Which WW2 module is the easiest to learn

[FrazMann]

Hi,

 

I've just managed to get some more free time on my hands and wanted to become more involved in the community / learn how to fly one of my modules. Although i have a couple others, id prefer to start with a WW2 modules. Is there a specific module which is easier to fly, ie less engine management etc?

 

Thanks for your help :)

[WinterH]

Depends on definition easy I guess.

 

Mustang for example, is the easiest to taxi, take off and land. But it does have a more involving engine management compared to German birds.

 

I don't have spitfire, so can't comment about it other than it seems also difficult in taxiing, taking off and landing, and it also seem to perhaps have a more involving engine management than Luftwaffe birds. But comparing other 3, I'd say the Mustang is easiest to start with.

 

If however, easiest mean the easiest to score kills with, then I'd probably need to say 109.

 

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[Vitormouraa]

I've never flown the Dora, but between Bf 109, P-51D/TF-51 and Spitfire, the Mustang is the easiest.

[NeilWillis]

I definitely think the P-51D is easiest to start out with.

 

Remember of course that you can learn to fly the TF-51D which is almost identical, except for the lack of armaments, and is lighter due to the lack of armour etc.

 

The reason I suggest that is because it is free, and packaged with DCS World.

 

Once you have the hang of that one, then I'd agree, the FW-190D9 comes next, mostly due to the very simple engine management.

 

After that the Bf-109 K4 is much harder, and I'd say the hardest bird of all to fly and fight is the Spitfire.

 

I would recommend you get a decent set of rudder pedals before you try to fly any of them as there is a great emphasis on rudder control - particularly during taxi, take off and landing. I'd also recommend you dial back the take off assistance to zero in the options/special page before you start.

[Schmidtfire]

The german birds are way simpler in their engine management, however they are also more difficult to takeoff and land with. I think I have landed with the Dora once, but its nearly impossible without tipping over and breaking something, the Bf109 is a bit more forgiving.

 

Spit is a lot of fun and has a very nice and good looking cockpit. Turns great but is somewhat difficult to dogfight with, as high AoA will cook your engine in about five seconds. It is the second easiest bird to takeoff and land with.

 

Mustang is a solid air-ground platform and a pretty good energy fighter with a great gunsight and plenty of ammo. It's quite easy to learn and the best part is that the Mustang was also used in the Korean War, so it's not confined to WWII action.

 

It's hard to recommend a WWII module to start with, but I can recommend that you use rudder pedals, as

a Joystick-twist-grip make any of the birds difficult to fly.

Edited January 7, 2017 by Schmidtfire

[Schmidtfire]

The german birds are way simpler in their engine management, however they are also more difficult to takeoff and land with.

 

Spit is a lot of fun and has a very nice and good looking cockpit. Turns great but is somewhat difficult to dogfight with, as high AoA will cook your engine in about five seconds.

 

Mustang is a solid air-ground platform and a pretty good energy fighter with a great gunsight and plenty of ammo. It's quite easy to learn and the best part is that the Mustang was also used in the Korean War, so it's not confined to WWII action.

[FrazMann]

Thanks for taking time to reply/vote I appreciate it.

 

@schmidtfire I'm surprised the Dora is tricky to land, I thought the wide undercarriage would have made it easier to land.

 

@NeilWillis The cost is not an issue as I've already bought all 4, I've just been too busy with work to sit down and learn them. Thanks for the other tips. At present I only have t16000 and no pedals. I'm really tempted to buy some but I'm always wondering how much they are really used during flight, ie is it just during take offs and landings you tend to use them?

Thanks for the tip about the take off assistant.

 

@Victormouraa thanks very much for your input as well.

[probad]

you will use rudder plenty in flight to counter throttle changes and the accompanying torque, as well as for coordinated turns.

 

you should just pick up a plane and fly it, experience is the best teacher. sure i was taught how to manage my radiators but it wasn't until i cooked my engine twice in dogfights i really understood what sort of scenarios i needed to be watching out for.

 

if you are afraid of failure you will never conquer it.

