Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[Crumpp]

Thus it was the Yanks who came to the rescue and fixed the hitherto unstable machine by waving their magic flight reports and inertia weights

1. Did inertial weights get added to the design to fix the Longitudinal instability....YES.

2. Did this occur during the Battle of Britain.......NO, the longitudinal instability was not fixed during the Battle of Britain.

3. Should the Spitfires modeled in the game exhibit the longitudinal instability.....YES.

4. Do they now exhibit the longitudinal instability in the game....NO.


As "yanks coming to the rescue"....that is a very myopic view and far from the truth.

It was Gates and Lyon's efforts that brought a measureable standard to the UK aviation authority. Yes he based those standards on the NACA's efforts just as the NACA based part of their standards on his work.

And the tale told by Quill, that the inertia weights were fitted after the discovery of badly loaded Spitfire Vs in Fighter Command service was horse pucky.

And I suppose they added the inertial elevators to the Spitfire Mk I because nobody in the RAF could read a load plan or do a weight and balance?

I am sure there was an issue in the Mk V when it first came out with the operators incorrectly loading the aircraft. That certainly did not help the longitudinal instability of the design making a bad situation much worse, but it was not the reason for the longitudinal instability.

[Crumpp]

Can you explain this further. Fixed As a result of NACA? How? Surely not.

The inertial devices added to the elevator control is the fix for the longitudinal instability.

You add weights to the control and those weights act to artificially increase the amount of control force required.

[NZtyphoon]

Bug #415 and this thread

[Crumpp]

Bug #415 and this thread

Maybe, but it is not because the stability and control characteristics are modeled in the game or that they cannot be modeled.

More to do with community politics than aircraft behaviors.

[Crumpp]

IvanK says:
When you started this thread its purpose was to discuss this issue as it pertained to early mark spitfires IRL, not for a bug tracker entry

I thought you all wanted realism in your game. I see that is not the case.

[IvanK]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

I thought you all wanted realism in your game. I see that is not the case.

LOL When you have spent 1/10th of the time that many of us have supporting realism, providing original source documentation,testing utilities, face to face meetings overseas with the devs and testing in the IL2 classic and IL2 CLOD come and talk about not wanting realism.

[bongodriver]

So....can we have a 109 thread now?