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Ctrl E
08-24-2011, 10:41 AM
Hello. anyone know if there is a tail wheel lock for the blenhiem?

I can see a tail skid lock but this doesn't seem to do anything to stop the aircraft swinging hard to the left on the tarmac.

Vengeanze
08-24-2011, 01:47 PM
No tail wheel lock yet.
What I do is after I started the engines I quickly tap A on/off for autopilot. The autopilot then locks the full break so u can warm up without turning.
Another way is to assign wheel break to a slider.

ATAG_Doc
08-24-2011, 06:48 PM
No tail wheel lock yet.
What I do is after I started the engines I quickly tap A on/off for autopilot. The autopilot then locks the full break so u can warm up without turning.
Another way is to assign wheel break to a slider.

You might know this....do you know if binding a key to landing flaps will cause them to be lowered all the way with a single press because I have to hold it to lower them all the way down. Is this normal? Or is there another bind that drops them when I press it and raises them when I press it without having to hold it.

The other night I took off and my flight lead just left me in the dust and it took a long time before I bothered to look right and see them still extended.

Vengeanze
08-24-2011, 08:37 PM
You might know this....do you know if binding a key to landing flaps will cause them to be lowered all the way with a single press because I have to hold it to lower them all the way down. Is this normal? Or is there another bind that drops them when I press it and raises them when I press it without having to hold it.

The other night I took off and my flight lead just left me in the dust and it took a long time before I bothered to look right and see them still extended.

You talking Blenheim? If so then I suggest waiting for Blackdog to arrive.
What I do know is that on the Hurricane you can set flaps in increments all the way from full Up to full Down. For instance on take off you'd usually set them to apx. 20-30%. You might have noticed that when you hit the assigned key for flaps down or up it will go to neutral first. Then hit down and wait for a couple of second (no need to keep key pressed) and then back to neutral to stop extending.
It's very well animated to the lower right in the cockpit where u can see exactly how much flaps's extended..
The spitfire has only full up or down. Nothing inbetween.

I've learnt to keep up with the AI in a spit or hurri but it takes Boost Cut-out ON, keeping rads closed till the very last second before overheat and rev up with brakes and start rolling just after the plane before you.
160 mph is best speed for optimal climbing. Good to know.

Hope this helps.

Vengeanze
08-24-2011, 08:40 PM
You might know this....do you know if binding a key to landing flaps will cause them to be lowered all the way with a single press because I have to hold it to lower them all the way down. Is this normal? Or is there another bind that drops them when I press it and raises them when I press it without having to hold it.

I never have to keep a key pressed for lowering flaps in any ac.
Perhaps you reassigned to "flaps down one notch" if there is a such command. Dunno.

Blackdog_kt
08-25-2011, 05:23 AM
First of all, an answer to the initial post. A lot of the aircraft modeled in the sim didn't have lockable tailwheels in real life. Most of them used a free castoring tailwheel and this is reflected in the sim.

Now, as to the flap questions...if your observations are correct then we can set partial flaps in the Blenheim which is awesome, because (according to the pilot's handbook) taking off with heavier loads (a lot of fuel plus bombs) needs to be done with 15 degrees of flaps.

Generally speaking, the control logic for flaps (and any other control for that matter) depends on how it was done in the real aircraft.

In the 109 for example, the pilot had to turn a wheel by hand. To reflect the continuous manual effort required to do so, the sim requires the player to keep the key pressed: as long as you keep the flaps up/down key pressed the wheel is turning and the flaps extend/retract, as soon as you let go of the key the wheel stops turning and the flaps stay in their last position.

In the Hurricane it's different because it had a flap motor with a 3-way switch: up, down and neutral. Pressing your flaps up/down key will move the control lever, not the flaps. What the flaps do depends on where the lever is set. If you set it down, the motor starts working to extend them. At that point if you press "flaps up" the lever will go from the "down" position to the "neutral" position, the motor will stop and the flaps will stay there, partially extended. If you then press the "flaps up" key one more time, the lever will move from the "neutral" to the "up" position and the motor will start working in reverse to retract them.

This is also how the flaps work in the Ju88, how the landing gear works in the 109, 110, Hurricane and possibly others too (as long as you've set seperate gear up/down keys) and so on.

The Spitfire on the other hand had only a two-position switch in the cockpit and only two positions of flaps: fully retracted and fully extended.
Pressing flaps up/down moves the switch to the relevant direction and sets the flaps according to the switch's position.


As for the Blenheim, in my experience the flap handling in the sim is similar to the Spitfire: if i press flaps down the control is set one way and they extend fully, if i press flaps up it's set the other way and they fully retract.

However, the pilot's operating handbook states that in the real aircraft it was possible to set partial flaps by "forcing" the control to a certain position. Maybe this is also simulated in CoD by applying a different method of control. So, maybe if we just press the key once the flaps deploy/retract completely, but if we keep the key pressed they deploy/retract only for as long as the key is held down?

If so it's pretty interesting, not to mention somewhat necessary for setting partial flaps for take-off (more lift than drag, as opposed to full flaps which cause more drag than lift for the purpose of slowing down for landing) and getting that beast off the ground without risking engine trouble.

I'll be off to test it and report back ;-)

EDIT: Nope, doesn't seem to do the trick, flaps in the in-game Blenheim are just like the Spit, either fully up or fully down.

Varrattu
08-26-2011, 11:03 AM
The JU87B-2 has a tail wheel lock. Does the wheel lock work in CloD?

Regards Varrattu