Swoop73

Thanks, Merlin.... Interesting info. Amazing how much of this stuff is available to purchase. You could probably build up a pretty neat Mustang cockpit using the "real" front ends.

As a general rule, carb icing becomes less of a threat as the bore of the carb becomes larger. The T-6 doesn't even have a carb heat control, as I remember. Think of it this way. Icing conditions "Sometimes described as a Temp/dewpoint spread of less than 11C" and a quarter inch of ice forms in the carburetor. In a Cessna, the carb throat might be around 1.5 inches, so that ice buildup is a big deal. I don't know the throat diameter in the 51 but it must be 5-6 inches. That same ice deposit would hardly be noticed. This is an approximation. Not writing this with a Lycoming manual in my lap, but it's the general idea. I can find out from pilots who flew P-51's in appalling conditions in Italy. Never heard of carb ice being one of their worries. Losing control in clouds, mid air collisions and friendly fire were probably more feared than enemy action. I'll have to ask about carb icing.

One other way is to be close to the guy you're shooting. That would be an interesting thing to model. I know, in Aces High, You can take hits from enemy plane debris flying back. A Mustang pilot from the 325th I stay in contact with, Barrie Davis, shot up a German plane and was rewarded with enough oil on the wind screen he had to roll the canopy open and land looking out both sides.

I used to own a Cherokee 140 and one night, going to visit friends, I neglected to stow the primer. In most light planes, this is a brass pump you work kind of like a giant syringe. It locks closed after you give the engine a few shots of prime. Partly open it allows some raw gas to make it to the carburetor. The engine ran fine on the flight since it was making the mixture rich but not too rich. However, when I landed and was taxiing to park, my friends were going crazy. Under the plane my exhaust stacks were playing blue flame over the pavement. Wouldn't have been visible in daylight but really something at night. So... Yes. in theory the fuel burns in the cylinder but actually, if overly rich, the leftover fuel does make it out the stacks. Another reason for this would be valve overlap. I'm all for getting these little details in as they help establish a sense of emersion. Guess I won't be happy until a simulation is so exact I can't tell it from reality. That day is coming. :-)

Exorcet has a point. I have so much fun just flying the Mustang, I can count on the fingers of one hand how often I've been in a fight. Just fun doing low level cross country stuff, maybe set an AI Mustang and fly formation with it. Pull the power off at 6,000 ft. and see if you can dead stick it to a runway. Do a touch and go on the Carl Vincent. Millions of things to do...And the scenery is terrific up North. That's why you'll hardly ever see me use the word "game" here. :-)

I guess I just thought "randomizing" would be the simpler approach to making sure the same thing didn't happen over and over. Absolutely agree tying an event to conditions is best....Just figured harder to do. I wouldn't care, if DCS Mustang wasn't so darn good. It begs for adding little details that will push it over the top.

I would be interested if anyone can find any info on the antenna embedded in the vertical fin. My own guess is that this is the rear radar warning antenna that is connected to that horn shaped object on the top left panel. Very doubtful that this was ever in a WWII Mustang but not going to lose sleep over it. Per MP's question, though, it would be great if slight tweaks like removing the belly and homing antennas could be done by the skinners. I just got off the phone with Art Fiedler, a 325th FG Mustang ace, and he does remember some of them had a "homing" radio but it never got used. Hilariously, they were told by the brass..."We won't give you the frequency of the homing range because the enemy might get hold of it."

Looks neat but shouldn't be a regular occurrence. Those are stack fires and just mean it was a bit over-primed. I wonder if some effects could be randomized? I personally would love to see compression streamers off the wing tips once in a while. :-)

There were about a dozen TF 51's a few years ago. There is a TSO for the mod, I'm pretty sure. There are more today because people having Mustangs rebuilt are attracted to the TF. It's important to note- The TF-51 doesn't just have dual controls. It has a full rear cockpit. Also, the canopy is different, with more headroom in the back section. The altered canopy profile is the reason for the taller vertical fin as there is some airflow separation and a little less flow to the rudder. When I was in Crazy Horse almost a decade ago, I rode in both positions. The rear cockpit had no radio/nav stack but all the other instruments. You couldn't start the Merlin from the back and the guy in front had to handle the gear. I rode with both Ed Shippley and Lee Lauderback. Their biggest fear as instructors- The one thing they couldn't counteract was somebody getting on the brakes too hard. There will be more TF-51's every year.

