PilotNL

Ok sorry to bother again, but seriously, that free castering tail wheel is a pain in the backside for taxiing. Just a request for any engineers out there, could you put a little less grease on the bearing, so it is still free-castering, but that it may take more than 0.1N to move it. Thanks! :pilotfly:

Ok! first of all, Merry Christmas and thanks for all the kind comments! It took me another many broken aeroplanes, but indeed I needed to adjust a few things: I now take-off with full right rudder trim (thanks for that manual! epic!) Pitch trim at 1/2 division down, half aileron right, hard back-pressure. Franctic efford on the rudder to go straight (and I was thinking the supercub is a handful!). Just before airspeed is alive, ease on the stick. get off at 90knots, accelerate in ground effect. Brace for the 120mph killer tug-under, but with anticipation its not so much a problem. 140kts, start breathing again and consider cleaning up, powerup to 12 boost, canopy and trims. I must say, I have done some basic aerobatics: Half roll and slpit-S, Loop, lazy eight, spin, hammer-head and stall turn, chandelle, spiral and side slip, it behaves nicely all through and even an unintentional inverted spin (I was being naughty) was easily recoverable. I may or may not have gone through a hangar or two as well. Jolly good aeroplane above 140mph! So again thanks all, I will keep practising and hopefully one day see you either on the wing tip or the cross-hairs. blue skies!

Hey all, I have spent the last 8 hours just trying to fly a circuit with the spit. It is a great challenge as expected, which is part of the fun for sure. I have a question though about the directional stability and effectiveness of the controls. For some reason I can't get a combination where the aircraft is capable of going straight. During taxi at low power, (1100 RPM), after centring the tail-wheel with the differential brakes, I expect that when I release the brake, keeping back pressure, the rudder should be effective enough to at least roll in a straight line. It is not, however, but even the slightest dap of the brakes, (I have tried with buttons and with an analogue input, same results) there is no way of actually keeping it going straight, not even for a second. I know that the CG is aft of the wheels and hence when there is more drag on the wheels, the tail wants to go forward. However with the brakes fully released, full aft pressure on the stick, 1100 RPM to blow the tail wheel down and get some airflow over the rudder, still there is not enough rudder authority to go straight. to me that doesn't seem right. I have attempted over a hundred take-off's now, I can manage to stay on the runway about 3/10 times. I get airborne about 7/10 times. I have not managed to find the magic combination of powersetting, airspeed and pitch. when I slowly apply 8lb of MP, the aircraft goes off the runway to the left with full right rudder. Only when I am already off the runway, the rudder becomes effective but it's already too late. So I have tried to first gently apply 0 or 4 lb of MP but then the aircraft always swings left and right resulting in wingtips bouncing off the deck. I'm not saying that you haven't modelled the spitfire correctly, but at the least with my hardware in its current configuration, it is almost uncontrollable. I have watched a few YouTube videos of real spitfires taking off, paying especially attention to flight control deflections. I haven't seen any videos where full deflection is required. Actually it looks like the stick is slightly checked forward from brake release and variable amount of right rudder is required to stay straight. I can't see the use of brakes of course from the outside, but I would think during take-off, surely using brakes shouldn't be required? Once airborne, the aircraft flies like the CG is slightly too far aft. Stick force per G is virtually zero which means that at a certain trim setting, the aircraft can fly 140 in trim as well as 300. With the CG a tiny wee bit forward, the aircraft would fly much better I'm sure. and this is not cheating, In real aircraft there are often tail or nose ballast weights that can be added or removed to adjust the CG. Of course you already knew that! :pilotfly: Looking forward to your feedback and the golden tip to get me off the ground safely! My hardware BTW: VKBsim Gladiator, CH pedals, CH throttle quadrant. Cheers PilotNL

I think I found a way to lock the tail. Apply some power, nearly go into nose stand, cut the power and slam the tail into the ground. now it's broken in a convenient position for take-off :P