I realize that the P-51 CoG was moved but,
 

There was a fanboy group that sent documents to Oleg to get elevator stick force lowered and as a result the balance point got moved because that's how it works, that's how it's done. Since then there's been tons of discussion about fuselage tank level where I can't recall seeing anyone mention that the super-sized fuselage tank didn't get introduced until the D models.

Could maybe just maybe have the P-51B and C models CoG moved up even if it means higher elevator stick force?

Also are the sealed ailerons modeled? I expect so, the roll rate is very good.

of course if nobody agrees or comments on changes then there should be no reason for DT to make any such change.

Nothing I've read indicates that the fuselage tank installed in the B/C models was smaller or different in any practical way from the one placed in the D/K models. The problem starts and ends with the assumption that the fuselage tank should always be filled, when it was intended to be an overload tank used only when filling the wing tanks and carrying drop tanks would not provide the range needed for the planned mission.

All Mustangs provided with the overload tanks were marked with a white (or black, in the natural metal aircraft) cross above the data stencil on the left side of the fuselage, just ahead & below the cockpit sill as a reminder. Of course, that information didn't always get to the units (or sometimes individual ground crewmen) in the field and they had to figure it out for themselves, but that is a natural fallout when your shortest supply lines are over 4,000 miles (Dallas to Liverpool) and your quickest means of duplicating documents is the mimeograph machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph). It was definitely well known and understood by the time veteran units started converting to the P-51 while still in combat operations, and issues or problems due to it being full in combat were most often due to individual error, not common practice.

In any case, when filled, the fuel in the overload tank was supposed to be used over friendly/neutral territory on the way to disputed air space and be more than half empty by the time contact with the enemy was probable. Since Il-2 Sturmovik's game engine does not allow for a CG shifting due to fuel or ammo consumption, the CG should be shifted to one consistent with a nearly-empty overload tank, and 100% fuel should mean that the overload tank will not be filled (and who needs it on any maps in this game anyway?). Overload fuel should be an option for the Mustang, just like 'extra ammo' is an option for the P-47.

No doubt there will be some further issues with handling (there always is), but the Mustang used to have a pretty good reputation for good handling and responsiveness before the Il-2 Sturmovik sim series trashed it.

cheers

horseback

100% agree to this. If your can't model CG shifting in game engine, it's only fair to model the correct CG. P51 going into combat with full tanks and messed up CG is extremely rare.

You know I do remember the first few patches the Mustang was a pleasantly interesting aircraft to fly before everyone started to complain and it became fairly difficult to fly.

I'd like to see it represented in a configuration that it would typically do battle in. So, I agree... if the CoG is setup in a position that represents a full rear tank then I'd like to see it altered. This would be an acceptable compromise on realism for the sake of dealing with an engine issue.

I thought the D's were the longer range model and there might be a way to get a P-51 closer to combat condition in game. Is it just the bubble top that's different?

Zeno's has loaded some videos up on Youtube including an intro to the P-51 on handling and characteristics. It is supposed to keep alt without trim change for some range of speed changes which is a wing and tail balancing act. And before that tidbit came up there was mention of the Merlin making the plane a bit nose-heavy compared to the original Mustang. So just -maybe- a version with empty fuse tank will be less trim intensive.

It was done because some fanboys had a document that said the stick force should be light, with numbers and perhaps conditions. So we got what it took to make the elevators as light as was demanded.

All Mustangs were considered long range fighters in very close to the the same class as the P-38 on internal fuel; a couple of RAF Mustang Is flew the first fighter sorties over German territory in late '42 or early '43 (possibly with drop tanks, I'm not sure--AFAIK, the Mustang I & Ia lacked that capability, but the RAF was always experimenting, often without consulting the manufacturer).

The Merlin Mustangs were similarly inherently long legged, particularly with the introduction of the droptank capability, but they were just short of an escort to Berlin capability (assuming at least 15 minutes of combat), and some clever fellow noted that since the newer radios didn't take up as much space as before, there was room for an extra tank behind the pilot with another 40% of the original capacity, which would easily put the Pony over the top for that requirement.

The first P-51Bs were reaching Britain in September of 1943, but not in sufficient numbers to equip a full group, satisfy the 8th Air Force's in-house experts that the things were safe to fly those kinds of distances at those altitudes, and familiarize the new group(s) slated to fly them right away. Combat operations with the P-51B didn't begin in earnest until early December of '43, and the 352nd FG started ops without the fuselage tanks (as did the RAF squadrons receiving the Mustang III at about the same time).

While all that was happening, North American was installing the fuselage tanks and flying a test batch of 'improved' aircraft to determine if it could be done without screwing up the airplane's combat capability. Once that was done, they had to satisfy the USAAF that they had done so while at the same time trying to figure out the best way to install them both on the production lines and create retrofit kits that could be practically applied to aircraft already deployed in England. As I recall, the second or third production blocks of the razorback Merlin Mustangs came 'stock' with the fuselage tanks and were starting to arrive by January '44 (although they still only had the original eight track tape players;)).

The first retrofit kits probably were reaching depots in Britain by December of '43, but the first couple of groups were already committed to operations, so the retrofits to their aircraft were likely done one flight or squadron at a time and in part by replacement of combat damaged or aircraft lost to all causes. 8th AF Mustangs were apparently fully converted to the fuselage tanks by March 1944, since the first daylight bombing attacks on the Berlin area took place in the first week of that month--about eight weeks before the first bubbletop models were issued.

cheers

horseback

Was F-15 or F-16 the first US fighter with cup holder(s)? (in response to the 8-track note)

I don't know. But due to its enclosed cockpit the P-35 was the first U.S. fighter that allowed you to hang fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror. :)

That's a bit controversial; the F-111A has made a claim, but most experts disqualify it on the basis that it was only a mud-mover, and therefore not a real fighter. Further, the Australians got their noses out of joint when their version of the Aardvark came with cupholders too small for a can of Fosters'. Robert MacNamera has been persona non grata Down Under ever since...

