to be honest, I don't think the Blen belongs to that altitude... she starts struggling at 7000 feet for me and won't do anymore without carb heat above that :rolleyes:
But if you insist, slap on the heaters and go for auto-lean mixture, that would be my tip... although you're somewhat limited in terms of boost when going lean.

Anyways, I think there's still interest in working startup procedures, so here is what works for me:
-[OPTIONAL]The Autopilot knows how to lock the wheel brake. Hit it for a few seconds and look for the lever on the steering column until its done... the AP will begin startup procedures instantly, so for max. realism, don't do that
-select "Inner" tanks for both tank selectors, located at your 4 o'clock. Above these selectors, there is a 3rd one, which is, I believe, for cross-feeding in case of engine failure. It doesn't hurt (so far) to switch it to 'on'. To get the corresponding tank content displayed, switch the fuel level gauges to 'inner' - on your 8 o'clock high.
-pull back on your stick to be able to see the magneto switches. Activate them all.
-activate carburetor heaters, located on your 8 o'clock low, right beneath the pilot seat. I just switch them on/off rather than having them on a slider, so for me its 0%-100%.
-set mixture to the lower half (pulled towards you) of the quadrant, getting 'auto rich' mixture. See Blackdog's postings in this thread.
-set prop pitch to 'fine' - slider all the way up (!)
-set radiator full open, just as a precautionary measure
-throttle to 5-10%
-start left and right engine individually. You may get some mileage from actuating the primer pump, located to the right of the pilot's seat. For me, it's somewhat ambiguous.
-if you've got both engines running, wait a minute and do something else in between, like calibrating your gyro. The engines are rather precarious in the first minute or so, so don't choke them.
-[OPTIONAL]You may close your radiators in order to get temperatures high faster. However, that's a bit tricky and you shouldn't, under no circumstances, forget to re-open them fully for take off. That WILL kill your engine fast. I just leave them open until at cruising altitude.
-switch off carb heaters to get an extra kick for take-off (with them on, engines run a little bit too 'rich')
-If the engines run solidly, rev them up to 40% (step on the wheelbrake of course) in order to get oil temperatures up to 40deg.
-back to idle/10%, grant the engines a little rest
-rev up to around 70% (so that you can still hold the blen with the brakes) and watch the engines going crazy, revving up and down on their own. Wait until you've got stable rpm on both engines.
-back to idle/10%, again, a little resting...again, a safety measure
-activate the boost cut-out in order to get higher boost for Take-off. This is again somewhat risky as you can blow your gaskets in 30 seconds or less. YMMV.
-step off your brake and throttle up for take off. Go full throttle but don't go into the extra-boost region yet. With no airflow over the engines, this will kill them even faster.
-once going 60-70mph, I normally go into extra boost. Not the full 9lbs, rather around 7-8 and only very briefly, for about 20-30sec. max. as airflow is still somewhat scarce.
-lift off at 80-90mph, raise your gear immediately. Don't pull up immediately, let her build up a little speed, probably for quite a while. Deactivate boost cut-out.
-compensate for rudder mis-trim: for me, it's at least 40 clicks 'left' in order to get her flying somewhat straight.
-Now, it's your decision: I normally go for coarse pitch quite early, in exchange for extra-bad climbing performance until I picked up some speed. However, you may very well be able to stay a bit longer at fine pitch if you monitor engine temps properly.
-switch carb heaters back on. I just feel safer with them.
-my cruise settings: around 6000ft, throttle 50-60% auto-lean mix (switching at around 5k ft), coarse pitch, 180-200mph, engine temps arond 220-230deg (don't exceed 250!), rads 1/4 open, carb heat on, well-trimmed to get a good bombing approach.

The heat capacity is totaly believable because of the massive amount of low temperature air around the inner parts or the engine. You just can't compare it with a fully closed hurri engine or others. Also you would get the same if the fluctuation in a G.50.

Also the gauges are in perfect spot for the bombardier to keep a close watch on it. Would be nice if a human bombardier could sit back and help out while you're ferrying. Note that the radiator and trimm controls are nearby aswell.

As for bombing procedures, my observations are the following:

- As mentioned before the bombsight don't work properly, so we have to wait for a fix.

- On the other hand if it were operational it will be very tricky to get a decent hit with just 2 or 4 bombs at higher altitudes.
I have run some tests on bombs dispersion from 3000 and 6000 feet, and they can impact anywhere between 30 to 300 feet (4 bombs).
Basicly the bombsight can only be used to hit a factory site, railway station, port, or an airfield, but it won't be effective if only one blenheim carries out this kind of mission. 9 or 12 would do in vic or diamond formation.

