Blenheim take off
 

Now before I start, I know the fanbois will come crawling in droves to defend their religion, but none the less:

How does one take off in a Blenheim? I've just wasted 2 hours trying.

Yes, the rad is open.

Yes, the engines are warmed up.

However, I've yet to get as far as wheels up without blowing an engine.

What's the magic formula, with respect to manifold pressure and RPM?

I tell you what, this may be a sim, but it's sure as hell no game (<- obligatory hook for the really real realism fascists that are killing flight sims)

Couple weeks ago I posted a track in the thread in "Gameplay" forum. Try doing a search on "Blenheim" in the title.

the cylinder temperature has to be minimum 200° !!!
gauges are over the fuelcock levers, look over your right shoulder.
That take a lot of time.....in singleplay you can use the speed up function.

If the engines are at that temperature, all works like a charm . But dont forget to check the ruder trimm, its 'off' by default :(

as you have only two propeller settings (0-4% is coarse, from 5% to 100% its fine pitch) dont give too much power during start to avoid overrev. And disable the carburetor heating, you need it to start the engines, but it reduces the power.

during flight, i always stay at fine pitch. rpm 2000to 2200. And if your engines begins to stutter, try if to enable the carb heating helps (it does in most cases) ;)

The game lacks of documentation, true. As you are wondering very often "has this to be this way or is it a bug" :D ..........

I can understand being irritated by the lack of documentation, but there's no need to project that to the same people you're asking for help. Even being an unintentional side-effect of being frustrated, someone will take offence and respond in an agressive manner, then the whole thread will go down the tubes and you won't have the answers you need.

We're all experiencing frustration at certain issues, but there's a lot of community knowledge accumulated already, all you have to do is ask and use the forum search function ;)

Fear not, for there have been numerous threads on the Blenheim. I've started keeping a log of my posts regarding to frequently asked stuff, so i'll just copy-paste some of it that's relevant.


It might also be a good idea to download a user made mission with Blenheims in it as a means to get rid of the crosswind in the stock cross country mission. I'm searching for the link but i can't find it now, it was posted here on the forums, it's a battle of France scenario with a flight of Blens taking off from France and going to back over the channel to Lympne airbase amidst a dogfight.

Alternatively, select the luftwaffe airfield attack mission from the quick mission builder. The first two groups of RAF aircraft spawn on the ground in that mission to simulate a scramble. Change the aircraft type for one of these groups to a Blenheim, click on the pilot icon to set it as the group you spawn into and set all other groups to zero amount of aircraft. This way you will be undisturbed in practicing start-up, take off and landing.

I hope this gets you started and eases your worries somewhat, cheers :grin:

Hi Seeker, the only thing i do is basically have my right engine throttle at 100% and left at around 50% and as my back wheel starts to come up i set the left engine to 100% also. The main thing that stops me from overheating though is when ive started to roll quit fast, i start to drop the prop pitch slowly till its about half way or lower and thats seem to be the only thing that stop my CHT from sky rocketing through the roof.

Watch the use of the throttles, happens in real life
http://www.fightercontrol.co.uk/foru...p?f=18&t=20608

i just repeat myself, WHEN you warm up the engines to 200°C (NO joke!) , the engines work simultan when opening the throttles. No need to make on 50% and the other 100% than. It just take time to reach this temperature without speeding up the game...

CoD need a "warm engines" setting, RoF players know what i am talking about ;)

yup i only put the left 1 at 50% throttle to stop it pulling off the runway to the right. then when i get rudder authority il (ie when tail is off ground) il set the left engine to full, i use prop pitch to stop CHT going above 250

I shoulda really said that ive already got my oil temp to 40 and my CHT to 200 by the time im ready for takeoff

you checked the ruddertrim ?
because as default it is full right IIRC.....

yeah i put it full left rudder at start of mission, still pulls over :/ i cant stop it unless i have my left engine to 50% and right to 100% throttle, even when i turn the cross wind to zero. on one of my own missions on the channel map.

I can relate to that.

I spent almost a full day at it and got absolutely nowhere, in spite of lots of advice from other members.

It was me who suggested taxi-ing to the other end of the runway as in Blackdog's quote, but I never managed it. The engine(s) blew before I could get there!

