Mogster

References are a major problem for Japanese planes. DCS Zero would probably be a goer, but much else?

Fantastic skin. Looks like a chubby Ki84...

That would be very very useful. If your engine stops it’s frustrating to have little idea why exactly.

The odd time you read reports from RAF or USAAF pilots who spent time at VVS airbases there’s always some raised eyebrows. They talk about engines not being warmed up, pilots just jumping in the cockpit and roaring away full throttle. No ATC, aircraft just taking off randomly from dispersed locations round the airfield, little apparent attention to wind direction on takeoff or landing. Really rough conditions at the fields, hardly any preparation for air operations. Little maintenance, engines just being run till they stopped then replaced. As you say it’s little wonder they had problems with the Merlins and Allison’s they received.

As others have said this sounds like duplicated controller assignments. With a new aircraft install I always find pitch and roll assigned to my pedals (check toe brake axis as well) as well as stick, etc. It’s best to check axis assignments before doing anything else, it only takes a couple of minutes.

WW2 carrier landing videos are so scary... I assume if after launch you detect a problem then you’re putting it down in the drink. The deck’s full, so unless you can fly round until your mates have launched then you’re going for a swim...?

if you read pilots accounts like “The Big Show” mostly they don’t admit to being scared by encounters with enemies in aircraft but they are terrified of enemies on the ground pointing a 20mm light Flak 38 at them. Light flak was very dangerous and pretty much impossible to counter.

Yes you’d expect it to have at least similar overall characteristics to the P47s radial. I agree it seems impervious to damage.

It’s surprising the prop didn’t fail. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160505-the-spitfires-that-nearly-broke-the-sound-barrier

From reports about flying the real thing, the tail is very light and noseovers and embarrassing prop strikes are a constant hazard. Search for “flying the Spitfire” or similar, they nearly always mention it. In fact if you read flight reports from other warbirds quite often when they mention the brakes if the tail is heavy they’ll say “not like the Spitfire”... I have the brake button mapped to the pinkie lever on my Warthog and quick press and release works OK. The brake key seems progressive, if you press and hold then pressure builds, if you press and release you only get light pressure.

It would be interesting to have a DCS La or Yak. I’m not sure a sim has really modelled all the manual systems these aircraft had. Fighting in an La with their high cockpit workload against FW and Me with their automation would be interesting. Yefim Gordon has the combat evaluation of the La 7 in mid September 44. He says performance was disappointing so a rapid series of changes were made to the aero and engine install. More units received aircraft in November 44 but the engine problems persisted. Again the K4 was a strange choice to represent the 109 series. Yes for better or worse we mostly have late war super props, apart from the Spit IX which was the dominant Spitfire version 44-45 and the A8 which was early 44. Then there’s the I16 on its own of course.

A few hundred were available, it seems most were delivered after the war, later in 1945. My point is that if you’re making historical WW2 scenarios with the La7 then you’re really restricted to 1945 only.

The engine may have been the same but the packaging can make a big difference. According to Yefim Gordon “Soviet Air Power in WW2” There were engine troubles in the initial operational evaluation, Colonel Ye. Gorbatyuk reported that his guys liked their planes but the engines were problematic. They weren’t fixed, operational deliveries continued and in early 1945 La7 squadrons were seeing 25% or greater unserviceability and reverting to other aircraft they had on station. Things only really improved when the units moved to Manchuria late in 1945. It’s no surprise there were aces on the type. There was always pressure within the Soviet Union for new equipment to be seen as a success. Results were important so the best pilots will have been given the new aircraft.

49, surprised to be a relative youngster Been around on and off since the Flanker days.

WW2?

It seems not many La7s actually participated in WW2. The ones that were issued to units were mostly unserviceable with broken engines. If you try to select the La7 in a WW2 sim you should enter the cockpit of an La5, because that’s what you’d be flying while your mechanics tried to fix your La7s engine... I always like to see the most widely used variants of aircraft in historical sims. In that case for 44-45 the La5 would be the most appropriate choice, as would the Yak 9. Assuming the aim is to produce historically WW2 accurate scenarios for the player. 1946-1950 Aye.

I thought the B17-G had the fire system removed from the engines as Boeing were desperately trying to lighten the aircraft?

Wasn’t the Soviet 7.62 aviation ammo explosive though? From the Maddox IL2 days I seem to remember pretty much everything the Soviets fired from their aircraft were grenade rounds. The ShKAS had a very high rate of fire also.

https://skiesmag.com/news/16252-flying-a-legend-html/ This suggests the Hurricane is much easier to handle on the ground, as you’d expect with the wide soft gear, it’s a larger, heavier plane so doesn’t nose over as easily and has more prop clearance. He does remark about some aerodynamic strangeness due to the 1930s first gen monoplane design and a sharp and unannounced stall with wing drop that can lead to a spin. A 172 with 303s this is not...

Really we need another couple of quality developers on board, making WW2 flyables AI and assetts. Development of DCS as a WW2 environment is glacially slow currently. There’s a clutch of 3rd party developers now but other than the Octopus Gs lovely I-16 nothing WW2 era has appeared from them, it’s all modern stuff. The F4U from Magnitude has a forum now but when will we see an actual release?It’s been in development for literally years, but even then we have no Pacific maps (I know it was used by the RN in the ETO) and very few naval assetts. DCS WW2 first became a thing in 2014... A2A seemed to be sniffing around 18 months ago but nothing has transpired. I keep hoping they’ll burst onto the scene with a completed P38, P40 or somesuch...

Just finished reader Tim Peake’s book, The UK astronaut and AH64 instructor. He mentions how he had DI’s Longbow on his PC when he was a teenager and how he found it surprisingly accurate when he came to fly the real thing.

Not just D-Day but on 4 occaisions and volunteered for 5...

In the 777 products at least the “autopilot” is the AI taking over control of the aircraft when you request it. ROF also has a time compress feature, the AI flies you plane then. You can compress a long flight into the action area. It is a useful feature for people that don’t have hours to expend flying realistic missions but don’t want to air start every time.

From a quick search it seems the Lanc, Halifax and B17 all had early autopilot systems. The system in the Lanc at least was capable of driving all control surfaces. Come to think about it wasn’t the Norden bomb sight linked to some form of autopilot?

Some of the longer range bomber FW 190s had autopilots iirc.