Yeah that answer puzzles me too. I'm not a pilot either but I've never heard anything like that before. Remember that flaps provide not only lift but also drag--that's another part of why they're used on landing. To help keep the plane stable and slow.
This brought to mind a flaps story that applies--to WW2 planes too. I was at the Reading (PA) WW2 days airshow a couple of years back. There were 3 P-51's and a P-40 that were going to do a missing man flight. They took off individually and made circuits of the field to form up. One of the Ponies was lagging terribly. I was standing next to a guy with a scanner tuned to the tower frequency and he was listening to the flight. The lagging pony driver was saying he'd been thru everything he could think of and was running at a high manifold pressure and still couldn't catch the others. He was considering coming down to find out what the problem was. Well after some back and forth with the other pilots in the flight what do ya think was the problem? Anyone? That's right--he forgot to raise his flaps after takeoff! He pulled em in and ziiip--right into formation. Pretty as a picture.
Yeah so I don't think its a wind pushin em back up thing. If anything there I'd think wind might jam em down until you got slow again. Same as they won't deploy if you're too fast. Make sense?
Just my thoughts. I wouldn't mind that the flaps came in automatically its just that they seem to come in a bit too soon throwin a monkey wrench into the works! I seem to have manual control of just about everything else in this game--trim and prop speed for example. Why not flaps too? I got a button mapped for bringin em in. There's a command for it here. So why make em come in automatically? That's the puzzling part.
Damned Drano
Originally posted by Damned Wind:
Not being a real pilot, I have to ask.. Did this happen in real life? Is the AH model realistic or is it a playabilty tweak from the developers?
Wind
[This message has been edited by Drano (edited 04-29-2001).]