Then I got a G940 set-up, which I'm still figuring out, and can't get the split throttle to control two seperate engines.

I won't be giving up though, this weekend's project is to set up the 940 and have another go with the Blenheim.

Watch this space!:grin:

lol I don't remember where I was, but it was a little airshow and a girl was commenting on a turn on/warm up engine checklist that she spotted in a cockpit: she said something like "hey, get temperature to 200 degrees, it's like a recipe!" much to the amusement of the people around her hehehe

Actually setting prop pitch to 50% has no effect. It uses two-stage props like the Spit.MkI but the sliders don't "snap" into the top and bottom position like they should. If you set pitch full back it goes to the low RPM position, if you set it at anything higher than that it's the same as running it full fine.

Which means that running with the slider at 50% has no real effect, you can take-off just fine with it at 100% and save yourself some trouble ;)


As for the temperatures now, i too had a bit of trouble. I could take-off just fine with an accelerated warm-up if i'm not carrying bombs, i would advance the throttles in a series of steps with the brakes on in order to "force" a temp increase. When they are running rough the aircraft shakes, when the shaking stops you know it's sufficiently warmed up for the current boost setting so you push it up a notch or two.

However, i would only get the CHT (cylinder head temp) to 150 or so and upon trying to take-off with a bombload bad things would happen. If its unloaded you get enough acceleration and rudder authority even with the engines running slightly rough, but if it's loaded the acceleration is slower, airflow is less and engine components start to fail.

My most recent trick is frequent use of the cowl flaps to actively control CHT. This is also really critical during descent and approach/landing. You can't just chop the throttle and start descending at high speed, the engines will go cold and by the time you deploy gear and flaps and need the extra power for the flare and touchdown you don't get any.

In fact, the entire profile of the approach (how low can you set boost and how fast you can go in combination with your cowl flaps and prop pitch setting) is determined by keeping the temps where they need to be.

If you just put the nose down at coarse pitch (which will cause you to accelerate even further) and chop the throttle you're about to suffer.

Instead, chop the throttles first and go to fine pitch (high RPM), this combination makes the props windmill almost face-on to the incoming airflow and acts like an airbrake. Then start closing cowl flaps (i had them at about 30%-40% and it was still resulting in too low CHT), but remember to open them again when you re-apply throttle to settle into the glide slope.

Yes, it's difficult and the ergonomics in the cockpit are not really the best, but it's highly realistic. Similar things happen with most radial engines, you can take a look on youtube at the A2A P-47 for FSX, or even better, search for some videos showing DeHavilland Beaver aircraft in Canada or Alaska starting up their wasp junior engine.

Radials need some pretty intensive temp management, this workload is the trade-off for their reliability, power and combat resilience.

Online , and ONLY online:
are you able to change positions in a Blenheim without its engines are stopping?

Offline i have not this proplem!

There is some bug with temps resetting/fluctuating when you change crew positions for the first time, it's this that kills the engines.

A temporary work-around is to cycle through all the crew positions when you first spawn on the ground, before your engines are started. I haven't tried this, but several people reported some improvement.

WOW, never expected this..........................
And it always happens. THAT IS a serious bug for online play !!!

I would like to thank you all for all the tips regarding the Blenheim. Today, I finally managed to take her off and I flew the Cross Country mission to France. Looks like we have to keep CHT temperature between 200 and 250C Deg. Once I broke the upper limit, my starboard engine started to vibrate and lost about 200 RPM's. However, I managed to continue the flight and land in France. The next step will be to take off with the full fuel load and then I will expriment with the bomb load. That advanced system modeling creates lots of fun and teaches to check gauges every few minutes.
While I did not have any problem with the Sptifire and Hurricane (i have learnt a bit about their behaviour thanks to the A2A S. Spitfire Mk.I/II for the MS FSX), the Blenheim was a mystery for me :) Pity that only four planes are mentioned in the manual, but maybe we will have some pdf tutorials in the future, just like there are some for the RoF for example.
Thanks,
Lucas

Thanks in advance
 

Have read all the posts and it appears that after a week the thread starter didn't bother to drop in and say thanks for all the Blenheim tips. My DVD hasn't even arrived yet but thanks in advance. Will return to this thread when the challenge (love a good challenge) of flying the Blenheim is on.

