Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[IvanK]

"I have played the game and note the behaviors as I play. Just because I don't spend my time making excel spreadsheets does not mean the points are invalid."

No just your gut feeling not actually measured and or recorded. You post so many charts to support your statements in this thread then jump in the sim and just wing it !

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Pilot opinion was a factor of secondary importance. He was a monkey in the cockpit that operated the measuring equipment and flew the specific profiles.

Contrast this with Crumpp's own posting on what was required by his "monkey(s)"...



Which is also a good description of the test pilot responsible for developing the Spitfire.

Alex Henshaw, chief test pilot at the Castle Bromwich factory, wrote, “Jeffrey’s greatest gift to those technicians with whom he worked was his concise analysis of technical problems and his ability to articulate them in a language they clearly understood. Last but not least was the complete integrity of his test reports.”

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Fly the airplane trimmed for slow flight, let go of the stick, fire the guns, and note the behavior.

I have played the game and note the behaviors as I play. Just because I don't spend my time making excel spreadsheets does not mean the points are invalid.

Yep, let go of the stick and fire those guns just like real pilots!

[IvanK]

In the end it comes down to the last sentence as underlined here, Mr Mel Gough NACA :


Report of joint Fighter Conference NAS Patuxent River, MD 16-23 Oct 1944.


And the end user of the Spitfire the combat fighter pilot was very happy !

[CaptainDoggles]

Originally Posted by IvanK

In the end it comes down to the last sentence as underlined here, Mr Mel Gough NACA :

...

And the end user of the Spitfire the combat fighter pilot was very happy !

Nobody's saying the pilots weren't happy. Why is this relevant?

[Glider]

Originally Posted by CaptainDoggles

Nobody's saying the pilots weren't happy. Why is this relevant?

Because it shows how important the test pilots views are

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

It is the measured and defined flying qualities that make up the "personality" of the airplane.

These characteristics are what make an early Mark Spitfire a unique airplane with its own individual behaviors.


Otherwise, it is not much of simulation of a specific airplane if the gameshape does not have the same flying qualities as the airplane it supposed to represent.

This has nothing to do with how well an airplane turns, how fast it goes, climb, or any specific performance. This has to do with how the airplane behaves in achieving that performance.

To mitigate the fact players could dial out the most important characteristic that made an early mark Spitfire unique, the sensitive elevator and heavy ailerons. Since players are going to cheat, developers can too. I did this in Warbirds and it worked great when I did the Bf-109 and Spitfire models.
If an accelerated stall is reached, the aircraft spins. This keeps players in the mindset to stay off the stall point.

So it eliminates a nice feature of the Spitfires stall characteristic but realistically, Spitfire pilots did not seek the stall except as rare method to escape an unwanted combat. If the players are going to cheat, let the developers do so as well.

Not only has Crumpp failed to realise that this is a flight sim, with all the variables of hardware and software adopted by players, he is also proposing to make the Spitfire so hard to fly by inexperienced gamers that many will just give up after constantly crashing and burning, or having the plane fly apart, as soon as they make a small mistake. He also wants to deny players even the option of using the Spitfire's good stall characteristics.

[klem]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Dive to Vne, stomp on the rudder, and pull back as hard as you can.

Fly the airplane in the buffet and time your turn.

Pull back on the stick, release, and note the behavior of the airplane.

Fly at Vmax, pull hard back, hold it at full deflection, and note the behavior.

Fly the airplane trimmed for slow flight, let go of the stick, fire the guns, and note the behavior.

I have played the game and note the behaviors as I play. Just because I don't spend my time making excel spreadsheets does not mean the points are invalid.

What were your five results, what were your expectations and how did you come by them?

[Crumpp]

The must be some pretty smart monkeys.

Yes they are very intelligent, disciplined, and highly educated. It is one of the toughest jobs in existence.

Damn now he has a CFI I say this as before Crump only claimed a PPI.

I am sorry. Do I need your permission to get ratings, train, and get a job flying? You are not hireable as a PPI.


Who do you people think you are????

[Crumpp]

No just your gut feeling not actually measured and or recorded. You post so many charts to support your statements in this thread then jump in the sim and just wing it !

If I had the time I would. Why do you think it has taken so long for me to get the post's out in this thread.

I don't put food on my table by helping to develop realistic flight simulators.

However, I have another source of income, a family to support, and all the things that come with that.

[Crumpp]

In the end it comes down to the last sentence as underlined here, Mr Mel Gough NACA :

Mel Gough was a test pilot for the NACA.
The quote is in the context of the meeting to determine stability and control standards for the individual services, the US Navy and Army Air Corps.

The NACA already had developed stability and control standards and Mel Gough was a co-developer of those standards.

The end result is the document posted below. It did not result in things being left up to "how much instability one can stand".

In fact, Mel Gough was one of the pioneers in eliminating the "pilot opinion" standard.

The handling qualities of all future airplanes would be based on the parameters they outlined. Up to that time a pilot would fly an airplane, and the attitude was, “Well, if you go back and fly it the second time, it must be a good airplane.” Or the pilot would be asked, “What is it that you like about the plane?” And those early-time pioneer pilots would try to describe what it was they liked about the airplane. Whether the stick forces seemed too heavy or if the plane didn’t roll fast enough, etc. It was all kind of subjective stuff based on pilots’ opinions.

Then Mel and Bob decided, “Let’s quantify this. Let’s put some numbers to these opinions.” What is it that a pilot likes in a fighter as well as in all other categories of planes? What does the pilot want to feel? What response is he looking for? How much G [gravitational] force does he want to pull? How much can he handle in a roll? When does he get uncomfortable or reach his limit of physical response. Is any of this different in a fighter or a bomber? Does he expect the same stick forces and rudder forces in a fighter as he does in a bomber?
So all of that became a matter of negotiation, and between the two of them, the pilot and the engineer, they quantified the parameters. They wrote what I call a bible of stability and control and described what ideal handling qualities are in any type of aircraft. It was no longer up to the designer and manufacturer to produce and present a product that was satisfactory to their designers and test pilots. It was a mandate to meet the requirements outlined by NACA.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...I69j8yvj-7PvKg

The result is attached. It is the quantified answer to the question, "How much instability can one stand?"

In England, Jeffery Quill was the Chief Test Pilot for the development of the Spitfire. If it met his standards in his opinion, without quantification, it went forth despite the some early testing investigating the longitudinal instability, his acknowledgement, and all the warnings found in the Operating Notes that are the result of longitudinal instability.

It was not until the design was evaluated under a set of measured and defined standards that the longitudinal instability was quantified and fixed in the Spitfire.