Warm Up Times of Radial Engines.
 

Assuming that once aircraft FMs are adjusted, I am having difficulty seeing any radial engined aircraft being used online much, except by AIs. Why? Because in reality, even in warm climates, a large radial can take up to half an hour to properly warm up, whereas the water cooled engines can be gotten off the ground in considerably shorter time.

Here we run up against one of the issues of total realism vs. enjoyment of the title. I know that the offline crowd will have no issue here, but my focus is for online. And I dare add that the reality of radial engined aircraft operations is such that no pilot would go out to a stone cold aircraft at the start of a mission, as it would have been warmed up by the ground crew, then possible even have the fuel topped off before the actual mission start time.

So how do we put the radial engined aircraft into the sim and maintain some sort of usability for them? This will be even more critical as we move forward in time with the series,and more and more radial types come into play with all sides.

Will say online wars have to have a half hour earlier start time just for those flying radial engined craft? None of us have all day to fly the sim you know.

In a war time environment ALL aircraft would have been warmed up by ground crew before the sun was even on the horizon and kept warm throughout the day.

http://www.cubpilot.com/Tspin/popcorn.gif

How about an extra switch in the Realism options menu called "Warm start" which let all planes warm up quickly while still maintaining the start-up procedures and CEM? It doesn't get much simpler then that, gives the option to those inclined to prefer it.

This type of logic is sure to get you banned.

I don't know about radial engines.

For fighters warming the engine never has bothered me as during warm up time I do all the things preparing for flight and usually it is quickly warm.

But I agree just get an option engine warmed up in the difficulties setting would satisfy all I think.

LOL! yeah, I try to seem a bit ignorant sometimes so I don't get banned. It's a fine balance. :)

I actually enjoy the warm up phase of the inline engines. It does add to the immersive experience without causing undue frustration. Also gives time to adjust the compass and gun sight. However sitting there for half an hour waiting for the G50 or Blenheim to warm up is really not cutting it at all.

Half an hour to warm up a G.50?! Don't know how you do it but for me it takes 3-4 minutes tops.

Addman, if you would share your proceedure I would be very grateful.

I have tried every way I know to get one off the ground and always, and I mean every freaking time, the engine seizes.

Nice fight today BTW. I wish our connection issues had not gotten in the way, I was enjoying our fight.

Cheers.

S!

I enjoyed our little tangle too but yeah, wish I had better latency with ATAG or that the Repka servers had the same missions as ATAG.

With regards to the G.50, I made a track for you but then as I watched I noticed that CEM is porked when recording so no use there. Anywho, here's what you need to do: 1. Give a little throttle before starting the engine, I mean like 5-10% only. 2. Start engine and wait a little, maybe half a minute or a little more until the engine sound starts getting even. 3. Increase throttle by around 10-20% and wait a little while. Might wanna open the rads and oil rad to full now as the temperatures get fairly high during take-off. 4. Give about 10-20% more throttle and wait until the temperature reaches 100-150 degrees and slam the throttle if you want to. Then engine will probably sputter and rev up and down like crazy but once it reaches 200 degrees it starts sounding like a sowing machine which is historically correct for the g.50 :), you could avoid this by sitting on the airfield for another 5 minutes or so to let it warm up properly but there's no need to really. Basically you need to give small increments of throttle during warm up and listen to the engine, if you throttle too much it will shut down.

ElAurens - it only takes few minutes to warm up Mercurys in a Blenheim, too - minimal cylinder head temp. is 200C, you got to watch it very carefully and make sure you take off on the lower treshold as they go very hot on full power. Ideally, roll into take off position when they reach some 120C and if you happen to go past 200, idle till the temp drops to 200 and only then take off. Don't forget to trim your rudder fully left and do a small run up to synch your RPM.

Warming up is much faster with rads fully shut (unrealistic on the ground I know), add more power in steps (you can hear and feel when the engine stops running rough). But don't forget to fully open them on your take-off run. Once airborne, coarsen your prop, lower your boost to some +4PSI (I think) and work with your rad shutters constatnly to keep her between 200-250C. She climbs slowly, the trick is to find a sweet spot between Coarse and Fine pitch in the area around 5 -30 percent.

Interesting.

I went on ATAG late last night my time and tried twice to get the G50 off the ground.