Cheers,

OC

On the Syndicate server we have set up one of the two airfields with blenhiem as an airstart (the north western one). You still need to be careful once you have spawned (and for the love of god DO NOT switch crew positions until that bug is fixed!) but it certainly helps get you flying!

Its not on all our missions, but look for the tag when you hover your mouse over the NW belnheim airfield as it will say if its an airspawn. Whilst airstarts for this sort of thing are not our normal practice at SYndicate, the Blenheim is so delicate (and I believe possibly unrealistically so) it simply isn't being flown and given its the only human flyable offensive aircraft the RAF has we do need to get pilots into it!

I haven't said thanks here (although I hope I've acknowledged some posters i other threads) 'cos I still haven't managed to get the dam thing off the ground yet.

Seeing as other people obviously have, the problem's me, not the game, so I'm keeping my big mouth shut until I've learnt something useful.

Sorry about that.

I'm beginning to hate this game.

Jumped on to Repko this morning to try yet again to get the blenheim off the ground.

No sound :( but thought I'd try any way.

attempt #1: Engine 1 suddenly loses rev during warm up. No indication why.

attempt # 2 I have to keep jabbing the brakes despite full left trim and rudder to keep the nose straight, engine 0 suddenly loses power half way up the runway, no indication why.

Frustrated, I restart off line to get sound back.

attempt #3 same as attempt 1
attempt #4 same as 1
Attempt # 5 same as 2

This is supposed to be fun?

Obviously I'm cocking it up somewhere, you guys are managing to get the dam thing off the ground, so I accept that my procedures are at fault.

What burns me is that I can't find out why. I've got all kinds of stupid info windows open (there's realism for you! But WTF can't I get an info window with my current heading? Not real enough?) and NOTHING is giving me any feed back on why my engines keep failing. Temps are in spec, revs are in spec, manifold pressures are in spec etc. etc.

So I guess flying Red buffs is just not for me.

BTW, Old_Canuck: bite me.

Edit: My UP 3 download has just finished, so I guess that's it for this POS until the next patch. Never thought I'd say it, but a bunch of amateurs working free are producing better quality work than this.

Who's the amateur? - I got it off and flew fine after 5 minutes of perusing youtube vids online. See my movie thread for how to do it with no trouble at all, full CEM of course...

Here's a quick step by step list of what I do to take the Blenheim off the ground online on the SYN server:
- Fuel cocks at the back to the right to "outer tanks", fuel cock #3 on (the lever)
- Radiator and carburettor closed
- Brakes on during the whole procedure
- Magnetos on
- Full left rudder trim, full left rudder
- Pitch fine
- Mixture low (1/3 or less on the little image)
- Throttle slightly open
- Ignition for both engines
- Wait.....
- Keep increasing RPM slowly, never allowing it to shake. If it's shaking, reduce throttle.
- At 180º engine temperature, set radiators full open, increase RPM to 2200
- At 190-200º release the brakes
- All rudder and trim is still full-left at this point, but brakes will be needed almost up to takeoff to nudge the aircraft in desired direction
- Plane starts rolling, but the engine temps will stay within the 200-250 range because radiators are open and you are gaining speed. If you're still getting temps too high, you can either reduce RPMs to 2100 or 2000, or start take-off roll at 190º or less so that you gain speed to keep it down.
- Let it go until you get some speed, pull back on stick, and you're off. You will have to leave almost full-left trim.

You'll need to close radiators a bit once you're airborne. The key seems to be engine temps between 200-250. Too low and it'll shake, too much and it'll blow. When changing prop-pitch, adjust radiator as well. I usually put carb heat on 2/3 up... it's a very heuristic choice, no particular reason, but my engine hasn't blown with those settings!

The rudder might actually be full-right, I can't remember. Whichever makes the trim spring in front of you go down. I hope I haven't forgotten anything.


On another note: don't bite people, and be cool. I read for hours to get the Blenheim in the air, was trying to make bombing runs for about 4-6 hours. The first 2 or 3 were all about trying to get the Blenheim off the ground. The rest was me dropping into the channel because of bad engine temp management, etc.

