VSI rate of climb in going to 20,000 feet.

[gdotts]

This is what I have gathered so far from P-51 videos...

Formula so far in climbing from ground to 20,000 feet and making it easy on the engine.

 

RPM... 2600-2700

THROTTLE ...30-40-50Hg

?..... RATE OF CLIMB VSI NEEDED

"ZIG-ZAG FLY... HORIZONTALLY" (DON'T FLY STRAIGHT)

Help me fill out the rate of climb if you know.  Thanks!!

 

 

[grafspee]

In P-51 you don't care about rate of climb, you maintain 175 mph 46"2700 rpm in climb.

[Theodore42]

The climbing profile is 61" 3000 RPM up to 500 feet and then 46" 2700 RPM up to 40,000 ft.

The speed is 175 mph but if you have no external stores you can do 165. If you have less than 50% fuel you can do 160mph. Above 20,000ft the best climb speed is a little slower; I've never seen the best climb speed go lower than 155mph indicated. If you don't know which of these speeds to use just stick the speed needle on each of these speeds for about a minute at each speed. Choose which ever speed averaged the highest feet per minute. If you do this experiment and your find that all the speeds average about the same rate of climb, this is normal. It means you need to focus on keeping the airframe steady for a faster climb out rather than worrying about selecting the correct climbout speed.

Problems climbing out usually happen because the nose climbs a little too much and the speed ticks down just a little bit. Accelerating  back up to minimum climb speed while in a climb at less than minimum climb speed ruins your climb rate for LONG periods of time.

I remember reading or watching an interview with a P-51 pilot concerning his high altitude escort missions: He reported the importance of delicately manipulating the RPM and manifold controls. If you weren't careful, the changes in engine settings disrupt the airflow and you would lose a few mph. At 30,000 feet or more getting those few mph back takes a lot of time and delicate flying.

The Mustang has an easy engine to manage but the airframe can be really difficult to control.

[grafspee]

As said above you can stay between 165-175mph, it is quite hard to stay spot on especially when you hit low/high gear supercharger crit alt. The most important thing is when you get very slow cooling problems may appear especially in hot day, when high blower kicks in, MP will rapidly increase but without power gain so plane won't accelerate but heat generation will increase significantly and if you are very slow in climb it may render some cooling problems too.

Edited July 26, 2023 by grafspee

[ErnieO]

I have a question for you guys. I'm new to this flight sim and experiencing what sounds like typical noobie problems getting my warbird to climb properly. After reading several posts and watching a few videos I've realized rudder trim is as critical as maintaining your speed. I've been flying the Blue Nosed Bastards campaign and after correctly adjusting rudder trim I've improved the climb with the AI from having them leave me in the dust to just maintaining visual on them at about 5 or 6KM behind but I never attain the 20K feet required. My super charge never goes to high speed but just seems to surge up and down when I get past 14K. If I fly the quick mission that's a free flight with just my aircraft I can smoothly go to 20K and the super charger kicks in at the correct altitude. I am wondering if this has something to do with running this game on a minimum system? I'm playing it on an Alienware 17 R-5 laptop that has an Intel I-7 at 2.2ghz 16GB Ram and a Nvidea GTX 1070 16GB.  The game is not installed on the SSD due to lack of space. My theory is I need more memory and speed to run the sim smoothly enough to not cause all the small control deviations that when added up result in loss of speed in a climb. Thoughts? 

[ErnieO]

Well son of a b$#%. Forget everything I wrote above even though I do need a new computer! I have been inadvertently putting the mixture lever down to full rich on startups. It still goes full rich with one click on the lever but now I just pull it up to "run" and everything is peachy. The AI still did get 1.5km out in front of me but I caught up with them pretty quickly. 

[Art-J]

5 hours ago, ErnieO said:

Well son of a b$#%. Forget everything I wrote above even though I do need a new computer! I have been inadvertently putting the mixture lever down to full rich on startups. It still goes full rich with one click on the lever but now I just pull it up to "run" and everything is peachy. The AI still did get 1.5km out in front of me but I caught up with them pretty quickly. 

Right-click moves the lever right (and cycles through all positions), left-click moves the lever left (and cycles through all positions). So next time, just right-click once at startup and you're good.

[grafspee]

This was nightmare for me at begging, mixture, gun safety. I removed binds for emergency rich, and i put mixture cut off and run only to my hotas same with gun safety. Since then no accidental mixture or gun safety change.

[ErnieO]

Thanks Guys great advice!  

Now for that new gamer......