Issues with the Ta152

[leitwolf]

Widewing, did you use Combat Trim in your tests? Surprising to see so many different opinions about the same plane (and a perfect digital copy at that!) . No wonder wartime test report discussions get heated at times

[moot]

SLED - No offense, but the 152 is one of the very worse planes in the game, in terms of agility. To quote one of the all time AH top sticks... "I couldn't wait to get out of it and get back in the A8", or "It's awful compared to the D9".

Leit - I can and will back up what I'm asserting... I'm just waiting to be sure I'm interpreting Bodhi and Widewing's posts correctly.
The 152 is nothing like it was in AH1.  It used to be tied with the A5, now it's down to the A8's degree of flying brick FM.

[Krusty]

I'm with Moot on this...

No offense intended WW (tongue in cheek), but did you fly the same plane we were?!?!?

I find it VERY hard to believe you didn't enter a permanent tail spin on air spawn. And that you didn't experience any instability at all, to the point of saying (implicitly) the plane has nothing wrong with it...




SLED: 50% - 75% usually. I like 30-45 minute sorties on average, and with the heavy ammo load you get lots of opportunity to loiter.

[moot]

I'd like to see a movie of WW not getting any tail funk from an airspawn, with subtitles substituting for input telemetry if possible...

[Widewing]

Originally posted by moot

Widewing, please compare with the pre 2.06 (or AH1 to be sure) Ta152.  You won't even have to do a whole battery of tests to see the differences.
They'll be most obvious in tight and twisty ACM.

edit- I just re-read your post and you're basicaly saying there is nothing unstable about the 152 anywhere in landing, lowspeed dogfight ACM, sustained flat turns, and airspawns.... WW, with all due respect, you're doing something wrong and/or very different with what just about everyone else who's flown the 152 has reported.

I'll post movies if needed...

Well, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, inasmuch as I don't encounter the same problems.

I loaded AH1 and took off in the Ta 152 with 25% fuel. I then performed a turn radius test. Speed taken from film.

At 500 feet I sustained 124 mph for three consecutive circles, which took 63.16 seconds. Thus, 124/60= 2.067. 2.067x5820=10911.999. 10911.999/60=181.867.  181.667x63.16=11486.70.  11486.70/3=3828.90  3828.90/3.14=1219.39 (average turn diameter). 1219.39/2=609.7 (average turn radius).

I then loaded AH2 and took off in another 152 with 25% fuel. I performed the same test. Speed taken from film.

At 500 feet I sustained 127 mph for three consecutive circles, which took 62.06 seconds. Thus, 127/60=2.117.  2.117x5280=11176.00.  11176.00/60=186.27.  186.27x62.06=11559.71.  11559.71/3=3853.24.  3853.24/3.14=1227.14 (average turn diameter). 1227.14/2=613.57 (average turn radius).

So, the difference between the turn radii between AH1 and AH2 is less than 4 feet. Well within the average deviation expected (which I classify as +/- 3%). In short, they are virtually identical in this aspect of performance. One can reduce this 10 to 15 feet by pushing a bit harder, but the result is usually a substantial reduction is turn rate. This trade-off isn't usually desirable.

Another advantage of AH2 is the superior stall warning. There's no cockpit shake in AH1, so all you have for warning is the stall horn. AH2 gives plenty of advanced warning with the stall horn and increasing cockpit shake. In short, it's easier to avoid a stall in AH2. Especially for newer pilots.

Krusty is apparently shocked that I don't get flat spins on air spawns. That's probably because I use a better technique upon spawning. As soon as I spawn, the stick goes full forward and I raise the gear and start the engine (all in about 2 seconds). The plane rolls to the left and I center the stick and now counter torque with right rudder. Rotation stops with the nose down and I feed in power and level off... No sweat, no hassle, no spin, no tail slide, no drama. I'll post a film.

Now, it's certainly possible to induce a tail slide by over-flying the 152. Sudden and large elevator inputs while flying near pure vertical will induce these (and do so in many aircraft). However, it is very easy to recover from. Simply press E to shut off the motor. The nose pitches down instantly and you restart. There's very little loss of altitude. Again, I'll post a film.

