My little 109 v spit experiment

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by pstyle

4. Recovering from a flick-stall (but not in a spin) was marvellous. I took my hands and feet off and just waited about 3 to 5 seconds for the heavy nose to drop. she righted herself and I was power diving and under lift within a second or two more. really nice. really stable. I might try and put one in a spin soon too, to see how that experience compares.

Defo a nice crate to fly. I might brave a few missions in the busier servers now too....
Does anyone know if point 4 is "historical"? Are the reasons why a 109 v spit will blow engines different, and thus the "sudden" nature of the spitfire breakdown is accruate? Should there be any kind of audible warning from the engine in either case that something is about to pop? Should it be avoidable to a point, even once the engine tone has changed to "abnormal"?

As to 4, yes, from everything I have read the gentle stall characteristics were definitely a forte of the 109 (which is the no. 1 reason I kept flying it in the old Il2 times, even after when the 190 was added, and which I would have normally preferred). I guess the plane's longitudinal stability has a lot to do with it.

As for the Spitties engine breakdowns, I would say the prime reason is that the 109 has so many automated systems that its basically fool-proof. It has great cooling capacity, and essentially you only need to adjust the throttle. In comparison the Spit has a zillion engine related switches and levers, so its quite easy for the pilot to select wrong mixture/rpm/boost/temperature combination. In addition the negative g problem of the Merlin means that you can suddenly loose oil pressure with a bad move on the stick, and that is not a good thing for any engine. There's quite simply too many things going on too keep track of all of them. Rpm should be probably less of a problem on both planes, since actually both the DB and the Merlin tolerated fairly high overreving for considerable periods (2400/3000 and 3000/3600 for 30 secs iirc)

[SlipBall]

There was a training period for those pilots that we do not have access to for this sim. Mistakes being made here is understandable, a training do's and don'ts is needed, or the butchering of fm.

[Robo.]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

In comparison the Spit has a zillion engine related switches and levers, so its quite easy for the pilot to select wrong mixture/rpm/boost/temperature combination. In addition the negative g problem of the Merlin means that you can suddenly loose oil pressure with a bad move on the stick, and that is not a good thing for any engine. There's quite simply too many things going on too keep track of all of them.

Do you mean real life BoB pilots trained on Tiger Moths and then Harvards? I don't think so. There were 2 levers you used to control your engine and that was:

1. throttle (same as in 109, you move it forward and you go faster you know)
2. propeller pitch (same as in 109, but slightly easier to reach before the Daumenschalter got introduced)

everything else was the same. Of course later, when the LW came with the Kommandogeraet equipped fighters, things were much easier just as you say. But in the BoB era all you had was RPM you had to tinker with constantly even during the dogfight (what we have in game as Drehzahl lever in the middle of the instrument board was certainly a bit awkward to control, I always admired the LW pilots who could do that and fight - must have been great skill) and that's the reason they put it on Daumenschalter on later models, you would still had to tinker with it more than the RAF pilot who had the set and forget RPM CSP lever. He basically also only had to work with the throttle lever doring the combat. As for E-4 automatic PP, it wasn't exactly great right from the beginning and especially in the high alt, it was common procedure to switch to manual and work with the lever again in order to get some extra speed up there. If the E-4 pilot uses the throttle lever in the combat and auto PP, the RAF pilot would use the RPM lever once to set combat RPM and then just throttle lever. I don't see much of a difference. Even using both levers was natural and they were close together.

There was nothing wrong or more difficult on RAF setup imho, I believe that in order to get the max performance from you engine, pilots of both sides would need to show same amount of skill.

Neg-G effects are irrelevant for pilot's workload. It was certainly a big limitation but it was also quite natural to them all.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by Robo.

Do you mean real life BoB pilots trained on Tiger Moths and then Harvards? I don't think so. There were 2 levers you used to control your engine and that was:

1. throttle (same as in 109, you move it forward and you go faster you know)
2. propeller pitch (same as in 109, but slightly easier to reach before the Daumenschalter got introduced)

everything else was the same. Of course later, when the LW came with the Kommandogeraet equipped fighters, things were much easier just as you say. But in the BoB era all you had was RPM you had to tinker with constantly even during the dogfight (what we have in game as Drehzahl lever in the middle of the instrument board was certainly a bit awkward to control, I always admired the LW pilots who could do that and fight - must have been great skill) and that's the reason they put it on Daumenschalter on later models, you would still had to tinker with it more than the RAF pilot who had the set and forget RPM CSP lever. He basically also only had to work with the throttle lever doring the combat. As for E-4 automatic PP, it wasn't exactly great right from the beginning and especially in the high alt, it was common procedure to switch to manual and work with the lever again in order to get some extra speed up there. If the E-4 pilot uses the throttle lever in the combat and auto PP, the RAF pilot would use the RPM lever once to set combat RPM and then just throttle lever. I don't see much of a difference. Even using both levers was natural and they were close together.

There was nothing wrong or more difficult on RAF setup imho, I believe that in order to get the max performance from you engine, pilots of both sides would need to show same amount of skill.

Neg-G effects are irrelevant for pilot's workload. It was certainly a big limitation but it was also quite natural to them all.

+1

This will be very interesting when it comes to the eastern theatre as the la5 apparently had a load of levers to deal with compared to the 109 and 190.

I am now wondering if my favourite aircraft from 1946 the 190 will be one of the most boring aircraft to fly and be given the "n00b plane" name which was given to the la7 in 1946