Echo38

What is meant by "motoring the engines"?

I have always had Windows system sounds turned off, so I was rather startled by this. (Twice.) : D

Gyroscopic effect is dependent not only on the magnitude of the control input, but also on the mass & RPM of the propeller. How many of these pilots you spoke to have flown an aircraft with ~2000 horsepower?

The simulator is incredible. Details like this ... : )

This "sound-radar" has plagued combat flight-sim games since the very beginning. I've yet to try an aerial combat simulator which doesn't suffer from this physics error. I wrote the following a couple of weeks ago, in another thread on the subject: Here is a link to the thread where Yo-Yo discusses the matter. This is the closest thing to an official stance so far, to the best of my knowledge: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=94347 As far as I'm concerned, the discussion never truly concluded. My counter-point went unaddressed. There appears to be a relatively simple solution that could solve the matter, resulting in maximum realism with minimal development effort

I have no input on whether or not the roundels are right, but I'd like to point out that "It's okay if it's wrong, the community can make their own skin" is not a reasonable response to a statement that something isn't historically accurate.

Flaps make you turn tighter (which is good) but also turn slower (which is bad). As you lower flaps more and more, at some point, the amount of gain in turn tightness may be less than the loss in turning speed. That's why many fighters had a combat or maneuver setting; it was sort of the "sweet spot," although that doesn't mean that it would always be a bad idea to lower them further. Fowler flaps, which only a few fighters had (P-38 & Ki-43 are the two most common of them), have a significantly better ratio of "tightness gained" to "turning speed lost" than split & conventional flaps do, but that advantage gradually lessened the more the flaps were deployed.

It doesn't need to be this way. I only need maybe a dozen keys for the P-51D; most of the cockpit functions are only needed on the ground, where mouse works just fine. In flight, where mouse hand is on the joystick (and thus keys/buttons are needed in lieu of mouse), there are only a few functions that are needed (flaps, gear, gunsight, radiators, etc.). It leaves plenty of room for two of the less-handy keys (e.g. on the right side of the keyboard) to be used for simultaneous switches during startup. The A-10C is a different story, but we're talking WWII fighters, not modern aircraft with all the MDF stuff.

"Destroying the gear" is surely an overstatement. I prefer your method (slip touch), which is indeed healthier for the gear, but there are plenty of real pilots who prefer the rougher method (crab touch). I've seen too many airliners touchdown still in the crab. Do I think it's poor form? Yep! Does it destroy the gear? Not in the usual sense. It does accelerate metal fatigue, increasing chances of an eventual collapse (after years or decades of such abuse). But I wouldn't worry about the gear collapsing just from a few such landings.

No, it isn't realistic. It's been acknowledged to be wrong by Yo-Yo, years ago. I have enormous respect for Yo-Yo & his amazing work, but I am perplexed as to why this issue doesn't seem to be a concern. It's the largest flaw in the simulator's realism, as it completely changes the nature of the historical "hunt." Real-world aces generally favored sneaking up on the enemy and firing at close range, with the element of surprise; that simply isn't possible in DCS (and other sim/games), because of the "sonar problem." See following thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=94347

I meant "feel" as in "grok," not as in "use your inner ear."

Could you expound?

What I'm trying to say is, "Use the Force, Luke." It's difficult at first to keep glancing down at the ball (especially for no-headtrack users like myself), but eventually you'll come to feel approximately where it ought to be, and won't need to glance down nearly as often. A cheat-sheet won't really teach you the feel.

Exactly so. It isn't a good idea to try to memorize a list of when to yaw in which direction. That's like cramming for a test instead of really coming to an understanding of the material.

It depends on a number of factors. Some aircraft will have a great tendency to drop a wing during any stall, due to their aerodynamic shape. Others will be stable during a slow stall (power at idle, 1G), but drop a wing in a power stall (due to the engine torque). So, just because one aircraft is stable in a 1G stall doesn't mean it'll be stable in an accelerated stall or a power stall, nor does it mean that other aircraft will behave similarly. It's quite complicated. Each aircraft's stalling behavior unique to that aircraft (sometimes, even to the model/block—for example, the P-40C had markedly different stalling characteristics to the P-40E). And even with a given aircraft, remember: coordination, bank angle, & power setting are not the only determinants of the stalling behavior. Drop tanks can alter the airflow under the wing, causing vortexes where none were before. A "clean" P-38 (flaps up, gear up, no external stores) had no wing drop tendency under normal conditions (that is, flying coordinated, both engines at the same power setting, both wing tanks at similar fuel masses, etc.), but lowering the gear gave it a slight tendency to drop a wing, and having external tanks gave a strong wing-drop tendency. (That's what killed Thomas McGuire—he was accustomed to the P-38's gentle stall when clean, so he wasn't expecting the nasty spin which occurred while dogfighting with droptanks on.)

