Having a hard time outclimbing Spits/Hurris above 5k? Solution?
 

I have recently realized that i am having a hard time outclimbing a hurricane or spitfire above 5k in my 109. I was trying to keep climbing with 2200-2300 revs but it felt like the spit/hurri came closer and closer.
Also i noticed emergency power doesnt give any power above that height. Anyone experienced the same or maybe even has a solution to that? Maybe raising revs to 2450 and trying to climb steeper?

Winger

..and what are you doing with your prop at that height?

I in fact do not use throttle at all (set to full in dogfight all the time. Only if i need to dive steeply i re regulate throttle). I regulate my revs with the pitch all the time. Below 5k 2200-2300 revs are best and seem to deliver the most speed. But above 5k staying at 2200-2300k revs doesnt seem to deliver adequate performance.

Winger

The air is thinner when flying high, so you need to run the prop at a higher angle of attack to get an adequate "bite" of air. For this reason, i run RPMs a bit lower at high altitudes than what i usually run at low altitudes. This also gets rid of the "shaking" from the engine running rough.

I discovered this while flying a QMB mission starting at 4km of altitude. I could fight with ease all the way up to 5km and during the cruise back to base i even took it up to 6km without any problems at all.

As for emergency power, if you are high and the outside air pressure is low enough it comes to a point where even the supercharger can't provide a sufficiently compressed volume of air to the engine because the starting point (the outside air) is at too low a pressure.

Finally, leaving throttle on full and regulating only the prop pitch can work, as long as you stay within a certain power band of RPMs and a certain band of airspeeds. You can do way cooler stuff if you work the throttle and prop together though. What you do is like driving a car with manual transmission and regulating your speed by shifting gears without ever taking your foot off the gas pedal: it limits your effectiveness.

If you work both controls at the same time you can force enemies to overshoot easier, use the prop as an airbrake (idle throttle and fine pitch) or pick up speed faster in dives and so on. Hope this helps getting you started, cheers ;)

In FR servers the max altitude that I get on the 109 E3 is 6900-7000 m. No way to climb further. I tried all prop pitches, from 9:00 to 12:00, no way. The actual ceiling of the E3 was some 11 km. So either I'm doing something wrong, or there is a basic FM fault here.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Insuber

All fighters have troubles with this. High altitude flight has some issues (acknowledged by the dev team) and generally speaking, once the sim's performance in terms of FPS and stability and certain gameplay bugs are sorted it's probably the FM's turned to be fine tuned.

Thank you Blackdog. Apparently the Spit now dies around 27500 ft (8800 m), while the 109 agonizes up to 7500 m. I'm afraid that the issue is not so simple to solve, otherwise the first patches would have gotten rid of it.

Cheers,
Insuber

Actually if the Spitfire have a slighter higher ceiling than the 109 it's not so bad.

Otherwise BlackDog said it.

~S!

Only managed 7000m of altitude in the 109 before it becomes unstable and wants to fall. Anyone else have any results?

Same for me ... 6900-7000 max.