Spitfire I/II starting procedure

[jf1981]

Hi,

Just to mention, I guess on the side of the cockpit, by the right arm position, there is a plate with check list so you may have a look at it.
There are some manuals of spitfire on the web you can find for the real procedure.

Talking about this game, since it is not 100% correct according to reality, it will be a little bit different.

Here is one very much practical and quite realistic. This assumes that you want an aircraft ready for any action while having to tune a minimum things during flight.

My own full version check-list :


TAKING OFF

COCKPIT AND GUNSIGHT LIGHTS ............ ON
CANOPY .................................................. ......... OPEN
RADIATOR .................................................. .... FULLY OPEN
MIXTURE .................................................. ....... RICH
PITCH .................................................. .............. FULL FINE
ELEVATOR TAB .............................................. ONE NOTCH UP
RUDDER TAB .................................................. . RIGHT
THROTTLE .................................................. ..... 1/2 INCH
GUNSIGHT DISTANCE WING SPAN ........... SET
ALTIMETER / COMPASS ............................... SET
FUEL COCK .................................................. ..... ON
ENGINE STARTER ............................................ ON

SAFE HEAT UP

BOOST .................................................. .............. MAINTAIN ZERO

AFTER TAKE OFF

GEAR .................................................. ................ UP
CLIMB RPM .................................................. .... 2850
CRUISE RPM .................................................. ... 2650

ECO CRUISE 35 GPH

ALTITUDE .................................................. ..... >10'000 ft
MIXTURE .................................................. ....... LEAN
BOOST .................................................. ............. LOW
SPEED .................................................. .............. MAINTAIN 200 MPH

COMBAT 40 TO 85 GPH DEPENDING UPON BOOST

MIXTURE .................................................. ....... RICH

LANDING

MIXTURE .................................................. ......... RICH
PITCH .................................................. ................ FULLY FINE
BELOW 160 MPH ............................................... GEAR DOWN
BELOW 140 MPH ............................................... FLAPS DOWN
GREEN LIGHT .................................................. ... ON
GREEN LIGHT MISSING .................................... OPERATE SAFETY LEVER

APPROACH SPEED ........................................... BELOW 140
FINAL SPEED .................................................. .. 90


SMALL FAQ

What are the correct temperatures for taxiing and taking off ?
Oil & water temperatures have passed white arc (30°C for oil / 60°C for water).

What is the best attitude if my engine is damaged ?
If you need to travel distance, use low rpm / high boost and gain altitude.

What are correct RPM settings ?
Full fine for take off and landing so as to reach high thrust with lower torque.
Max 2850 for climb and dogfight however the current engine model does not suffer from exceeding it.
Max speed 2650 RPM. You can notice boost decreasing above.
For cruise, as low as possible, however, you can't maintain a high boost at low rpm as it will damage the engine.


What is best climb speed ?
Keep speed above 140 MPH. Best climb rate should be obtained at approx 160 MPH. In a fight area, you should prefer to keep a maneuvering speed of 200 MPH.

EXPLANATIONS

Manual gear down lever (red lever bottow right) : click twice for proper action. If green light does'nt come, either the gear is not down & locked or you have an electrical failure, then other lights won't work either.

For three point landing, I use to progressively decrease power to something near 10% throttle, not fully down to zero, then maintain a little ammount of altitude (few ft) by increasing nose pitch until the aircraft falls down in a 3 pt landing by itself as speed passes down about 70 mph.

You want a fully fine pitch for taking off and landing since it will give you the maximum thrust with minimum torque hence less banking and yaw effect for same effective thrust.

I keep a very small ammount of thottle at landing so as to eliminate propeller torque and keep engine ready for power increase if required.

PRACTICAL NOTES

Since there is no difficult physical action, I generally skyp right rudder trim, I just compensate with yaw action during take off.
I generally skip altimeter and compass setting. Altimeter may be as wrong as 500 ft if not set.
I generally start up the engine right in the begining and set zero boost, then do all other stuff afterwards.

If you set up following keymap you just have to press "ctrl+shift+I" for engine startup and "ctrl+alt+shift+L" for lights on. Remember radiator open. The rest is of lesser importance.

Ctrl+I for fuel cock toggle
Shift+I for engine startup

Ctrl+L for cockpit light on (part of panel)
Shift+L for cockpit light on (other part of panel)
Alt+L for gunsight light on


For my own game, I have removed the bottom left & right windows which show the position of throttle, pitch, radiator, and which informs you about system failures. This way, I have to do it right and monitor what's wrong in the aircraft.
I hope they would implement this realism level into the game through a new option. As well magnetos turn on automatically, we miss the carburator heator and some other issues. Not sure the carb can ice. All those features would be interesting at full realism.