Too hard to say how accurate this behavior is. P.C. flight simulator technology has, in the last eight years or so, become sufficiently advanced that it is sometimes impossible to determine whether or not something is right or wrong, without directly testing it in the real aircraft. Let me explain. Games like old IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles had relatively low-tech physics, and so it was often possible to see that the stall behavior was badly wrong, by comparing it to detailed videos of the real thing. It wasn't only wrong in debatable fine points, but also grossly wrong in simple matters, such as a procedural slow stall. When a USAAF training video demonstrates—step by step—a slow stall, in a particular aircraft model, under given conditions, and repeating the same steps (under the same conditions) in the simulator give a drastically different result, then the simulator is clearly incorrect. But sim/games like DCS and Rise of Flight have sufficiently advanced physics that they can blur the line between simulated and real behavior. Generally speaking, modern simulators are accurate enough that they behave like the real thing in procedural slow stalls, and in other easily-reproducible matters. But since P.C. power is limited (and even NASA's simulations don't entirely match the real things), P.C. flight simulator games will always have some discrepancies in the details (particularly with accelerated stalls, which are just about the most complex aspect of flight). And without having good access to the real aircraft for side-by-side comparison, it is simply impossible to tell which details are wrong, or by how much. Sure, E.D. has unprecedented access to some of these aircraft, but not all of them. And even the ones they have access to, it isn't close enough access for the fine details to be perfectly adjusted. For example, I don't think anyone who has done hands-on work at E.D. has actually performed the stall. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that no one has been able to do detailed, in-person, "back-and-forth" feedback for the 109, the way that Nick Grey did with the P-51. So, I suspect that the 109's flight model isn't quite as accurate as the P-51 is. No disrespect to E.D.; it's just how things happen. So where does that leave us? It isn't really possible to say with certainty that the aircraft's stalling behavior is correct or incorrect. It's more likely to be slightly incorrect than 100% correct, simply because no high-complexity simulation can be perfect, at least with current technology. But I don't think it's been definitively established that the simulated 109K's unusual stalling behavior is erroneous, either—or, more importantly, how erroneous. I do know from personal experience that some aircraft can indeed stall in a similar manner. As others here have mentioned, not all aircraft must drop a wing in a stall. The Cessna 152 that I stalled (in real life) fell straight forward, with no wing drop whatsoever, while some prop aircraft can (like jet fighters) even "pancake" down, without even a nose drop, at least at certain power settings. Some of the later fighters of WWII approached the supermaneuverable, with their astonishingly-high power-to-mass ratios. Could the 109K, with its revolutionary slats, maintain a stable stall in a falling turn, like the P-38 could? We don't know; there isn't enough information today, to the best of my knowledge. I guess that it might have been able to, at certain power settings, with extremely careful pilot input. (Too much power is likely to exceed rudder authority and force a wing-drop, while too little power would not provide enough lift to keep the nose near the horizon, causing a nose drop.) However, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it couldn't.

I'm inclined to agree, and to assume that whoever originally wrote that the bent wing had better lift was mistaken.

That screenshot! I love how DCS is looking (visually) more and more like Arma and less like previous flight sim-games. For me, the flight model is much more important than the graphics, but it's also super-cool when the graphical fidelity approaches that of first-person shooters. There are FPS games I still play, ten years after their release, which DCS now looks better than, from on the ground. I'm really hoping that, soon, Eagle Dynamics really implements walking around on the ground, and manually entering & exiting the aircraft. It's already half-implemented, and now the graphics are good enough that it'd look better than doing the same in (e.g.) Arma 2. The game engine is fully capable of supporting simple first-person on-foot gameplay (and, I think, even an infantry simulator a la Arma), and this becomes more clear with each graphical update. While my own interest is flight, I think that a proper combined-arms approach could be a great thing for the sim as a whole, and infantry is an essential part of combined arms. But, even if no infantry, walking out of the hangar and climbing into your fighter in first-person is still an important part of the flight experience. It's the one thing that Arma has always offered in its (meager) flight experience which DCS, in all of its richness, still hasn't.

