I only mentioned it because AH consensus seems to be that best glide speed to cover the most ground = best climb speed (+/-10mph depending on who you talk to.)
this says that its 75mph above best climb speed.
Well, I always recommend 10-15% above the default alt-x speed, but Machfly for one, disagrees with me. Certainly +75 mph is above 10-15%. The reality is that the POH lists 155 for "best" climb and lists 230 for "best" glide. Both of the speeds are weight dependent, and, although I haven't tested gross weight best glide speed, I'd expect that the 230 is close to the gross weight best glide (i.e. full fuel and ammo). My testing with the P-47M shown above shows 180-190 range for 25% fuel condition (approx 14,000 lbs). With the P-47N coming in at around 18,000 with full fuel and ammo, 230 seems close to what I'd expect. A couple of factors contribute to these speeds. Typically, manufacturers list Vspeeds at gross weight. I guess this is viewed as "worst case". But, regardless of what configuration they use to develop the listed speeds, those speeds are only valid for that specific configuration. Both best climb and best glide will change with weight, and also with altitude. The higher you fly, the faster your best climb and best glide speeds will be. So, even for us, with the default alt-x speed being a fixed number (like 155mph), if you climb all the way up to 20,000 feet, there will be a period where, in order to absolutely minimize the time to climb, it would behoove you to adjust your speed up to 160-165mph, for example. Or, if you're in a P-47N with max ordnance and fuel (approaching 20,000 lbs) and you want to minimize the time to climb to your desired cruise altitude, you'd probably want to climb faster than whatever the default alt-x speed is. But, for the most part, simply using the default alt-x is the easiest, and probably doesn't penalize you too much if you're flying just above or below optimal. Second, these POHs were developed to be used by the masses for instructional and operational guidelines. For the USAAF to say 230mph is best glide speed, someone decided that, for whatever reason, 230mph would be the best speed to list in the POH. Unfortunately, they don't explain to us what configuration the aircraft was in when they determined that speed.
The bottom line on this is that to be perfectly sure, you flight test both in game. And, I can provide testing methodologies for both to get fairly precise speeds for in-game. However, if you don't want to take the time to do the testing for yourself, just use default alt-x for best climb, and whatever other speed you want for best glide.
