According to test pilot Jeffrey Quill:
"By this time I was bitterly blaming myself for not having thumped the table much harder about the aileron problem...in May 1938....However production problems at the time made any design changes almost impossible to embody.
The aileron problem was further compounded by what could be described as 'non-repeatibility' or variations in manufacturing accuracy. On first take-off a new production Spitfire would usually be found to be flying severely one wing low, sometimes to the extent that it was almost a two-handed job to hold it. The aircraft would immediately be brought in to land and a trimming strip, comprising a piece of cord sewn inside a length of fabric, would be attached to the upper trailing edge of the aileron on the 'wing low side'....Usually, but not always, if the aircraft had been successfully trimmed at cruising speed it remained in trim at very high diving speed. But sometimes it would develop a strong bias one way or the other. In these circumstances an aileron had to be changed and discarded or tried again on another aeroplane. Thus very small production variations in the hinges, the slotted shrouds in the wing, the profile of the aileron nose balances and the aileron profile aft of the hinge could have a spectacular effect on the lateral handling of each production aircraft.
So the ailerons virtually had to be individually 'tuned' by the test pilot (who had to know what he was about) and it usually took several flights to achieve this. Sometimes if an aileron had been discarded as untrimmable on one aeroplane it could be refitted to another....If, however, after delivery to the Service, an aileron was changed, the whole matching process was destroyed and the aeroplane might fly very badly indeed.
There were frequent reports from squadrons of so-called 'rogue' aeroplanes and it usually transpired that an aileron had been changed or that someone had monkeyed about with the trimming arrangements.
The reports which floated into the A & AEE and RAE through HQ Fighter Command on these so-called 'rogue' aircraft did much to confuse the issue during our early efforts to deal with the problem. Provided the ailerons were correctly 'tuned' and the aeroplane correctly flown, there was only one central problem - the ailerons were much too heavy at speed." (Jeffrey Quill Spitfire: A Test Pilot's Story John Murray, 1983, pp. 180-181)
The reports shown by Kurfurst in his second and third postings are some those reports of 'rogue' aircraft as described by Jeffrey Quill, and are
not representative of a properly trimmed Spitfire with fabric ailerons, so they should not be used to change the flight characteristics for the game.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 41Sqn_Stormcrow
(Post 417612)
Mh. I have some concerns if the report should be taken as a basis for FM development.
It clearly says that the authors of the report have some doubts about their finding as it does not entirely fit with reports from pilots.
The very first page says that both the Hurricane and the Spit were reported to be heavy on ailerons at high speeds while the Hurricane was measured to make the bank of 90° in 2 secs while the Spit's roll rate was measured to 8sec. It is obviously a discrepancy between pilots' complaints about the heaviness of BOTH aircraft and the measurements made on two individual aircraft with one being considerably lighter than the other.
The authors encouraged to contact Fighter Command in order to find out if the Hurricane used for measurement was too light or the used Spit too heavy.
I think this report is not a good base for any FM modelling and more consolidated data is needed.
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Spot on - to take these reports as being typical of the flight characteristics of the Spitfire or Hurricane is drawing a very long bow.
Quill went on to write:
"I have mentioned how badly I felt about the ailerons of the Spitfire at the time of the Battle of Britain. In October 1940 I flew a captured ME109E; to my surprise and relief I found the ailerons control of the German fighter every bit as bad, if not worse than, at high speed as the Spitfire I and II with fabric-covered ailerons. It was good at low and medium speed but above 400 mph and above it was almost immovable. I thouught the Me 109E performed well, particularly on the climb at altitude, and it had good stalling characteristics under g except that the leading edge slats kept snapping in and out; but it had no rudder trimmer, which gave it a heavy footload at high speed; while the cockpit, the canopy and the rearward vision were much worse than that in a Spitfire." (183)