Echo38

I flew some more today. Same deal--whenever doing touch&goes, I run into this problem if I throttle back for more than the shortest of times--that is, if I throttle back a few seconds before I cross the runway threshold, I'm okay, but if I throttle back any earlier than those few seconds, I run into this problem within a few such landings. It sounds like the bug described here (http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=129159), except that in this case, the electrical instruments aren't affected, and the bug (if bug it is, in this case) is still present in the current version of the sim. I'm really thinking that it's a bug with the battery not being charged properly, and I suspected this before I saw that thread on the FW 190's similar bug. The battery seems to get drained at low power settings, but not recharged at high power settings.

You can try the TF-51D (two-seat P-51 without guns) for free, for as long as you like. If you like it, and want to have the guns & rockets & bombs, and/or want to support the sim's development, then buy the P-51D module. IMO, it's worth every penny & more, but you do have the option to try before you buy. The first time I ever installed DCS, it took me seven hours to get my control bindings and my cameras set up how I wanted them. Admittedly, not everyone goes to this length of customization, but DCS is a fine sim with a not-so-fine shell, if you know what I mean. If you require assistance with getting your controls/cameras set up, PM me and I'd be happy to try to get on voice to help. You start with 10 activations and 10 deactivations. If you deactivate before uninstalling, activating the new install doesn't take up an activation. After you're all out of activations, a new activation becomes available every month. So, assuming you install DCS once a year, you should be good for 20 years, and after that, you might have to wait a few weeks if you have to install it twice within a month.

Well, I think I've narrowed it down to two variables. Eliminating both has caused the issue to stop presenting itself. The two variables are exceeding oil pressure redline immediately after startup, and long periods of idle power upon approach. So far, so good, although I never have seen my amp meter above 40.

No, I'm not saying that; but neither am I saying the opposite, mind you. I don't have enough information about the real P-51 to have a solid opinion on whether or not the DCS: P-51D is accurate or not in its turning characteristics. If it were a P-38J or L, maybe I'd be comfortable in offering an opinion, since I did some fairly heavy-duty research on late-model P-38s, back in the day. But even then, without having flown one for real, it'd be nothing more than a relatively-educated guess. Would be even less comfortable in commenting on the DCS Me 109K's turning ability, given that I haven't even had the opportunity to fly it in the sim. Just making a clarification on the different types of flaps & {systems for lowering them into specific positions} (or lack thereof), & the {reasons for / benefits of} those specific positions. So, to conclude: I'd expect the 109's flaps, if lowered 10 degrees, to be roughly as effective as the P-51's flaps, lowered to the 10-degree combat setting. That is ignoring all other factors, such as general airframe drag and P/W ratio and all that--when accounting for these things, one aircraft or the other might be "more comfortable" at that flap setting, due to greater ability to overcome the drag. But, AFAIK, there is no great distinction between the P-51's flaps at 10deg and the 109's flaps at 10deg, speaking of the flaps themselves. Definitely neither are Fowlers and neither does anything else similarly-unusual at the 10-degree setting (or any other). The major difference (relevant to the discussion) between the P-51's and the 109's, is that the P-51 has a handy "combat" setting to get them to the 10-degree angle more easily. : ) (The 109 has the leading-edge slats to make up for the lack of a 10-deg flaps shortcut, so don't feel too sorry for it!)

