How to properly use prop pitch in IL-2 Cliffs of Dover

[CaptainDoggles]

Originally Posted by SIDWULF

What i want to know is what is the ideal prop pitch setting for combat, climbing, and diving.

There isn't one single ideal setting.

Please list them by % so i can set a key for them, I hate fiddling with settings all the time and would just like to set a key for climb/combat/diving.

Forgive my bluntness but thinking of prop pitch in terms of % is looking at it the wrong way. Read below for explanation.

And could someone explain to me how prop pitch works and why am i getting faster speed at lower settings?

In the Bf 109E-3 for example, you have what's called a variable pitch propeller. That means you can adjust the blade angle, and the prop stays at that angle no matter what you do with the throttle. By comparison the Hurricane with the Rotol prop has a Constant Speed Propeller. What this means is that instead of selecting a particular blade angle, you're selecting an engine RPM that you want. Then when you play with the throttle, the prop governor tries its best to maintain that engine RPM. That leads us into the best way to visualize prop pitch.

Yes, pitch is the angle at which the blades bite into the air. But this isn't a helpful way to think of it, and neither is the analogy to shifting gears in your car.

In my humble opinion, the best way to think of prop pitch is in terms of engine RPM. Forget the blade angle and forget the percentage. Every engine has a range of RPMs where it works best. For the 109 this is about 2200-2400 RPM. So what you should always be doing is keeping your engine RPM in that range, by fiddling with the prop pitch.

You'll notice as you climb, your RPMs will go down. Time to raise them by going to a finer pitch setting.

In a dive your RPMs will rise dramatically. Time to lower them by coarsening your pitch.

And why is IL-2 1946 not modeling this?

It does model this, but most aircraft functioned like CSPs, not VPPs.