Answers from BoB Spitfire pilot and Rigger

[sevsterinos]

Originally Posted by Sutts

Thanks for your efforts PPP, a great read and some nice info in there. If you manage to catch a pilot again please ask about the negative G cutout issue..would be great to understand that one.

Cheers

For those who wonder about the negative G cutout issue, I believe in real life it was exactly like in CoD. Check this video, check out the minute 6.25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slM-I...eature=related

the hurricane and spitfire pilot says he says something like ''you put your stick forward and the engine immediately cuts''.

I think we should trust devs more with their research in general terms, I would expect the complains about speeds to be also true in the game as I would think that the official data don't show the max speeds with the plane fully loaded with ammo and fuel. I could be wrong there, but I guess the devs did enough research on many aspects of the game, especially the engine and FM. Not that it couldn't be improved....

cheers

seven

[klem]

Originally Posted by sevsterinos

For those who wonder about the negative G cutout issue, I believe in real life it was exactly like in CoD. Check this video, check out the minute 6.25

the hurricane and spitfire pilot says he says something like ''you put your stick forward and the engine immediately cuts''.

I think we should trust devs more with their research in general terms, I would expect the complains about speeds to be also true in the game as I would think that the official data don't show the max speeds with the plane fully loaded with ammo and fuel. I could be wrong there, but I guess the devs did enough research on many aspects of the game, especially the engine and FM. Not that it couldn't be improved....

cheers

seven

I don't want to push this thread off track but actually he says ''you stuff your stick forward and the engine immediately cuts''

For anyone who doesn't know, that means you shove it forward quickly and very definitely and I would expect the engine to cut then as you would be inducing a severe reduction in G, probably even to negative G. Bear in mind this is the sudden reaction to finding yourself near the stall with the need to get out of that situation as quickly as possible.

There is a summary on this forum by a current Hurricane Mk1 pilot which goes into more detail. I believe the cutout is coming into effect at too low a reduction in G, possibly around a reduction of 0.3G rather than a reduction to 0.3G

[klem]

Many thank for the information PPP.

I had the pleasure of meeting Flt Lt Ken Wilkinson and Sqdn Leader Tony Pickering back in 2000 when they were travelling around together giving after-dinner speeches.

It was at an Air Warrior convention. (We used to drag our PCs to a Hotel and have a LAN party including on-line connection to the Air Warrior Host and make a late night mass attack on the insuspecting 'homey' Air Warriors.)

I just found a link to one of the guys' website with a brief report on the weekend
http://www.vulch.t15.org/aw2000.html
I particularly liked Ken's comments about flying with the Douglas Bader Wing:-
"Sixty aircraft in perfect formation, Fifty Nine aircraft under strict radio silence;... and Bader, chatting away to all and sundry. We were a grand sight" said Ken, "We never saw the enemy, but we were a Grand Sight."

Tony's wife Chris gets a mention, a lovely lady. I spent a long time chatting to her about her particular passion - her five year old grand-daughter. Later, she said about Tony, "He must be enjoying himself, we never normally stay up this late". He was particularly chuffed as we watched him fly an Air Warrior Hurricane only to realise it had the same markings as he had flown in 501 Squadron, quite a co-incidence.

Happy days.

Basically I think the devs got it almost quite right in the beginning. Now we are at old-IL2 stage which imho IS a bit arcade. IL2 is either no cut or full cut and you really have to push it.

In my opinion it only lacked some inertia in what the devs have provided with the initial release. The issue was principally that at the slightest deviation from 1g we got a lean cut out (not full cut out which occured when really pushing the stick as you describe). The result was that with minor turbulences we got lean cut outs (that looked very dramatic because black smoke was emitted but that was not that dramatic performance-wise). I think a filter filtering out the normal and weak turbulences out and have a small delay before cut occurs would have done completely the trick without going arcade.

Now we have arcadish cutouts and no black smoke.

I really just hope that Luthier is not becoming a second Jason - with all respect to Jason who is a great guy - really! I do appreciate him and his approach very much and he is listening to the community and is concerned about the opinion of his customers. It is just that: In my opinion he just listens a little bit too much to the loudly proclamated complaints in the forum and we all know that the whiners appear to be more preponderant while they are a minority as they are less reluctant to communicate their issues than those for which it is just ok the way it is. You know stuff like the schoolboy making most trouble getting most attention and stuff. Now they've dumped down the SE5 engine which was a bit fragile but only if one did not know how to handle it. Many complained about a glass engine of the SE5 (a fairy tale imho) while those taking time to master the SE5 as it was did not communicate in the forum. Now they removed the sensitivity of the SE5 engine although it was really an engine that was so much pushed to the limits that it should seem obvious that it is a bit sensitive.

[Blackdog_kt]

Thanks for taking the time to interview those men, very valuable testimonies from a hard to reach community, especially as the years go by.

The more technical aspects are of special interest. For one, i was very satisfied to see the different answers about engine warm up that clears up a lot of things: engines demanded a warm-up session to perform adequately, which was part of the ground crews' job.

I guess in the future we could tie this into a script of some sort for online/offline dynamic campaigns:

IF enemy detected by radar ahead of time or squad is on alert rotation, THEN spawn with warmed up engines, ELSE spawn with cold engines (to simulate getting caught unawares by low flying jabos, etc)

The only thing i'd like more detail about would be the fuel question, the way it was asked it's a bit ambiguous and could be construed to only pertain to their squad/airfield. It would be much more beneficial to have asked them specifically if 100 octane fuel was used by all or the majority of the squads/stations.

In any case, i won't let that minor niggle get in the way of a perfectly good interview and the commendable effort of organizing such an event in the first place. Good job and a very good initiative