Acceleration comparisons

[horseback]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

Just what planes always button trim with no left over up or down? I've never gotten that except through luck or throttle adjustment.

I have always found the 109's susceptible to nose bob after slowing down even a little.

(LOL, that's above average 8th grade level. You lost half the readers.)

Those who don't figure out the implications of the quote above, implications which have been presented over and over for more than 10 years now are still trying to find answers elsewhere. For them it's endless 'persecution' and WTF.

P-51 could be more stable. Move the CoG forward. Then listen to the whines that say stick force is too heavy, I have a book that says so.

The key word in my description is excessive. Most aircraft have an easily determined 'sweet spot' where just holding your hand on the stick will keep the aircraft level and steady (not banking to one side or the other). If you take your hand off the stick, the change will be gradual over two or three seconds, maybe five to ten degrees of roll (and it will usually be random--left one time, right the next). "Nose bob" is one thing and most aircraft have it to a greater or lesser degree. Usually the greater the nose bob, the more the aircraft is out of trim; if you are way out of trim, the bob becomes a yo-yo. If you need to constantly re-trim for the slightest change in state (nose up, nose down, bank, 5-10 KPH gain or loss of speed, 5% more or less throttle or prop pitch), you're screwed.

With the Spitfire (any Spit/Seafire) in this game, there is a tendency to roll right at all speeds; it has no aileron trim and the tendency and amount of pressure to the left is the same throughout its speed range. Take your hand off the stick and it will roll 15 - 20 degrees in about two seconds. The P-47 has the same tendency, except if you add one click of left aileron trim, it has the tendency to roll left at the same strength: about 15-20 degrees in a couple of seconds. I call that 'excessive'.

I also wonder where it comes from, because in over fifty years of reading and asking former and current pilots of these types (say "Spitfire" to Bob Hoover, and you would get twenty minutes contrasting and comparing it to the Mustang, P-39 and P-40; unfortunately, when I asked him the cassette recorder hadn't been invented yet) about every little thing, and no one ever said that there was always this little bit of pressure to roll right. Very short 'throw' on the elevators vs a full arc on the ailerons, yes. Tendency to quickly overheat on the ground, yes. No incipient roll to the right was ever mentioned in print or verbally.

With the Mustang (and to a greater degree, the Hellcat, Corsair and P-47 in that order), you cannot achieve the state of consistent trim I described above; there is always that bit of pressure against the stick and one click up means that you are fighting a climb and one click down means that you're in a shallow dive (and either case means that the rudder is going to need a tiny bit of pressure one way or the other and it will inevitably be too much and the 'ball' will shoot across the T&B indicator). You can do it with the Airacobras and the P-40s, but not the later, more sophisticated designs, which were all described as equal or (much) better in this regard.

The in-game P-38 (like the Mustang and the others) needs constant elevator trim adjustment every 10-15 kph of of speed up or down, contrary to every description I've read or heard of the real thing. As I've pointed out, WWII era pilots all carped constantly about the fact that the P-40 series all needed to be trimmed for speed changes of as little as 10 miles an hour (16 kph). That is about four miles an hour more than you need to trim the in-game P-51 for.

Excessive.

You like to go on about game controller joysticks vs the extended 'real things', but how is it that the 109 and the so many other aircraft modeled in the game are capable of precise flight with easy trimmability but this one group of aircraft all described as equal or superior (by both sides) in this respect cannot be modeled to be equally capable of that precision without an inhuman awareness of trim state (that is not accurately depicted by the instruments' display) and an ability to input micro units of trim at precisely the right time?

It is not just a matter of one aircraft's center of gravity or people not having their joysticks adjusted properly. There is a basic error at work here. It could be mathematical or it could be a personal prejudice. Something is stacking the deck against these aircraft.

cheers

horseback