It is. However, it's nothing special in terms of how the flaps work--it's just lowering the flaps 10 degrees. The only reason it's a special setting is for convenience's sake. Some fighters (Spitfire? 109? don't remember) made you hold the flap lever down until they were at the right setting, so you had to work to get the flaps at ~10 degrees. The P-51 & FW 190 (?)'s combat settings were just there to be handy--that is, to reduce pilot workload by making the 10 degree setting readily available via detent (throttle switch, in the FW 190's case, I think? it's been a long time, don't recall). The P-38's not only did that, but also "something extra" (better lift/drag than conventional & split flaps, 'coz increasing wing area). In period literature (manuals and other documents) that I've seen, this distinction is made by referring to "Combat" and "Maneuvering" flaps, respectively (the P-51's being "combat flaps," and the P-38's being "maneuver flaps" or "manuvering flaps"). I've noticed the two terms being used distinctly & consistently in the manuals etc. So, my point is, there's a distinction in terminology in all of the period literature I've seen; in fighters with conventional or split flaps, which have a special setting to lower them 10 degrees, it was called "combat flaps," while in the P-38, which had Fowler flaps, the setting that put them to the 8-degree mark was called "maneuver flaps." The distinction in terminology comes, no doubt, from the clear distinction in their function as flaps (as opposed to any "within the cockpit" distinction, applying only to the pilot's workload / interface for lowering them); the Lightning's 8-degree Maneuver setting maximized the "extending" function, but minimized the "lowering" function, making it the best possible setting for having max lift with the least drag--or something like that. Because conventional & split flaps don't extend wing area, no such "max extension / min lowering" setting was possible. Can't maximize wing-area extension if the flaps don't extend the wing area, see. Hence the distinction in terminology. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please do feel free to rephrase it--I suck at trying to explain things.

You no doubt already know this, but just in case: the Combat flap setting on the P-51 is simply normal flaps, deployed 10 degrees. It isn't like the 8-degree Maneuver setting on the P-38's Fowler flaps, which does something that normal flaps don't (namely, increasing the surface area of the wing). None of the aircraft currently scheduled to be in DCS: WWII have Fowler-type flaps. The only WWII fighters I'm aware of that had Fowlers were the P-38 and a few of the Japanese fighters, such as the Oscar and Frank. AFAIK, P-38 was the only Fowler-equipped prop fighter on the Western front, at least that made it into mass-production. Fighters which didn't have 'em included the P-51, FW 190, Me 109, P-47, and Spitfire. The P-38's Fowler flaps are also not to be confused with the dive flaps--not airbrakes--on the P-38L (and some Js), so the P-38L actually had two separate types of unconventional flaps. IIRC, the FW 190 had the same system as the P-51--a "combat" setting which allowed easy access to the 10-degree setting. Don't remember for sure, though.

Hum. Just happened again. This time, I was keeping an eye on it; it happened gradually, about 10 amps lost per touch&go on avg. Perhaps my relatively-long periods of idle power, on my approaches, are causing this? I'm trying to not over-cool the engine, but perhaps the generator doesn't like the engine being at idle for long periods of time, even when the temp's good. (Makes sense that a generator "cares" more about engine RPM than engine temp.) The other idea is that my fairly-rapid temperature changes caused by the touch&goes (cooling on approach, heating upon takeoff) may be screwing something up. I don't know how quick the temp change has to be in order to cause damage to anything, but this does seem awfully rapid to me. Edit: adding the track for this flight, too. Oh, the mystery! The excitement! ... Okay, not really. This is pretty much the same as the last track, except that the takeoffs aren't quite as bad and I'm trying more "interesting" airfield approaches. (Still not comfortable enough with it to try my old "flat spin approach," though.) The amp-meter goes down notably during (or around) the middle two out of the four landings. IIRC, the second landing (the first one on which the meter went down) was the one with the engine at idle for the longest period of time. This idle time is my current suspect. amps again grr.trk

Mmm--just remembered--while following the (sim) manual's instructions to the letter, the oil pressure exceeds the redline for a significant amount of time. I'm in a new mission, doing another cold-start; this time, I'm gradually increasing the RPM up to the 1200 RPM instead of going there immediately after startup (the manual doesn't say gradually, but only by doing it gradually am I able to prevent oil pressure from going higher than the redline). I don't know enough about engines to know if overdoing the oil pressure can screw with the generator (or whatever it is that the amp meter is keeping tabs on), but I'm going to keep a close eye on my amps this flight.

Can we get a thread sticky, please? Can't believe I haven't seen this until now.