I was told the whole prop assembly "4 blades plus hub" comes to 450 lbs. accelerating that in a go around is bad enough and many are taught to just go to 40 inches to help avoid a torque roll. I was told 2700 RPM on final but as has been pointed out other real world Mustang pilots may use slightly different settings. One thing.. Setting RPM really low does not cut down on torque, it makes it worse as that huge prop is taking a bigger bite out of the air. Also, listen to Squirrel. Aerobraking from a flattened prop is a real thing and the courser the pitch the harder to keep it slow while coming down final.

In 2007 in Columbus, OH, I was a legend Host at the Gathering of Mustangs. As a volunteer, one of my jobs was to pick up arriving air show guests at the airport. Jim Brooks was the first person I was assigned. That half hour drive went by in a heartbeat. What an amazing life. After the War, he was a test pilot. We've all seen those 1950's photos of jet fighters "F94's?" launching off the back of a truck with a JATO bottle. He was in the plane for several of those launches. What a ride that must have been. Amazing. Great guy.

You're right. In the outfit I'm most familiar with, the 325th, there were some pilots who preferred the C model, which of course is the same as the B. Slightly thinner wing and greenhouse canopy made it just a little faster and, some thought, a better gun platform. The drawback? The 50 cals had to be mounted partly on their sides which made a tighter turn for the ammo feed into the receivers. In a fight the guns were very likely to jam if you were firing and pulling more than 3 1/2 G's. They added electric motors to help move the belts but the D models had wings thick enough to take the Brownings upright. Wonder if they would model this? Sure would like to see this version....and about a hundred other WWII planes. I like jets but DCS is well on the way to the best WWII sim ever...if they just follow through.

OK... Guess I've been fixated on "Takeoff from Parking hot", thinking it was "parking lot" Time for new glasses.... :-)

Yeah..... Been driving me crazy too. :-)

RPM is prop pitch control, yes. The Mustang is geared just about 2:1, i.e., 3,000 RPM on engine "What you see on tachometer" is close to 1,500 RPM on the prop. I know many of you know this but Prop RPM needs to stay below the speed of sound for efficiency. Then it's all about prop diameter. A Piper Cherokee 140 might be at full power at 2,700 RPM. The engine not being geared would be the same. The prop tips based on diameter, would not be all that far from sonic speed. The Mustang's 450 lb, 11 foot prop approaches this tip velocity at around 1,500. That's why almost all big, high horsepower prop assemblies are geared to the engine if it's a recip. These are just round numbers, folks. If someone finds the P-51D in 1944 had an 11 foot, 5 1/4 inch prop....Go easy on me. :-)

The prop governor runs on engine oil. Get shot up and loose oil pressure and the prop probably goes to flat pitch. Also is supposed to happen if too long inverted "negative G's" as the oil scavenger can't pick up. Maybe they model this? Just wondering.

Echo, what I was saying is Stallion51, in Kissimmee, FL, along with David Gray at the Fighter Collection are among the very best at rebuilding and maintaining P-51's. Stallion 51 is owned and run by Lee Lauderback and his Brothers. Mustangs are pretty much what they do. No, they aren't producing factory new Mustangs, that I know of, but now that you mention it, I wouldn't be surprised if they or somebody else was thinking about it. Eventually this will be absolutely necessary.

Hi Mike, The 51 was a work in progress and depending on the year various items may or may not have been installed... Not to mention the way contemporary birds are all a little different as their owners put in dozens of different radios and nav equipment as well as change the location of many controls and switches. My Mustang manual is US Air Force publication T.O. No. 1F51D-1 (Formerly AN 01-60JE-1) Published in 20 January, 1954. This would be for late model Mustangs and you're probably correct that, in the DCS Mustang, there probably is not an accumulator bottle in the right wheel well. I don't know when that would have been installed. I did try cycling the flaps while shut down and parked on the ramp in the DCS sim and I could raise and lower the flaps through about 4 cycles before the hydraulic gauge suddenly dropped to zero and the flaps froze. That seems to mean the DCS people are modeling some kind of pressure accumulator. Don't put too much faith in any manual as there are many places where the DCS model doesn't necessarily follow. Some of this will get fixed and some won't. I have no real problem with that since most P51's are at least a little different from each other. Many times during the War, North American made little changes. My friend, Barrie Davis, of the 325th FG had a D model with no dorsal fin one week and then it was added as a field mod. I was writing from memory last week, but finally located my manual. In section III, Hydraulic Power System Failure: "If the engine driven pump fails and the rest of the system is intact, enough pressure will be supplied by the accumulator to lower flaps fully provided the pressure gauge shows at least 800 psi." Again, I'm not trying to come across as some kind of Mustang expert. If you want experts, go to Duxford, UK, or Kissimmee, FL, where the Lauderback Brothers crank out prize winning P-51's by the truckload. I'm just a guy who LIKES Mustangs and wishes he was a millionaire. :-)