- For three or less blenheims (which occurs mostly in online games) the only way to be effective is to use an attack dive bombing in low altitudes. With this way a flight of blenheims can easily take out columns, trains, parking airplanes, bridges, railway stations, ships, encampments, etc.
Unluckily performing a percise attack dive takes a lot of practise, because there is no instrumental aid for such attack procedure in the blenheims cockpit.
I say you must drop about 1000 bombs to get the hang of it, also if you get the "feeling" when to release the bombs you will able to do it in any other plane aswell. Most of us have this "bombing sence" from il-2 allready and it works fine in CloD too ;)
But here are some advice for the beginers:
- Always line up on your target if it moves or just longer in one direction, like a train, a ship, or a bride.
- Moving targets are best approached from behind, because you decrease the difference of speed between you and your target (easier to hit slower or stationary targets then fast moving ones because you have to calculate an impact point witch is before the target)
- The higher angle you have the closer the bomb will impact to your crosshair\sight. That is the whole point of Stuka like dive bombing, but it requires dive brakes which blenheims doesn't have.
- The lower you release the bomb the preciser your bomb will impact. Just remember that most bombs have to travel certain time in the air before its armed, and you can damage or kill your self with your own bomb. You can use timed detonators, but I won't reccomend them against moving targets. Although 1 or 2 secs might be fine against slow moving lightly armored targets.
- If you have few bombs against a linear-like target wait few milliseconds between releasing them, because you will do more damage against a column or a train, also you improve your direct hit chance on a ship or a bride.
- Choose your loadout wisely if you know the exact target you going to destroy. For example two 500 pounders are great for destroying larger buildings, bridges, or ships, but will do less damage against a 20 car long column, then four 250 pounders. Be aware that the blast damage decreases with the square of distance, so if you are going against a linear-like target choose more lighter bombs the few heavier. In the other hand four 250 pounders will do minimum damage against a concrete bunker or a heavily armoured ship because it doesn't have enough penatrating power, so in that case us heavier or penetrator bombs. Germans have SD bombs which don't blast much but will penetrate armoured or thick targets.

Thats all I can recall, for now... :)

hmm now I'm able to bomb - thanks so far. But still, a few wierd things... :rolleyes:
In the video I made to watch, I noted that, when opening the bomb doors, a single bomb fell out just due to opening...?!? I mean, what the freeek? Sabotage? Bad ground crew? One does not know...
With the remaining three 250-pounders, I noticed that the bombsight (how I presumably use it) is indeed waaaay off, as was already stated. damnit!

Also, could somebody give me a primer (heh) on fuses on the blenny's bombs? What are the differences and which ones should I use, with what delay? Thanks in advance!

I once had a sample mission made and loadouts worked from within the FMB. I can also load them from within the normal menu interface by going to the "plane" menu on the map screen and applying the changes there, plus saving at every screen (fuel, guns and bombs) with the same name. Then the loadout is saved, i can go back to the QMB and select it for the entire flight.

For bombing you need to map keys to open/close the bomb bay doors first, as well as the salvo selector keys. As for detonators, i use the so called "ever ready" ones because they are always armed and always explode. Take care though if bombing from low altitude, in need to jettison them or you get engaged by fighters and your bomb load gets hit, because these detonators are primed and ready by default and will explode under all these circumstances.

The reason you're probably having trouble is a known bug with the bombardier's controls, the bomb release key/stick button only works from the pilot's seat. To drop from the bombardier's seat you need to click on the cockpit switch (the yellow buttons on the small "bench" to the left of the bombsight), so once you're a couple of seconds from dropping zoom out to a wider FoV to bring them into view and click them (the medium one works well as it's a good compromise between viewing the cockpit and being zoomed on the target).


For the landing part, i had that happen to me as well and your assumption is partially correct: you did over-cool them but it's not something that can be fixed with carb heat.

What you need to do is reduce throttle and bleed off some speed while on approach, enough to drop flaps and gear, then re-apply some power to overcome the drag and trim for your descent. During all this you need to also monitor the cylinder temperature (gauges are on the right-hand cockpit wall, to the pilot's 4 o'clock position) and adjust cowl flaps accordingly.

The aim is to prevent yourself from pulling back too much on the throttles and cooling the engines too much, because then they won't produce power. Keep them at 200 degrees minimum to ensure the engines can develop full power, if it drops further close the cowl flaps or apply some throttle while still in the descent, or both, to make it rise back to operating temperature (200-250 degrees).

Of course, all this workload necessitates a bit of experience (trial and error mostly but you can get it right in just a couple of tries, i flew some touch and goes to practice) and most of all, giving yourself some time to juggle all these parameters. This means a longer glide path from further away from the airfield and some prior planning of what to do.

In other words, it's a full blown approach in the proper sense of the word and not a "cut throttles, bring it in and firewall it briefly for the flare" deal like we could do in IL2.


I think the CEM is somewhat masochistic in the radials but i can't help it, i like quirky planes :-P
I can't judge how accurate it all is, but when i'm in the mood for a challenge i always select the Blenheim. There are at least a few things that need tweaking (pilot's manual from back in the day says "do this" but it doesn't work in the sim), but overall i think it will be one of my favorite aircraft once we get a few gameplay-related fixes in a subsequent patch.

I think the main issue in terms of CEM is how certain parameters affect the temperatures. It's realistic that the radials are more susceptible to temperature changes, but what might be off somewhat is how these temperatures change.

For example, warm up takes so long that we can close the cowl flaps, step on the brakes and apply throttle to accelerate it. However, for start-up, warm up and taxi the pilot's operating handbook recommends open cowl flaps because the temps rise too fast when on the ground.

