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horseback

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About horseback

  • Birthday 09/16/1953

Personal Information

  • Flight Simulators
    FSX, Il-2 '46, Cliffs of Dover, Rise of Flight, Battle of Stalingrad
  • Location
    Mount Palomar, CA
  • Interests
    This!
  • Occupation
    Support at Mt Palomar Observatory
  1. Should have waited for the concrete to dry. cheers horseback
  2. In the sim, as in real life, the throttle was limited from full extension by a wire to prevent the engine from being worn out (or exploding) prematurely. Most operations, even in combat, did not need that last little bit of power. War Emergency Power is just that; you only used it in an emergency, and activated it by pushing the throttle through and past the wire barrier on the throttle to push the engine into the 'red'. In the sim, by pushing 'E' (or whatever button on your HOTAS you assign it to) with the throttle at the wire 'breaks' the wire and gives you that last extra bit of power/performance. The visual representation of your throttle will move forward to the stops. You can take it out of WEP by pulling your throttle back a bit, but it will still be there for more use up to a total of I think 10 minutes(?) in that flight if needed. cheers horseback
  3. Just my two cents; at higher alts, the air is much, much thinner. This not only affects the amount of oxygen that you need to run your engine, it affects how much lift your wings generate at a given speed. It's a lot like you are flying at lower alts with the speed indicated by your instruments; if you have superior low speed handling, you might have some advantages over the guy whose aircraft starts getting harder to fly precisely once the speed dips below a certain line--assuming, of course that he cannot generate a higher speed at that altitude. The specialized high altitude aircraft of that era had extended wings; think of the Spitfire Mk VII which not only had some extra 'plumbing' for the engine, but the extra pointy wing tips added. Or think of the early U-2 or the Canberra recon versions--extended wings. Until you're going at speeds mostly attainable by jets, you need a certain amount of wing surface to give you anything like the amount of control you take for granted below about 6000m, and the propeller fighters of WWII couldn't quite generate that sort of speed, and things got progressively sloppier the higher you went. As others have pointed out, the ai controlled aircraft fly at a degree of perfection reserved for Jesus and the Angels in real life, so they're going to beat a human player's brains out 99 out of 100 times. cheers horseback
  4. After over 10 years of using TrackIR and assigning the F8 and F12 keys to my CH Pro Throttle, I found that CH Manager has decided not to cooperate with Windows 10 any more --at least on my computer. I had already begun the migration to a Thrustmaster Warthog, and just found the Target software to be a pain to learn and use, and I was getting a bit desperate. I started the TrackIR up, and tried changing the buttons assigned to center and pause TrackIR on the profile I have for DCS--and it turns out that they can be assigned directly to a button on your joystick by clicking on the hotkeys section, selecting 'center' or 'pause' in the 'Action' dropdown menu and then clicking on the 'key' button. This will result in a GUI that asks you to enter the desired hotkey or button for the desired action, center, pause, etc. Press the joystick or HOTAS button you want to use for that action, and you are good to go. Repeat as necessary for the other actions you want assigned to your joystick/hotas, save that profile, and there you are; works like a charm. And it only took me 12 years of using TrackIR to find this out. I'm sure you guys are all faster learners than me, but I thought I'd share this, just in case. cheers horseback
  5. I curse waaaaay too much for that to work for me. cheers horseback
  6. Depends on how far you dive, doesn't it? You should build more kinetic energy sooner in a Jug than in other WWII aircraft, so you will have more speed combined with all that weight to add to your basic climb capability for a pull up into a zoom climb. Whether the DCS model permits this, I do not know, but it might be worth a try or two. As for a quick look back, it sounds as though you don't have or aren't using the 8 position Point Of View(POV) hat switch that comes with most joysticks; I use TIR myself, but when I did use the hat switch (in the long ago WWII combat sim that shall not be named), I also assigned other buttons to 'Look Up' and "Look Down' --using these in combination with the hat switch allowed me almost full coverage of the sky and my cockpit. Clicking the Up or Down button at the same time as the 135 degree position on the hat (for example) raised or lowered my 'line of sight' 45 degrees. Might be worth a try. cheers horseback
  7. Johnson's second P-47 ('Lucky') was reputed to have been greatly souped up; it was acknowledged to be easily the fastest razorback in the 56th until another pilot borrowed it & put it into the 'drink'. You may not be able to duplicate what he recorded doing with that aircraft in his book, even with a much more powerful version we get in DCS World. As regards upper body strength, in that generation, most men did a lot of very physical work from an early age and then did a lot of sports on top of that. One of my father's older brothers was the state of Ohio's high school (ages 14-18 yrs) heavyweight wrestling champion his final year during the late 1930s, the man was no more than 170 cm (5'7") tall and he weighed 100kg/220 lbs when he was in his early fifties--and he wasn't fat at all (and he lived to celebrate his 90th birthday). He was relatively typical of the best of his generation. Johnson was a wrestler too, you may recall. You need a lot of upper body strength to excel in that sport, even in the lower weight classes. Most countries' air forces selected the cream of their youth for their pilots, and if you check, the vast majority of the aces were outstanding athletes before they started flying. cheers horseback