It's supposed to be part of the experience in simulations. It was the best feeling when I finally managed to get it up. And again when I did my first bombing run. It does take dedication, calm and a certain type of personality. Coming on the forums and being insulting or aggressive isn't going to get you any sympathy...

anyone an idea what the lever behind the two fueltank wheels is controling?
fuelcock#3 is strange ?
Could it be the emergency fuel outlet valve ?

i read on these forums, cant find the post: num 3 is cross feed

Try selecting airfields without grass only, it's supposed to be a light bomber, but taxiing on grass, or even try takeoff on it, is too hard. It's too much friction on grass, and you overheat too easy.

Edit;
Thanks for the tip, haven't read this before, sad this isn't in the manual yet.

Thanks, but...

Most of your post is on start up, and I can start the engines OK.
However, you mention temps over 100c, and your not the only one. Here's the thing: My temp gauges only go to 100. I've just started up the game to double check after reading your post, and my gauges definitely only go to 100 degrees.

I should point out that this is with an empty load out and on a concrete strip.

And again, what's getting my blood up is not that I'm doing it wrong, but that I can't find out from the game docs and feed back mechanisms what it is that's going wrong. Even putting it on auto pilot and sitting back to watch how the AI does it is not helping.

I'm glad you find this a pleasing simulation; however I'm not at the moment, and I do have rather a lot of experience in the genre. Of course that's no measure of either piloting skill nor tactical awareness, but it should indicate that I can read a manual and look around a cockpit. Nonetheless, I'm also very aware there's nothing so ridiculous as some one yelling that they're "gud at flight simz" and then falling off the end of the carrier, or what ever.

And Canuck can still bite me.

you have to check the engine temperature gauges, look right behind you, over the fuel "wheels", there are these two little 'bastards' - so important and so shy ;)
In front of you are "only" the oiltemperature gauges ;)

Seeker have you also toggled carb heat?

What he said! I completely forgot to mention it. That should do the trick. It's a bummer always having to look back. I tend to put the mouse near the the upper-right corner of the window so that when I look right, it'll fall on the temp gauges.

Judging quality has nothing to do with how capable we are of flying CoD in full difficulty. Turn down a couple of difficulty settings if you have to, it's not a social stigma to fly on less than 100% difficulty you know.

I agree that documentation is lacking, but there's tons of posts on the Blenheim in here to get you started, plus various youtube videos: instead of reading the manual you use these sources, problem solved.

I roughly know what to do and still botch it from time to time, it's not supposed to be easy. You either make an effort to learn through trial and error (which will also help others because you'll probably discover something new that you can then pass on), or turn down your realism settings a bit and have fun until we come up with the correct procedure to get this bird in the air with some consistency of success.

There are a lot of choices, use them and have fun flying ;)

Hi Seeker, prob the most difficult plane out of the set for me but i got it in the air after a bit of practice.

All i do on start up is, heat the oil temp to 40% throttling up bit by bit as it gets warmer. Then drop throttle, open rads, open carb heat and then drop my prop pitch to 0 while i wait for the cylinder head temp to drop to just above 180. I put prop pitch back up then throttle up slowly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4MNDMwZJGw

~S~

Nice video!

I tend not to pay too much attention to oil temperatures. Do you just wait until 40 because by then engine temps are around 200? I'm going to get neck injuries by looking back towards the engine temp gauges all the time.


Also, I really liked that you set throttle to maximum and adjust prop pitch to keep to desired RPM. Does that give you more acceleration than fine prop pitch and adjusting throttle to lower?

I'd test it, but I have all graphical settings on low, and it gets really hard to tell exactly where you are without the runways and such (to see how long a takeoff run I did).

Oh, and did you use left and right wheel brakes to keep the nose pointed down the runway?

Thanks!

Thanks Anvilfolk

It took me a long time to beable to take off smoothly in this bird, i thought that when Luthier said he would drown us in videos...i thought he meant tutorial vids like dcs did.

