Quote:
Originally Posted by Whacker
2. Damage to the oil/lubrication system is modeled. If hit or damaged, the windscreen will show the "oil splash" graphic. The aircraft will trail a darker black smoke. Questions: Does the aircraft trail smoke only until the oil runs out? Until the engine quits? Forever? Is the amount of smoke generated variable, and does it depend on the amount of damage?
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Being mainly a 109 pilot I get oil splatters a lot, even a AAA gun crew looking angrily at it makes it to spill its oil supply
There are 3 kinds of oil leaks, depending on amount of damage:
1) Mild leak, thin black smoke coming out. Does not smudge the windscreen, but you can notice the mild smoking in the cowling. Easily misinterpreted as fuel leak seen from other planes. The trail is the same but more black. Not dangerous and you can in most cases operate the engine with normal power output for about 10-30min, after which the engine starts to lose power slowly. Haven't seen cases that this would get worse with just engine mismanagement.
2) Medium leak, medium thickness black smoke. About the same thickness as when putting out that brownish smoke when having too rich mixture setting. More dangerous, engine starts to lose power after a couple of minutes and will usually die after 10min. Medium smoking can become heavy leak(!) in some cases, usually something to do with high RPM and overheat (or getting more damaged of course
).
3) Heavy leak, thick black smoke, the smoke now also makes little puffs instead of just a steady stream when coming out. Very dangerous in 109, usually leads to a fire and explosion within seconds. Recommend bailing immediately. In some other planes (bombers mostly) I've seen they can last in the heavy smoking state longer (few minutes) before catching on fire, but they always do eventually.
Common to all:
You can't get better
... Even when you run out of oil and the engine has stopped, you will still have a smoke trail. Maybe the smoke is related to a small fire that is going on in the engine which might get worse as in point 2.