Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by fruitbat

I await with interest his thread on the 109.

Indeed, that's the one I'm really looking forward to aswell.

[Crumpp]

It is required documentation and just like the Handbook, propeller logs, engine logs, and airframe logbooks follows the aircraft throughout its life.

Holy out of context, Batman!!!

You shld open another thread on Crumpp.

I am hoping the Mods will just clean it up. Delete all the pointy-tin foil hat "NACA can't do weight and balance" and sour grapes comments from "lurkers with an agenda".

OK, let me put it another way, what behaviour would you expect to see?

In layman's terms. What do you expect the Spitfire to do that it isn't already doing in game? Without going into the game engine.

Something like 'if you do xyz then this happens', please.

Just so everyone understands what it is you're asking for, not just the brainiacs..

Winny, I have a few more post's to put out before we get into the nuts and bolts for the game. Let's not put the cart before the horse. I would like to get somewhat of a consense and some input from people who know more about the limits of the game.

I hope that after defining the stability and control behaviors that represent the early mark spitfire, we should be able to produce a list that is reproduceable in the game.

[gimpy117]

well personally I would expect a much lower Roll rate at speed, and a very sensitive Unbalanced Elevator (unbalanced meaning it needs much more roll input than pitch).

[winny]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Winny, I have a few more post's to put out before we get into the nuts and bolts for the game. Let's not put the cart before the horse. I would like to get somewhat of a consense and some input from people who know more about the limits of the game.

I hope that after defining the stability and control behaviors that represent the early mark spitfire, we should be able to produce a list that is reproduceable in the game.

Put the horse before the cart? You're on the CLOD forum so I just want to know, even in a ballpark kinda way what all this means to a Spitfire in CLOD.

I can look at this thread all day and I'm never gonna be able to relate all this info and graphs and whatever else to what is actually supposed to be happening to the Spitfire?

Treat me like the idiot you normally do and spell it out for me!

Are we talking a small amount of movement, wobble, or whatever it is that this instability creates, in RL?

You keep saying that it's unstable but I still don't know What you actually mean.

[Robo.]

What exactly is wrong with the Spitfire in game regarding control and stability?

[bongodriver]

In a nutshell Winny, the Spit was neutrally stable longitudinally, this is an undisputed fact, in very basic terms this means it was very light on the controls in pitch, this basically means the pilot needed very little (only 2 fingers) effort to pitch the aircraft, the other benefit of this is it means the aircraft is very manouverable in the pitch plane too, hence why the Spit was so good at turning, the down side to highly sensitive pitch is the aircraft can be overstressed if used harshly at high speeds and may also mean the aircraft can be stalled very easily too, what this doesn't account for is the fact that despite how the Spit looks on paper all the potentially negative issues never really manifested and the Spit ended up with a reputation of being a 'delight' by the people whose oppinions 'really' count i.e. the pilots, who it turns out were largely not so 'ham fisted' and were able to use sensory feedback to allow the airframe to 'talk' to them and use the effect to it's limits, what Crumpp would like to see is the Spit being 'unforgiving' and basically discourage all of us to use this effect because NACA said it was a problem therefore he canno't accept the truth (we have all seen how resistant he is to hard evidence), it's purely coincidental that this would further pork the Spitfire

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by winny

You keep saying that it's unstable but I still don't know What you actually mean.

Hey Win, here's the laymans

I'm flying staright and level, trimmed for cruise and hands off in an aeroplane and I hit a pocket of rough air. The right wing drops a fraction:

Stable: aircraft will settle back to it's trimmed state automatically thanks to inherent clever design - basically it's to do with differing lift vectors and their strength and direction. This is great for trainers, light aircraft and commercial machines as it means a minimum of pilot effort to fly the plane in straight lines. However it also means that the plane will resist slightly manouevres initiated by the pilot, cos it just wants to fly straight and level! Not great for fighter aircraft.

Neutrally stable: The plane will stay at that angle of bank and unless controls are manipulated will not return to it's original attitude. More workload for the pilot but generally not hard to fly, just requires more attention.

Unstable - the aircraft continues or even accelerates the wing drop to the right. Without pilot interaction/correction the manoevre would continue or even amplify till 'bad things' happen. Aircraft of this nature are tiring to fly because you're constantly fighting the plane - like being balanced on a pin and in asituation where even your control inputs are being amplified. Not fun. A good example of this is the P-51B/D with the rear fuselage tank full; it pushed it's CoG back far enough that it took it to the limit of acceptable controllability - there is a quote by Bud Anderson where engaged before he could empty this fuel tank he ended up in a turning fight with the nose still pitching up and round but he had nearly full forward stick input to try and keep it from throwing itself into a spin.

Now Crummps agenda is based on one report of a Mk. V with which he wishes to tarnish the handling of all Spitfires, despite reams of evidence to the contrary.

In truth there were some issues with Mk Vs being not correctly loaded (they carried quite a bit more kit in them than the earlier Mks) and a short term measure of intoducing bobweights into the elevator control circuit ('g' acting on the bob weight during pitching manoevres actuallly weighted the control column to provide a resistance to up elevator input). As this problem was investigated, and it's catalysts understood, better and more careful loading instructions, and ultimately a redesigned elevator mass blance made the bob weights obsolete.

Was the Spitfire's CoG range small? Yes. And it didn't take much to put it close to or beyond them. However, if you've done your reading nearly every one who's flown the thing, in whatever Mk, speaks glowingly of it's handling. Sure there were lemons and I suspect the NACA variant was an old war weary machine not in best of trim, but it seems foolish to take the evidence of one report against a veritable sea of contrary opinion.

[TomcatViP]

Originally Posted by Fenrir

... the NACA variant was an old war weary machine not in best of trim...

The RAE had the same conclusion. (Re-)read the report.

But they might hve been also unlucky and get a war weary machine ? Hummm ... might hve been the 5th German column

[Glider]

A SPit Va in 1943 in the USA is going to be a tired machine

However we still have the basic questions

If in theory the Spitfire was so poor in its stability, why did all the pilots who flew it of every nation, sing its praises?

There is of course another inconvenient point that should be considered and that is have you done these calculations on the Me109E?

I say this because if you believe that the Spitfire to be dangerous and the German pilots considered the Spitfire to be much easier to fly than the Me109E, How dangerous do you think the Me109 was?

Any comments

[TomcatViP]

OT. Deleted