DartzIRL

If she's spinning she's an anchor. If it's seized it's a pig but not as bad as a rotating engine that's absorbing masses of energy rather than a stationary element Not diminishing. It's still a challenge.

If you can feather the prop or the [prop stops spinning, it's straightforward. She'll fly on one engine smoothly. It gets interesting when the prop-feathering doesn't work and you've this massive drag anchor off one side of the plane and you're running the other engine at 110% to keep it flying. And even then it's basically a slow crash.... Erroneous ignition timing might be too much boost for too little RPM, or leaning the engine out at high boost --- but I've seen it on a Dora with automatic control where I managed to run it at exactly the RPM it wasn't supposed to be run at.

Flying with a windm illing engine is basically just a long, drawn out fall. It does not want to do it at all.

Seems like he says to do what I've been doing which is set the power with the brakes on, getting rolling and then punch it airliner style. You could even go to full power and it won't pitch forward like any of the other big-noses. That said, it does seem a lot more controllable than it should be at low speeds with a windmilling engine -at least going by description

When it's feathered it stops. It did work in one mission. I had ignition off, and just hit the feather button while doing nothing else --- not touching throttle or RPM and it stopped in seconds. If it's wiondmilling it's producing drag

Was playing around with flying it on one engine. Shut down the right engine by closing fuel, shutting the throttle and turning the mags off. Then hit the Prop-feather button. It remained in for the next ten minutes or so but never properly feathered --- the engine continued to windmill at high RPM and basically acted like a boat anchor that couldn't be trimmed out. Managed to land it with the left engine pushed to boiling point to keep the airspeed at a controllable level but it really didn't like flying like that. It basically lurched through the sky and threatened to frisbee the entire time. Of course, when the engine finally stopped on the ground the feather process on the prop completed.

It's tough at low airspeeds and high power settings - and starts getting really noticeable in a high power climb when climbing past 25,000ft and around 200knots or so. It's very easy to get it into oscillations trying to get ahead of it.

Probably explains why it gets so weirdly wobbly up above 35k under power. 2500rpm, 40in of boost, 200knots or so and it just feels really unstable. It doesn't trim at all properly or want to stabilise.

I'm reminded of doing track days on my car. The manufacturer says that the engine redline temperature is somewhere around 118 - that's the point where damage is all but guaranteed. The engine housings warp and it's basically a boat anchor after that. But, failure of the water seals starts becoming possible at around 105 - that's where the seal material begins to lose resilience. Sustaining these temperatures will increase the chance of damage - but doesn't guarantee it. Amusingly, the engine gauges read normal at this temperature and all the way up to around 110C. Anyway, there's a 15 degree window from where failure is possible, to where it is likely. The car is also fitted with a cooling system that is somewhat inadequate. It'll do 7000-7500rpm pulls all day, but cavitation sets in between 7500 and 9500. A few second-third gear runs on a tight track will have the cooling temperatures spiking rapidly - 1 hard lap is the limit. Knowing this, I monitored the temperatures - and the highest temperature I logged was 108 degrees. On a 28 degree day. Not too high. The engine failed over a year and 20,000k later due to damage done on that trackday. The seals had been degraded and coolant seeping into the oil slowly thinned it between changes and killed the main bearings. Engine limits are a funny thing, in that regard. Exceeding them doesn't necessarily mean immediate failure, but the longer they're exceeded, the higher chance of failure. Random death isn't really the best from a gameplay standpoint - and it seems like the modelling is tuned to be fairly severe on it - but it is realistic.

The rudder wakes up on most of the warbirds with enough throttle. Get some airflow from the engine. The spitfire is noticeably easier to takeoff at +12 or more - and the Mustang is incredibly stable with the trim set right. These things bite if you're too timid with them.

The Lion and the Sun is rediculously hard - it seems that Fishbed flies with some sort of nuclear energy - you can't even run it out of fuel Last time I tried it I ended up having it do a 180 flip right in front of me like something out of Stealth. It does not seem to loose energy. Then again, I've only just started actually trying to Fight with the Tomcat - I took about 10 or 12 attempts to beat the 3-v-1 3rd Gen constant peg mission (I broke the Jet 4 times, ran out of fuel or ammo twice trying to swat the fishbed and got swarmed by the Floggers, tagged by a missile, or surprised by one doing a bat-turn when I tried to Blow through. And then then replay of the succesful mission desynced about 5 seconds into the first dive to defeat the first missile

Noticeably longer than other modules - on the other of 8-10 minutes. But it does work fine once the wait is over. The odd stutter loading Jester for the first time and the usual twitching and freezing when weapons are fired, or the radio menu is opened by *anything* but these are normal.... CPU: Corei7-3610-QM RAM: 8GB, DDR3, 1833mhz (I think) GPU Nvidia GT650M HDD: 500GB slab o' spinnan rust OTOH - we're sort of below minimum spec here so I'm amazed it runs once it is loaded up....

One of the sole advantages of the xbox controller is that rudder work is easy enough. It's a lot like the Mig-21 in terms of difficulty. Maybe a little easier to land. But with much the same propensity for wandering off when you want to check the F-10 map - and without the 'Just fly straight and level' button on the stick. The hardest part I've found so far is the Jester menu. It doesn't map to an Xbox controller stick yet. That'd be dead ****ing handy if it did. Tomcat also has something vanishingly rare these days. Useful DLC that's available on launch.... EA would charge for that ****ing thumbwheel. It's definitely not the hardest plane to fly in the game. It seems to settle into the e-bracket easier than the Hornet for me. It's just that it'll wander a lot more on you if you don't watch it. But if you want something that likes to go off on its own try flying the K4, or Spitfire. Especially the K4 which has pitch trim - but you're always at the nose-down limit unless you're landing it. Anything that isn't a Hornet or a Mirage needs to be trimmed to keep going - the Tomcat is no different. If you want to learn the true value of Trim, take up a TF-51 and trim in three axis to let it fly itself. Until you change pitch, or throttle, or more fuel burns one side....

Well, they're similar in the same vein as most A-B's in the game. Either one would be an interesting addition. the Interceptor would be amusing because - if the fidelity is high enough - it could finally be used to answer the question... Could an SR-71 have been shot down by a Mig if the Black Line was just that bit too close to the airbase? That'd be a hell of an instant mission. From cold start, to take-off, to zoom climb, to firing off this massive IR-guided missile that the Blackbird doesn't have a countermeasure for..... and hoping it hits. that said, most people will merrily tuirnfiooght tomcats in their Foxbats. they'd do well to ask some Libyan pilots how effective that tactic was.

I still have a fierce grá for the YF-155's.... Either the 25's or the early 31's. They're both out of service in one way or another - the 25 especially is only sort of being used by the odd tinpot or some middle-eastern rebels fighting that tinpot. The 25 is a historical adversary for the Tomcat, doesn't fit in with the turn and burn meta and requires some skillful tactics to use correctly. It can also be effective even against 4th generation aircraft, if used by a pilot playing to its strengths, making fast attacks and using the aircraft's speed to evade technically better aircraft. Even at it's standard 2.83 redline (rather than the, the engines are a disposable element 3.2) it's still faster than anything in DCS. It's still higher flying. In hindisght, the missions where there's a use-case for it will probably be few and far between. Maybe if reconnaissance missions are a thing with proper ELINT capability. Or bombing from 80kft