Engine temperature management

[Pikey]

Anyone able to share some rough RPM and max time settings for

1.) Cruise

2.) Climb

3.) Combat

 

And what affect does methanol have on those times?

 

I seem to have broken my engine dog fighting so I know the limits are there despite the automatic nature of the Dora. Now i'm cautious and the oil temp seems always at max.

 

Manual had next to nothing on this apart from throttling back to 3K after xyz.

[nervousenergy]

It's easy to break it dogfighting if you're constantly stalling it out. Dora relies (probably like every prop fighter) on a lot of air moving past the radiator, and if you're hanging there with little velocity it'll fry.

 

Keep the throttle wide open, and pull into a vertical stall, hanging on your prop till she starts to slide back, and watch the temp gauge. You'll be surprised how fast she spikes up once the plane stops moving. Keep that in mind if you're doing a hammerhead, or chasing a P-51 up into a vertical stall fight... drop the throttle as you lose those last bits of airspeed or you'll melt the engine.

[DieHard]

I mapped two buttons on my joystick that opens the cowl flaps for cooling and also closes them. The radiator runs ideally at 100 degrees Celsius, see the more detailed flight manual, not the Quicky manual. I keep my eye on the radiator temperature constantly as well as maintaining my situational awareness constantly as best I can. The oil temperature is the gage to the right of the radiator temp gage, it needs to be running between the two limit indicators. Right Shift + Right Control +Numpad 2 will give a look under the front dash to see the cowl flap knob turning when you activate it. Just a little bit open is enough and adjust as necessary. I think 40 degrees Celsius is the low limit for the radiator. If I maintain my radiator temperature I can run the engine full on until I run out of gas or battle damage. Boost and MW50 have their own limits to also run within.

 

This is currently 1st Beta with the FW.

 

P-51D in the 1st couple of betas, engine management was much easier to maintain until the final release. P-51D I also have buttons assigned for the cowl flaps.

 

With the FW currently, running the radiator too cold also effects good engine performance/HP---I think.

 

Yeah, me too, I was blowing engines and not just dogfighting until I implemented using the cowl flaps as necessary.

 

Maybe the automatic operating cowl flaps will be fixed in an upcoming newer beta version.

Edited September 16, 2014 by DieHard

[Anatoli-Kagari9]

We're still waiting for some words from the dev team on how the "automatic radiator flaps" are modeled because apparently they stop working that way when we intervene to manually force their oppening / closing...

[Pikey]

Really interesting about "hanging around", feels like these posts should be marked as "Business in Confidence" when we discuss PvP advantages!

 

I need to master this cooling business, I'm getting literally trolled by P51's climbing me into Engine breakdowns.

[Narushima]

The Dora used the same radiator fan design as the Antons, meaning it was pretty efficient even at low speeds, and did not require as much air speed to keep the engine cool as contemporary prop fighters.

 

The radiator fans would spin with the prop (at different gear though), which created a vacuum in front of the engine, which sucked cool air in. This came at a cost of engine power. When air speed was 0, the fans would take up about 50HP from the engine, with the engine load decreasing as speeds went up, until the engine was no longer loaded at around 300-350 km/h.

 

That said, I've yet to bust a single engine with cooling flaps opened to over 75%. If you keep it on automatic then they won't adjust fast enough. You have to open them manually prior to the fight.

[Kodoss]

The Dora used the same radiator fan design as the Antons, meaning it was pretty efficient even at low speeds, and did not require as much air speed to keep the engine cool as contemporary prop fighters.

 

The radiator fans would spin with the prop (at different gear though), which created a vacuum in front of the engine, which sucked cool air in. This came at a cost of engine power. When air speed was 0, the fans would take up about 50HP from the engine, with the engine load decreasing as speeds went up, until the engine was no longer loaded at around 300-350 km/h.

 

That said, I've yet to bust a single engine with cooling flaps opened to over 75%. If you keep it on automatic then they won't adjust fast enough. You have to open them manually prior to the fight.

 

Wrong!!

 

This only counts for the air cooled BMW 801 radial engines, which needed a fan to cool the engine.

 

The D-series is a water cooled inline engine and has a ring radiator in front of it. There is no radiator fan attached to it.

[Narushima]

Wrong!!

 

This only counts for the air cooled BMW 801 radial engines, which needed a fan to cool the engine.

 

The D-series is a water cooled inline engine and has a ring radiator in front of it. There is no radiator fan attached to it.

 

Eh, you're right. Was looking at the wrong blueprint.

 

Still, it needed air to cool down the coolant itself.