F-16s never came with cup holders as original equipment; due to the inclined pilot's seats, aircrew were issued sippy cups to prevent spilling.

cheers

horseback

Current P51 FM is very close to what pilot accounts like Bud Anderson memoirs read. It is nowhere like a P51 with full aft fuel tank, or you'd have to PUSH the stick while in a turn so the plane doesn't tilt itself beyond control. If you find it difficult to handle, you can either train (it doesn't require much time) or lower your joystick response (doesn't take more time). Just leave the FM alone, pretty please.

BTW, if you can still find it, UF josse made a mod with moving CG, and flying it with full tank was really a challenge until it started to empty. Compatibility was 4.09 IIRC.

I agree with this, though I admit I know nothing about how the real life Mustangs flew.

What exactly is wrong with the way the P-51 flies? It needs a lot of rudder and elevator trim adjustments, but no more than a lot of American planes or Yaks or Spits in the game. It stalls violently and somewhat unexpectedly, but so do P-40s, a lot of USN planes, I-16's, Hurricanes, Tempests. It shakes when firing, but again, it's not the worst plane for this. And unlike those other planes, it's pretty much untouchable when flown well. The Mustang III can even turn-fight with Bf-109s from 1943 or later.

When I get into a groove in a P-51 online, or when I see an even better pilot in that plane on the opposing team, I wonder where the complaining about the FM is coming from. So seriously, without snark or sarcasm; what would you like to be able to do in the P-51 that you can't now?

First, it needs a lot of rudder and elevator trim adjustments; this is in direct contradiction of both British and American wartime pilot and test reports. These were not propaganda, because these reports were part of the training regimen and they are confirmed by the personal testimonies of the men who flew them who are still with us. The oft-cited Anderson account is from one fight in thin air at high altitudes and at often low indicated airspeeds at the extreme ends of his climbs at which point, yes, the Mustang has higher stick forces and needs a bit of trim adjustment. There are literally thousands of other pilot accounts that tell you that the Mustang was eminently controllable and needed minimal trim adjustment in all but the most extreme conditions. Most WWII fighters tended to have high stick and rudder forces at low speeds and high throttle; most of them were designed to be at their best at somewhat higher speeds than 200 kph.

Go to Zeno's Warbird Drivein and watch the Mustang video here:
http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/P-51.html

It's a training film; air forces don't lie to their pilots about the aircraft they are going to fly into combat (at least not the ones that win). Pay attention, and you'll hear them say that it doesn't need a lot of trim adjustment through most of the normal speed range. There's also a few comments on the stall characteristics, which say clearly that the Mustang had a fairly predictable stall warning in both normal and accelerated stalls, and that the stall was easily recovered from by the standards of the time. I have more than one pilot's account that confirms this, so maybe the modern pilots who fly the restored warbirds have a more limited context, or they are comparing the Mustang to slower and lighter modern general aviation prop planes.

Find a copy of America's Hundred Thousand and read the sections on trimming for each American fighter (I've posted them on these forums at least once); the Mustang's section is full of superlatives, not because it was easy to trim, but because it hardly needed to be trimmed at all. The in-game Mustang requires at least a couple of trim clicks each in rudder and elevator for any change in speed of 10 kph; how does that square with contemporary pilot complaints about the P-40 needing trim adjustment for speed changes of as little as 10 mph (that's 16 kph, or more than one and one half times less often than the in-game Mustang)?

The P-40 was well known to be a couple of orders of magnitude worse for trim demands than any other US fighter, and the Soviets got several thousand examples, but the in-game Mustang, which was considered the second least trim hungry aircraft in the US inventory after the P-38, (and that one has some in-game issues too in terms of the amount of elevator trim) is worse, even after the recent changes to the Warhawk's FM.

Keep in mind that we are talking in the context of high powered propeller driven fighters in the 1940s, not light general aviation of the early 21st century; of all the fighters that have survived to this day, none is more numerous or more thoroughly documented than the P-51 and comparing contemporary pilot evaluations of any aircraft nearly 70 years old to virtual aircraft modelled on factory data and pilots' reports from seventy years ago may give you the wrong idea. This isn't anything like your Daddy's Cessna.

By the standards of the high performance taildraggers of WWII, the Mustang was a remarkably easy aircraft to master and fly; only the Spitfire was considered superior in this regard among Allied fighters. The Mustang had a reputation for doing what the pilot wanted it to do and for doing it more precisely than the pilot's skills would warrant. In the game, it takes a lot of effort to master, not least because the instruments are slow to give you accurate information --remember, a pilot in an actual airplane has the sensual inputs of his inner ear, the pressure on his backside from the seat, and at least 180 degree range of vision--in the game, you are forced to rely on what the sim gives you--and if you're flying a P-51, the sim lies shamelessly.

Your 'ball' ricochets around and takes precious seconds to settle the moment you deviate from straight and level flight, the climb & dive indicator is a good second and a half behind the altimeter, the artificial horizon is hard to read in Wide view and it seems just a bit offset, which makes it hard to detect whether your wings are actually level, and at the same time, if you're accelerating or slowing down, you have to constantly be hammering at your trim buttons or your stick will soon be all the way back or all the way forward as you struggle to keep it on track.

Compare the cockpit displays of the Japanese fighters (which in real life used mostly license built copies of older American designs) in the game, and you will see that the display is faster to respond and much, much more accurate under the same circumstances. German and Soviet cockpits are similarly advantaged, in my opinion, although not quite to the same degree.

People who have mastered the in-game Mustang and can actually shoot accurately with it have done so after many hours of effort and frustration; they have learned which cockpit displays are accurate and when to ignore them, how to anticipate the trim requirements and the right time to shoot.

I won't go into the DMs, because that is a contentious mess; I will point out that the Mustang was a typical American fighter, and it could only be called 'delicate' when compared to the P-47 or the Hellcat. Period. Compared to any European or Asian design, it was a big, heavy and rugged aircraft. It could take a lot of punishment, but the game permits some remarkably high hit percentages in the forward parts of the fuselage, which rarely took the same sort of hits in real life from what I've seen of the historical record. And of course, the AI never miss that engine or fuel tanks from any range...ask yourself if maybe someone decided that it was 'fairer' to make the American planes just or 'almost' as vulnerable as the smaller, more lightly built a/c from the rest of the world in the interests of 'game play'...