I'm not having the troubles you gents are.. So, the question begs; what are you doing to induce this behavior? Post some films if you can, it may help to figure out where the problem is.

As to landing... The AH1 Ta 152 is less darty on the runway. The AH-2 152 tends to hunt from left to right. But, lots of AH2 fighters do that, such as the P-51D and F6F-5. The secret to avoiding this is to 3 point your landings. This is something I do in all tail-draggers. That's why I never suffer a ground loop. My point is, if you can land an F4U without undue drama, the Ta 152 is no sweat.

My regards,

Widewing

[Widewing]

As promised, here's two films.

The first film shows air spawns at 30k. The first one shows me using my standard practice of stick forward, rudder to counter torque. Each subsequent spawn shows me trying different methods, including full back stick, full left rudder and so on. I could not induce a tail slide no matter what I did.

 Air Spawn

In the second film, I induce a tail slide by climbing vertically and pulling back power to idle. Once into the tail slide, I shut off the motor and recover. The second example was begun at low altitude (ground level was about 1.0k above sea level), zooming up until a tail slide is entered. Recovery was swift and without anxiety. Just kill the motor, get the nose down, restart and carry on as if nothing happened.

Tail Slide

My regards,

Widewing

[Krusty]

I'm at work now (can't review anything or put anything up) but I'll look at them later. I'll try filming some 152 stuff, but a LOT of us are seeing a very messy, sloppy, and just ugly, instability in the 152. EDIT: Maybe moot can post something?


P.S. I can land a corsair easily. I still get problems with the 152, but no other plane does what it does when I'm flying it. The closest example was the mossie, but that's been (mostly) fixed so it no longer is similar.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by Krusty
I'm at work now (can't review anything or put anything up) but I'll look at them later. I'll try filming some 152 stuff, but a LOT of us are seeing a very messy, sloppy, and just ugly, instability in the 152. EDIT: Maybe moot can post something?


P.S. I can land a corsair easily. I still get problems with the 152, but no other plane does what it does when I'm flying it. The closest example was the mossie, but that's been (mostly) fixed so it no longer is similar.

After about 20 tries, I was finally able to induce a flat spin on air spawn. To do it, I had to push the stick all the way forward and left, while applying full left rudder. I was able to recover within seconds by killing the engine and centering the controls.

My regards,

Widewing

[TUXC]

Hey Widewing, did you have combat trim turned on for all of your tests? The 152 only does strange things at speeds low enough so that combat trim sets the elevator trim to full up (such as on takeoff/landing, and at the top of vertical maneuvers).

I will agree with you and say that the vast majority of times I've flown the plane it has handled well and flown more or less as to be expected. The have been 3 or 4 occasions where strange things have happened though, and two of those occasions were on fairly normal approach to landing with combat trim on. The plane became very unstable in the yaw axis, resulting in a flat spin one of those times. The second time I was expecting it and managed to keep it from happening. Another time I followed an enemy a/c in a vertical zoom, blasted him with the cannon, but then ended up sliding tail-first 4000ft or so straight into the ground. It was as if the tail was made of concrete. No combination of control and throttle inputs would budge the plane from it's tail-first death plunge. I've never had this happen in any other plane. Since these events occurred I've been disabling combat trim in many instances with the 152 and had better results.

I used to have issues with air spawns depending on fuel loadout, but not so much lately as I've gotten more experience flying AH and become used to how the 152 behaves.

[Krusty]

It's not just combat trim, because I was using manual trim most of the time (but I was toggling it on to see if it helped any).

[moot]

Widewing please give the 152 a try in tight dogfighting.. And then once you've calibrated your brain to that, give the old 152 a try.  There's nowhere near as much inertia, and you can transition between maneuvers a lot more briskly, e.g. in scissors. Just wagging your wings the difference is obvious.  The yaw from torque (or whatever is causing it, I don't know) is huge.
I'll go film some fights if I can find some now.

