Just flew the first mission and of course I didn't even get a glimpse at the recon plane
.
Nice airfield under the trees in a field, hehe.
As far as engine cutting out goes, it's probably the mixture, I flew the whole mission pretty much with a rich mixture (M-slider all the way up, right?).
If I leaned up the mixture too much the engine was cutting out, just lower your throttle to +3 or a little less boost with the prop slider in the up position (the low angle of attack for the prop blades) and look at your rpms when you change the mixture, if you make it too lean the rpms will start to drop, first just a little then dramatically. When they drop a little make the mixture just a little richer again and you should be there.
1C says look at the flames from your engine, if I remember correctly an orange flame means mixture too rich, a small blue flame is just right and long blue flames too lean (anybody correct me if I'm wrong), so you want to be just where the orange turns into blue and then a little bit more.
However I find the flames very hard to see, could only see them in F2 outside view from pretty much top down, zoomed in, somewhat when I leaned over to see the exhausts fom inside the cockpit, so I much rather go with adjusting for good rpms. Look at the screenshot in the briefing, P,T,M are all the way at the top at high altitude. Not sure why it's like that, one would think the higher I go the leaner the mixture has to be.