Some thoughts.... Re: the flaps thing, Merlin.... No, they wouldn't come down if you're in flight trying to get the gear down by pulling the T handle. It removes hydraulic pressure from the system. This pressure is what holds the flaps up and also the gear doors. It used to hold the gear itself up until a tragic accident with the 325th FG during dive bombing tests. The left main came partially out in the pull out and yawed the plane at high speed causing loss of the vertical stab and other parts. The plane went in at 400 mph. After that, uplocks were installed to hold the gear up. So.. Sorry if I'm wandering, here, but on the ground, pulling the T handle, also called the hydraulic dump, opens the system and nothing is left to hold the flaps or gear doors "clamshells" up. They slowly open from gravity. In flight, The flaps would stay up from aerodynamic forces. It takes a lot of force to drive them down in flight. There is a 450 psi accumulator bottle in the right side gear well that is supposed to be good for one flap cycle in an emergency...otherwise you simply land without flaps. As to "configuration" Just about all modern Mustangs have the rear tank removed. A Mustang is too valuable to most owners not to have a rear seat. That rarely means rear controls. Taking out the tank, armor plating, very heavy old-fashioned radio gear, etc. and adding a seat generally all evens out. Understand that modifying any airplane does not mean that you have to change the CG. You would just move stuff like the heavy battery around to keep it in range. Crazy Horse is indeed the bird I got to fly "3 trips to Kissimmee over 3 years and most of my life savings". It cost me any chance at retiring and I consider it a fair deal. First flight in the back seat with Ed Shipley and subsequent ones with Lee Lauderback culminating in three hour and a half flights in the front seat where I had to start the Merlin and handle the gear and flaps. First flight in 2005. This was actually the P-51 checkout syllabus we were using. While I knew I couldn't afford the complete checkout, I made it half way. That just left high altitude training, various advanced emergency procedures, etc. What we did included about a million stalls since these are the killer in the Mustang. I got to do stalls with flaps and gear down "which the sim models just about perfectly" It was all about stall recognition and I was made to fly in and out of the pre-stall buffet constantly. One drill was to roll inverted at around 270 mph and pull into a split S but pull aggressively enough to keep the bird in the buffet all the way through the split S. Called "tracking the buffet". Lots of accelerated stalls at 250 and above. No big deal... Like this sim, just relax the back pressure and you're flying again. At high speed, the turbulence off the wing was severe enough to make the skin on the stab oil can and you not only felt the buffeting, you could hear it. We did many "dozens" of touch an go's and this is why you hear me saying how easy and controllable the Mustang was on the runway. Touching down at around 90 on the mains, tail up, and then adding power "40 inches at first and then 55 with prop at 2,700" it was a little swervy due to my inexperience but never close to out of control. The rudder on the Mustang is VERY powerful and is effective at low speeds where the ailerons are totally ineffective and the elevator marginal. By the way... we were taught to start the Merlin with the oil and coolant doors closed and on auto... they would get the engine warm faster and then open up to maintain temps. just a different policy.. Not done everywhere. Just saying it worked well. Going over some points about war mustangs versus modern configs, Just some thoughts. It' been almost a decade, so go easy on me.. I'm just repeating some of the stuff I was told while training. People wonder about take off's in contemporary Mustangs where 100 octane gas generally dictates 55 inches MP instead of 60 and nobody would ever use WEP... It all balances out. Today's Mustangs are several thousand lbs lighter and take off and climb at 55 inches works out to at least as good as a WWII bird. Crazy Horse and the TF-51's are not tail heavy due to the added rear cockpit. They balance pretty much normally. If it was tail heavy, we never would have done all the aerobatics and stalls. The several inch taller vertical fin does not change the flight characteristics over the stock Mustang...It keeps them the same. The TF canopy is said to come from a T-33 but that could just be rumor. It does have added head room in back and this kills some of the airflow over the vertical tail, thus the added area. According to my instructors there is no significant difference between the TF-51 and regular Mustangs other than the fact that they are all at least slightly different. You will probably never see any two civilian Mustangs with identical cockpits. In Crazy Horse, the oil and coolant door switches are on the right where the ancient WWII radio controls used to be. Well... That's it. Sorry if I kind of went all over the place but I've been reading all the reasons and theories for different things in this thread and others and just wanted to, hopefully, throw a little light on the subject. I'm no Mustang expert but just want people to know what a beautiful flying bird the real plane is and that it is nowhere near as hard to fly as most sims. I think the DCS Mustang is the best ever done but there are a few things that could be made better and that would make it unassailable. I personally have little interest in playing a "game". To me, this DCS bird is a terrific P-51 simulation and I use it to recapture a time I can never go back to. :-)