I let it warm up for 20 minutes and the oil temp never went above 50C and the cylinder head temp never went above 100. Tried to take off and the first time the engine just started smoking and seized up, and the second time I actully got off the ground, but did not have enough power to sustain lift and crashed just off the runway.

My G50s sure work differently than yours do.

What about mix and prop pitch?

I am at a loss here.

I timed Blenheim online (ATAG), took me ~4:56:00 (min/sec) since respawn to gear up.

Sokol1

you are not lost. the warm up of the radials in CoD is realy annoying. and not only online, keep in mind that the AI does not care, imagine flying an offline miision with such a formation, your AI comrades are alrready comming home till you have warmed up your engine :D

the only "help" i have is to throttle up alwasy a bit during warm up. and the italian planes are even worthervthsn the blenheim in regard to the warm up time....

put it in the WIP category i would say. you know, the game has potential ;)
Imagine such warmup times in the planed easternfront scenaria at a cold winterday. The war is lost long before you are able to start with your I-16 (as example for a radial) :D

Yup! No need for prop or mix settings just give small iincrements of throttle until cylinder temp is 100+ then u may hit full throttle. Never fails for me.:)

I haven't flown a real plane with radiator control, but in every checklist I remember reading you are supposed to close the radiators when warming up on the ground. Is there another reason?

Thanks for the help Addman.

I finally got her up today. BlitzPig_Raven and I flew a full tank draining sortie on ATAG this afternoon. Except for the lack of speed it's a delightful aircraft to fly.

We maneuver killed a Spitfire by getting him to stall and crash in the Channel, then we danced with another Spit till he ran away towards England like a little school girl. Good fun.

Now I wish the CR 42 and Gladiator were flyable. The Brits really need a crap plane.

:cool:

She's a crap plane lovers dream ain't she? CR42 and Gladiator, yes aaaand yes please! Beware though, I've been shot on by "fellow" 109 pilots, it boggles me, can't they tell the difference between a G.50 and a Spitfire/hurricane? It's happened several times and it ticks me off, maybe they are just teens that don't know so much about WWII aviation.

RoF has it. And all servers (I've flown on) use it. A good idea IMO for CloD as well. But somehow I like it better in CloD...

OH my... I hated all the start up procedures for flying Falcon.

When you fly the real thing, you have to deal with real world. When you fly a virtual aircraft... YOU ARE PRETENDING. Why not just pretend like an 8 year old kid does and by pass all whoopla associated with a real world warmup. I don't care how far you go with a virtual cockpit you'll never get full real until you ARE FULL REAL.

I don't want all the complications of real flying in a virtual air combat. I prefer the WW2 air combat, because the planes were fast and powerful enough, yet you still need combat skills. The fast movers knocking down enemies at 22 miles away, etc. Just doesn't make sense for enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong. I am for flight simulator experience as you like it. Oleg has clickable cockpits for the people that think that is feeling of full real. LOL

I just can't forget I'm in my office sitting at my desk facing a monitor and holding a joystick designed for that environment.

Heck... I am not even strapped in. Most of the time I'm half reclining in my big old leather chair.

I have a CH Products MFP programmable keyboard. I set everything to as few buttons possible and circumvent all the complications. Yes, I know the complications well enough. What is my excuse. I work consistently with the computer, and what little time I have is so small for flying IL2 or COD. If I get on for 2 hours a week I feel fortunate. Too much to do and too little time to do it.

I sure as heck am not going to sit in front of the screen like some darn dummy and let a computer program manage my time and life waiting for a virtual engine to warm up. I'll sit there a few seconds, after that something better happen.
Anyone that would wait on such a thing is idea candidate for Pochinko the dullest most boring game ever invented. LOL I cannot for any logical reason understand how anyone can sit an watch that ball drop and bounce redundantly for hours and hours and enjoy it.

http://vimeo.com/17021697

As a pilot and mechanic who's flown or done ground runs on radials (from R670s on through R2800s) on not sure I've ever waited more than about 5 mins for warm up. And warm up is usually not done at idle. About all you're looking for is oil temp because the oil is usually a heavy, single viscosity, like 50 weight, and if you throttle up too much too soon pressure will get too high popping gaskets in some areas while other areas will have low oil volume. Roller motors like the R2800 can actually handle low oil flow surprisingly well, though, because they don't rely primarily on plain bearings.

Are you talking about warm up before taxi or warm up before takeoff?

The next update instead of fixing the crashing memory windows fart

Were going to have a old man with a can of methoxymethane (Ether ) standing infront of the aircraft yelling out "try it now!"