Which leads us to gunshake: I think it excessive, considering the weight of fire of four or six .50s is less than that of the much lighter FW-190A or Bf 109 with 20mm gunpods. Again, that is a judgement call, but all of the judgments seem to be going in one direction...

The speed is there; it's well documented, so taking that away is practically impossible. I even suspect that the acceleration is somewhat higher than it should be, given that the P-38 should be better at all alts in that regard, and it isn't. Maybe they're just going by the general impression, or maybe I haven't figured out how to squeeze the quickness out of the Lightning that should be there. Speed is very important, and it gives you lots of advantages, but the in-game Mustang has a lot of its other well documented historical virtues erased or hobbled.

cheers

horseback

I can get behind what you say but not how you say it. I wonder just what you expect when I've read the same material and don't come away with descriptions like yours.

In Bud Anderson's account the need to change trim was no surprise to him but as stated something you just do from regular practice, like tuning a car radio in those same times. But then from training on he was taking planes across the speed range quickly regularly.

At low speed you don't get enough air over the elevator and ailerons to make high stick forces but propwash on the tail will be high in proportion to prop speed and power and worse on the ground when the tail is down. At cruise the plane should be closest to trim neutral by design. Do you find any accounts for any plane of the stick being "set in cement" at low speed? At high speed, yes.

Trim is normal for most planes for not just speed change but engine setting change. When you change the propwash spiral you need to adjust the rudder to match though it's easily enough done first and sometimes (like the 109) only with the feet.

This is where I read/listen close to accounts, what are the conditions and are there any clues about all those things that don't get written or mentioned which is why Bud's statement starting off with how trim is one of those things and why really sticks out. It doesn't mean trim every second but in maneuvering combat it happened often and for an accomplished pilot was no big deal, something done without thought.

Still the IL-2 P-51 is trim needy as are most all of the models and in IL-2 it's not simple at all to get right (in fact it's a PITA) nor do we players have the feel of G's and slip side-pull and changing stick force that let these things become automatic. It's a pain no matter what plane, some degree of that plays a part in P-51's so how do you say how much is the game itself and how much the model? Oh, by comparing to enemy planes!

How many degrees is elevator trim? And how many clicks is the total range? A couple of clicks is barely anything!

If something needs to be fixed it also has to determined how much fix and not enter magic wand land.

BTW, plural orders of magnitude more is 100x, 1000x, 10000x, not 2x or 3x more. Please, significant is 10%, 1/10th more, and 50% more or less is extremely remarkable where 25% alone is remarkable. Orders of magnitude is not a statement to be thrown around. It has numbers attached that beg qualification despite how often number-challenged people misuse the term. Cargo capacity of a ship tends to be orders of magnitude more than that of a truck. A modern jet might fly a single order of magnitude faster than a Piper Cub. Changing trim 100x more than what Bud described you mean never removing a hand from the trim wheel.

I have to be a lot more ham-handed than usual to get The Ball to misbehave anything like what you describe.

Find the date that Zeno's Flight Characteristics film was made. Clues: it's a P-51B being introduced as new. There is NO mention of the fuselage tank and CoG caveats we see mentioned later as you would expect if there was a fuselage tank and "these reports were part of the training regimen" which BTW that film was.
My conclusion is that at that time there was no concern because there was no fuselage tank to be concerned about. Still, once it is EMPTY the result *might* be the same or close to the film.
We -KNOW- that with the tank more than half full that the change was big not only from the manual but pilot accounts such as Clostermann's.

I know you have a passion for the subject but it keeps going to the fundamentalist religion level. If you get a blackboard, you could approach the Beck level from where you may never come back to sane reasoning and start using first letters in arranged words to make your own truth. Did you ever know Von Helton?

From my understanding if you select under 75% fuel the shifted CoG is what you will have .. This was from some people who worked on the P-51 FMs in HSFX.. The source told me 6that in that respect they changed nothing from the stock AC.

Try it.. fly a P-51 with 100% fuel and one with 50% fuel and you will notice the difference.

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That IS interesting... I've never heard of that being a FM feature but it could very well be the case.

I will definitely corroborate the second part of this and that is that at 50% or less that the Mustang is much easier to handle. All of the people who take it for a 5 minute dogfight jaunt at 100% fuel are handicapping themselves big time.

Guilty. Put the cuffs on.

When TD was adding G stresses to planes back with the 4.10 patch, I asked for the option of including G force information on the speedbar to simulate exactly these sorts of inputs. Sadly, I was told that it wouldn't be "realistic" for cockpit view. At least they added it to the "Wonder Woman" view.

Per another thread about gunnery, it's possible that gunshake for the P-51 is accurate and should be increased greatly for most other planes.

That's why I always take 50% fuel or less for any QMB mission. It doesn't take that long and arguably it's "realistic" since QMB missions start in the air, presumably after the planes have been patrolling for a while.

Horseback, all the things you mention are on par with the "fit and finish" of most other planes in this game.

Inaccurate or slow gauges? The P-11's fuel gauge still does not work, even though it was the very first extra plane introduced in a patch to the original IL-2 title. And didn't that plane fly with its rudder working in the opposite way than control input for a long time? Talk about hobbling. Is that too some sort of Russian conspiracy from the makers of this game, anti-Polish this time?

Also, have you seen the Pe-2's airspeed gauge between 300 and 350km/h? It looks like a four-year old drew the 10km/h interval lines with a Crayola. Speaking of bombers, in most of them the airspeed gauge in the pilot's cockpit does not match the reading of the gauge next to the bombardier's seat. And I can't recall the climb and dive indicator NOT being a second or two slow to respond in any plane in this game, though I don't pay attention to the Japanese ones much.