[dtango]

I did some brief tests as well.  Here is my response:

[list=1]

• AH1 to AH2 FM.  One of the major changes made to the FM from AH1 to AH2 was the increase in the number of lift vectors along the wing.  This allows HTC greater fidelity in modeling lift.  This resulted in higher fidelity from things like stall progression, prop slipstream effects on lift and drag, to higher fidelity span-wise induced drag variance.  You’ll see how this greater fidelity in span-wise induced drag variance comes into play especially for the Ta-152.
  
  
• Fishtailing of the Ta-152 with roll (aileron input).  It does, especially at lower airspeeds.  The Ta-152 nose wants to go the opposite direction of your roll – roll to the left, the nose will yaw right.  Furthermore as soon as you stop aileron input the nose yaw’s back toward it’s orginal orientation.  Is this wrong?  Nope, infact it’s to be expected.  What we’re experiencing is ADVERSE YAW.  Aileron deflection produces adverse yaw.  Induced drag increases on the downward deflected aileron while it decreases on the upward deflected aileron.  This creates a yawing motion in the opposite direction of the roll.  It's a known fact that planes with high aspect ratios experience much more adverse yaw because of the additional length of the wingspan.  They tend to have longer ailerons as well as longer moment arms which increases the impact of the variation of induced drag between opposite wings.  Stop rolling and the differential in induced drag disappears.  The nose yaws back the other direction as the airplane seeks stability.
  
  
• Landing.  Was trickier to me than planes I fly.  It tends to float near the ground.  Again this is expected because of the magnification of ground effect with the longer wingspan.  It also fish-tailed easily on the ground on touch down.  Not sure about the cause of this but I’m guessing it has to do again with adverse yaw as well since there is a coupling between roll and yaw with rudder deflection.
  
  
• CG and other stability issues.  No pitch stability issues out of the ordinary were experienced.  Air launches weren’t a problem as well.  In maneuver no other stability issues were encountered out of the ordinary.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[Widewing]

Originally posted by TUXC
Hey Widewing, did you have combat trim turned on for all of your tests? The 152 only does strange things at speeds low enough so that combat trim sets the elevator trim to full up (such as on takeoff/landing, and at the top of vertical maneuvers).
 

I had Combat Trim on.

Also, I tried air spawns with 100% fuel and even added the belly tank. No significant difference was noted.

Indeed, the Dora was more troublesome during air spawns, albeit not much more.

Guys, if you want examples of wild air spawns, try the Spitfires and P-38s. These are more of a handful than the 190s or Ta 152.

Air spawns have zero forward velocity. Thus, the aircraft is dropping flat. In the Spits and P-38s, don't start the engine(s) until after you have gotten the nose down.

My regards,

Widewing

[Krusty]

I don't think the aileron drag is causing the nose to bounce around, like you say. The wingspan isn't 100 feet here. Heck you can get a B24 and use aleraons and NOT have your nose bounce aroudn nearly as bad as the 152. The B25s with their much longer wingspans are far far more stable, but they have not only larger ailerons, but a larger moment arm to cause yawing.

I don't buy that at all, or EVERY plane in the game would act like this. So far, only this one does.

When you roll, the nose shifts, and STAYS shifted. It does not recenter exactly where it originally was the second you stop rolling, definitely not when I fly it.

And, if you're on the ground going so slow you can't stay in the air (landing) whatever adverse yaw there might be isn't going to cause the plane to fishtail all over hades and back. It would be MORE noticable at higher speeds, not slower speeds. To a small degree the opposite seems true (higher speeds seem a little more stable, but only to a degree).

[moot]

I'd be pretty disgusted if the FM is more accurate now than it was in AH1.  As it is, it's nothing like everything it was reported to be.  It's a step backwards in what 190s were supposed to evolve into.
The AH1 152 felt compared to the preceding 190s as the tempest feels like to the typhoon.

Krusty I don't think bombers are comparable to the 152 here..