[Les]

**Just a note, this was written before some of the other replies above and I couldn't be bothered editing it to reflect that.**

Seeing as no-one else is here yet, I thought I'd say a couple of things, from a non-expert, eternal noob point of view.

In terms of reading material, there's more information around dealing with real-world flying and combat flying than you can poke a stick at. None of which I myself own or can refer you to, as I never really got into that side of it. You might try having a look around the old Ubisoft Il-2 forums for links and other info though. There'd be years worth of questions and answers in those forums alone.

As for your numbered questions. Without getting into the technical side of it, and just dealing with the way the game models such things-

1) Trial and error. Just get in a plane and practice taking off and landing. Take the machines to their limits and beyond, to see for yourself what the different components do, at what point they break etc.

2) and 3) You adjust these depending on your altitude in order to use fuel and keep your engine running most efficiently. Your engine will start chugging and be slow if the fuel mix is wrong. You can even see trails being blown out your exhausts at high altitudes if you have the mixture too rich.

4) The radiator cools your engine. It's the vents in the radiator covers (cowlings) that you adjust to let more air go through the radiator and cool the engine. The trade-off there is that by letting more air in, by opening the vents more, you lose some air-speed. Some planes have an auto setting for this.

5) The elevators are the moveable horizontal bits on the tail wings, which are your main means of controlling your planes straight up and down movement.

6) Propeller pitch is the angle of the propellers actual blades. Somewhat like gears in other vehicles, the pitch can be adjusted to facilitate quick changes in speed or for efficient cruising at a more constant speed. A lot of planes have automatic propeller pitch.

7) Do the campaign that you find most interesting looking, in terms of the nationalities and planesets and locations involved. Any of them will be a learning experience.

8 ) Superchargers (as opposed to the usual 100%+ throttle) are only used on some planes at higher altitudes. Similar in nature to the fuel mix, but either on or off, with a somewhat convoluted method of implementation in some cases.

Hopefully some of that might help. Generally speaking, it's not as compicated as it might seem and there's a lot of leeway in-game when it comes to flying your plane effectively in combat.

Just wanted to add, I envy you and your 'noobie-ness' in some ways. I'd like to be newly discovering this sim series now myself, now that I have the equipment to run it well. I have fond memories of being overwhelmed by it all too, in a good way. I feel though I had the good fortune to be around when a lot of other people were discovering it at the same time too, and the flow of information was more current. Learning things from scratch means looking back into the recent past more so now. Hopefully the quality of the sim itself can maintain your interest though and not too much of it's sometimes obscure content remains unused.

As a last bit of information, and you've probably heard it before, but you simply must fly online at some point. I myself would say not too soon, for various reasons. It's just my opinion, but I'd recommend getting thoroughly familiar and competent with all aspects of the off-line game, even to the point of getting bored with it. Then go online, where everything amps up to a whole new level and the thing takes on a whole new meaning. With a skill set gained from off-line practice, you can go online, learn even more, and have air-combat encounters of a kind that you will remember for the rest of your life. They may be rare, and there's certainly a lot of negatives to the online aspect overall, but when it works, it really does convey something of what it must have been like for real.

Anyway, good luck with it all.

Les