Starting to make little progress

[mxmadman]

Well, I think you're best off mapping your own keys as you have planned, but I don't think you should take time off of flying to map them.

Obviously you want it to make sense, so some thought is required to make sure the buttons that are needed in combat situations are easy to press without moving your hands or eyes.

You can change the controls during a mission also by hitting escape. I have a Saitek x52 that has multiple modes so I can assign the same button to multiple uses depending on which mode I'm in, so I have a 'start-up mode' and flight mode.

You may not have this ability, but can still do something similar. Map all of your preflight keys in a sequence somewhere, like having 1 as fuel cock, 2 and 3 as magnetos, 4 as toggle sight illumination, and 5 as ignition.

This way you can't forget what to do, just hit the fly button and slam 1 2 3 4 5 in succession, and as long as your engine is in the proper start-up condition you'll be ready to go.

Also, as far as take-off is concerned, you want to trim your plane for take off before hitting the run way. In a Spit this means full right rudder and very nose-up elevator trim.

During take off, before wheels up, you'll notice that you need to begin dialing back the right rudder more towards centered as you build speed, and this increases as you get to cruise speed. After wheels up you want to obviously retract your gear and immediately go back to trimming elevator and rudder.

This trim process during take-off makes the ac much easier to control.