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Old 10-22-2010, 03:11 PM
Kurfürst Kurfürst is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 705
Default Seat adjustment lever

Hi Oleg,

Absolutely stunning to see the thing "in action"

However since you asked us to pick errors... I think the pilot seat adjustment lever (to the left of the sear) is wrong. I've seen the original one. Its a shiny piece of finely molded aluminium, with a black rubber grip.

So I think there are two problems with it:

- the end of the lever misses the rubber grip
- the colour doesn't seem to be right either. On your picture it has grey primer as the rest of the cocpit, but the original piece I have seen was polished aluminium. I didn't see any traces of paint on it, it probably wasn't painted originally. I tried to find a picture, and I managed to find this:

This is picture taken by the French (or the British) of a 109E-3 (WNr. 1304) in the end of 1939, when the plane was captured. It seems the original lever and the rest of the assembly was unpainted, natural aluminium finish. Note also the black rubber grip.



via: http://kurfurst.org/Tactical_trials/...ls/Morgan.html

The second thing I don't like so much is the weathering inside the cocpit. All planes look like as they have seen many, many years of use. Some pre-war manufactured planes might have, and looked this way, but in reality, losses were such that fighter planes did not have much time to age. Avarage lifespan of a Bf 109 was like 4 months and about 40 hours in 1942, from RLM records... then it was wrecked or shot down in avarage. Most planes were still had the factory smell in them and no wear on the cocpit when they went into the trash can. As it is, it looks a bit strange, the wings are all new and shiny, but the cocpit looks 500 years old...

So, since the externals of the plane "age" already, I wonder if it would be possible that the internals would have less "beggarish", with less or no paint chipped etc. Perhaps a multi-layered texture with transparency set according to the age and use of aircraft?

Or some random effect, that at start of carreer, you get a well worn airplane, get higher in rank, crash the previous aircraft etc., and get a new one fresh from the factory, with no wear in the cocpit at all?

I can send you some accurate Russian drawings of 109E seat adjustment system too.
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Il-2Bugtracker: Feature #200: Missing 100 octane subtypes of Bf 109E and Bf 110C http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/200
Il-2Bugtracker: Bug #415: Spitfire Mk I, Ia, and Mk II: Stability and Control http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/415

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