  8. The manual (p.50) states that the hot exhaust is also used to heat the air going to the carburetor in a heat exchanger system when there is danger of the carburetor icing up; this indicates to me that however the exhaust is routed out, some portion of it is always diverted, and the sound from the manifold is going to be muffled regardless. Some is also diverted to the guns as well, to keep them from freezing at high alts. The exhaust just doesn't have the 'clean' route out of the engine most other types have. Very cool picture though; where's the display located? cheers horseback
  9. I just watched the Flying the P-47 collection from Zeno's Warbird Drive-In yesterday; I don't recall the specific reason the Captain narrating that section used, but I noticed that the link from the throttle to the Prop pitch only goes forward--you could push the Prop RPM forward with a throttle increase if they were linked, but you couldn't pull it back with a throttle decrease. Truth in advertising here--the model they were discussing was a razorback with water injection, but no wide bladed props, so call it a pre-1944 model. The US insignia were roundels with stars, so that probably puts it before late summer of 1943; domestic training commands weren't nearly as concerned with the latest marking requirements as the combat units were. cheers horseback
  10. You underestimate my knowledge base; it is well known that the 354th FG was assigned to the Ninth Air Force, and was given the first draft of new Merlin Mustangs by what was officially labelled a 'mistake'. I suspect a senior Supply Corps officer who had been a senior accountant two or three short years before had the ship load of Mustangs dropped into his lap, and not knowing better, looked at the chart listing 'Groups, Fighter' that had just arrived and gave the new airplane type to the guys going to the 'new' 9th Air Force, because he knew that all the fighter groups in the 8th AF flew P-47s. When the Commanders of the 8th AF and 8th Fighter Command learned of this assignment, gaskets were blown, irrevocable oaths were spoken, threats were made and Hap Arnold got a telegram marked 'urgent' within hours. Arnold in turn telegramed General Quesada, commanding the 9th AF, asking pointed questions and suggesting that remedial action be taken. RIGHT NOW, please. The upshot was that the 9th Air Force 'loaned' the 354th Fighter Group to 8th Fighter Command in exchange for an incoming P-47 Group (and rumor has it that several cases of Johnny Walker exchanged hands as well), and the 354th stayed under 8th Air force Command until sufficient numbers of Mustangs reached the 8th AF that they could be released. Also, the former accountant was not court martialed and shot, as he undoubtedly deserved, from the standpoint of certain 8th AF fighter pilots. the return to 9th AF command occurred on 15 June 1944, from which point they were doing the tactical close air support over France that they had originally been brought in for. They continued to fly Mustangs until the end of November when 'someone' took away their Mustangs and inflicted P-47s on them, which they grudgingly flew until late February of 1945, getting their Mustangs back after much complaining and string-pulling. The point of all this is to say that while the 354th was with the 8th Air Force (and doing the bulk of their scoring), they were receiving 150 octane when it became available to the 8th AF. I'm sure that they were cut off immediately after returning to the 9th's order of battle. As for the RAF thingie, it was more or less an assumption based on the knowledge that the RAF did test & approve the stuff and that RAF Mustang and Spitfire wings did use it at some point. As I said before, it was a new development of the refiners' art, and was initially available in limited quantities. It was therefore doled out to the higher priority units in the 8th AF, and then to our loyal friends and allies (probably after much kicking and screaming). cheers horseback
  11. 8th AF fighters using 150 octane routinely maintained an availability rate of over 90%; their German counterparts were not doing nearly as well and probably wouldn't have even if they had the needed parts easily available (or weren't getting their field bombed and strafed every couple of days). The important thing about the H model was that it was almost 10% lighter empty and finally made the aerodynamic improvements to use the greater power of the Merlin over the basic design's intended Allison V-1750. It wasn't just faster, it had much improved acceleration and the maneuverability that a better power to weight ratio gives you. Pilot reports from that era say that it regained the docility and predictability of the P-51A while improving on the P-51D/K's performance and overall lethality. cheers horseback
  12. 9th AF Mustang groups were decidedly in the minority in that air force (two, maybe three groups out of 15?