Just some thoughts Reading this thread and several other related ones, I respectfully think many people are over thinking the whole thing. First, let me say that I find the DCS World Mustang to be the best ever done. But... That doesn't mean it's perfect. Any attempt to duplicate a real world aircraft on a desktop computer is bound to fall short somewhere. I have been flying flight sims since the TI994A days when the planes and terrain were in wire frame and control was the arrow keys. Look what we have today....and we're still bitching. To those who have pointed out the need to spend serious time setting proper control travels and curves... absolutely correct. If you're not willing to put in the time to set it up, well... You will never be happy with it. I only have a very few problems I couldn't fix with the control setup. One is the speed the handbook says to raise the tail at... I think it's a typo in converting from metric, maybe. Why would it say raise the tail at 100 mph when the Mustang comes off the ground at around 80? Then there's the bad swerving that goes out of control when you're up on the mains for take off or trying to wheel land it. Here, I may be saddled with a too slow computer but not sure. Getting 20-30 frames and flies beautifully in normal flight. The inner gear doors come down on the ramp after shut down when you pull the T handle, which is correct, but the flaps stay up. They should drop down too as hydraulic pressure is removed from the system. Easy fix, I would think. I'm well aware of the differences between a real plane and flying at one's desktop with the short sticks we use. That said, here is my wish list to put this amazing P-51 sim over the top and make it unbeatable. Tweek the steering to be more controllable on take off and landing for those of us who aren't running 50 fps. Most Mustangs now days are wheel landed to keep better aileron control... These planes are close to 2 million dollars now. Yes, everybody landed 3-point in the War but they didn't have to pay for the occasional ground loop. Every crash including ground loops seems to end in an explosion and fire... Common, guys... :-) Accelerated stalls are close but the real P-51 has more pronounced buffet. Also, for all of you saying the Mustang had vicious stall behavior- Not really. It would snap roll in the direction the ball was off but at least in normal stalls, if the ball was centered it would break straight ahead. This sim does model recovery beautifully... just relax the back pressure and you're flying again. Just a bunch of notes after flying the DCS Mustang for the past 3 weeks. Again, don't jump on me.. I love it and am going to work with darn little sleep some days. By the way, I'm not saying all this as theory. I have 7.5 hours in a P-51 at Stallion 51 in Florida and the first hour was with Ed Shippley.. Ever hear of him? :-) He'd be the first to tell you you can get the tail up at 60 on take off and track the centerline with razor precision. I have done split S's from altitude, holding Crazy Horse in the stall buffet all the way through. That's an exercise they teach. Take off's and landings? Probably close to 20. I'll never be able to go back... Burned through my savings... but absolutely love this sim because it comes so close to the real thing. Sure wish it didn't swerve so much on the runway though. :-)

For you folks wondering about gear coming down at high speed, the aerodynamic load is brutal. Certainly the inner clamshells would depart the airframe at sufficient speed. I have heard first hand from several 325th FG "Checkertail Clan" pilots who recount in detail what happened when they were experimenting with dive bombing in the early model Mustangs. At one time the plane had no gear uplocks. Someone had decided hydraulic pressure alone would be sufficient. Plenty of aircraft use this but maybe not such a great idea in a fighter. As told by Barrie Davis, who was parked on a bridge along with Jerry Edwards, one of the best pilots the 325th had made a practice dive carrying no bombs...just making notes on speeds and pull outs....On one pull out, due to the high G's, the left main gear started to extend. This yanked the plane sideways sufficiently to cause the vertical stab and rudder to depart the aircraft with instant destruction being the result. It was Barrie Davis' accident report that got the North American plant to engineer a field upgrade kit to install uplocks in all Mustangs. This story is in "Checkertails, Part 2" an all-volunteer documentary of the 325th FG by Neil Pugh "MysticPuma" with the help of several other talented people. It includes many first person interviews. All who flew them loved the Mustang.