimmed AC the autopilot oscillates left/right, making aiming through the LotFe simply impossible.

Complex is not the same as complicated. I just want a working system that keeps the AC flying straight while I work the bombsight.

and im not sure if this "Kursautomatik" is avaible in the Blenheim ??
if not, will the Blenheim pilots have to trust their trimming abilities :)

i just didnt came behind the CEM miracles of the Blenheim already, because of that i didnt have tested it a lot :D

Totally agree with u ParaB.... at least for me, level bombing has just been a huge frustration so far..... :(

I dont know if it was in the patch but I can now jettison bombs from the bombadier position while in auto pilot.

Actually, what happens in CoD is how it was in reality. The level stabilizer from IL2:1946 is like giving control of the aircraft to the AI and telling him to keep it level, the course autopilot in CoD is an actual instrument.

I know the current system could do with some streamlining, but i guess this is mostly an issue of lacking documentation and not faulty implementation in the game.

I tried some level bombing today in the Blenheim and while it doesn't have such a course autopilot, it also doesn't need to be rock steady during the bomb run because it uses a simpler bomb-sight.

In the German bombers you need to be steady for the gyro-stabilized bomb-sight to work correctly and they have the autopilot to do this. In the Blenheim i just trimmed it to fly almost hands-off, set my altitude and TAS into the bomb-sight and manually corrected my course. I still missed, but that was mostly due to opening my bay doors too late and the target being substantially above sea level.

Well i guess that will have to do then... perhaps im doing something wrong which explains why im having such a hard time trimming the Heinkel. Thxs for the info anyway Blackdog, but if it is not too much to ask, could u post the step by step guide on how to level stabilize it again (include the keys that are required).... this way i can check for any missed info previously posted.....

Thxs

I got this to work before the patch but after the patch I cant seem to get it to work.
Has anyone used this after the patch?

Im having the same issue here...

You will have to define most of the keys yourself in the options, as a lot of them are not mapped by default.

The blenheim is simple. Just trim it to fly level at a speed and altitude of your choice, go to the bomb-aimers position and press the "loosen straps" key. This will allow you to look through the targeting reticule, which is a simple metal indicator moving on a line: you input your altitude and true airspeed (there's a conversion table for true airspeed in the final pages of the game manual, you can find this somewhere within your steam folder as a PDF file) and the targeting indicator moves.

Set it to the correct values, open the bomb-bay doors, select single or salvo release (click the switches on the bombardier's instrument panel), go to zoomed-in view and when the target is under the targeting indicator drop the bombs.

The German ones are more complicated. I also have a feeling that the directional gyro is bugged in the Ju88 and that prevents the autopilot from working correctly. I had better luck with the He-111.

The way it works is that the autopilot gets your current heading from the directional gyro (the gyroscopic compass) and your intended heading from a separate heading "card" in the same instrument, it compares the two and decides which way to turn to get you on your chosen course.

This means, the directional gyro needs to be accurately set before engaging the autopilot. The best time to do this is while sitting on the runway before take-off, with throttles at idle and the aircraft under no acceleration whatsoever. If you throttle up and step on the brakes to keep it steady, the magnetic compass will give you inaccurate heading values.

If you are on an air-start mission you will have to calibrate it mid-flight, so don't be afraid to enable the mouse cursor so that you can get the help pop-ups when mousing over the instruments and also pause if you need to between adjustments.

For a start, climb to your selected altitude, trim the aircraft to fly level and let it settle for half a minute or so in order for the compass to stabilize. Next, look at your magnetic compass or the repeater compass (this one wobbles a lot in turbulence though, so i prefer to use the magnetic one) to see your current heading. The easiest way to do this is to enable the mouse cursor (default key is F10 to toggle it on/off) and mouse over the compass, it will give you a pop-up window with your heading.

Afterwards, you need to align the directional gyro so that's it's pointing the same way as the magnetic compass. I don't have it mapped to any keys, i just click on it to increase/decrease the values. This is where pause comes in handy if i'm doing this mid-flight.

At this point you should have the directional gyro properly calibrated. Now, if you look at this instrument you'll see that it has a second row of headings, this is your intended heading.
I have mapped keys to this function because they are usually hard to find and click in the cockpit, i think they are called "course autopilot increase/decrease" in the options. I have also mapped keys to enable/disable the autopilot because it's also a bit hard to find the controls for it in the cockpit in some aircraft. This is labeled "course autopilot mode next/previous" in the options.

First of all, in order to let the autopilot stabilize and not make any sudden turns the moment you turn it on, align your intended heading with the current heading displayed on the directional gyro.
The directional gyro, NOT the magnetic or the repeater compass. This is important, because the gyro will drift and lose accuracy over time, so it will always be a bit off compared to the compasses. These two functons are on the same instrument for this reason.


Assuming you did this correctly, this tells the autopilot that you want to keep flying the heading you already are flying, so it will only do minimal corrections once you turn it on and it will stabilize after a while. So, go ahead and turn it on.

There are two autopilot modes selected by a 3-way switch (off, course mode and R.22 mode), which is why i don't use the "cycle autopilot modes" command and prefer to use the "autopilot mode previous/next" commands.
I have a feeling that the R.22 mode is used with radio beacons for night flying and/or bombing or landing in such conditions but i'm not sure.
For what we want to do now (a normal, daylight attack) the course mode is fine, so select that one.

