Great post widewing.
There is one thing that bugged me about the p-38 for two years of play plus through that part of the original beta run I participated in.
Every time I flew the P-38 and tried to turn it I would wind up in the most wicked snap rolls I have ever seen. The plane would depart from controlled flight at the slightest sounding of the stall horn. I was furious. I made post after post on the matter, which I see now are all gone. And no one even offered an answer. All I ever got was, essentially, "Sit down! Shutup! And be thankful you have a sim to play." Many have noted I am very critical of AH, my angst was and remains fueled by these kinds of responses. But that's unimportant. It began to look to me like there was something wrong with the version of the game I had vs what everyone else was playing.
Everytime I read a post on the P38 there would be these absolutely GLOWING reviews of it's agility, for the most part historically accurate too. But MY p-38 was just awful. I couldn't figure it out. I almost quit AH over the matter when suddenly a version appeared with Stall Limiter. WOW I could actually FLY it finally. Stall limter kept me in the game. And occaisionally I could do some cool things with the P-38. But it still seemed like there were two different P-38s in the game. Then I found out that there are!
You see I always flew with a full load of ammunition. 500 rounds of .50 caliber ammo per gun. I thought that was better than peanut butter. Then one day, two years after getting into this silliness I tried the plane with the 200 round per gun option. Oh... My... God.
After a good hour kicking myself for being a fool, then cursing every flinty hearty miser out there who had been laughing at me all that time, I realised that AH has much more detailed weight and balance modeling than I ever thought it had.
Now I am Ex-Army. I know very well thankyou that .50 call amo is very heavy. So I did a little homework and found out that .50 cal ammo weighs .3 pounds per round, linked. At 200 rounds per gun I had removed 1200 rounds of .50 ammo. Thats almost 450 POUNDS, and all that weight is located forward of the pilot.
So for all those folks out there who read these reports of fantastic manuveablity in the 38. Remember there ARE two completely diffrent flying versions. One with 2000 rounds of .50 call ammo in the nose and one with only 800. It makes a difference. But, I still need the stall limiter to keep me in the air in dogfights. I am firmly convinced that some sticks throw more control than others.
What I'd rather have is the ability to scale my stick at 100% of throw. As it stands we cant do that. 90% yes 100% no. But, that's another gripe.