Everything ive picked up is from reading up on the forums here, mostly from Blackdog.kt (thanks Blackdog ~S~). I actually did not know about the CHT temps as the gauges are behind you, but i read you have to get oil temp to 40. So for the first few days all of my takeoff were hit and miss :-x

The prop pitch thing is just habit, i can take off on full fine pitch also.

I think you can only use full brakes on the Blenheim, i set left rudder trim and just use my rudder full left as the speed starts to pick up, i tend to when first rolling to try and have it slightly going to the left on the runway so when the torque starts to pull it right you dont go to far to the right

~S~

On low vid settings enable roads disable grass to see the runways.

The wheel brakes are like the RAF fighters on/off brakes use rudders to apply. ie the brakes are tuned into your flight yoke

Prop pitch fine for takeoff but then go coarse, use pitch to regulate revs.

Full left rudder trim full left rudder and if thats not enough try a bit more power on the right engine or less on the left engine, not recomended if heavy !

You dont get good power till oil @40

Stupid place to put temp gauge huh, I looked for ages and still never found it till I saw vid on this forum, same for the fuel cocks.

The Blenny flies quite well once airborn Its becoming a fav of mine, wouldnt like to encounter 109s in daylight tho,+

Has anyone flown the blenny coop with human crew on a server ? That sounds like it could be a laugh.

I think I need a bombaimers course, I havnt bombed a damn thing yet !

Thanks to Freycinet for his excelent entertaining video, for showing me where the temp gauge is and for rekindling my interest in the Blenny and this game.

Actually id love to encounter some 109s on a server :)

On the bob map, you get quit a bit of cross wind, so i do as you say, i have my left engine at about half way till my tail lift.

Actually, using fine pitch is better for takeoff. Using coarse pitch for takeoff is like trying to get your car rolling from a stop while using 5th gear ;)

Found out that the Blen's a pussycat as long as you take off from a longer runway with less wind!

I was persevering with the the stock cross country mission and still no go after a huge number of attempts.

Set up my own mission in the FMB flying from Biggin, with 4x250lb bombs on board and it was a cinch!

Oil at 40, heads just under 200, no carb heat, no boost, throttles at about 65%, mixture in the 'normal' range.

Doddle :)

Is there a video of the Blenheim with or dropping bombs in CLoD?

No bombs to be found in my download for the Blenheim.

And when the tempter control is on the planes are wack. Most of the time. LOL
This shows a take off with the Tempter control off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpVcgriqx58

Sorry Sir, don't understand your banter!

Definition of WACK

slang
: not up to the mark : lousy, lame <while there are skilled moments, there are wack ones as well.

As much as I like CLoD. With the Tempter control on, the planes are wack.

On another flight forum this was said. And it's hard to say a pilot that flew the plane is wrong.


Join Date
Mar 2010
Location
Norfolk England

Problem with Blenheim and other bombers.

"I am having real problems getting the Blenheim to take off properly. Firstly it starts turning as it sits on the runway before you even start the engines. Brakes stop it but you don't seem to be able to keep the brakes applied.

Engines start okay but the aircraft always swings violently to starboard and no amount of left rudder and rudder trim will correct it. Using brakes helps but slows down your take off. I have tried varient power on the engines. This again helps but it becomes very tricky when the aircraft rotates. Also the lock tail wheel does not even seem to work.

I have spoken to an ex-Blenheim pilot who told me the Blenheim was not difficult to take off and did not suffer from an bad yaw tendencies (Unlike the Beaufighter). I have to conclude the Blenheim in CoD s badly modelled. The last patch did nothing to improve it."

I'v gotten to where I can take off in the Blenheim. But not with the Tempter control on.

I'm going to keep trying to take off with the tempter controls on. It my be the whay I'm doing things but it should not be this hard .

We're omitting the good old British weather here me boy!

There's a bad crosswind in the stock mission.

Also there are two temperature controls to consider, oil and cylinder head.

The oil is in front of you on the orange gauges, but the cylinder head temperature is behind and to your right in a very stupid place above the fuel taps.

Set the game to have CEM and temp effects, start up engines and wait for the temps to get to 40 on the oil and just under 200 on the cyl heads. Keep opening and closing the cowl flaps, to keep cyl head temps down while the oil catches up.