Inaccurate toughness? The P-51 has a glass engine and average wings, but I rarely if ever get disabled controls or get PK'd in it. Soviet planes were supposed to be tough, but the supposedly toughest of them all, the IL-2, loses its controls and its tail as easily as a lizard. Yaks become useless with a scratch on their wing, and the Pe-2 appears to have its wings glued to the fuselage with bubble-gum.

Ease of flight and stalls? You can see the supposedly easier to fly Spitfires do spins and stalls all over the place in a server with lots of rookie pilots, and they're harder to recover from than in a P-51. Their elevator trim needs is more intensive than that of the P-51, and their "arrow" (British equivalent of the ball) bounces from side to side with speed changes even more. Besides, "ease of flight" is so subjective and open to interpretation, and likely means different things to real pilots who spend 95% of their flight time bored, and players of this game.

The delay on The Ball is modeled down to what type of fluid was used in the tube. That's not a mistake, real gauges have delays, these are not 21st century Cessna's as has been noted somewhere lately.

As Joe Worsley who learned to fly in the USAAF during WWII had noted years ago, if you tried to "fly the needle" then "you'd be all over the sky".

It's not all errors. Some, maybe maybe most is attempted realism.

Anderson, like all the pilots of that era did have a lot of practice at trim adjustment, but he also had the 'feel' that the virtual pilot is denied, and as I pointed out, the account that everyone loves to quote covers one fight at between 25 and 30 thousand feet; at that altitude, the IAS is relatively low, especially as both combatants were trying to extend their zoom climbs (and oddly enough, that is where the comment about constantly trimming comes up). As I understand it, flight performance is consistent with indicated airspeed regardless of altitude, and at low IAS, the rudder needs a lot of adjustment, but not the elevators or the ailerons to any great degree.
"At cruise the aircraft should be closest to trim neutral by design." What happens when you have an air start with the Mustang in-game? Your starting speed is what, around 300kph/185 mph? The Mustang (and almost every other late-war US fighter except the Hellcat) drops like a rock; you can lose 1,500 ft before you recover, even with pushing the throttle and prop pitch well forward and mashing in nose up trim while pulling back on the stick and trying to avoid a stall. Then, once you get leveled, you're fighting a climb because there is no discernible balance or transition point. You simply start fighting your stick in the other direction and mashing in nose down trim. Elevator trim on the Mustang should be minimal, not a constant battle with the joystick's springs, and the difference between 185 mph indicated and the normal cruise speed of around 240 mph IAS (2700 rpm and about 35-40" manifold pressure in the DCS Mustang), and the rudder shouldn't need a couple of clicks (1/80th of the trim range) for every 10kph/6mph in speed variation--as noted before in previous posts, the P-40 was thought extremely trim hungry because it needed a rudder trim adjust for every 16kph/10mph of speed variation.

Check any reliable source, and the P-40 would be rated well below any model of the P-51 in the matter of trimmability or trim demands. Even with the recent changes to the FM, the Il-2 '46 Warhawk is still not the trim hog the Il-2 '46 Mustang is; the Warhawk is still fairly predictable and quite intuitive, and a far better gun platform as a result.
Here, I agree with you in principle, but the degree of change required to minimize stick force seems excessive to me; it's 160 clicks of rudder or elevator trim from one extreme to the other, and you can feel the difference of one click (and usually, you find yourself giving it three clicks in one direction and then one click back on the elevators and then you adjust the rudder trim in approximately the same way, and then if your nose isn't perfectly level, you're either speeding up or slowing down a little bit and the trim has to be adjusted again). Elevator-elevator- elevator; UN-elevator -rudder-rudder-Unrudder--oops--UN-elevator-UN-elevator, rudder. Lather, rinse, repeat. In most cases of Il-2 FMS I believe that the elevator trim is much too excessive--on average, I think that we are applying trim at least two to four times as often as we should have to in proportion to rudder trim.
On the contrary, I have always compared the Mustang FM to other US fighters, and there appears to be a clear historical hierarchy that can be established from worst to best. The P-38 was the least trim needy, closely followed by the Mustang, and the P-40 was far and away the worst with most of the rest grouped somewhere close to the middle--and this may be why Oleg was so sure that US fighters 'got worser' as they were developed--it is generally agreed that the P-40's trim issues became more pronounced with every new model and the Soviets received almost every Warhawk variant via Lend Lease. Since 1C appears to have used TsAGI wartime testing as their primary source of data for their FMs well into the life of the sim, and TsAGI had little in the way of first hand data on the late war US fighters (particularly the Naval fighters), I think that some extrapolation went on, and that there was a certain prejudice at work. We had several instances of US sources of official documentation being rejected by 1C because they were 'propaganda'.
If we could assume that the original game and Forgotten Battles/Pacific Fighters had the P-39 and the P-40 series properly 'slotted' in terms of capabilities and firepower versus the Soviet and German aircraft that the Soviets exhaustively tested during and after the war (and players' results in the game seemed to reflect that slotting), we should expect that the superior late war aircraft should be superior to the P-39 and P-40 in most, if not all respects.

Instead, there's this insistence that more advanced means more complicated and harder means more realistic.

As I said, I have checked on several aircraft, and it's the same for all; 80 button clicks from neutral to full trim in each direction, or 160 clicks from one extreme to the other. You're right; a couple of clicks is barely anything. Or at least it should be. Amazingly, much of the time one click is too little and two clicks is excessive; you still find yourself fighting the stick or making constant micro corrections when you should be able to just hold the stick steady and maintain straight and level flight once you've stopped accelerating and keep the throttle and prop pitch constant on aircraft with an established reputation for stability.If something needs to be fixed, the responsible parties first have to agree that it should be fixed; a partly nerfed Mustang seems to have a lot of supporters in the Il-2 '46 community, not least because of some fashionable historical revisionism and cherry picking.
Depends on your background; you appear to be using an engineering standard as in ten to the x power. I might be overstating my case, but I tend to think in terms of squares and cubes as orders of magnitude. When you have 160 squared (160 rudder X 160 elevator plus maybe a little aileron here and there) shades of trim adjustment and you have to use every one of those steps in some part of the flight regime (plus several in between) for an aircraft that historically is described as needing very small amounts of trim (and mostly rudder trim), that's reasonably close to an order of magnitude in my book.