I think this is an issue of environmental modeling and it's also noticeable on the liquid cooled fighters, it's just that their engines handle better over a wider part of their allowable temp range.
My theory is that it's part of the dynamic weather module which is still under development: ambient temperature and heat build-up from idling on some hot tarmac doesn't have as much of an effect as it had in real life (according to the pilot manuals at least).

On the contrary, the manual recommends closing the cowl flaps for take-off! The reasoning is that once the aircraft is finally moving, there is enough airflow through the cowlings to maintain acceptable temps for the small amount of time that take-off power is used. In the sim it's reversed, we need full open cowl flaps.

I've done some observing and it seems this is true for other aircraft too (Spits were notorious for overheating on the ground if idling somewhat high, but it doesn't happen in the sim), but it's more noticeable in radials because they are temperamental and can't develop power if not at the correct temperature range.

It seems both the effects of airflow on cooling during flight and of lack of airflow on overheating while on the ground could be bumped up a notch.

However, the pilot's manual also categorically states that cowl flaps should be opened as soon as the pilot has configured the aircraft for climb. This means pulling the throttles back to 5 psi boost and also switching to coarse pitch as soon as the aircraft picks up some speed.

I've climbed on coarse pitch, it's not hard and it goes at a pretty good pace too as long as you follow the observation you added in one of your later posts: the pilot's manual recommends staying level after take off and not climbing straight-away.

This builds up some speed and once you hit 120 mph or so, you immediately switch to coarse pitch. This not only results in more speed (which if left untrimmed will result in a climb, so you just trim the elevators and rudders a bit and let it climb), it also lowers the RPM and prevents heat build-up somewhat. Climb gently until you hit 150mph, then you can properly climb.


I'm sorry for holding back (hey, it's summer :cool: ), i should just bite the bullet and finally copy the relevant parts of the pilot's handbook here during the coming days. Ironically enough, it might have "cost" me more typing answering set-piece questions than having copied the manual right from the start :grin:

yeah, some parameters in the Blen's FM are definately off... however, she's certainly flyable.

climbing with coarse pitch works just fine, but only if you've picked up some speed before. If you try to climb with coarse and 90mph, you'll have trouble staying aloft.

Well, 90 is way too low. Minimum safety speed (in case of engine failure and so on) is 120 mph. It's a bomber after all ;-)

Climbing speeds are 150 mph up to 10000ft, reduced by 10mph every 5000ft after that:

150 mph until 10k ft
140 mph between 10-15k ft
130mph between 15-20k ft

The fact that the manual doesn't specify altitudes greater than 20k ft tells me it's generally inadvisable to fly higher than that :-P
I guess it makes sense, keeping in mind
a) the RAF's preference for low level bombing tactics, they must have some reason behind it (lack of engine power? also point b below)
b) the fact that the bombsight has crude adjustment intervals for speed and altitude, that thing looks mighty inaccurate and according to another poster on this thread who tested it, there's a lot of dispersion and not enough bombs to effectively drop from higher altitudes.


I think i'll just bite the bullet and start copying the pilot's handbook tomorrow, it will save us all some trouble getting this thing to fly properly (me too, since i'll probably learn it better in the process) :grin:

so... nothing new about the bomb not properly fixed by ground crew? :D

P.S.: Has anyone noticed that the blenheim has a rather beautiful sound in external view? :rolleyes:

Okay, I've been searching the web for a) how to use the bombsight properly, and b) more info on the different fuzes. Sadly, I came up with almost nothing so far :(

One thing I did find, however, was some pics about the blen's bombsight:
http://users.cyberone.com.au/clardo/..._armament.html
The sight is identified as a Mk IX course-setting bomb sight and the drawing suggests that there is more to adjust than I currently do (just alt and speed, while considering the sight being off, as mentioned above). Apparently, you have to look at the junction between those two rings.
A thorough explanation would be greatly appreciated!

As for the fuzes... the search has been frustrating. I've found heaps of pictures from collector's sites, but no info as to how they work. A short table would be greatly appreciated as well!

Interesting findings about the LSC and SBC. It would be definitely usefull to have them in the sim. 16 40lb bombs would be just like the AO-10 in Il-2.

WWII allied fuses are quite simple, mostly mechanical. Ever ready fuses are working like a nail. If you push them on one side it will put presure on the detonator charge which leads to a chain reaction known as explosion of the bomb.
The more common mechanical fuses are armed by time with a spinner which is spinned by the airflow. When the spinner reaches its final position the bomb become armed an will expolde on contact. You can put a timer mechanism in the above mentiond constuction, which will count down from the moment of inpact the a pin will put presure on the detonator charge.
Most of (if not any) the fuses have a safety pin which blocks all above mentioned actions. Usually it is removed by the falling of the bomb, Imagine a pin in a slot (in the fuse) which is tied to the releasing mechanism on the plane.

Here is a schematic of a very primitive mechanical fuse for aerial bombs
http://img.tfd.com/ggse/b9/gsed_0001_0005_0_img0783.png

Bit more info on sight here
 

Every little bit helps !
Have a read of this about halfway down the page!
http://www.twinbeech.com/norden_bombsight.htm