Radiator/cowling flaps

[-)-MAILMAN-]

Originally Posted by palidian

This comes from WWII pilots that when in combat would go full mil power and never have an issue. I have several WWII airplane and engine manuals, and they give lots of warnings, but nothing about running at full mil power. The manual states no more than 5 minutes at WEP or Take off power. Water injection helps cool the engine, if cooling was an issue than the water injection would be started earlier. In addition the higher up you get the colder the air is, it is also thinner however.

The ME262 over heats at 100%, jet engines generally do not get hot (so to speak, at least not to start melting things.) due to there nature.

I will test the cowling effects more.

Better read the manuals for the US birds, because I have manuals for almost all of them and they all had limits for:

Takeoff - 5 minutes max
Military Rated Power 5-10 minutes (highest power no water injection all aircraft)
War Emergency Power - 5 minutes max (for planes that had water injection)
Normal or Maximum Continuous - no time limit limitations for this power setting

These power plant settings may be different depending upon the geographical location, season and altitude you are operating so the US manuals and manufacturer settings may have to be adjusted slightly lower to compensate for "warmer locations". These conditions were also presented in the pilot manuals. Full rich mixture setting was also used to cool the engine. In the game the US birds don't have the option of an auto lean setting, only automatic rich and full rich.

The corsairs also for example had separate "radiator" flaps for oil (oil cooler), cylinder head (cowl flalps) and carburetor inlet air (intercooler). On the corsairs each of these had a separate operator were opened depending upon the cause of the heating issue. The F6F-3 had two controls for these three flaps sets, but the F6F-5 was improved to have three separate controls. Unfortunately in the game if you operate the radiators for any plane in the game all of the cooling flaps open even though you needed only one for a specific heat issue and you get the associated drag of all of these flaps. This info came directly from the USN Pilot operating manual for the F4U-1, F4U-1C & F4U-1D and the USN Pilot operating manual for the F6F-3, F6F-3(N), F6F-5 and F6F-5(N).