First, practice landings in the TA or offline. The thing lands like a 737.
Now, how to use it:
It is a kerosene burner, and thus is more of a flying gas tank than anything else. Fly with 100% fuel.
DTs only add 5% endurance, so only use them if you're on a reconnaissance run.
One of the major differences between props and jets is that jets have more or less constant thrust across airspeed, whereas the power output of props decreases with airspeed. What that means is that props will give you a hell of a lot of acceleration and excess power when you're going slow, and drop off markedly at faster speeds, but a jet-powered aircraft will provide relatively good acceleration and excess power at high speeds.
In English?
In a prop, if you slow down too much, you can accelerate fairly quickly; in a jet, if you slow down too much, you're a fat, slow target for a long time.
In a jet, best climbspeed is also much higher than in a prop.
For the Ar234, look for Funked's pilot notes from shortly after its release, published somewhere (A&V page?). He's got all the critical numbers you need.
Here's what you need to get started:
Takeoff: Hold on brake. Keep flaps up. Ensure that your secondary weapon selection is set on RATO. Spool engines up to full power. When they're at max rpm, release the brake and start your takeoff roll. At about 75 MPH, fire the RATO bottles. Run down the runway until either the tires start squealing or you run out of runway. Rotate, retract gears, pull up for terrain clearance and level out. Wait for your speed to hit 250, then engage autoclimb.
in terms of time, the Ar234 doesn't have great endurance; in terms of distance, it's great. If you cruise at 14-18,000 feet (above that it takes forever to climb with ordnance) at half throttle, you should get good results. You should always take off from a rear field and land there.
IMO, the best use for the Ar234 in the arena is for launching advance strikes ahead of the main wave. If there's a group on your side running a field capture campaign, what you do is get one or two buddies, and grab Ar234s. You fly into the general area of their operations, then liase for information on their next target. Go in and pork the field to eliminate or severely hamper an enemy resistance. I've had a couple of Ar234 missions where we'd spend hours on a single sortie, shuttling bombs to the front, landing at rear field, rearming, and going back.
If you get attacked from above, drop ord, unload the plane and head for a shallow dive until the thing shakes. Then run like hell on the deck. Only the 262 dives faster and flies faster, and they don't like going to the deck.
So maintain your SA when flying -- always fly away from those high dots on the horizon.
Landing,
you want to shoot a _long, shallow_ approach. The thing is very streamlined and doesn't like to slow down.
[ 12-12-2001: Message edited by: Dinger ]
