thoughts about need for rudder usage?

[Citabria]

found an interesting viewpoint from a self proclaimed actual warbird pilot but I think it may be genuine.

I have actual time, hundreds of hours in P40, Corsair F4U and B25.  I used to spend my time in the summer flying these birds to AirShows for an outfit on the East Coast here.  I think the models are pretty close in the game except for one area and that's the rudder.   It almost appears in the game as if there is an autorubber and the ball is seldom out of center.  That may be because if the planes in the game took as much work with stick and rudder as they do in real life,  no one would ever complete a flight or be able land without groundlooping

before the locking tailwheel it was near impossible to land or takeoff an f4u without groundlooping though.

I am certain though that one aspect of need for rudder and heavy rudder usage may be in the takeoff and landing phases due to wind and turbulence so that could lessen the need for heavy rudder usage in ah's no wind environment.
laser accurate trim would be another one I think many warbirds were set with a fixed rudder trim making rudder pedal usage much heavier. the workload of stick and rudder on an untrimmed aircraft is quite high.

speed may also be a factor with much more rudder needed at stall speeds than at 350mph.

[Citabria]

I don't have warbird experience but I've been flying an 85hp j3 cub a lot lately.

it flies a bit like the ww1 planes for the most part they land and takeoff similar when I fly the cub on a clear calm morning. though more rudder dancing is needed in the j3 cub.

I think the biggest change in behavior of the need for extremely rapid (more rapid than normal lol) "dancing" on the stick and rudder is when flying later in the day and the winds have picked up and its bumpy as can be. The workload in moving the controls in wind and turbulence is almost night in day in such a light plane.

I would characterize it as glad to be back in the hangar in one piece as an analog to his everyone would ground loop comment.

[Sid]

I've always wondered about this also Fester,

All the forces the rudder needs to counteract appear to be modeled, but I can't help thinking they are reduced some what along with the force the rudder itself can produce. Certainly the amount of side slip I can generate with the rudder seems quite small to me (a very subjective comment I know, I freely admit to having never flown any of the aircraft currently modeled in Aces High).

I've always put this down to the fact that not everyone here has a set of rudders (How many do? 20%, 30%, 40%?), and this is just one of those aspects of the game that is adjusted for game play over realism.

Any comment HiTech?

[moot]

The only pixel plane I've flown enough to know like the back of my hand is the Ta 152.  I always thought that the way it sine waves in yaw felt artificial.  Just a gut feeling.  It could be due at least in part to AH's perfectly still and homogeneous air.  But something about it just feels artificial.  Not that it'd be surprising either, given the hardware constraints.

The only real plane I piloted (pilot let me grab the co pilot controls for a bit) was one of those modern low power civilians, high wing.  The controls felt about as sharp or sharper than AH - at that time I was flying AH 190D9 dedicated.  The real plane was much lighter obviously, but everything was perfectly crisp. Infinite granularity. Feedback from the air on the surfaces was immediate, much more like AH than e.g. Il-2.    This was on a clear day in the indian ocean tropics.

[Urchin]

I flew a biplane trainer down in Atlanta, GA last Christmas - I'm not sure what it was but it was old and used for training back in the WW2 days, according to the owner of the company.  He said I did a very passable job considering I had never flown before, and said that a lot of people who have sim experience don't have much trouble flying a real plane.

I didn't have any trouble getting the plane to go where I wanted, but I will say that I didn't use the rudder pedals much and the plane felt kind of... greasy. Maybe slippery would be a better word. Like driving on ice kinda. I could definitely tell the difference in feel between coordinated flight (his) and uncoordinated flight (mine).

It is a feeling I have never gotten in any sim I have played.

[1sum41]

rudder usage is a definite must in a Harvard MK.4 or T6 Texan. I'm learning how to fly the Harvard, and she does not like not being coordinated.  

[colmbo]

rudder usage is a definite must in a Harvard MK.4 or T6 Texan. I'm learning how to fly the Harvard, and she does not like not being coordinated.  

I have landed a T6 a couple of times....you just get the feeling the airplane is gonna jink out into the weeds!! <G>