Blenheim take off

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by Seeker

How does one take off in a Blenheim? I've just wasted 2 hours trying.

I can relate to that.

I spent almost a full day at it and got absolutely nowhere, in spite of lots of advice from other members.

It was me who suggested taxi-ing to the other end of the runway as in Blackdog's quote, but I never managed it. The engine(s) blew before I could get there!

Then I got a G940 set-up, which I'm still figuring out, and can't get the split throttle to control two seperate engines.

I won't be giving up though, this weekend's project is to set up the 940 and have another go with the Blenheim.

Watch this space!

[Sternjaeger II]

lol I don't remember where I was, but it was a little airshow and a girl was commenting on a turn on/warm up engine checklist that she spotted in a cockpit: she said something like "hey, get temperature to 200 degrees, it's like a recipe!" much to the amusement of the people around her hehehe

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by meplay

Hi Seeker, the only thing i do is basically have my right engine throttle at 100% and left at around 50% and as my back wheel starts to come up i set the left engine to 100% also. The main thing that stops me from overheating though is when ive started to roll quit fast, i start to drop the prop pitch slowly till its about half way or lower and thats seem to be the only thing that stop my CHT from sky rocketing through the roof.

Actually setting prop pitch to 50% has no effect. It uses two-stage props like the Spit.MkI but the sliders don't "snap" into the top and bottom position like they should. If you set pitch full back it goes to the low RPM position, if you set it at anything higher than that it's the same as running it full fine.

Which means that running with the slider at 50% has no real effect, you can take-off just fine with it at 100% and save yourself some trouble


As for the temperatures now, i too had a bit of trouble. I could take-off just fine with an accelerated warm-up if i'm not carrying bombs, i would advance the throttles in a series of steps with the brakes on in order to "force" a temp increase. When they are running rough the aircraft shakes, when the shaking stops you know it's sufficiently warmed up for the current boost setting so you push it up a notch or two.

However, i would only get the CHT (cylinder head temp) to 150 or so and upon trying to take-off with a bombload bad things would happen. If its unloaded you get enough acceleration and rudder authority even with the engines running slightly rough, but if it's loaded the acceleration is slower, airflow is less and engine components start to fail.

My most recent trick is frequent use of the cowl flaps to actively control CHT. This is also really critical during descent and approach/landing. You can't just chop the throttle and start descending at high speed, the engines will go cold and by the time you deploy gear and flaps and need the extra power for the flare and touchdown you don't get any.

In fact, the entire profile of the approach (how low can you set boost and how fast you can go in combination with your cowl flaps and prop pitch setting) is determined by keeping the temps where they need to be.

If you just put the nose down at coarse pitch (which will cause you to accelerate even further) and chop the throttle you're about to suffer.

Instead, chop the throttles first and go to fine pitch (high RPM), this combination makes the props windmill almost face-on to the incoming airflow and acts like an airbrake. Then start closing cowl flaps (i had them at about 30%-40% and it was still resulting in too low CHT), but remember to open them again when you re-apply throttle to settle into the glide slope.

Yes, it's difficult and the ergonomics in the cockpit are not really the best, but it's highly realistic. Similar things happen with most radial engines, you can take a look on youtube at the A2A P-47 for FSX, or even better, search for some videos showing DeHavilland Beaver aircraft in Canada or Alaska starting up their wasp junior engine.

Radials need some pretty intensive temp management, this workload is the trade-off for their reliability, power and combat resilience.

[JG53Frankyboy]

Online , and ONLY online:
are you able to change positions in a Blenheim without its engines are stopping?

Offline i have not this proplem!

[Blackdog_kt]

There is some bug with temps resetting/fluctuating when you change crew positions for the first time, it's this that kills the engines.

A temporary work-around is to cycle through all the crew positions when you first spawn on the ground, before your engines are started. I haven't tried this, but several people reported some improvement.

[JG53Frankyboy]

WOW, never expected this..........................
And it always happens. THAT IS a serious bug for online play !!!

[1PL_Lucas]

I would like to thank you all for all the tips regarding the Blenheim. Today, I finally managed to take her off and I flew the Cross Country mission to France. Looks like we have to keep CHT temperature between 200 and 250C Deg. Once I broke the upper limit, my starboard engine started to vibrate and lost about 200 RPM's. However, I managed to continue the flight and land in France. The next step will be to take off with the full fuel load and then I will expriment with the bomb load. That advanced system modeling creates lots of fun and teaches to check gauges every few minutes.
While I did not have any problem with the Sptifire and Hurricane (i have learnt a bit about their behaviour thanks to the A2A S. Spitfire Mk.I/II for the MS FSX), the Blenheim was a mystery for me Pity that only four planes are mentioned in the manual, but maybe we will have some pdf tutorials in the future, just like there are some for the RoF for example.
Thanks,
Lucas

Have read all the posts and it appears that after a week the thread starter didn't bother to drop in and say thanks for all the Blenheim tips. My DVD hasn't even arrived yet but thanks in advance. Will return to this thread when the challenge (love a good challenge) of flying the Blenheim is on.

Cheers,

OC

[SYN_Flashman]

On the Syndicate server we have set up one of the two airfields with blenhiem as an airstart (the north western one). You still need to be careful once you have spawned (and for the love of god DO NOT switch crew positions until that bug is fixed!) but it certainly helps get you flying!

Its not on all our missions, but look for the tag when you hover your mouse over the NW belnheim airfield as it will say if its an airspawn. Whilst airstarts for this sort of thing are not our normal practice at SYndicate, the Blenheim is so delicate (and I believe possibly unrealistically so) it simply isn't being flown and given its the only human flyable offensive aircraft the RAF has we do need to get pilots into it!

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by Old_Canuck

Have read all the posts and it appears that after a week the thread starter didn't bother to drop in and say thanks for all the Blenheim tips. My DVD hasn't even arrived yet but thanks in advance. Will return to this thread when the challenge (love a good challenge) of flying the Blenheim is on.

Cheers,

OC

I haven't said thanks here (although I hope I've acknowledged some posters i other threads) 'cos I still haven't managed to get the dam thing off the ground yet.

Seeing as other people obviously have, the problem's me, not the game, so I'm keeping my big mouth shut until I've learnt something useful.

Sorry about that.