I always assumed this myself. Well, sort of. The wing was bent for the landing gear & prop clearance, not for stability. So, I always assumed that the designers of the Corsair sacrificed lift for shorter (and thus more sturdy) landing gear, by bending the wing. It seems obvious that the bent wing will have less lift than an unbent one, all else equal, because the lift vectors are not all parallel (and thus should have a weaker combined effect along the normal lift vector). However, I recently read somewhere that, surprisingly, the bend in the wing somehow actually increased lift. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this, so this should (of course) be taken as simple hearsay, unless someone can help me out by providing a source.

Have you tried loading the mission in the editor, then saving it?

This works if there's no wind, but if there's any wind, and you aren't aligned with it (travelling exactly with it or against it), then this effect will be deceptive. The wind will make it look like you're flying uncoordinated even when your ball is perfectly centered, because it's blowing you sideways relative to the ground (but not to the airmass, which you are only moving forward relative to, and not sideways, barring small increments during brief gusts).

Would kill for ED-made P-38L.

Compare the cross-section and location of fuel tanks between automobiles and WWII fighters. You almost can't miss the fuel tank on a 109 or Mustang from the rear quarter. An automobile's tank, on the other hand, is typically of much lower cross-section and placement, making it unlikely to receive a significant percentage of hits from a burst from a single machine gun. Another factor--perhaps even more important--is the slipstream. A leaking automobile tank will leak primarily liquid fuel. A leaking fighter tank will leak fuel in a vaporized form, because of the slipstream. This fuel vapor is much more flammable than liquid petrol, which is why API is far more effective versus aircraft than against stationary or slow-moving automobiles. API wasn't instant-ignite, no; British static tests showed that it took multiple hits to ignite stationary fuel tanks. The first shot would pretty much never do it, because the fuel is still mostly liquid at that point. But once the tank had one leak, chance to ignite went up. The more leaks, the more chance to ignite. Slipstream vaporization multiplies that chance. This is why self-sealing fuel tanks were so important in minimizing the chances of fuel fires.

There are quite a few examples of flat-out errors. I don't remember any off-hand for the P-51D manual (there were some), but I distinctly remember several in the P-38 one. For one, the P-38L's listed WEP speed was actually obtained at MIL power, not WEP. Not even the lowest-used factory WEP of 60". It was the MIL rating of 54". Plain and simple clerical error there. There were also things like the whole "You cannot perform a turn into a dead engine" thing, which Tony Levier (Lockheed test pilot) later had to disprove by going from airbase to airbases, performing aerobatics with an engine shut off & feathered (including barrel rolls into the dead engine). It's been a long time, but I did a good deal of hard study of the manual & compared it with more reliable sources--including Bodie's book, which had a foreword by Kelly Johnson (one of the P-38's two designers), saying (I paraphrase) "this book is the straight stuff--none of the other authors ever bothered to consult me before writing a book about my airplane." Fact is, there were a number of errors in the USAAF manuals, plain & simple. Some of them were pretty serious. The guy in charge was one of those types who doesn't like to be told he's wrong. I don't remember his name, but Bodie's book went into some detail on the point. So that 414 MPH at WEP figure you see everywhere for the P-38L, which originated in the official manual? Wasn't gotten at WEP. 414 MPH was the speed they got at 54" MIL. It was ~421 at 60" WEP (to say nothing of 66" WEP). Similar problems existed in the P-51 manual, but I've forgotten which ones are there, so someone else is going to have to give you specific examples of errors in the P-51 manual. Point is, you cannot trust the period USAAF manuals. They did contain errors.

I think the phenomenon is due to the faulty & incomplete USAAF manuals. Because the manuals (inaccurately) implied that the lowest of the WEP ratings for a given model was the maximum (or at least the standard), and since most printed secondary sources used the USAAF as primary reference, most people think that these lowest ratings were the highest or the norm. So, to these folks, who've seen sources for decades listing e.g. 67" as the P-51D's WEP rating, a less well-known, later-in-the-war authorized rating like 72" looks like a revisionist addition, as if we simmers were pushing for a non-historical, non-standard rating to be included. Which, of course, is not the case. The problem lies in the USAAF manuals, riddled with errors and omissions, as they were.