Open your cowl flaps (radiators), hold it on the brakes until you're up to the gate on the throttles, about 65%, release the brakes and wait for a long time until your tail lifts. Give it a bit longer, pull back gently, and voila! You're in the air.

Immediately raise gear to cut down drag, gain some airspeed and at about 160mph cut back to zero boost and go to coarse pitch. When the the boost has increased to a steady value, reduce throttle to zero boost again. Trim for the climb.

Works for me anyway. :)

Thanks for the pointers. I maybe trying to take off to fast.

After you talked about the CEM. I have never tried not use that. I did and taking off is EZ and fun made my night.

I'm going to try taking off slower and see if that helps.

thanks,

flyer01

How does one edit the stock training missions? I don't seem to be able to find them via the FMB's file system browser.

Reason being is that yes, unsurprisingly I've been using the stock mission to try to take off in the Blenheim (isn't that what it's for??). So far this has been impossible for me.

Quite a few have postulated that that mission has a strong crosswind component (of course! on the first buff training mission they throw in a crosswind just to encourage the noobs! What were they thinking off <bangs head on desk, hating 1C's game design team even more>), so I thought I'd open the mission in 1C's delightful content editor to remove the crosswind.

But I can't even find the mission :(

(and no, I still can't take off in the dammed thing).

Why the rpm doesn't modify changing the mixture? and also changing altitudes it doesn't seem the mixture change is needed. Is it a bug?

Why do you think it should?

It's true that an incorrect mixture setting will have an effect on the RPM's achievable, but one wouldn't normally mess with the mixture to suit differing engine speeds.

The mixture is semi-automatic: levers in the normal range (from the middle and back) is auto-rich, levers in the weak range (from the middle and forward) is auto-lean.

This is exactly like it worked in the real one too, the levers move all the way but they only have two effective functions: for example, if you have the mixture levers 30% forward it's the same as having them 10% of the way forward, both of it corresponds to auto-rich.


What i do is warm up by applying throttle with my cowl flaps closed and the carb heat on (it seems to accelerate the oil temp increase). Also, don't forget to set rudder trim full left and have the mixture levers back so that it runs on auto-rich.

As soon as my oil temps hit 35-40 and my cylinder temps are 200 i fully open the cowl flaps, hold the brakes and advance throttles to +2 lbs boost.
I do this to clear the engines and get them to a sufficient temperature so that i can then advance throttles even more without having them choke and run rough. I also turn off carb heat (it reduces available power) and wait a few seconds for the mixture to re-adjust and the engines to stop shaking.

At that point i enable the boost cut out (this gives you up to +9 lbs boost at the cost of overheat so you cant' use it for too long), advance both throttles to +4 lbs boost or so (throttles about 60-65% of the way forward) release the brakes, select the starboard engine and gradually advance it to more than +5 lbs boost.

Initially it turns strongly to the right, even under full left rudder and rudder trim, but you can straighten it out without using the brakes: just use short bursts of +9 lbs boost on the starboard engine. Don't leave it there as it will overheat and get damaged, just give it a burst or two to realign with the runway and then pull it back to +5 or so. Immediately pull it back if you get any shaking, this is your engine telling you it's about to blow a gasket but you can prevent it if you pull it back to +5.

During all this time the port engine is running steadily at +4 lbs boost or thereabouts.

By that time i'll be having some forward speed and planning ahead a little bit i will have turned a bit to the left of the centerline by means of throttling up the starboard engine, so that i have some time to react before it starts veering off to the right again.

At this point i select the port engine and gradually advance it to +5 lbs or more. I don't use +9 unless i'm doing what i described above to keep it straight, but i think it can easily take +7 or so (approximate value, as i'm not looking directly at the instruments while "dancing" on the engine controls). Throttle is roughly 90-95% of the way open at this point. The trick is to advance it gradually so that it can warm up (remember, we had the port one running lower boost to reduce the right turning tendency), just advance throttle in two stages to give it a couple of seconds to warm up during the process, instead of going full out at once and getting the "shakes".

This makes it want to turn right even more, but by this point i have enough forward speed to keep it pointing straight with the rudder.

