Soviet fighters and 4.12

[IceFire]

I would have to agree. I've read a lot of battle reports and it seems a rare thing to me that a pilot would use full power continuously. In most of the cases I can remember they tend to be in fast engagements where they are in a high speed regime and may be pursuing or fleeing.

I did a little test. I like flying 8vs8 engagements in the QMB so that's what I did. La-7 versus Bf109K-4. I haven't flown the K-4 in a long time so I was a bit rusty but I did fairly well. I find the K-4 flies better these days... perhaps? It's really been a long time since I flew the late Bf109s (I did do a 50 mission DGEN over Berlin in the K-4 once). Anyways...

Full power 110% with MW50 engaged and rads on auto. Overheat around the 4.5-5 minute mark. Resisted the urge to drop back power so I let the overheat go. I got a oil leak at 7 minutes, engine started to chew metal at 8 minutes and at 12 minutes it died and I crashed into the ground after being chased by several La-7s. I managed two kills and my wingies got a few before I got separated.

I'd say that's a brutal test. None of the aircraft in IL-2 that I've tested have had much in the way of similar results. Dogfighting at full WEP isn't something I normally do so I had to resist the impulse to drop it back. I'll often run at 102% or thereabouts so as to maximize my time rather than going for the most amount of heat. But usually if you were to watch my throttle in a dogfight I'm all over the place... slowly up and down from 40% to 90%, a couple of minutes at WEP, then back down for cooling. I also usually run rads closed or at 2 and then open during slow speed fighting where the drag hurts me less and the heat hurts me more.

I've very much internalized this whole process so I do it without thinking.

[jermin]

Come on, guys. It has been proved by a deluge of facts in the forum that MW50 was able to be used continuously for 10 minutes at max engine output in WW2. And there sure was time (and quite often, considering German fighters were seriously outnumbered on both fronts) in real battles when the pilot HAD TO fly the entire engagement with max engine power, because he would have been killed by chasing enemies otherwise.

And using quick mission to conduct the test is absolutely valid, since when you join a battle out of cruising, your engine temperature will be much closer to overheat limit compared to around 45 degrees centigrade when the quick mission starts.

Oleg's overheat model accurately represented the endurance of MW50 enabled engines in that the engine would only be damaged after about 10 minutes' continuous max output when tested in the same setup.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by jermin

Come on, guys. It has been proved by a deluge of facts in the forum that MW50 was able to be used continuously for 10 minutes at max engine output in WW2. And there sure was time (and quite often, considering German fighters were seriously outnumbered on both fronts) in real battles when the pilot HAD TO fly the entire engagement with max engine power, because he would have been killed by chasing enemies otherwise.

And using quick mission to conduct the test is absolutely valid, since when you join a battle out of cruising, your engine temperature will be much closer to overheat limit compared to around 45 degrees centigrade when the quick mission starts.

Oleg's overheat model accurately represented the endurance of MW50 enabled engines in that the engine would only be damaged after about 10 minutes' continuous max output when tested in the same setup.

The 10 minutes thing seems oft repeated but I'd love to how exactly what the requirements were and that part seems to be somewhat vague. At least to me.

I ran flat out at 6000 meters with MW50 engaged and overheat just came on somewhere in the 6-7 minute mark. It could easily run for another while before really having any difficulties. Big difference depending on ambient temperatures at altitude versus down low and flying slowly.

[Dami55an]

It would be hard to simulate real historiacal performance.

[JtD]

With the original overheat, most engines got damaged after 4:45 minutes of overheat message. That has little to do with overheat, and nothing to do with MW50 time limits. The current model also doesn't have a time limit for MW50, you can use it indefinitely unless you're overheating.

The statement in the 109K-4 manual re: MW50 is "under no circumstances use special emergency power for a duration of more than 10 minutes." It does not say "you can use it for 10 minutes no problem".

Anyway, for the fun of it I also went into QMB and made an 8 vs. 8 K-4 vs. Yak-9u, and I ran MW50 + 110% power for the entire fight right until rtb, for more than 15 minutes. I overheated a couple of times, but this would go away even in climbs at 500ish km/h, let alone in dives or in level flight. Radiators in auto, map Smolensk. No engine damage. The historically better suited Berlin map is another 5° cooler, so I wouldn't expect any trouble there at all.

Engines temps in air start are the same as in take off.