Yes there is a reason, you would cook some engines even before taking off. (Merlin III for instance, esp. in a Spitfire where the water rad is being blocked by the landing gear) Regarding Mercury IVs, in the real life manual it says rads open on the ground, shut on the take off run hence my comment about 'unrealistic', it's pretty much the other way round in game.

Starting an engine with ether is not warming it up. The purpose for warming an engine is to get the oil warm so that the bearing surfaces are lubricated properly. The ether just provides an extra large detonation of the fuel, nothing more.

Skua? or not quite that crap?

Well, we do need some kind of attack aircraft, so the Blackburn would work, more or less...

:grin:

zoning in on how long the aircraft should run before take off instead of addressing game crashing as your taking off provides a large headache, nothing more

For the 2800, after start you want oil 50+ psi within 25/30 secs and then expect oil to hit 40C within 2 or 3 mins at 900/1000 rpm after which you can throttle up over 1000 rpm and typically start taxing. By the time you get to the run-up pad you're more than ready to due as much throttle as you need to, 2300 for mag and prop checks.


Here's a P-47 cold start with two mins to taxi. (Note the smoke which takes forever to clear because of the long exhaust to turbo - most Jugs today don't have this, they have conventional side exhausts at the original waste gate location.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9EPQa559Nk


PS. The smoke is from oil that has accumulated in the exhaust system and cylinders since the previous shutdown. Before starting a cold radial (or inverted) engine, always pull the prop through (forward) at least 2 full crankshaft revolutions, usually between (for a three blade prop) 6 and 18 blades, depending on gear reduction.

Was that a cold start as in the first start of the day?

And what was the weather like?

A "cold" start in the summer near Atlanta is a very different animal from a (genuinely) cold (and probably wet) start during a British summer, let alone (for example) a Russian winter...

I don' know about aircraft engines but air cooled motorcycle engines warm up quicker than liquid cooled. Air cooled only have the sleeves and cooling fins to heat. With liquid cooled you have twice the amount of metal in the block and heads. Then there's the coolant and radiator reservoir. Ride a liquid cooled bike hard to soon and you get unnecessary wear and stress.

Two minutes before he Taxied but how long before he was ready for Takeoff ?

At 4:24 he taxied behind the C47 blocking the camera mans view, and one second later at 4:25 the P47 was taking takeoff. The camera man had to plenty of time to reposition for a better view of the takeoff because the P47 was at the far end of the runway (out of sight) warming up for 20 to 30 minutes before the camera man filmed the take off.

lol - ok, guys. NOTE: I was there BUT did not shoot this video.

It was the end of May in Atlanta. Was comfortably warm, not hot by any stretch, and slightly humid. It was the first start of the day for the Jug. The video is clipped but it was not a twenty or more minute delay to takeoff, more like fifteen. The taxi was nearly half of that with run-up the majority of the other half. Even with the paddle blades there isn't an awful lot of airflow from the prop on the ground so the danger is almost always (unless in the snow, of course - lol) overheating before takeoff. Heavy bombers at large bases lining up for massive raids would sometimes adopt the technique of taxiing on inboards, then switching to outboards and then back again to control temps (and that's with paddles). The bat handles on the early F4U, as a contrast, required rather quick, deliberate action on the ground in the Pacific, as you might imagine.


... AND ... once you're good for 1000+ rpm (40C) you're good to go, temp wise. What might hold you back a little is if you are paying for it (you just can't baby your $75000 motor too much, eh?). The taxpayer was swapping out the engine in a couple hundred hours (at least, hopefully) during the war so they did what they did back then (i.e. use 70" for takeoff). Ground crew run-ups prior to missions were as much or more a systems check as engine warm-up.

True but even more important is the fact aircraft engines have what is called a "choke grind" cylinder.

That means the cylinder is wider at the base and narrower at the head when cold. When warmed up, the head is hotter than the base so it expands and the cylinder walls become straight.

If you operate your engine without it being warm, then you are really putting excessive wear on the head, pistons, and rings.

Yes. That's a good point, but what I'm saying is that on the engines I've run by the time the oil is warmed up enough to rev up the engine the cylinder head temps are good to go. That's all.

Basically the cylinders need to absorb the heat first before the engine start heating the oil.

Hence when the oil temp is good, the cylinders are already fit to go :rolleyes: