Quote:
Originally Posted by ytareh
Thats practically the same as if the mission took 15 minutes to load from your hard drive!What the heck are ya meant to do for those 15min....fill in the pre flight checks?!Outrageous !
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There's nothing to fix here, air-cooled radials require warm-ups in real life too and they are also really difficult to start in cold weather.
In case you're interested in improving your engine handling methods and saving some time, here's a little method that i found works on most aircraft i've tried up till now. It doesn't take 15 minutes, much less in fact.
I tried it in a 109, taking off right behind the AI with a minimal amount of time warming up, so i started replicating the method and it has considerably shortened my warm-up times.
The trick is that you don't have to keep idling until the temps come up, in fact they never will reach optimal temperatures if you are idling too low. In a real aircraft in fact, there's a lower limit for idling (usually 800-1200 RPM depending on the engine) otherwise the spark plugs get dirty with unburnt fuel and other residue and that requires bursts of full throttle to clear (unless you keep idling too low and they become completely fouled, after that they need to be inspected by a mechanic).
This is also part of the reason for the run-up procedure, along with checking how the engine operates prior to committing to the take-off. The values depend on each aircraft/engine, as a rough guide you set pitch to full fine (high RPM) and advance throttle moderately but not fully with the brakes on and tail held-down (pull back on the stick), until you get about 2000RPM or so.
At that point, in a real aircraft you check the ignition system by disabling one magneto and checking how much the RPM drops, enabling both and letting the RPM stabilize, disabling the other magneto and doing the same RPM check, then again enabling both. This is not necessary in the sim, because there are no random failures modeled and both magnetos are working fine every time you spawn into the mission.
What it shows us however is that it's possible to use moderate power settings very shortly after start-up without causing damage to the engine. So, i decided to use this in order to shorten my warm-up times.
First, apply brakes and then advance the throttle for as long as your oil pressure doesn't skyrocket.
As the temps climb due to the increased power, the oil becomes thinner and pressure drops. At that point you can advance the throttles a bit more and so on. Within a minute or even less, you'll be having a minimum of 40-60 degrees oil temp which is just fine for taking off.
In a plane with a liquid cooled engine i can manage scramble-style take offs running flat out in less than 2 minutes. The air-cooled radials are a bit more temperamental and require some more warming up, but it's definitely less than 5 minutes if you take the time to experiment and find a method that works. I don't even close my rads to warm up and the plane is up and running in no time, i just need to watch the gauges to prevent the oil pressure from getting too high and starting leaks.
That's what this game finally simulates in a WWII sim and why i can't go back to IL:1946, despite CoD having a smaller planeset and bugs: the gauges in a real aircraft are not there for decoration purposes, so if i fly full switch i prefer the sim to reward players who pay attention to instruments and learn how to operate their aircraft.
The main problem is the lack of documentation, but i'm having an immense amount of fun experimenting and finding out what works on my own. Of course that's not everyone's cup of tea, so if you still don't like waiting for a warm-up or learning a few tricks by trial and error, just turn off temperature effects and enjoy yourself without having the extra workload to worry about