Okay, so, being terribly out-of-practice, I decided to do some touch&goes in the P-51D. Random system failures was on in the mission options, but I didn't specifically set any up, so the probability for everything was, I believe, at the default 0% for all systems. I thought I'd done everything right; warm-up at (sim) manual-recommended RPM to the recommended temps, levers in the right places, kept it from over-cooling on landing, etc. However, after my ~second touch&go, I noticed that my amp meter was showing nearly zero. The manual says 50 is normal, but I can never seem to get it above 30 or so (why is that, anyway?), and this time it was somewhere around 10. I returned to the airfield & landed with no issues beyond the low voltage figure. The only thing I can think of that I did wrong (well, other than wobbling all over the place) was that I forgot to retract my gear on one of the takeoffs, so I was flying around with my gear down for a while, but I never went over 200 MPH while doing so (IIRC), and besides that, I can't imagine that stressing the gear would affect the electrical system. It's a long and relatively boring replay, ~40 min. of warmup and touch&goes, but if anyone's bored/curious enough, here it is. Any ideas on what caused the amp meter to display such a low figure? amps too low I think.trk

I confirm that this method works. The other track must have been truncated by an error of mine during the saving process (hitting "save track" after an incomplete playback, I think). Thanks!

(A year and a ~half later, I see this.) Hmm! This appears to work! The the end of my replay (perhaps the last two minutes) was cut off, but upon restoring the backup I made of the track, it was still missing, so the problem doesn't seem to have been caused by your method, which is vastly easier than mine. Thanks for the tip! I'll watch out for the cut-off problem in my next track; I'll watch it without editing first, and then edit it.

Good find! I don't think I've ever seen a 109 pushed that hard before, and that wasn't even full power, of course. Very impressive! His aerobatics reminded me of the P-51's at Oshkosh. Wish we could see these birds at WEP, but even at ~half-power, they can do some crazy things.

Hmm. While held down? Not sure. But it's a simple matter to bind a mouse button to the function which toggles between clickable-pit mode and freelook mode (it's bound to Lalt+C by default, I think). If he really needs it to be held down instead of toggled, I don't know how to do that.

I see! They responded in about 24 hours, this time. Jolly good!

[nod] My old stick is CH and I have considered going back to it, but the shape & size of the grip was much less ergonomic for me & harder on my hand for that reason, even though the spring strength was more forgiving. Hands are better able to grasp round things than square things, especially if the square things are large. There're other things as well that I didn't like about the CH, some having to do with ergonomics and some having to do with functionality. Removing the spring altogether--there's an idea. It'd hamper my flying ability, but I've been playing with relative-mouse in War Thunder and it's doable without having the reference point from a spring. Hmm--I think my warranty's already expired, so if I can get someone to open this thing up & extract the spring ...

L2shoot, marm! [tips hat] My buddy took down my A-10C with a one-second burst from his .50s yesterday. Barely knew what hit me; both engines were on fire and one of my wings damn near fell off. The fifty-cals can be tricky to use when one's out of practice, but you know what they say about practice!

That's certainly true [puts on aviator goggles] ... if you use a loose definition of "simulating." [cue musical sting]

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here." Yeah, I totally hear you; flying was my goal since I was four, and ever since it became impossible, sim-flying has been my primary hobby. I think I have gone mad! A few days ago, a friend convinced me to dust off the ol' stick & pedals and give DCS another, more careful try. It's disgruntling to be limited to ~15min a day (back in the old days, I used to do at least three hours a day avg.). Still, after all that time away, just taking off and landing in the P-51D made me feel like Tigger having his first bounce after a year-long abstinence. And way more convincing than the War Thunder I'd been dabbling in with mouse & pedals. That is a most kind thought, thank you, but I'm pretty sure my Charisma stat is too low to pull off something like that. ; )

Got it. So, in that case, my hands would be "not precise," and thus better suited to FW 190D than P-51D. [nods]

