My little 109 v spit experiment

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by pstyle

4. Recovering from a flick-stall (but not in a spin) was marvellous. I took my hands and feet off and just waited about 3 to 5 seconds for the heavy nose to drop. she righted herself and I was power diving and under lift within a second or two more. really nice. really stable. I might try and put one in a spin soon too, to see how that experience compares.

Defo a nice crate to fly. I might brave a few missions in the busier servers now too....
Does anyone know if point 4 is "historical"? Are the reasons why a 109 v spit will blow engines different, and thus the "sudden" nature of the spitfire breakdown is accruate? Should there be any kind of audible warning from the engine in either case that something is about to pop? Should it be avoidable to a point, even once the engine tone has changed to "abnormal"?

As to 4, yes, from everything I have read the gentle stall characteristics were definitely a forte of the 109 (which is the no. 1 reason I kept flying it in the old Il2 times, even after when the 190 was added, and which I would have normally preferred). I guess the plane's longitudinal stability has a lot to do with it.

As for the Spitties engine breakdowns, I would say the prime reason is that the 109 has so many automated systems that its basically fool-proof. It has great cooling capacity, and essentially you only need to adjust the throttle. In comparison the Spit has a zillion engine related switches and levers, so its quite easy for the pilot to select wrong mixture/rpm/boost/temperature combination. In addition the negative g problem of the Merlin means that you can suddenly loose oil pressure with a bad move on the stick, and that is not a good thing for any engine. There's quite simply too many things going on too keep track of all of them. Rpm should be probably less of a problem on both planes, since actually both the DB and the Merlin tolerated fairly high overreving for considerable periods (2400/3000 and 3000/3600 for 30 secs iirc)