Maybe you're not chasing ai Me 110s that will twitch out of your sights just as you get within effective gun range; the moment I correct to get the guns back on the target, the ball under the sight is squirting all the way to one side or the other; I realized a while back that most of the time it isn't remotely accurate unless you've been flying straight and level for a minute or so. Of course, I probably drink a lot more coffee than you do, but it is a lot more 'active' than most other aircraft's T&Bs in response to minor inputs. As I said, the cockpit displays in the Japanese fighters are far more stable, accurate and timely, but they are based on what someone thinks they should be like (and that someone probably owns a Honda or a Toyota), because they have next to no documentation on them, and they cannot imagine a time when good quality in a Japanese product would be a surprise to anyone who encountered it. The German instruments are slower and less accurate than the Japanese, for Pete's sake. That is just upside down and backwards from the historical record.

I understand that the instruments in many aircraft are modeled as illegible or slow & inaccurate, but this is a flight simulation without 360 degree field of view or moving cockpit; we don't get the cues that the real pilots got, and ones we do get are slow or false in selected cases to a greater or lesser degree. I have argued in other threads on this forum that the flight instruments depicted in the game cockpits should at least meet a single standard of accuracy and clarity, the clearer and more accurate the better.
Let's start with the film; at 2:20 we briefly see an Olive Drab D model without a fin fillet, so it's safe to say that the film probably is late '43 at the earliest (first production 'B' models came off the line in late May or early June of that year, and the cutdown fuselage and bubbletop were in the works before New Year's Day 1944).

At 3:20, Mr Deitz (the bald guy) says "And we're putting an 85 gallon tank in the fuselage, back of the pilot's seat." This means that it's a done deal, the tests were passed, the concept works and we're either in production or about to enter it. No earlier than August of '43 for that portion of the script; the wording is vague and he could mean that they were already doing it at that time or that they were about to.

Again, it's an overload tank, and I agree that the aircraft in the film probably didn't have it (no white cross near the data panel is visible, but the film could have been made before it became common practice). As mentioned in the film, the heavier Merlin 60 series moved the CG a bit forward from the P-51A, and I am aware that the newer radios were more compact and lighter than those in the earlier models, so adding the extra bracing, fittings and the tank probably put the CG much nearer to where it was intended. Since the consensus is that once the tank had less than 45 gallons in it, the aircraft would behave normally, the extra 235 to 260 lbs of weight from that first forty gallons of fuel was the critical part that hosed the CoG up. America's Hundred-Thousand says that as a class, the Merlin Mustangs needed a bit more trim than the Allison powered models, but that they were still very good in that regard. We could argue that a Merlin Mustang with the empty tank was closer to the ideal CG of the P-51A than the first P-51Bs without it.

Now regarding trim, at 13:40 in the movie the Major in the tower asks the pilot "How is she on directional trim changes as speed and horsepower are varied?"

Response:"The aircraft is stable at all normal loadings but the directional trim changes at low speeds as speed and horsepower is varied. However, the rudder tab corrects this with just a slight adjustment and it should be used as necessary. Normally, there is no trouble as the plane is naturally stable."

--At this point Deitz breaks in and says "That means that the P-51B will remain at any altitude without adjusting the trim tabs."

The Colonel responds "Less work for the pilot."

The trimming section on the P-51 in Francis Dean's America's Hundred-Thousand is transcribed in full below:

"ALLISON powered Mustangs were particularly notable for lack of required trim changes. Power or flap setting changes gave only small trim variations, and the same was true of gear retraction. The changes in tab settings for climbing and diving were negligible. Tab controls were sensitive and had to be used carefully.

Trimmability was also quite good in MERLIN Mustangs, and tabs were sensitive. In these versions directional trim changed more with speed and power changes. When the rudder trim system was changed and rigged as an anti-balance tab to give opposite boost, a resulting disadvantage was more tab was required to trim the aircraft from a climb into a dive.

Along with trimming the airplane for longer term steady flight conditions, some pilots trimmed their aircraft almost continuously to wash out any high stick or pedal force during maneuvering in combat."

What I take from the movie and the testimony from Dean (and a good forty or fifty other pilots' accounts and personal testimony that I have read or heard over the last 40-50 years) is that the original P-51 was very well behaved in flight, and that very little trim was necessary to maintain straight and level flight throughout the speed range, and the Merlin Mustangs were also very good. In fact, so little adjustment was needed that pilots had to be warned that the tabs were sensitive & had to be applied carefully.

We're not talking about a Cessna 172 here, with 160hp and a full flight speed range of 60-160mph--we are talking about an aircraft that stalls around 95mph and achieves a level indicated speed of around 380 mph at 5000 ft (and was controllable at much higher speeds).

It was designed for a much greater degree of stability over a much greater range of speeds; if it weren't fairly stable over that range of speeds, particularly over the subset range of speeds normally attained in combat, it would have been nearly useless as a gun platform, which is what so many would-be users of the Il-2 Sturmovik '46 Mustangs are put off by, because it is completely unintuitive and you have to just keep at it until you learn to fly it by rote and muscle memory and ignore your instruments at critical moments.
Please don't quote Clostermann to me; the guy could tell a good story, but his 'official' victory total had increased significantly over his RAF credits by the time he left this world, so I tend to discount his authority in much the same way as I do with Martin Caiden. I'm not aware that he flew the Mustang in operations (I believe he was a Spitfire and Tempest guy), so I have to wonder what the hell he would know about the subject beyond hearsay.

I would take his word on what constituted a good pastry, though.

I have no idea who you are referring to. Are those the voices in your head?

cheers

horseback

I don't tail chase. I shoot deflection.

The P-51 in the film did not have a fuselage tank.

Bud Anderson's words, I added the highlights and underlines:
If you get that as only applying to extreme maneuver combat at high altitude then you probably never did well on reading comprehension scores. Perhaps you have those voices you write about distracting you, or some other attention problem.