--and there were initially more P-38 groups than Mustangs in that air force) until the winter of 44/45 and the 150 octane was going to the groups that did the majority of air to air--in the 8th AF and for the RAF fighter Wings flying out of the Channel bases, as I've pointed out above. From the standpoint of the 9th AF fighter groups, encounters with any German fighters were rare after the D-Day period. Plus, the record is pretty clear that almost every USAAF fighter group in combat encouraged their ground crews to 'soup up' their engines' performance, and the techniques used to get that extra bit of power or range were widely promulgated, officially and unofficially. I note that there is nobody addressing the performance of the K-4 model in game, compared to the actual standard performance of the type in actual combat; German pilot accounts make it clear that aircraft build quality and reliability were generally poor, even worse than previous models that had a near 30% 'down for repairs' rate in 1943, compared to Allied aircraft in RAF and USAAF units that were consistently in the 90% range (despite the P-38's poor record) while flying much longer missions than the opposition. The 109's flight model is based on ideal factory standards, possibly leavened with the results obtained from captured examples brought back and repaired/modified with American or British parts to make them safe to fly--and using better quality fuel and lubricants than was available to the Axis when the aircraft were used. This is comparable to the reported 'superiority' of the Ki-84 'Frank once a few examples were captured, shipped to the US and repaired and baby-ed to the proverbial gnat's ass so that the US Navy could justify getting the F8F Bearcat a little sooner. The reality was that the Frank was poorly manufactured and unreliable after the initial, hand-made first examples were deployed in China and it never had worthwhile performance above 20,000 ft. And Japanese aviation fuels were worse quality than their German counterparts'. Pilots that fought the FW and the 109 to a standstill in 1943 with P-47s without water injection or paddle blade props were usually much more dangerous in a Mustang, particularly one that had burned off most of the fuel in its fuselage tank --which most comparisons insist on including in the combat weight of the P-51B/C/D/K whenever matching it against its Axis opponents. The base models of the P-51 (with high octane fuels) were more than effective enough in the Spring/Summer of 1944 to justify not developing and fielding the 'F' model immediately and taking their time to come out with the 'H' model. Power to weight and wing loading aren't the only factors to consider in a fight; like the Spitfire, the Focke-Wulf and F6F, the Mustang was very responsive, comfortable and easy to master. Flight sims don't reward the ergonomics or comfort of the cockpit the way reality does, much less the range of vision, nor is there any 'seat of the pants' input to help you keep the ball centered. And that's another thing--the Mustang didn't require the amount of trimming that a spring centered flight sim stick demands--stick and rudder forces were so light that most pilots of the era found it easier and more convenient just to ignore fiddling with the extremely sensitive trim tabs and keep the aircraft in 'trim' with stick and rudder, unless they were flying long distances. You'll have noticed what small (tiny, really) inputs are required to affect the aircraft in the sim, especially in the rudder and elevator; this placed no great load on the pilot once he set things up for normal flight conditions in the real thing, and the Mustang remained easily controllable in combat conditions except for a steep dive without a lot of trim adjustment (and the trim knobs were large, stiff, and 'clicked' into place, giving the real pilot a lot more feel on where his trim was than the average virtual pilot can hope for). Button trim inputs seem a bit 'lavish' to me, and I have tried curves and reduced saturation on my trim pots but they are still less predictable than I would like. Ultimately, what it boils down to is that we aren't getting a Mustang with even average wartime performance, and even if we did, much of the Mustang's basic real-life advantages are almost impossible to simulate (at this time). cheers horseback
  13. Taught by the great John S 'Jimmy' Thach. I think I have that video from a Disney Classics DVD and tried it on a flight of Betties in the original Il 2 '46; the AI gunners ate me alive for the first 50-60 repetitions of each approach until I got my approaches right, and continued to nail me from unconscionably long ranges in the rear approaches, especially when I was flying the F4F-4. The fact still remains that when the ai routine allows the 'gunner' to have absolutely accurate instantaneous range and vector data for his own and the attacking aircraft, he can (and will) hit you any time at almost any distance when you don't have time to vary your position angle between the time he fires and the time the bullets reach you; it's a simple geometry problem that your own traitorous computer uses against you in far, far less time than a real human doing the math in his head without the precise range/vector data while muscling a machine gun into position could ever be capable of. cheers horseback
  14. At lower altitudes the turbo isn't working as hard and I assume that most of the exhaust just by passes through the turbo ducting before reaching the exhaust stacks near the wing root; a longer trip at lower pressures than a 'normal' exhaust on a Corsair or Hellcat using the same engine with a different supercharging system. cheers horseback
  15. At the time that this fuel became available in useful amounts, escort fighters were encouraged to pursue enemy fighters down to ground level and expected to attack enemy facilities and units on the ground when returning to base after completing their escort responsibilities. The bombers essentially became bait to force the Luftwaffe to come up for the fighter force, which was then permitted to destroy them as an effective fighting force before D-Day. GEN Doolittle changed the rules when he took command of the 8th AF in January of 1944, and from that point, a much higher percentage of 8th AF victories were achieved below 20,000 ft, and not just ground kills. The limitation of the fuel to a 'a few' squadrons was because there wasn't enough to go around to units not directly in air combat over western Europe, so it was not supplied to the USSR, or units in the MTO, CBI or the Pacific. This was not unlike putting your first and best radar systems along the most threatened coasts before putting them in Northern Ireland, or stationing the limited numbers of Spitfire IX along the Channel coast stations in 1942. cheers horseback
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