Edited January 7, 2017 by probad

[FrazMann]

@probad thanks for the clarification, looks like I'm in the market for some pedals

[TripRodriguez]

This thread was helpful to me also, thanks!

 

I just a couple hours ago posted a thread asking if the Spit is easier to score kills with than the Mustang as I read elsewhere on the forum that the P-51 is at a significant disadvantage currently to the BF-109 in the kind of fights generally encountered online in DCS.

 

@schmidtfire Angle of attack kills the engine in five seconds? As in steep climb or dive? It's basically the same engine as the P-51, does it have a different oiling sytem?

 

Trip

[TripRodriguez]

@Frazmann Best pedals you can get are MFG Crosswind but they aren't cheap and generally it's a couple month wait to get them. Totally worth it though, that's what I fly with.

 

The other super high end (even pricier) option is the beautiful Slaw Device pedals, the older ones I can't recommend but the cam centering ones are comparable to MFG's but these are a work of art. Over $500 though I think once shipped.

 

For easier prices to swallow you have two choices. CH Products rudder pedals, for a really good price look for used ones on ebay but make sure you get USB ones.

 

The other option is the new Thrustmaster pedals, I haven't got to use these so I don't know how they compare to the CH's.

 

Stay away from Saitek pedals! They are terrible. I had the Combat Pro version, nice metal F-16 style foot rests but the whole rest of the device is the same plastic garbage and terrible design as the other Saitek pedals.

[Schmidtfire]

Let me clarify. The reason I think Dora is hard to land is the high landing-speed and that it is prone to stall very fast and dip a wing down. The margins between the right speed and a stall is slim. Usually I have a good approach but stall or tip about 1-3m over the runway. But I am sure a lot of players has a way of making fine landings (just check out Wags FW190 landing tutorial video, and you see that he also was struggeling).

 

About Spit AoA. Yeah, you can't really point your nose up in the Spit. It cooks a lot faster than the P-51D. This might not be a problem in every fight, but agsinst AI who zoom climbs like nothing else, you will be in trouble. But it is fantastic in a turn.

[FrazMann]

[razo+r]

you can already test the TF-51, so I'd start with that one

 

But if you really want a WWII module, an easy one, go for one of the german ones, since they have automatic radiators and automatic pitch/rpm controll, they're easy to use

 

The FW-190 especially, not a too close landing gear, whic lets you make closer turns without flipping over

easy brakes

flaps are either landing, take-off or up

clean cockpit

 

for Dogfighting, I'd recommend the BF-109, or the spitfire, which is a bit more tricky to fly/handle though

[TripRodriguez]

P-51 at least isn't nearly as complex as it seems at first. Mixture is automatic. Prop RPM lever is basically set to full forward (3,000 RPM) for takeoff and combat, 2,700 for landing, lower for max fuel economy cruising. Radiator and Oil cooler are automatic.

[Solty]

I never had pedals and never felt the need to use them. Just calibrate your stick well.

[gavagai]

190D-9.

 

It has simplified engine management and widetrack landing gear. When you decide to shoot something it has a boatload of 20mm ammunition in case you miss!

 

It's not a good choice for furballing, but if you keep your speed up and use its climb rate and superb roll rate, you are more or less untouchable.

[TripRodriguez]

Pedals are very enjoyable to use though, unless you simply don't want to spend the money I highly recommend them to everyone!

[Solty]

Pedals are very enjoyable to use though, unless you simply don't want to spend the money I highly recommend them to everyone!

I feel some people here treat them as mandatory. I have a cheap HotasX with twist and it works well.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

You really shouldn't be asking "Which is easiest" but rather "Which appeals more to me?"

 

I can understand wanted to take it slow and easy. After all, you don't go buy the best model airplane you can find and want to start out with. You work your way up since there's a risk there.

 

Here? There's no real risk. Crash away! Go nuts!

[kontiuka]

Well, the easiest to land category sure doesn't go to the Spitfire. I'm starting to have more successes than failures but it took a lot of practice.