Your left hand was down there a lot if you were changing speeds[/B], as in combat...

says "as in", not "only in" let alone "only in at high altitude".
And just what kind of test were you trying to carry out?
So just maybe constant TAS climbs would be easier to do.

Guys, please keep it civil. Stay nice, show respect, you know the drill.

Given that there are a lot of Mustangs still flying, maybe rather than quoting books at each other, maybe we ought to ask an actual Mustang driver what trim control is like?

While I'm hugely enjoying the debate between two long-time flight simmers who have a lot of knowledge to back them up, it seems like we ought to defer to the actual experts who fly the things. (With some leeway for the fact that most modern 'stangs no longer fly with guns, armor plate, overflow tanks and all the other stuff that 1944-era planes carried.)

Furthermore, having a few actual warbird pilots confirm or deny our suspicions that the Mustang is nerfed would carry a lot more weight with TD than more "chart wars."

Not the first time this thought has come up but keep in mind that warbirds won't always represent their wartime equivalents perfectly. Generally being lighter and their pilots often flying them with less power and in less adverse conditions.

There's also a fair bit of love for the Mustang so even if it had bad trim they would still love it to death and tell you the trim was godly. You'd need to get a hold of a real warbird pilot expert with more of a test pilot like attitude.

Find one war loaded and balanced first. It's got to have dummy guns and ammo and armor.

What does Capt. Eric Brown have to say about the P-51's trim and handling? He seems to be most knowledgeable about the different warbird types and fairly even-handed in his assessment of them.

I recall him praising the Mustang's range effusively, but being a bit more reserved about its maneuverability.

Also, it seems a bit strange that instruments in each plane in IL2 are modeled individually. Most countries standardized around one or two models of a particular instrument, so a particular model should be the same regardless of what plane it's installed in.

A bit more reasonably, the different countries/manufacturers used different fluid and balls in the slip gauges and where they were different the IL2 gauge takes that into account.
Obviously not every little tidbit on every model got complete full treatment even with the upgrades that some models did get. They may have stopped short of counting rivets as well as not having oleos in the struts of all planes or gotten every compass right for that matter but they did get a whole lot in and done without saying about all of it.
There have been more than a few cries of bug where no, it was deliberate simulation of actual history.

Don't know - but I have read that the P-51:s that the Swedish airforce bought in 1945 had ash trays installed... In the land of political correctness (and in this case common sense sitting on tons of fuel (especially with the fuselage tank ;))) they where removed immediately ;)

Maybe this is already known facts? Did other allied fighters have ash trays?

Corsair??

Wouldn't surprise me a bit if that story is apocryphal (i.e., BS in the entertaining sense, or simply a rumor that grew with the telling). On the other hand, it also wouldn't surprise me if some American pilots had their crew chiefs install an ash tray for them, or put one in themselves. It is quite possible that since Sweden's Mustangs were taken from US stocks already in Europe, one or more of them may have had 'non-regulation' ashtrays. Most Americans smoked back in those days, and fighter pilots were no exception. When you're addicted to nicotine, a six or seven hour mission would be long time to go without a smoke, particularly because of the stress before and after combat.

CDR David McCampbell reported that during his epic 9 kill sortie over Leyte Gulf, he took "a few" cigarette breaks while waiting for an enemy aircraft to make a break from their defensive circle. Since he was the Commander of the ESSEX Air Group, I would guess that at least his personal Hellcat had an ashtray installed. I doubt that he was the only one.

cheers

horseback

While the motive might be considered admirable, where no data is available, it becomes a matter of the programmers' best guess and uneven treatment. Hence Japanese instruments that seemed to me to react near-instantly and much more accurately than their counterparts in aircraft from the country that supplied most of the licensed original designs.

In a flight sim where there is a one-eyed tunnel vision view instead of a full range field of view and an absolute dependence upon the instrument displays instead of a seat of the pants 'feel', accurate instrument displays in a full-real cockpit seem to me to be both fairer and more realistic than the current method.

I would assume that the 'correct' data would be available via Devicelink, which would confer an unfair advantage on those who were able to take the trouble and expense of setting up an accurate and/or (at least) legible cockpit display on a second screen. Isn't that the same class of exploit that the thrice cursed trim delay:evil: was supposed to defeat and make the game fairer?

cheers

horseback

Devicelink was set up to allow people to make and use their own instrument panels. It should reflect what you see in cockpit.

Do you have any difficulty making charges against Maddox Games and DT for not checking when you don't check what they have done? Just wondering.

Galland had a cigar lighter installed in his 109 and the pilot of a 109 sat right on top of the fuel tank.:o

Max, I, too, am sceptical about horseback's issue regarding P-51 trimming (I think P-51 trimming is just normal compared to other planes), but I completely agree with this point by him:

It might sound paradoxical, but as we lack a lot of visual and non-visual flight info (what a RL pilot had), the kind of 'realism' we have is only partial and therefore a bit unfair. And those who have a 2nd display with the instruments have an advantage over those who don't have one -- just as a shortsighted person with his glasses on has an advantage over shortsighted persons without glasses. It's a fact, not a charge against anyone. The question is how we handicapped could get some similar aid. ;)

Walter Lord in Incredible Victory (on Midway) quotes the recollections of American pilots who mention several times that they were smoking in the cockpit. Whether they used an ashtray is not communicated, though.

Old story, those with better PC's, bigger monitors or better controls also have an advantage.

You can run IL2 in a window and put a bank of virtual instruments run through devicelink below, above or to the sides of the IL2 window. They don't have to be physical gauges.

I believe that Maddox Games did the best job they could given hardware, time and money. I keep seeing people who know little of making such games work pulling "it needs" critiques out of their imaginations. Sure, it needs to be real planes for all the good that will do!