I didn't explain it very well; sorry. A larger movement is fine, as long as it's a lower resistance (i.e. a stick extension is a good thing, all else equal). But if we're talking about my current stick, unmodified, flying an aircraft that requires larger motions is worse than an aircraft that requires smaller motions, all else equal. When I said that large motions are bad, I meant large motions against a hard spring. With my current joystick, a large motion means really straining against the spring (relatively speaking--for my hands, anyway). Hmm. I don't know exactly what you mean by "precise"; I am capable of some very fine motions, but, in order to make them, I need to grip the stick tighter than I ought to--at least, when my mind is focused on combat. So my method is "ham-fisted," but if you remember our duels, you know that it can produce "silk-handed" results. (I've flown with direct input ever since my time flying real aircraft, ~15 years ago. No curves, no dead zones. Perhaps this is contributing to my pain? On the other hand, curves generally mean larger motions.) This phenomenon (gripping the stick for greater precision--I didn't do this when I flew IRL, by the way, but IRL I didn't fly with a six-inch spring-bound stick, nor was I dogfighting) happens subconsciously. I don't think it's something that can be trained away; I've been dealing with the hand-joystick problems for ten years now, to various degrees. In the heat of the fight, I often am not aware that my hand is hurting until after my mind is no longer occupied the dynamics of the dogfight (E, Alpha, etc.). So, I think my hand is precise, but on the other hand, it is weak and tires quickly. It does look like the FW 190 is the best fit of these three for my particular problems; I will keep this in mind. Thank you all very much for your input; any further discussion is also welcome.

Mm, yes, good point. Okay, the frequency of micro-motions is one problem; the P-51D is hard in this because of its "twitchiness;" that is, I'm constantly making tiny corrections in every direction because of torque & gyro. The P-51 is unstable, so a tiny amount of back-stick necessitates a bit of rudder to counter the gyro; the rudder movement is easy, with pedals, but that rudder input begins a slight roll, which necessitates a tiny amount of side-stick. Furthermore, as the aircraft slows down from the increased drag from my back-stick, I need to shift everything again. A more stable* ship could mean that I don't need to compensate so much for these effects with my stick (or, at least, ignore them with less of a drag penalty et al.). But another big problem is amount of elevator deflection. Mostly, I'm interested in dogfighting, and when I duel my friends, I'm more often than not holding the stick back pretty far. An aircraft such as the Spitfire (as depicted in other sim/games like IL-2, Aces High, War Thunder, at least) needs less back-stick to maintain a high-G / high-Alpha maneuver, and so is less taxing on my hand in that regard. It's true that I should be trimming out this pull with the trim keys, but in a dogfight, I don't usually have time and/or the free hand to do this, since my left hand is busy with the camera keys. (Hat switch isn't an option, in part because of the bum hand.) Trimming it out beforehand is no good, either, because then when I unload / extend, I've got the opposite problem (hard forward-stick required), and don't always have time to retrim while unloading, either. So, there are several aspects to the hand workload, but those are the two main concerns: "twitchiness" near the center of the stick travel range (lots of micro-movements due to compounding effects & low general stability), and "hard pulls" being required for normal dogfighting maneuvers like combat turns & Immelmanns. Both frequency of motion, and distance of motion, contribute; the worst case, of course, being a high frequency of large motions on both axes. *Of course, there's the problem that a more stable ship might require fewer/less micro-movements, but require a harder pull to do a good turn; however, something like the War Thunder Spitfire manages to get a "sweet spot." I suspect that none of the three WWII birds we have in DCS come close to such a sweet spot, but it's looking like the FW 190D might be the closest of the three. Edit: after thinking about the problem more carefully, I would say that, at least for now, the largest problem for my hand is holding the stick pulled back for sustained amounts of time, such as in sustained turns or a lengthy duel comprised of high-G and/or high-Alpha maneuvers (which is what I tend to spend most of my flight time doing). Again, I really ought to be trimming that out, but I simply don't have the time--or perhaps the presence of mind--to do so mid-fight.

What if trim weren't a factor, hypothetically? Assuming that no trim is being used on any aircraft; now which one has less load on the hand (bearing in mind that rudder-work is irrelevant 'coz pedals)? (I do use trim if I'm cruising & such, but if my primary interest is duelling a friend from a close air start ... well, during hard maneuvers, there isn't much time to trim with keys.)

Thanks, ZaltysZ--I distinctly remember our duels in another sim/game, years ago--if you're as proficient now as you were then, then I can trust your opinion of how an aircraft handles! Anyone else have other ideas? Different joysticks could result in different experiences. For reference, I'm using a Thrustmaster T.16000M, at the moment--it's rather unyielding. (What're you using, ZaltysZ? Forgot to ask in O.P.)

Er ... sorry, I didn't mean to talk like it was going to happen. Wishful thinking from me. I meant, rather, "I'm confident that the sound engineers at E.D. will do it justice, should E.D. ever decide to create the Corsair."