Echo38

There are two major scenarios where I see myself at a disadvantage when everyone is forced to spawn with full fuel. Firstly, if someone's been flying around for a while before I join the server, he has less fuel mass than me, and there's nothing I'll be able to do about it. "Doomed at the gate," if you know what I mean. Secondly, even if we spawned around the same time, there's the case of different aircraft being affected differently--and not only in terms of pure mass--by the removal or addition of the same percentage of fuel. For example, the P-51 is an absolute mess at handling with that rear tank full. "Do not attempt aerobatics with full rear tank" and all that CoG fun. So, while 100% fuel 109 vs. 100% fuel P-51 sounds fair and dandy on paper, I think we all know that, in practice, it doesn't work out that way. The P-51 suffers far more from being saddled with full tanks than the 109 does from the same. Now, if the map size is large enough, and it's a historical-style long-range mission, then there's time for the P-51 to burn off that rear tank. But, really, as you said--who really wants to fly for four hours before they see an enemy? I doubt even a real fighter pilot would want to do that in a simulator.

That was the P-38L I was referring to. I never did the math on the P-51, but I still have the numbers for the P-38 floating around in my skull. Very roughly: 416 gallons @ ~6 lb = ~2500 lb., which is ~15% of a normal combat load (full internal, no external stores) of ~17000 lb. Something like that. IIRC, P-51 had higher internal range than P-38, but considerably less internal fuel mass. I'm still not sure what exactly you are saying here. Are you saying that { P-51D w/ 20% fuel versus Me 109K w/ 20% fuel } has the same competitive balance in a dogfight as { P-51D w/ 100% fuel versus Me 109K w/ 100% fuel } ? Because, if that's what you're saying, I'm almost certain that this isn't the case. The P-51 has so much more "unnecessary" mass in fuel (unnecessary for a 5-minute dogfight, understand) than the 109 does. Nix two thirds of the fuel on both, and the aircraft resemble each other a lot more, no?

Two things: firstly, despite my normal competitive practice of taking a reduced fuel load (because that's the competitive norm, and I do not wish to place myself at an disadvantage), I actually prefer duels with high fuel mass (because this makes the fight more slow-paced & thoughtful, as opposed to fast-paced & reflexive)--in general, and only when it can be guaranteed that the fight will start with both participants having similar fuel states. However, I said "in general," because this may break down when you get to high-mass, long-range fighters like the P-38 and P-51 versus low-mass, short-range fighters like the Me 109 or Spitfire. With matchups like this, when fuel masses are lowered across the board, the discrepancies between the dogfighting capabilities of the two opposing fighters are lessened. Keep fuel masses high, and--at least with factory WEP ratings on the U.S. birds--the lighter fighters have a big advantage in the duel, to the point of it being one-sided. Now, I gather you aren't much interested in duelling & non-historical dogfighting, so that might seem irrelevant to you, but note my main point of all that: I actually prefer duels to be high fuel mass, in general, because they slow down the pace of the fight. So, it isn't that I can't understand how anyone would want battles to be fought with larger fuel loads, as you imply I don't. Now, the second thing: my objection is, once more, not to your core proposal (mission editor option to enforce fuel states in missions), which I think is quite reasonable, even if I don't regard it as high-priority, myself. Rather, my objection was to your text which I quoted--your implication that my preferred type of simming was less high-fidelity than your preferred type of simming, which has been present in posts throughout this thread. I'll slightly rephrase the key point of my bolded sentence from my previous post: I am a competitive flight simmer who desires maximum fidelity of aircraft/weapon/equipment modelling, but doesn't much care for historical-style missions. I hope you now see why I do not regard my non-historical simming to be any less hardcore, max-fidelity simming than yours. I want very much to be in the real aircraft; I just don't want to be in the real war. I do not see this manner of simming as a lesser, or a lower-fidelity, form of simming, and I rather resent the notion that it is.

When you say "without slats," do you mean that the slats were missing, or merely prevented from opening?

