Hey TD can you look again at the Corsair..

[horseback]

Originally Posted by Freelansir

Regarding trim, I found the best first-person description from Bud Anderson's story "He was only trying to kill me".

Anderson's account is the first thing that comes up any time complaints about the Mustang's trim behavior in-game arise; what people tend to forget is that Anderson had a co-author--the same fellow who worked on Chuck Yeager's book with Yeager. It gives the customers 'what they want'--which is drama.

Had the pilot of the 109 he was fighting survived the fight, his memoir might have included stuff about how slow the stabilizer trim wheel responded, or how heavy the rudder got as he compensated for the higher or lower speeds as he climbed and dived, how the supercharger became steadily less effective the higher he went, the way the windshield kept frosting up or how sloppy the stick got at 10km (and all of these things can be read about in any number of well known resources like Caldwell's JG 26: Top Guns of the Luftwaffe), and then his thirty something civilian co-author would still ask him to 'punch it up' for the reading audience of the late 1980s.

I've read a number of pilot memoirs that state quite flatly that the Mustang didn't need a lot of trimming in combat because the stick forces were exceptionally light and well balanced by the standards of the time; Anderson's comment simply shocked me when I read it for the first time because it contradicts almost everything else I had read on the subject. You trimmed for level flight on long distance escorts, sudden changes in power and for the depletion of fuel in the wing tanks (otherwise, there would have been no need for aileron trim), and you would add a little nose up trim for landings; everything else was reported as a matter of pilot preference.

I long ago transcribed the trimming sections of America's Hundred Thousand for the old UbiSoft Il-2 forums; I'll be happy to post them here, along with 354th FG ace Richard Turner's description of the flying qualities of the Mustang, or David McCampbell's description of the Hellcat, if you need more proof.

cheers

horseback

[horseback]

These are my first efforts: I find that just attaching the pictures works better than trying to attach the whole Excel Workbook and allows greater access for everyone. The longer and flatter the curve, the better the acceleration over time. Notice how much faster and better accelerating the early P-40E is than the later P-40M.

cheers

horseback

[horseback]

More Charts: RAF vs LW, Spit IX vs Mustang and Japan. Again, the lower and flatter, the better the acceleration. Look for the anomalies in the curves; these may be indicators of the odd behaviors I noted earlier or inconsistencies in the FM.

Enjoy/debate.

cheers

horseback

[Freelansir]

Regarding trim, I found the best first-person description from Bud Anderson's story "He was only trying to kill me".

Originally Posted by horseback

Anderson's account is the first thing that comes up any time complaints about the Mustang's trim behavior in-game arise

I wasn't complaining about a darn thing, just pointing out a book that the author takes the time to include details flying a fighter.

[sniperton]

Gens, this discussion is getting out of control. Simply too many aspects of this great game are blurred together. What if this thread were continued as separate threads?

- late-war high-performance aircraft issue (if any);
- relation of FM and flight controls discussion (trim, charts, etc);
- cockpit/hud display of control settings issue (what must/should/could we have, and what we don't need);
- general reality issue ('realistic' cockpit visibility as a handicap).

Just a suggestion.

[horseback]

Originally Posted by Freelansir

I wasn't complaining about a darn thing, just pointing out a book that the author takes the time to include details flying a fighter.

No, I was the one who was complaining; I simply pointed out that the Anderson quote is inevitably brought up (usually from multiple posters) if anyone suggests that the current trim model of the Merlin powered P-51s is excessive.

There is a school of thought in the flight sim community that if it is harder, it must be more realistic; they also seem to think that newer, heavier and faster must also mean more complicated because that would mean harder to control (and therefore, more realistic). But the reality is that as technology becomes more advanced, it always becomes simpler and easier to use. Compare your DVD or DVR to the VHS systems I was using (at great expense, I might add) in the 1980s. The DVD/DVR is smaller, lighter, more energy efficient and much, much easier for you to operate.

While Anderson's book is very well written and generally accurate, that one sentence does not make the thousands of paragraphs and sentences written on the subject of trimming the Mustang before and since invalid, and most of the material on the subject says that the Mustang (like most later designs of that era) was better than its predecessors and most of its contemporaries because it was easier to fly and keep under control than the other fighters of its day, not just because it was merely faster and had longer range.

cheers

horseback

[RPS69]

Originally Posted by horseback

There is a school of thought in the flight sim community that if it is harder, it must be more realistic; they also seem to think that newer, heavier and faster must also mean more complicated because that would mean harder to control (and therefore, more realistic).

BIG LOL!!!

Also keep in mind, that almost all aircraft have been made strange by this particular perception of reality. This is not new to the sim, but it is nice when someone take the whole picture, and not just a biased one.

Still, all these discusions on aircraft performance, being it differential or not, start again every time a new patch appears, maybe with different actors, but it nevertheless starts again.

Tagert got a good tool to analyze this, while he still used that name. It enabled him to process other peoples tracks. With some help you could achieve many more test conditions, and got some in game behaviours faster, with the addition of joy inputs to discard player wrong inputs.

The trim retard was introduced because of some complain of cheating by people that love to play in horizontal furballs on dogfight servers. Nothing to do with reality.