May day, somebody help me please!!!

[Blackdog_kt]

If you want to know the basics of piston engines, i suggest you go to www.a2asimulations.com and take a look at their manuals.

They make payware add-on aircraft for microsoft FSX and some of them have an extra add-on module called accusim that gives the player more realistic engine operation.

How does that help us you might say. Well, for one, the general principles of piston engine operation are the same.

Second, you don't need to buy one of their products to read the manuals, they are freely available as a PDF download.

Just make sure you are reading the accusim manuals and not "base pack" manuals that only cover the general aircraft characteristics.
The accusim manuals start with a general preface on piston engines regardless of what add-on aircraft they are dealing with, then they move into the specifics.

For example, here is the manual for their P-47: http://www.a2asimulations.com/wingso...sim_Manual.pdf

A more useful one in our case would be their Spitfire manual, which you can find here: http://www.a2asimulations.com/wingso...sim_Manual.zip

This pretty much has the same preface about general engine operation principles, then goes into more length about the Spitfire in particular.

I don't own a copy of FSX but i fly it from time to time on a friend's PC when i visit him, he's got a lot of well done 3rd party add-ons and that's how i learned CEM in the first place. When CoD was released i was able to just jump in right away because i knew the basics from my few FSX flights.

In fact, you'll find that because of the specialized nature of FSX add-ons (a single aircraft can sell for as much as cliffs of dover does), some have a lot more detailed and restrictions modeled than even our very well done aircraft in CoD: a lot of what you'll read in that spitfire manual might refer to cockpit controls that you can't interact with in CoD.

Never the less, it makes for some good reading and will have you up and running pretty soon.

My advice would be to:

1) Read these manuals.

2) Launch CoD, go to the QMB and start a free flight mission with an aircraft of your choice. You will spawn in the air, start at moderate power and full open radiators, then gradually increase power while closing radiators. If you do this right, the effect of your increased speed (more power and less drag from the rads) will be increased airflow and this in turn brings more cooling: you might end up being able to get away with lower radiator usage despite the higher power settings.
Just focus on seeing how much power you can apply with the least amount of drag imposed on you through radiators.

3) Go to the QMB and start the cross country mission. There's a nasty crosswind in that mission which will pull you to the right, but it's a stock ground start mission. Use this to practice how to turn on the engine, warm up and do some take-offs and landings or touch and go maneuvers.

Stick with one aircraft for an hour or two and you'll be comfortable enough to select a combat mission in the FMB to see how it all applies to combat