Krupi

Not particularly relevant for 1944 Normandy Map, the Typhoon had by this time replaced the Hurricane for ground support missions. Would be great for a BoB or Defence of Malta Map, fingers crossed for both of these one day.

What do you mean?

With the arrival of the superior Tempest why would you keep them around, a lot of aircraft of all types were scrapped after the war for various reasons. The Typhoon was a failed Interceptor but arguably one of the best ground attack aircraft of the time, there wasn't much need for ground attack aircraft in late 1945. Regarding the tail, in reality only a handful of aircraft actually experienced this issue "In total 25 aircraft were lost and 23 pilots killed due to tail failures". The main reason for it's mass scrapping was it's bad rap, even after the aircraft was fixed... this was further compounded by the low survival rate of the pilots which was more to do with the extremely dangerous missions that they undertook than the aircraft itself. Take the Mosquito, a great aircraft... no one mentions the manufacturing issues that led to the demise of quite a few crews. "In the UK a series of fatal flying accidents among mosquito's of various marks (at the rate of two to four a month from January to June 1944) was attributed to failure of the wing structure." Extract from "The men who flew the Mosquito" by Martin W. Bowman That is at least 12 aircraft lost, not including the number that crashed in Asia where De Haviland blamed weather and the debonding of structure. A subsequent investigation actually found this was not the case and aircraft in Europe suffered the same issues due to manufacturing flaws. This was solved by Mod 638, where a small strip of plywood was inserted along the span of the wing to ensure that the wing was properly bonded. Regardless my point is that the Typhoon has suffered from initial well deserved criticism (lack of performance, engine and structural issues) however even with these "fixed" the damage was done and the low survival rate as I previously mentioned, due to the missions it was employed on, sealed the fate of what was actually a capable aircraft. It was simple rushed into service too quickly to counter the Fw 190, if it had more time to develop then the story would be very different as can be seen by the Tempest and Sea Fury.

The engine was pretty reliable by Normandy. The Tail was never really fixed, but when you actually look at the number of cases where the tail was known to have detached it is actually pretty low. It wasn't like they were popping off every other flight. It was rushed into the front line too quickly, both the airframe and the engine.

Makes for an interesting read https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/151223 Brave to land it, shame it was all for naught.

Interestingly in "Terror in the starboard seat" by Dave McIntosh he mentions using the system twice (Page 70 and 117) and both times it worked successfully, obviously they can't use the engine aftwards. Perhaps the system is different in the B-17? Different retardants used... I do recall reading that some crews of B-17s removed the fire extinguishers as they were deemed useless and would rather have the reduction in weight... I hope statistics from the B-17 system won't be used as a baseline for all extinguishers as it sounds like they were particularly useless

This is where I raised the issue regarding Radio Equipment... Looking into Early V Late differences... we have late war features present on the Underside of the aircraft... the "Additional Access Covers" see the landing gear doors. There is also the bulged navigator side window that equipped late versions....

Now you have highlighted it I am seeing it more often... Just reading further into this, correct me if I am wrong but if we had the GEE system and whip antenna then this aerial tube would not be installed... See these profiles.... This is rather frustrating as I raised this point numerous times over the last two years... We have a weird mid way Early and Late war design.

Agreed, the lack of GEE in particular stings which is a shame as it would be great to see it modelled as they have done a fantastic job on the R1154 & T1154. I have been looking for the landing gear manual lever, in fact I had assumed this winch was part of that system... where is the manual landing gear located? I have never seen this before, do you have any other pictures?

Success! Designed the body. Fortunate to have a friend with a 3D printer, rheostat winding fit perfectly! Fit perfectly and it works, as it was only a prototype it was only a rough print and some parts have snapped now so a few small tweaks to improve the design. Very happy as all I had was my old mans micrometre Not even digital

This is a slightly better picture... I can actually remove the rheostats winding. So if I 3D print the base and hook up a Potentiometer to the Wiper I will get the feeling of actually turning the dimmer and won't have to destroy anything in the process!

That is absolutely fantastic, thank you so much! The Rheostat is present, just my terrible phone camera...

I was inspecting it earlier and I can't see how the wiper connects to the contact (white wire). You can see the Solder and wires from the coil on the other contacts. Unfortunately my multimeter died on me the other day so I haven't had the chance to do a proper check.

Thanks will need it, I am trying to make a modular design so I can shift things around depending on the aircraft flown. I will start a thread once I have got a bit closer to completing the design stage. Already have genuine Air Ministry switches... Not sure if I will be able to get the Dimmer working at the moment unfortunately.

Already in the middle of designing my own I prefer to use metal when I can, non of this horrible plastic stuff Looking to make a casting of a Mossie Stick so I can swap when needed.

Hi Chaps, I could do with some help regarding the wiring of an old Air Ministry Dimmer Switch. I was hoping that it might register like a potentiometer, however as expected it isn't being acknowledged by my Leo Bodnar Board. Any advice would be welcome. Pictures to follow... sorry for the image quality.... I could strip out the internals and hook up a potentiometer but that would be sacrilege.

A rather complex solution. I will check it out. Thanks

Yes precisely my point. We have an up and a down button but in reality there is up, neutral and down positions. I am trying to recreate the flap lever panel, however because it is a Pneumatic system it is quite difficult to model how it works in reality. Unfortunately I don't see how ED can resolve this issue without causing arguably worse problems in operating the flap.

I hope that one day we will get a ww2 specific overhaul of the comms system including things like this. Reflected has been doing a great job filling in the blanks in the meantime.

So tell me where is the neutral button... As explained they didn't want to add one for obvious reasons so what we PHYSICALLY have to do is press the up button which then acts as a neutral button temporarily when the lever is down and vice versa.

Unfortunately we don't have GEE, OBOE has been recreated with scripts by Reflected for his upcoming campaign. We really should have GEE though, the vast majority of FB.VI were equipped with them. See...

No it is not, in reality you only needed to move the lever to neutral when at the desired flap angle (If you want full flap it will go back to neutral once at 50degrees, as can be seen in the videos). We have to press the flap up button to stop the flap, it is correctly modelled when using the mouse as you can set it to neutral manually. When using buttons as we have no neutral and introducing a neutral button will cause it's own set of headaches (i.e. having to hold the button down) so they have got around it by having us hit the up button.

It's a guard and like it or not is correctly modelled. You could use voiceattack to move it when holding the flap button down.. At least I heard of people using voiceattack so. Say press 1 open the guard, press for two seconds lowers the flaps. I think you are missing the issue I am addressing. As it is a Pneumatic system it does not translate to digital particular well... if you want to stop the flap at say 15 degrees right now you have to press the up button. In reality you would just move the lever back to neutral.

If there is any truth to that it would be a shame, ED have done it a great service.

Just want to add my voice to the chorus. Hmmm, just was looking back at a video I stumbled across on youtube... At the 2:09 mark you can see the landing gear retract and the lever snap back to neutral. At the 6:18 mark you can see the Flap Reach 50 Degrees and snap back to neutral. So... How it is currently modelled is perfectly correct. The problem being how does one go about creating such a system in DCS without causing problems, what we have is fine if all you want to do is raise or lower the flaps fully for example. The problem occurs if you want to only lower the flaps to say 15 for take off... using the mouse is tricky but you can achieve it. Using the buttons is odd... you would have to use the up position to stop the movement which is not correct, a neutral button would get around this but then you can't use a momentary button for down otherwise you would have to keep the button pressed down... which is not accurate. This is going to take some thought when I come to make the panel.