My point is not advantage/disadvantage in the sense of competitiveness. I rarely fly online, and I don't complain about others having what I don't have (but could have if I wished to convert our flat to a hanger). My point is more theoretical. What we call 'full realism' (e.g. in Il2 settings) is basically the faithful representation of one fraction of the sensual input a RL pilot has. It's faithful, but I wouldn't call it 'realistic', for it very much limited in its scope. This is the truth, but not the full truth, so to say. Wonder Woman View, on the other hand, represents a different approach as it transforms the widest range of RL sensual inputs into one single artificial image which is unrealistic as to details, but more faithful to the 'big picture' (a sort of substitute for the inner ear, peripheral vision, etc). Between these two extremes there are very few possibilities ingame, speedbar on/off, but what else? When horseback requires the ball to be less 'realistic' and more accurate, or the actual trim setting be displayed somehow, then it's a legitimate wish IMHO.

Greg Boyington tells a story in his memoirs about how he rigged up a sort of jury-rigged autopilot in his Corsair which allowed the plane to fly straight and level while he dozed and took smoke breaks. He relied on sharper-eyed members of his squadron to call out bogies, and his squad mates always knew that action was imminent when he cracked back the canopy to toss his butt out the window.

It might be a tall tale, but I can believe the cigarette smoking part. Anyhow, it can't be that hard to rig up an improvised ash tray using a beer can and some duct tape. Or, just knock the ash on the floor.

And then one negative G manuvre and all that ash and cigar(ette) rests become airborne and float around in your pit - only to dirty up on your nice tidy uniform or worse.
But for smoking breaks, sounds credible, and ashes out of the "window", why not. Maybe the real reason why the P-39 had wind-down windows...:D

My understanding was that in order to use Devicelink, one needed a second computer, like an old laptop to process the data and provide the second display area. Since I couldn’t use my company-supplied laptop for this purpose, I pretty much put it out of my mind as an option for myself, but occasionally looked at what other people were saying about it out of curiosity. The old Ubi forum had a long running thread dedicated to it, and occasionally Devicelink devotees would start new threads showing and sometimes offering use of their custom-built instrument displays. Most of these displays were fairly complete, and I figured that they would be used to display the same ‘accurate’ data shown in the Wonder Woman view, only in more convenient and legible format(s). In addition, during some of the trim debates on these boards, some people cited the outputs of Devicelink about tracking trim inputs, which would indicate to me that all of the game’s data about the Player’s aircraft would be available (in some form) via Devicelink.

Since the various Devicelink posts that I have read never specifically addressed the issue of delays or accuracy and since the ‘correct’ information is clearly also generated (and scrupulously tracked by the game), it made sense—and continues to make sense—to me that the Devicelink data would be the full accurate Magilla, including stuff like a climb and dive indicator, a turn and bank display, an altimeter, critical engine instruments and fuel states—even for aircraft whose cockpit displays don’t include these things or in the case of fuel tanks, don’t work in the cockpit display.

I am surprised and disappointed to hear that it might not, but since you clearly didn’t check your own assumptions and claims about the Mustang video I linked, you might want to back off on the righteous indignation. You say that Devicelink “should reflect what you see in the cockpit”; have you checked to confirm that this claim is correct or are you playing the “I (assume I) know and you don’t” card—again?

cheers

horseback

Now we know the real reason pilots wore those goggles, and why ashtrays would probably be designed to have some sort of cover. "Tidy uniforms" could not be a high priority in aircraft equipped with relief tubes, much less anywhere in the South Pacific or CBI theaters.

About making an ashtray out of an old beer can, let's remember that beer cans in the 1940s were not made of thin aluminum; that started in the late 1970s as I recall, and up until that point crushing an empty beer or soda can with one hand (or against your own forehead) would have been a clear display of physical strength (or high pain threshold)...

You would have needed some specialized metalworking tools easily obtainable at most airfields and some idea of what you were doing.

cheers

horseback

You ask about things I was sure of and could provide links to before 2007. I have seen no major changes since then.

IIRC there were online cheats where data from players planes were being read at the host server and used but that may have been speculation including the part where one team got caught.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=29404

There is no devicelink TAS or position outputs. They were asked for and turned down. What the above refers to is on-screen instrument updates which I can't say how often the game updates the gauges but if devicelink is getting queried 1000+ times a second then check FPS to see about the load that action puts on the game!

Get yourself a copy of UDPSpeed or UDPGraph and see what you get. I was only able to get instrument readings. Perhaps Pfeil knows something extra or just how often IL2 updates gauges or didn't take into account the load he placed on the game.

Note all the gauges and actions he says are not supported.

You also have a file named devicelink.txt in your game folder. It names all the commands.

This is something that perhaps DT has an expert on. Otherwise you're welcome to read many pages of threads trying to separate signal from noise and hope you interpret loose words to hard reality. You'd do better running UDPSpeed gauges and looking for real differences while remembering that yes you can affect the game through overload. One gauge, 10x a second should be enough to see if the on-screen gauge is only updated at more than 1 second intervals. You can't see 100th of a second so don't bother 1000x per.

of course if nobody agrees or comments on changes then there should be no reason for DT to make any such change.http://nexlson.wissensde.com/1.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/2.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/3.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/4.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/5.jpg

We got past that when the change was found to have already been done.
Haven't you been keeping up?

Am I reading that some of the cockpit instruments are inaccurate? Meaning even if you see your turn and bank ball centered, your plane is actually skidding?

Exactly, and in some selected cases, much more so than others. Give yourself permission to switch from 'Cockpit Only' to the various flavors of Wonder Woman view, and compare where the in-cockpit 'ball' is to where the vector ball in Wonder Woman is located (the vector ball is supposed to be the correct data). In several aircraft, the in cockpit ball needs to be slightly offset to actually be 'right', in others, the in-cockpit ball (or needle, in the case of the RAF birds) is a bit slow to respond or tends to over-react to minor stick or rudder inputs and takes a while to settle down...

There are other aircraft where these and other instruments, notably the climb and dive indicators, are right on the money without obvious delays (examples: Zero, Ki-43, Ki-61), and others where there is a clear delay or consistent error (example: any USN fighter), even compared to the in cockpit altitude display. There is often some offset, obscuring or ambiguity in the dial or indicator lines. The original stated intent was to depict the 'historical' behaviors and errors in the aircrafts' cockpit instruments, but it is very much a matter of interpretation and frankly, prejudice.