I'm not sure what you're saying, now. You're saying that, at cruise settings, U.S. fighters like the P-38 & P-51 had similar internal ranges to German fighters like the Me 109 and FW 190? That's difficult for me to believe. Wait--you listed WEP consumption. I usually fly around at just below max continuous, in the sim, and IRL they usually flew around max cruise. That makes a big difference for fuel consumption; they weren't charging around at WEP all day, of course, and neither are we. ... I don't even see how this matters to my original point you quoted: 15% of the aircraft's mass is a relatively big portion. This is why we competitive simmers who desire maximum fidelity of aircraft/weapon/equipment modelling, but don't care for historical-style missions, decline to take massive amounts of fuel that we can't possibly use in our non-historical missions (in which the airfields are only a few miles apart), and which can only harm us by significantly & noticeably hampering our maneuverability. Ah, but I thought people who aren't "doing it right" like this aren't serious simmers? >; )

With some of these birds, a full internal load of fuel was ~15% of the total aircraft mass, with a normal combat load. Not a small difference. On the competitive extreme, 5% can sometimes be noticeable to the very best pilots. 10% is a large competitive advantage (or disadvantage). Ask an Olympic runner if he's okay with carrying, during the big race, a weight that weighs 10% of his bodymass ... You say this like people who are interested in max-realism study sims don't/shouldn't enjoy non-historical scenarios. The two are not at all mutually exclusive. A real airplane can engage in "gamey" mock-combat. Air Combat USA is one of the more popular examples of that, these days. I don't think you're helping your case by implying that we aren't hardcore simmers, just because the thing we're hardcore-simming isn't the same thing you're hardcore-simming. Realism /= historical For the record, I don't have anything against there being options within the mission editor, for mission makers to lock things like this in historical-style missions. However, like Solty, I feel that the case of historical fuel loads is a "self-correcting problem." If it's a historical mission, the distances involved will surely necessitate historical fuel loads, without requiring a lock in the mission options.

Help me understand. Hypothetically, let's say you're correct, and that the K4 is supposed to have a 1.6 CLmax. Okay, so: If the K4 is supposed to have 25kph slower landing speed than P-51, and it does; If the K4 is supposed to have 1.6 CLmax, but it doesn't; Then, if the K4's CLmax is raised to 1.6, what happens to the landing speed being 25kph slower than P-51? Does it get even slower? In which case, wouldn't it end up lower than it should be? And what would be the cause of this, if the CLmax is right? Means something else is wrong, yes? And if the landing speed doesn't end up slower, when CLmax is increased--i.e., if CLmax doesn't affect landing speed--then why do you use the lower landing speed as evidence of higher CLmax? I just don't understand how the two points of your hypothesis work together. Unless you're saying that the CLmax is too low, but something else is too high, causing the landing speed to be at the correct figure, even though the CLmax is too low?

As you surely recognize, my comment about you goading him was a reference to your post(s) preceding his response, not to your post following it. You've been liberally dispensing mockery in your posts, but then act all wounded when someone reacts unfavorably. You're playing a game of your own, where you see if you can incite others to break forum rules without actually doing it yourself. Bluntly, you're trolling, and it is not becoming of a flight simmer. Your behavior is something I expect of people who attend twitch-shooter forums, not something I expect on the DCS forum.

Spitfires in the late 1940s weren't attacking targets that were five minutes away from home base.

Not cool. While I wouldn't have phrased it the way he did, you know perfectly well that you are deliberately goading him. You stop just short of open insult, but you're being plenty snide yourself.

Don't be absurd. I never take so little fuel that I am unable to safely return to base after a successful mission. I take enough fuel for the distance I plan on travelling, the return trip, and the time I expect to be fighting--and then some extra, just in case. Which isn't much different from how it was done in reality, by the way (not that it matters much). The difference is that, in the simulator, we generally fly super-short mission distances, and so taking several hours' worth of extra fuel is a liability here. Only a fool takes an extra thousand pounds of useless mass into combat for no good reason. This is the reason why we competitive dogfighters drop the unnecessary mass, when dogfighting in our maximum-fidelity aircraft simulator. You make us sound all sneaky-devious, with your insinuations about trying to get an edge over our opponents, but it's simply common sense. No point in entering combat with bombs on, if you aren't going to be bombing anything. Same deal with a gross excess of fuel--no point entering combat with a bunch of extra fuel, if you know you aren't going to be using any of it. In the actual war, pilots often had to enter combat with a much larger quantity of fuel than they needed. That was the reality of war. This isn't war; it's a competitive game taking place within a maximum-fidelity aircraft simulator. Outside of historical-style missions (where historical fuel loads actually make sense), taking the right fuel load for the mission range is no more gamey than having short mission ranges in the first place. Or are you one of those people who says that we're all just arcade gamers if we aren't flying hours-long-travel-time historical missions, every time? Please ... What makes the aircraft simulation accurate isn't how people use it, or what we use it for. What makes the aircraft simulation accurate is the aircraft simulation--flight model, systems, engine, weapons, etc. Don't scorn simmers who prefer to use their max-fidelity sim for purposes other than recreating & participating in historical missions. We aren't "arcade gamers" just because we prefer instant action in our modelled-as-realistically-as-possible fighters, instead of long, boring, miserable historical war missions.

This is precisely my point. For a more extreme example, the simulator isn't flawed for letting users wear a modern flight suit in the P-51D. It's simply well-simulating a P-51D that is out of its historical wartime context. I myself would prefer to be wearing the WWII flight gear, but I'm not going to say that people who choose the modern flight suit--in a non-historical-mission--are "compromising the realism of the sim." That's just silly.

Again, apples & oranges. It is physically impossible to put an infinite ammunition load on a real aircraft. It is entirely physically possible to put a short fuel load on a real aircraft. Not usually advisable, in real life, but it is not in the slightest unrealistic for a pilot to be able to choose to take a foolish fuel load. See? Recommended /= possible. A high-fidelity simulator isn't supposed to let you do things that are impossible in the real thing (barring basic functionality like respawning). A high-fidelity simulator is, however, supposed to let you do things that are possible in the real thing, even if it would be a dumb idea to do it in the real thing. This, on the other hand, would absolutely reduce the fidelity of the simulation. Regardless of what fictional or real scenario you are placing the simulated P-51D into, it is officially an inaccurate simulation of a real P-51D, if the fuel burn rate is higher than the real P-51's, under the same conditions.

Apples and oranges, Crumpp. Surely you see this. Bunny-hopping in shooters is viable because the shooters have broken-ass physics. However, that isn't the case with low fuel loads in high-fidelity simulators. It isn't as though there's something wrong with the aircraft simulation because it lets the user choose to fill the fuel tanks up to only a third of capacity. It's obviously not the historical way of doing things, but not all max-fidelity simmers are trying to role-play a pilot in the actual Second World War. One of the core purposes of a high-fidelity simulation is to allow the user to create & engage in hypothetical scenarios which would be inadvisable in reality. This does not compromise the fidelity of the simulator. From another thread: I don't see anything inherently wrong with there being an option in the editor to enforce certain loadouts on spawn, but I myself am not interested in joining servers which force an impractically high fuel mass for the job I'm looking to perform, in a competitive environment. As such, I have a difficult time seeing this as a high-priority item. If you want a historical mission, then the mission itself will necessitate historical fuel loads, by nature of the extremely long distances, yes?

I thought you just confirmed Hummingbird's assertion that the CLmax was too low, using Crumpp's formula? I am so confused. : /

So, if the current 109's CLmax is too low, and it gets corrected, what can we expect to be different in flight? Same sustained climb rate, but a lower stall speed? Tighter turn? Faster turn?

Well, about damn time. Thanks for the tip!

Mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, as a competitive simmer, I always resented for Spitfire in other games for being "the noob plane" and the "uberplane," the one bird I couldn't balance in my dogfight mission planesets by picking the right models/blocks. It was always too dominant, no matter what, and I always kind of disliked it for that. On the other hand, when I see an actual Spitfire, in real life, I immediately forget my simmer's resentment and become excited. Even if it isn't one of my favorite WWII fighters, it's still a classic WWII fighter, and that makes it--by default--wonderful and amazing. I expect it'll be more accurately modelled here, and so won't be the aluminum incarnation of Superman that it was in older, lower-fidelity sim/games. The real thing was a very good dogfighter, yes, but I suspect that previous developers went a little overboard. I look forward to seeing how the DCS one does.

Same deal. "This has been proven by a long series of test flights." How many? By the same pilot? Hmm, when I read Candaleria's description, it looked to me more like he was describing a wingover or hammerhead, but it was a little vague. I suppose it could be interpreted as a snap-roll.

Ha! I tossed my IL-2 disks in the rubbish bin. I'm amused to see that I'm not the only one who had this sort of reaction. After seeing DCS, other sim/games look shoddy, in comparison. However did you get a refund out of Valve, after playing the game? A few years ago, I accidentally added a gift to my Steam library, instead of to my gift inventory. Even though I'd never downloaded or installed the game, much less played it, Valve refused to reverse the action, saying that all transactions were final.

Ah, that's from the USAAF manual, right? Counter-intuitive, but those aren't very reliable sources for everything; lots of errors in them, because some of the people involved in the making of them weren't very familiar with the aircraft. Some examples: in the USAAF P-38 manual, the MIL power speed is listed as the WEP speed; recommended cruise settings were very inefficient compared to Lindburg's; rolls into a dead engine were forbidden (Lockheed test pilot Tony Levier later had to go from airbase to airbase, proving to the pilots via aerial demonstration that rolls & other aerobatics were possible to perform safely with one engine feathered), etc. There are plenty more, but the latter alone is a good enough example; just because the USAAF manuals say that a maneuver is not possible to safely perform in a particular aircraft, does not mean that it was so. Some of the guys writing the USAAF manuals had few hours in the aircraft, being more bureaucrat than pilot. So, I read that as, "No power-on spins or snap rolls are permitted, as it is impossible for the author to do a good snap roll and most of the author's attempts end up in a power spin." I'm not one to trust a flight sim over a reliable real-world source, but in the case of the USAAF manuals, since they have proven to be unreliable, I'd believe DCS over the USAAF manual, unless cross-referencing (with a source not derived from the manual) indicates that the manual is accurate, in the matter in question. If Eagle Dynamics model the P-51 as capable of snap-rolling, I assume they have a good source (e.g. NACA) that backs that modelling up. Yo-Yo, if you're reading this, can you comment?

I don't know very much about aerodynamics, I'm afraid. Why does an airplane climb better when going faster than the ... oh. I think I get it. There's more lift at that speed / AoA, but also more drag, and so there must be more drag gained from having that high of an alpha, than it gains in lift. Which is why the airplane climbs better (sustained) at a lower AoA (and thus higher speed), even though it has less lift, because it also has much less drag. Did I get it right this time?

What are the implications of the 109 having too low of a lift coefficient? I thought our 109 already was on the high side of historical climb rates for the given WEP rating, even after the recent reduction. How could the climb rate be higher-than-expected, then, if the lift coefficient is too low? Surely it isn't possible that there's too much thrust and/or not enough drag; if there were, then the top speed would be noticeably off (which I've heard nothing about). I presume that the CLmax was also too low before, when the climb rate was ~6000 ft/min (in which case, again, how can those two problems coexist?); if not, then was it inadvertently lowered during the process of correcting the excessive climb rate? There's so much about this that is puzzling.

Hi, Whyme, and welcome!

In my personal (limited) experience shooting fully-automatic weapons, heat was only ever an issue for burning one's hand! All of the jams I've experienced (and I experienced more than my share) were due to either cheap ammunition being used, or the weapon being improperly maintained. I know this because most of my jams occurred when firing cheap ammunition in my semi-automatic weapons; I had very few jams when firing good-quality ammo through full-auto guns. When I said, earlier, that realistic jams were currently not modelled in DCS, I was not implying that they should jam due to overheating. The specific cause of jamming I had in mind, actually, was jamming due to firing under high G-loads (cannons and machine guns alike). That's the problem I've heard the most about, with Second World War fighters.