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Hi BikerBabe
The Emil is definitely an excellent plane to learn on. Especially since in Il2 it has the hydromechanical auto management system in all models so you don't have to worry about setting prop pitch or fuel mixture. It's one touch flying and prop pitch/engine speed is automatically optimised for the throttle setting you choose (shown on the ata guage in the cockpit). Historically I don't think these features appeared until the Me109F-4 about October 1941.
A couple of pointers, as soon as you're able to handle the intense orgasmic fun of high immersion simming, make sure you set full realism in the options menu and start to fly these birds like it was the real thing. It multiplies the game experience by 100 and gives just a tiny hint of what it might've been like to try to fly and fight in these aircraft, playing the role of flight engineer, pilot and looking out for bandits all at once. Not easy but amazingly fun to try. What I usually do is set full realism, then deselect "no exterior views" and "cockpit padlock" so I can still pause to take screenies.
If using realism settings, make sure you only use both magnetos for take off and emergency settings (there's a 5 minute limit on these settings before the engine overheats, though usually this happens in more like 2 minutes), I've had magneto failures before so they are definitely modelled in game, and if you've got both magnetos on when you get a failure, you lose both and that means no spark for the engine. Basically a dead stick landing or a bail out.
Always look up the throttle and pitch settings of the aircraft you're flying and use them, Il2 generally attempts to model actual flight characteristics at the realism settings...within reason and the obvious limitations of a commercial game that isn't intended to be a physics program to make cosmological models. Sometimes it gets things wrong, but mosty general historical guidelines are followed, like a Spit MkIX has a +12lbs normal manifold rating and a +18lbs War Emergency Power rating which can be used for 5 minutes before overheating, whilst engine speeds are 3000rpm (pitch setting) for the high speed condition and say something like 2700rpm or 2500rpm for cruise settings (for which the auto prop pitch ratchet on the MkIX needs to be disengaged to manual control to set the pitch and throttle for best performance in cruising conditions, the auto settings only work well for combat). Stuff like that. What you then find is that you can cruise around the big maps in the Spit without running out of fuel before getting back to friendly airspace, and you discover the historical best cruise altitudes with lowest fuel consumption, etc. It becomes a fascinating and highly enjoyable experience overall.
Plus during combat, and when preparing for combat one of the most important things in these old warbirds is the temperature guages. Keeping your engine cool when you begin an engagement and knowing when you get away with running it a bit hot can mean the difference between having 1100hp available or only 850hp at the ready, which changes how tight you can turn, what your initial climb rates are and other important factors in combat manoeuvring. Also learn to use combat flaps for a/c fitted with them (British a/c usually aren't).
Life is much easier flying German fighters because they're optimised for automatic flight management all the time, part of their technological refinement (lower pilot workload, higher situational awareness...which helps offset things like a really horrible cockpit view in the Messers).
Anyways even though Il2 is more arcade game than true flight sim, it has elements of genuine simming and most of the time, if you set full realism options, flying its aircraft the way they're meant to be flown historically you do actually get the best performance out of them in the game, which is really nice to see and probably one of the reasons Il2 has remained so popular (plus the sheer variety of flyable a/c and more recently the modding community).
Here's some screens to illustrate realism flying in the Me109E...though have a look at the canopy frame, wing armament and cockpit layout, notice something different? hehe
That's right, the fuel control lever...translating that turned out to be interestingHi GG and thanks for your translations, that helped me quite a bit along the way.
Maybe with the possible exception of the "motorbrændstof løftestang", which - when translated back to english - becomes a "motor fuel lift rod". But I think I get the basic idea - you push or pull the lever, and then you increase or decrease the amount of fuel injected into the engine, or something like that?
Yes indeed!Prop pitch: Got it - it's the angle of the propeller that you can in- or decrease, depending on needs, right?
Yep! I think that translated fairly well...but that feature is pretty simple to master in the advanced flying modeTrim: Got it. On the last few missions my 109 kept drifting slightly to the port side when I let go of the stick, which means that I have to trim the bugger.
Well, I know how great translators can be, so I just wanted to make sure I got the translations pretty close, instead of saying something like:And no, it wasn't a dum oversættelse, I think I got the message.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Maria.