At this point the hard part is over. I set both engines to +5 or a bit more, force the tail up with some down elevator and lift off at around 90-100mph.
I might give it a short burst of +9 lbs boost to get an initial breath of altitude while the gear retracts, then throttle back down to +5 and disable the boost cut-out (with the boost cut-out on maximum boost is +9, by disabling it maximum boost is +5).

I then set props to coarse pitch (pull the levers ALL the way back, anything above that corresponds to fine pitch) and trade that initial bit of altitude for speed, diving back down to get into the speed range where coarse pitch works well (at least 120mph).

From this point on i just monitor my temperatures and adjust cowl flaps as needed.

All flying apart from take off and landing is done with coarse pitch. Maximum cruising boost is +1.5 lbs for lean mixture (levers forward in the "weak" range) and +3.5lbs for rich mixture (levers back in the "normal" range). Maximum climb is +5 lbs for half an hour (i think it is half an hour, going from memory here), but when flying level +5 lbs is limited to mere minutes because the RPM gets too high. In other words, +5lbs in level flight is war emergency power.

All this is with four 250 lbs bombs and 60% fuel, which is more than enough to do a cross-channel raid from one of the airbases west of Dover to Calais and back.

The aircraft is a joy to fly once you get it up in the air (apart from the slightly annoying tendency to roll, you either fly with the rudder trimmed and have the roll to contend with, or you fly with improper rudder trim in a constant sideslip and get rid of the roll) and will easily cruise at 170-180 mph with zero to +1 boost, rich mixture cowl flaps mostly closed.

Comparing with a manual someone sent to me, there are a couple of things that need tuning in our in-game Blenheim.

First of all, all engines in the sim seem to be hard to overheat or even warm-up when idling on the ground, which seems a bit off for a situation where there's almost zero airflow. As for the Blenheim in particular, the manual recommends cowl flaps closed for takeoff because they provide enough airflow to keep the engines healthy as soon as some forward motion occurs. The in-game cowl flaps seem to be less forgiving than that.

So, the way it happens in the sim is that we warm-up with closed cowl flaps and open them for the takeoff, which seems to be the exact opposite of the real procedure: idle and warm-up with cowl flaps open because engines running while sitting on the ground overheat easily, then close the cowl flaps to accelerate faster as soon as the take off run starts and the airflow helps to keep them cool.

Second, the real Blenheim carries two kind of fuel. Start up, taxi, warm up and take off is done on the outboard tanks, cruise and return to base is done on the inboard ones. The sim correctly cycles the fuel cocks, the first time you click on them it selects outboard tanks and on the second click it selects inboard tanks, but i don't know if it models the different fuel.

What happened is that they added two extra fuel tanks to gain range, but the weight went up so they needed more boost for the take off. So, they modified the engines to run +9 lbs but this also needed 100 octane fuel. In the end, they decided to run 100 octane during take off from the outboard tanks and then run 87 octane during the rest of the flight from the inboard tanks. That's the reason for switching tanks after take off, once they throttled down.

I don't know if the sim models this, maybe this is why running +9 lbs in-game is only possible in short bursts.

Finally, the in-game flap controls are similar to the Spitfire (full up or full down), while in the real one they were more like the Hurricane: up, neutral, down.

In other words, in the real Blenheim it's possible to set partial flaps. Move the control to the "down" position to start lowering them, return it to the "neutral" position to stop them where they are.
The Blenheim manual in fact recommends 20 degrees of flaps when flying in long range profile (with the outboard tanks loaded).

Moreoever, the AI in the sim also uses partial flaps, but the way they do it is by rapidly cycling between the up and down commands (you can see this if you enable the autopilot and let it take off for you).

I've posted most of this stuf in another thread under the gameplay sub-section of the forums (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23192) and i hope to have the most relevant portions of the manual copied over soon.

In any case, i bet the Blenheim will get its share of fine-tuning in the upcoming FM/DM improvements that Luthier announced for the next patch.

Until then, use differential thrust with short full throttle bursts to keep it straight like i described above. It's a joy to fly once you manage to take off :grin:

Was able to take off in the stock mission. With CEM and ETE.:grin:

The main thing is you can not push this plane into take off.

Thank you for the help!

flyer01