Why Can't I Keep Up?

[MaxGunz]

What you must do is get moving before you climb after the others. Get up, get wheels up, get flaps up and trim trim trim the whole time. Don't even shallow climb until you're faster than whatever waypoint cruise speed your flight plan is. You want to catch up on the horizontal more than on the vertical. They will be cruising at 70% or less speeds.

The faster you go, the more lift you get out of a little more AOA. Nose down and slow, excess lift is small and more AOA slows you down more. 240-270 kph is not the speed to climbout. More like 360 if your flight plan says 340. Then you rise only as much as you can maintain 350 kph.

Pretty soon you get co-alt and then just zoom up and try to slide into position without sliding right on past. IL2 planes-at-distance graphics isn't the best for judging distances and speeds. I liked Rowan's MiG Alley Ace for the detailed planes, IMO looked better than the IL2 LOD's at the same virtual range, what they are and what they are doing is more clear.

When you turn, rise or fall during the turn. If you are going very fast and want to turn, zoom climb steeply then roll until your canopy points where you want to go and you have changed direction quicker than you can fly a flat curve and you have height to dive from and regain your original speed.

If you're not at high speed and turning to make contact with enemy let your plane drop 100-150m alt in the first half of the turn, speeding up and a slightly tighter turn than a flat turn would have been, and finish the turn in a shallow climb. You can come out moving faster than you started. Even going straight-line, unload the wings a few full seconds to lower induced drag. Your speed picks up quick going downhill. Then regain alt slowly while still building speed.

One long hard turn and it's start over, too. Gain alt once you're really moving, it's money in the bank of physics. Just whatever you do, don't fly around nose-high and slow. In IL-2 you must trim all the time for minimum PC joystick deflection. Bud Anderson wrote of constant trimwheel adjusting during combat in WWII P-51's. He detailed the action as automatic, like tuning a radio while driving a car.

Last is check The Ball if you still can't get speed up. Then flaps. Then gear.

[K_Freddie]

Don't forget some Engine Management..

Once you get some speed up, throttle back and set prop pitch for optimum settings (usually 60/60, but a/c dependent). This will allow you to close your radiator a few notches, which gives you some extra mph's.

If you take notice of the AI props, they're usually not spinning at max which is an indication that they using CEM.

[MaxGunz]

Expect to catch your formation well before a reasonable waypoint. Once you can stay joined, you will be running reduced engine and prop. Work on lower prop speed, you can have 120+% power to 100% RPM which is over-square. But try keeping nose down until you have gained good speed method without using more than 80% power. It will still work.

The hard part is cutting back on power soon enough to just merge into formation moving 320-360kph. Crabbing to slow down does work. Crab is wings tilt one way, rudder goes the other way, plane loses speed.
Better is to not get over 400kph on the way to formation, start cutting throttle and rpm as you approach. Once close, even at 20kph faster you'd better be slowing down.

My usual experience is keep nose down, get speed, rise to formation alt already going 380-400kph and gain speed on the 360kph dots. Usually by the time the dots start getting bigger I'm going way too fast and just shoot on past the flight even while slowing down, then go back and fit into my spot.

Once you're moving you can usually keep speed up on reduced rpm and power. You should get a cooler engine that way.