[FrazMann]

@Mig21bisFishbedL i understand where you're coming from but i wanted to know which was the easiest so that i had a shorter learning curve / less frustration with having to manage the plane. Once id get proficient with the easier planes, id try the harder ones and read up on the different systems that you need to manage. Hope that clarifies things.

 

Ive tried the Bf 109k, unfortunately i dont own a real one, but it doesnt appear to be very stable esp compared to the other WW2 aircrafts. Are they still updating the FM?

 

@Kontiuka i have not tried the Spit yet but im not surprised. I saw one at the Le Bourget air museum in Paris and was surprised how narrow the undercarriage was.

[DefaultFace]

Might be a few days late to the party but only just saw this thread so I thought I might weigh in.

 

Like everyone else said easy depends on the definition. If you are talking about combat flying and in which aircraft you'll be able to fight in the fastest when starting from 0 experience and knowledge I would say without a doubt the Spitfire. In terms of easy to fly around and look good then it would be the Mustang, solely because it has much easier ground handling than the spit. Other than that the Spit beats the rest for a new player.

 

IMO there are 3 big things that make the Spit so good for new players:

 

1) The way you fight well in a spit is much more Intuitive than with some of the other aircraft. If you put someone whos only experience with air combat is watching top gun in a merge I'm fairly certain that 99/100 people will look at the enemy aircraft and go into a hard turn straight towards them. If 2 'noobs' go into a fight and do this the guy flying the Spit will win.

 

2) The Spit is IMO the easiest to fly cleanly and maintain energy with. Balancing the rudder and flying a clean hard turn is easier to learn and do well in the Spit than the other aircraft.

 

3) The guns on the Spit are awesome. After 2 days of flying the Spit I shoot way better with it than with any other aircraft in DCS or in other sims. Convergence is set perfectly, the rounds are fast and don't require too much lead and the 20mm tears things apart nicely. The one downside here is how little can be seen over the nose when in close but you can learn to get around that.

 

Big downsides compared to other a/c are poor ground handling, and the engine takes a bit of getting used to so as not to blow it. Generally if you avoid prop hanging I haven't had many problems. You are also slower which means less energy and a vulnerability to bnz from German aircraft. TBH it may have changed recently but a couple weeks ago I didn't have huge problems with this. The 109 is hard to bnz with and if I kept my eyes open I could time a hard turn or barrel roll to ward off any 190s coming at me for long enough to get to safety.

 

Don't get me wrong here, the Spit isn't gonna turn a noob into an ace, and it also takes time and effort to master. As a beginner you won't necessarily win but you might last a little longer and feel like you might have had a chance if you hadn't done this or that or had just a little more practice. IMO if you are learning to dogfight and fly online in DCS the experience will be marginally less demoralizing in the Spitfire than in the other aircraft. In the end no matter what you fly, if you want to tangle with the best you need to practice. And the best way to practice is to get killed. Over and over and over and over and over............

[probad]

@Mig21bisFishbedL i understand where you're coming from but i wanted to know which was the easiest so that i had a shorter learning curve / less frustration with having to manage the plane. Once id get proficient with the easier planes, id try the harder ones and read up on the different systems that you need to manage. Hope that clarifies things.

annoying misconception you have there, unfortunately shared by many. you think just because a ww2 aircraft has fewer systems that somehow that equates to easier, this is not true. there's an inverse relationship between number of systems and the ease of employing them.

all the trillions of dollars over millions of man-hours we spend on r&d is ultimately to make things easier, to minimize if not remove the finesse required from having to deal with crude, simplistic platforms, to have carefree handling and accurate targeting.

basically think of it this way, if you only had one screwdriver and you had to do everything with it from preparing your food to changing your oil filter, you would have a lot harder time in the end than if i tossed you a confusing-looking box of assorted tools.

Edited January 12, 2017 by probad

[Hermit713]

I just purchase all 4 modules. I am English so for the simple fact that I can read what is said next to the levers I am going to say the p51 and spitfire.������ But one can hold the mouse over the buttons and it will say in English writing what it is. So it doesn't make whole difference.

 

Fw190 most difficult to fly. It seems to snap at all speeds!

Get the plane you want you will not be disappointed.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Hermit713