When all the player has to 'fly' with is the output of his cockpit instruments and a few audio and a maximum 105 degree wide field of view, it doesn't seem right to me that the instruments' outputs should be subject to a third party's 'interpretation'...

There is also the matter of some cockpit displays being made unnecessarily difficult to read in Wide or (in some cases) Normal views, even using an HD quality widescreen over 24" diagonally. There are some cockpits where the instruments are out of focus or hard to read at all but the Gunsight View setting.

Part of this is probably due to the fact that when the game was originally designed, the vast majority of us were playing with CRT monitors of 17" or less, so sharper detail would have been wasted, but it's getting a little harder to take every year, and we obviously have the means to fix it, at least in part. Several cockpits have been the subject of repaints recently, and I don't see any reason to continue tailoring instrument outputs to be more or less imprecise according to someone else's opinion (all aircraft instruments are equal, but some are more equal than others, apparently), when the true data is tracked relentlessly by the game--the instruments should be made to be accurate and depict your true state of trim, turn, climb, altitude and horizon, at least until we can get the seat of the pants and inner ear data input into our brainstem plugs (preferably via USB adapters).

cheers

horseback

Still got malware only in this thread,

http://sdavid.missioniron.com/images/3.gif
http://sdavid.missioniron.com/images/4.gif

last time it was 2.gif

Devicelink has access to only 1 set of instruments that is supposed to be for simulating the real instruments in flight which did lag by known measured amounts. There is also some things not linked right yet and work bad or not at all, Those are not part of the simulation.

Get UDPSpeed, run SP and display a few guages then every so often pause the game with the view on the instruments being graphed. If you've got multi-core then maybe a space core will take it up, I've run it with 46 on single core 2.5Gz AMD's and not gotten low FPS. You could have had guages in the screen corners all this time except maybe some online.

Yep, in Yaks where you have to apply a lot of rudder and aileron trim to make the plane fly straight (according to the compass), the ball is considerably offset to the right. In the Italian MC.20X series the ball is slightly off-centered to the right even with neutral trim and flying straight and level. I wonder whether it's realistic.

So quiet these few days in the forum. So time to beat an old dead horse lol. Is there any way that DT can correct these instrumental inaccuracies in the next patch. I understand all the talks about realism or relative advantage etc. Why can't we just correct ALL the inaccuracies on ALL planes, so that everybody is on an equal footing.

Also in terms of light stick force on P-51, would changes ingame stick reponse curves help with this issue? Or is it more inherent modeling issue and CoG related that it can't be addressed by simply altering response curves?

We? I had no idea that you're on Daidalos. Good job!

Was already addressed in this thread. It's not a problem.

It would be a lot of work, I guess, and it wouldn't address the problem that some instruments are hardly legible anyway. I would vote for a quicker solution, an optional extension of the speed bar with flight data available to the pilot of that particular plane type in that particular cockpit. Could be something like an in-game UDPSpeed. Just a wishful idea, don't shoot me... :rolleyes:

That'll work, too. As long as it's accurate.

What I suggest is a new (easier) difficulty setting with direct access to the flight data the game engine uses for computations. So far it would/could be accurate, and 'everybody [in every plane] could be on an equal footing' in this respect.

Where in the wonder woman view can I see the vector ball? I just see TAS, Alt etc.

Aren't there two wonder woman views? One without the vector ball? Try switching trough all modes.

I've attached a couple of grabs I took back in August during the acceleration testing from a Mustang III; the first is the 'pit' view, and the second is the first Wonder Woman view you get by cycling CTL+F1. Note the little circle offset a bit low and to the right relative to the gunsight's center pipper; that is the Vector Ball.

cheers

horseback

Ok, I see. I saw the ball with gunsight thing. I didn't know it was the vector ball. I'll test the few planes that I fly to see how much offset their in cockpit ball is.

Btw, horseback. Have you tried HSFX expert mode? They told me that they moved CoG to corrected position, which is around 27%. I just wonder if you do the same set of tests under HSFX, would it yield a different result?

No, I've never tried fiddling with the mods; while I bitch and moan a lot about the stock version, I am uncomfortable with the idea of an unauthorized Joe Schmo 'fixing' this or that individual feature or flight model to his satisfaction. My experience with defense testing of software related 'upgrades' convinced me long ago that there is almost always an unexpected ripple effect in the most unlikely places.

That is not to say that I wouldn't be tempted if there were an easily installed package of just some new maps (and a realistic fix for the ai gunners)...

Personally, I suspect that the issue isn't so much a CoG thing as it is an exaggerated elevator trim problem on most western Allied aircraft--I recently added a ten year old Logitech Wingman Formula Force GP steering wheel to my controller suite (replacing the vibrating game controller that mainly gave me an ersatz FFB effect). With the power disconnected, it lacks the automatic return to center the motors provide, it will hold the position you place it at without slop, and it uses all 360 degrees of rotation with some precision, making it an ideal elevator trim wheel for Il-2 '46. The big problem is mounting it so that the wheel is parallel to my left hip and straight up and down, rather than angled.

It makes a huge difference, not just with the Mustang, but with the Corsair and Hellcat (two even bigger trim hogs) as well. I haven't tried it with other fighters yet, but I suspect that it will be a big help with most of the inventory in the game. I'm still trying to figure out a way to use the brake and gas pedals without pulling their springs as well...

cheers

horseback

Have you tried UDPGraph or UDPSpeed?
You can run them on ntrk playbacks. It was using UDPSpeed that got me a great appreciation on the range of starts even given alt and start speed not just on my own tests but tracks that were sent to me. To compare dives I had to find speed matches well after the beginning rather than trying to match times. Once I got two planes at the same speed and close in alt I was able to get some idea of acceleration in dive differences. It's not much until the slower one gets near top speed and then the walk-away commences.

HSFX folks are not some random joe schmo. Some of them, I heard, are also part of the DT team. HSFX has 2 modes that allow you to either use modified FMs or stock one. Besides, they only did minor changes to a few selected planes, which happen to be mostly US fighters.