I'm curious about your fighting style, jermin. Do you turn a lot with combat flaps deployed or do you zoom climb up until near standstill? I've attached a plot of my dogfight against said Yak-9u's. More of a b'n'z style fight. As you can see, b'n'z puts a lot of stress on the engine, in particular if the climbing part is done to a very low speed. At about 3 minutes, I climbed up to less than 100 km/h - and you can see the temperatures soar at this time. So I avoided these very low speeds and zoomed up to only about 250 from then on. It can also be seen that the constant speed prop is too slow to adjust to the permanent air speed changes, this way I'm over-revving the engine in every dive. It's also apparent that if you fly above full throttle altitude (5-6 km) you'll be in less temperature trouble.

If you fly like this on the Crimea map, you'll be overheating a lot more (pretty much permanently), if you fly like this on the Berlin map, you won't be overheating at all.

[jermin]

I'm afraid both you and IceFire have missed a very important notion in my statement. Emergency power is supposed to be used only when your life is being seriously threatened. The red button on the front panel should be your last resort while you struggle desperately to save your life, at the cost of your engine longevity.

If you are climbing at 500ish km/h or you flat out at 6000 meters during a battle, your life is not threatened at all. So you should not have enabled MW50.

I did use a lot of boom and zoom and E-fighting maneuvers during the dogfight, as they are how 109s are supposed to be flown, although in the current game most every allied fighters can outclimb contemporary 109s.

You might ask, why don't I try running away? Although both historically and by IL2Compare, K4 is able to outrun a lot of contemporary allied fights, in the game it takes MUCH(!) longer time for German fighters to reach max level speed than allied fighters do. Because of this, K4 can hardly outrun any contemporary enemy fighters.

So, sometimes it is a matter of you shooting that bandit down or you get shot down. This is where MW50 is supposed to come into play. It is in this very situation that sacrificing engine to produce additional power can be justified. You can't deny that it makes much more sense to kill an engine in one flight but save your life, than crash yourself into the ground with your million-dollar flying machine.

And, I have to disagree with your interpretation of the statement regarding the usage of MW50 in K4 manual. I'm sure the 10-minute figure had been carefully calculated before coming into the manual. There should be at least 1-2 minutes' headroom for most engines which were used for testing in order to get that 10-minute conclusion. If quite a big portion of the tested engine cannot last beyond 10 minutes, the figure printed in the manual would have been smaller.

Bear in mind that the engine must have the ability to bring the pilot back to base after a total 26-minute period of MW50 injection, 10 minutes max for any continuous sessions and 5 minutes in between. So, if the pilot is determined to damage his engine during a dogfight, the damage should happen at a later time, where 15-20 minutes is a reasonable guess. Now you can see how 5 minutes is ridiculous.

I'd also like to post here my other requests regarding German fighters (109 and 190) include

1. Improve zoom climb ability. (Speed should drops slower in a zoom and increase faster in a boom)
2. Greatly reduce the time needed to reach maximun level speed.
3. Improve acceleration. (German fighters are renown for their powerful engines.
4. Improve energy retainability. In a corner-speed turn, current German fighters lose speed much faster that allied fighters that have significantly low wing loading. Some uber planes like 25lb spit and those Russian fights even gain speed in a corner-speed turn! 109 is a typical E-fighter, but right now its energy retention ability is even worse than contemporary spitfire, a TnB fighter.
5. Give German fighters correct high-altitude performance. Right now 109s and Antons can hardly maintain a level flight above 8000m. While allied fighters (on western front) can easily maneuver around German fighters without losing much energy. Someone would say the high altitude is not able to be correctly modeled in IL2. But since those allied fighters don't have a problem, I can't see why German ones can't be fixed.

[JtD]

I shot down four Yak's while my life wasn't threatened.

I quoted from the K-4 manual. It's not an interpretation.

[jermin]

If I were you, I would have shot down a few more than that.

I'm writing all these words not to complain the game is too difficult for me. Actually I am much better than you can imagine.

What I want is the most viable WW2 flight sim in the world to be more and more realistic, not the other way around.

[JtD]

Originally Posted by jermin

If I were you, I would have shot down a few more than that.

Why do some people tend to take it for granted that others have poorer knowledge background than them regarding what they are arguing about while they actually don't have a clue about who they are arguing with in the first place?

[jermin]

This is my combat stats in a Russian server called AlexServer. And I flew all sorties alone.

http://spread-wings.ru/21000/index.p...334/index.html

You can see why I was so confident.