Keep in mind that the autopilot only controls heading (or course, i'm not exactly sure which one) so you can still be climbing or descending by using elevator trim and the appropriate engine power settings.

Once everything is stable you can make course corrections by turning the intended heading indicator left or right. You do this either by clicking the relevant control in the cockpit, or by pressing the keys you have mapped to it (the "course autopilot increase/decrease" buttons we talked about before).

From that point on, it's a matter of working the bombsight. Before that however you need to do your bomb setup with the so called "bomb distributor" instrument.
You can either map keyboard commands to this, or look at the cockpit instruments and click on them (i prefer clicking since they are easy to spot and this reduces the amount of keyboard commands i have to remember).

In the Ju88 you can find the bomb distributor below the instrument panel on the co-pilot's side, next to the magnetic compass. In the He-111 the bomb distributor is located in the nose cone, just pan your camera down and you'll see it. There are three things to do here:
1) Set the amount of bombs you want to drop at once (the salvo).
2) Set the amount of meters between bomb impacts on the ground. Instead of using a millisecond delay timer, this one actually calculates the correct time intervals to get the bomb spread you specify, as long as you have the correct true airspeed and altitude values input to the bombsight.
3) Arm the bombs.

Finally, open the bomb bay doors. In the Heinkel they work just fine with a toggle key. The Ju88 however has a manual control, to operate the bomb doors the co-pilot/bombardier has to turn a lever. So, you need to define separate open and close keyboard commands for the Ju88 (or click on the lever in the cockpit), as long as you keep pressing it the bomb doors will open/close.

The rest is similar to the previous IL2 series. Input your altitude and true airspeed to the bombsight, move the crosshairs over the target and engage bombsight automation. If you've done things correctly the bombs will drop automatically.

Finally, a bit of important information.

1) What the bombsight actually needs is your speed over the ground and not your true airspeed (which is indicated airspeed corrected for altitude changes, etc). Ground speed=TAS ONLY when there is absolutely no wind.
This was not a problem in IL2, but in CoD you also have to take the wind into account if the mission has a weather layer enabled.

2) To do an accurate drop, what the bombsight also needs to know is your altitude over the target, not over sea level.

Example: I'm flying a He-111 at 5000 meters of altitude, my airspeed indicator shows 250km/h indicated airspeed, there's a 10km/h headwind and the target is 500 meters above sea level. Assuming i did everything correct up to this point, the values i need to enter into the bombsight are:

a) Ground speed: According to the manual (page 112), 250 km/h IAS at 5000m equals a TAS of 322km/h. Since there is also a 10km/h headwind, my actual ground speed is TAS-headwind = 322 - 10 = 312 km/h.

b) Altitude over target: I'm flying at 5000m over sea level and the target is 500m over sea level, so my altitude over target is 5000 - 500 = 4500m.


Phew, that was a short novel alright :-P

I haven't had much success myself with level bombing yet but i'm experimenting almost daily and trying to put theory into practice. I hope it helps somewhat ;)

Thxs a lot Blackdog... that was extremely helpfull. Great detailed instructions but i got a feeling that this is actually a additional instrument rather then the level stabilizer we had in il2 1946 because none of the axis remain stable during the "stabilized course heading"... You can easily move not only the trims but also the arelon, rudder, and elevator. Maybe, because im not an aviation expert, but a simple sim "pilot" i got the misconception that the level stabilizer should be something like the old il-2.

Anyways, as i said, i really apreciate the instructions :) and im going to give another try here.... maybe i can master this method and forget about the old way... :)

Thanks for that write up I havnt played any other IL2 sims and been trying to figure this out by trial and error I think I would have a better chance of hitting the lottery.

Ok back to trying this out.

Well riksen, as you said: it is a additional instrument..... and another step from game to simulation.

Problem is that it simply doesn't work. Try a normal bombing run on a mission where you have to make course corrections with the target in sight, the current AP simply will not keep the aircraft flying straight, making level bombing impossible. This has nothing to do with "but it's a simulation", in the real aircraft I as bombardier would simply tell the pilot to keep the frickin' plane on course while I handled the bomb sight.

It's the same with the new turret controls. They are so badly designed that they have become basically unusable.

There might be also crosswind that has to be handled with.

I agree with this. I was under the assumption that these tips are something to do in the mean time while we wait for a fix for the horizontal stabilizer.
They have the key in the controls menu... so it does exist. It's just broken at the moment.

Of course I don't expect to be fiddling around like a mad scientist just to get the plane on an acceptable Course Autopilot heading forever...

Guys, regarding the He-111, I just took it up for the first time and I had quite a fight with it!

I left the oil rads closed for much of the warm-up, but still the temps didn't want to go much over forty... - Bit surprising that, but well, they crept up to a balmy 80 degrees during flight, so I guess that was ok.

On take-off I had to close down the port engine almost fully, to keep the plane from exiting the runway to starboard. Well, I solved that too, and got into the air.

however, when up and flying the trouble really started! - I could hardly get the old bird to go more than 200 kmph. Also, rpms didn't go much higher than 1700. I had superchagers "on" for the whole flight, am I supposed to have that? (The old version with just on and off settings)

I also felt it was really difficult to trim out the plane... - Anyway, lots of trouble and not a very successful flight. couldn't keep up with the other bombers...

Any pointers to how I can get it up to around 350kmph?