Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[Sandstone]

Originally Posted by robtek

There are speed changes of about 70mph in less than 15 second documented, if that doesn't take the pilots attention away from other things i don't know what would.
Of course a pilot can manage to control this instability, but he has to work just to keep his ride in a controlled flight, add other factors as gusts, attacking 109's or else and the workload might become too large.

The question is whether the increase in workload caused by the Spitfire's longitudinal stability actually amounted to very much at all. Crumpp has been unable to show that it did and the lack of pilot accounts that even mention longitudinal stability suggests that there was no great problem, even for low-hours pilots. I suspect this is partly because the frequency of the pitch oscillations resulting from the instability was quite low. It's hard to see where this discussion can go given these facts.

Further, I really can't see how pitch sensitivity or instability could in any case be modelled in a flight sim where players use short, spring-centred joysticks with response curves. The situation is made worse in CoD because there is no turbulence or weather in the game (or at least I can't recall any from when I had it installed, but that was many months ago).