FW-190A vs Spitfire, Me-109G, P-47D in dogfights

[David603]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Two questions, David603:

Were you trying to do a minimum-radius turn, or a best-rate turn? The results would be different. In combat, rate is usually more important than radius.

Are these sustained turn rates? Unless you can maintain speed, altitude and turn rate continuously, the results may be misleading. Even a loss of height of a few meters can make a noticable difference to results.

EDIT ---
I've been doing a bit of experimenting, using my prototype autopilot application (see http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...097#4121016097), and though I need to investigate further, I find it very difficult to believe a Fw 190 A5 will do a 360 degree sustained turn in 18.7 seconds, regardless of throttle settings. IL-2 compare suggests the best turn time will be around 24s, which is much more consistent with the results I'm getting at full throttle, and trying to turn at that sort of rate at 80 % throttle results in a rapid decay in airspeed. My autopilot is struggling to hold a smooth turn in these conditions (it was never designed to do this), but I'd be surprised if a human pilot could do much better - the plane is right on the edge of the stall.

As Ernst says, we need to see a track.

To be honest, I think I shouldn't have put 18.7 as the Fw time. Although the Fw can do between 2-3 360 degree turns with times that are very close to produce this data (18.7 is the average of many turns), it only maintains this turn rate at 80% throttle by losing speed and tightening up the turn, so after 2-3 turns at this rate you run out of speed and either stall out or have to leave the turn to regain speed.

As such it is not a true sustained turn, although 2-3 turns would still be quite useful in a combat situation. By contrast, the Fw @ full throttle and the Spitfire at either setting can maintain the times listed for as long as you wish, so those are real sustained turn times.

Bear in mind I said this was a rough test, and by no means perfect, if you can come up with a better technique I will be happy to accept the figures produced by it.

In the meanwhile I will try to get a good track of the Fw turning @ 80% throttle (will change altitude from 500m to just above the deck so you can more easily see that it is a horizontal turn).

[AndyJWest]

Thanks for clarifying, David603. That sounds more in line with what I was finding. If you are going to run tests, you really need to specify as much as you can about the conditions: map, fuel load, difficulty settings etc. As has been shown on the Ubi forums, even changes in the 'wind and turbulence' setting can have a measurable effect on performance, in supposedly calm conditions.

If you can provide a track, it is possible to analyse it later using DeviceLink, which is often more useful than trying to make measurements in real time.

I need to do more work with my autopilot to be able to test turn rates accurately, by the look of it, but I think I'm getting somewhere. I'll post a demo of what I've achieved up to now if anyone is interested, though the plane still lacks a little stability.