Do P51s breed sucky pilots??

[Saxman]

I haven't flown since the latest patch.  Is their an achievement for putting a certain amount of G's on a plane in a turn?

No idea, but I wonder if they put one in for how many parts you can off while crash--er, LANDING. 

[Paladin3]

IMO you must have better situational awareness in the P51 as modeled in the game. You cannot outrun things where you usually engage them - on the deck the Dora, K4, LA7 and Spit16 will out accellerate, climb, and run you. All are very common. You have to know when it is time to disengage - which may mean rolling off of a target rather than fighting their fight and loosing the turn fight, ie bleeding so much that you cannot then extend if you need to when his buddies show up.

The P51 is a tough plane to fly. It requires you to increase your SA not just of what is going on around you but the state of your aircraft as well because you have to plan ahead. You also cannot just yank the stick, you must finesse your stick, throttle, flaps, and rudder. On top of that the 50s require more than a brief tap on the shoulder to end the fight.

[Ripley]

I've done it countless times and come out on top.  So have several others.  I've posted a film of an extended 51D vs c202 fight versus a very good player, hoping people would see an extended rolling scissors fight at the deck and learn from it.

I've been on the losing end too.  For instance, I know that BigR, in a 51, can beat my 38 if he gets saddled up on me.  I also know that I can beat a lot of 38's in a 51 because I know what a 38 can do. 

There are a lot of things that we can do in this game due to the fact that we can control throttle, flaps, and trim without removing our hands from controls. MtnMan made an excellent post in another thread describing such.

One of the keys is to know what the other plane can or cannot do, how it handles, how it gains or dumps speed, and so on.

I would love to see that video then because the c202 is probably the only plane in the game that I will not under any circumstances try to maneuver with, it ALWAYS ends up bad for me. Maybe its a curse...

I guess if you were messing with trim during the engagement I could somewhat understand. I dont touch trim when fighting because my trim isnt easy to get to in the heat of things. Id still have to see the video. Would love to add new tricks to my arsenal.

[BaldEagl]

Last I knew the F4F/FM2 has maneuvering flaps, no? I havent flown one in a while but if I remember correctly...

Really only needed against Zekes.  Almost anything else they'll out-turn.

Every plane has flaps and they are used on every plane in the arena so to say they have flaps is pointless.

You said NO AMERICAN plane was manouverable before the P-51.  I respectfully disagree.

[Ripley]

No it wasn't.  

ack-ack

Care to elaborate then? If you are going to call me out I'd at least like to hear your claim, that is if you have one.

Spare yourself from using our cartoon models to prove anything though, let's use some real history here.

From any of the sources I have read from as far as american avionics, American planes have always been built around the principle of speed and firepower. Maneuverability was never at the top of that list, until the F-15. Maybe in WW1? I dont really know, I know very little about American WW1 Aircraft. So If you can prove me wrong, please teach me something, I'm interested. No sarcasm intended.

You said NO AMERICAN plane was manouverable before the P-51.  I respectfully disagree.

No, I said no american aircraft was built primarily to be maneuverable before the F-15. I wouldn't consider the P51 to be a 'maneuverable' aircraft. Disagreeing is completely fine, I'm no expert by any means, but I would like to know why and what plane because I'm interested in hearing other opinion/fact.

And yes, every plane has flaps. But some planes, like the spitfire, do not use them in combat to better their rate of turn. In game, pretty much every american plane does, as well as many others. Many of these planes, to my knowledge, used them much differently in real life than they do in this game. That was the only point i was trying to make about flaps.

[Vinkman]

Care to elaborate then? If you are going to call me out I'd at least like to hear your claim, that is if you have one.

Spare yourself from using our cartoon models to prove anything though, let's use some real history here.

From any of the sources I have read from as far as american avionics, American planes have always been built around the principle of speed and firepower. Maneuverability was never at the top of that list, until the F-15. Maybe in WW1? I dont really know, I know very little about American WW1 Aircraft. So If you can prove me wrong, please teach me something, I'm interested. No sarcasm intended.

No, I said no american aircraft was built primarily to be maneuverable before the F-15. I wouldn't consider the P51 to be a 'maneuverable' aircraft. Disagreeing is completely fine, I'm no expert by any means, but I would like to know why and what plane because I'm interested in hearing other opinion/fact.

And yes, every plane has flaps. But some planes, like the spitfire, do not use them in combat to better their rate of turn. In game, pretty much every american plane does, as well as many others. Many of these planes, to my knowledge, used them much differently in real life than they do in this game. That was the only point i was trying to make about flaps.

If you are talking about priority, I would tent to agree. Higher, faster, farther, seem to have been the first three priorities, with toughness as a fourth, and ordinance capability fith.  Maneuverability seems to be no higher than sixth priority.  that's not to say some planes didn't end up with good or even high maneuverability, it means that when they started out in design, and trade offs arose, maneuverability was sacrificed in favor of th eother attributes, to a point. There were probably minimum requirements in each catagory. But the target for the categories was set higher in the Altitude, Speed, Range, toughness, weapons, categories. I think all you are saying is no contract bid ever went out, that specified the "turn rate" or other maneuverability categories as "Best".  I do believe that did change with the F-15, where maneuverability (lots of ways to define that) wsa to be "Best in class"

But I would love to hear if another plane was targetted as such.  Perhaps the F8F?  or F-86? 

[Oldman731]

But I would love to hear if another plane was targetted as such.  Perhaps the F8F?  or F-86? 

I was thinking Hellcat.

- oldman

[mthrockmor]

Do 51s breed sucky pilots? Yes.

I remember talking to an Air Force pilot who flew F-16s at Nellis back in the mid-80s. He had done some exchange training with the US Navy. He bragged up the 'electric jet' versus the mighty aluminum cloud (F-14) and noted the abilities of the Hornet. He then made a comment about Navy pilots being really good because their planes weren't as high performing.

I was a kid and didn't know the questions to ask though in hindsight, when it is easy you don't have to learn the right skills. With a Spit or Zero (not the plane in question) you know that when you are in trouble simply pull on the stick and most of the time you are out of trouble. For a PonyD simply drop the nose, go to WEP and most of the time you are out of trouble. Requires little skill other than this. The ease of these planes limits the need to learn the limits of their ability.

A good 190 driver has to always be aware of the setup (SA), great at estimating speed, timing all kinds of actions to avoid getting in trouble. Many planes are great with limitations. Finding those limits is the skill set.

Just my two cents.

Boo

[Ripley]

If you are talking about priority, I would tent to agree. Higher, faster, farther, seem to have been the first three priorities, with toughness as a fourth, and ordinance capability fith.  Maneuverability seems to be no higher than sixth priority.  that's not to say some planes didn't end up with good or even high maneuverability, it means that when they started out in design, and trade offs arose, maneuverability was sacrificed in favor of th eother attributes, to a point. There were probably minimum requirements in each catagory. But the target for the categories was set higher in the Altitude, Speed, Range, toughness, weapons, categories. I think all you are saying is no contract bid ever went out, that specified the "turn rate" or other maneuverability categories as "Best".  I do believe that did change with the F-15, where maneuverability (lots of ways to define that) wsa to be "Best in class"

But I would love to hear if another plane was targetted as such.  Perhaps the F8F?  or F-86?  

Well said, that pretty much sums up my thought process, you just said it better than I did and added some things that I hadnt thought about.  

[Vinkman]

Well said, that pretty much sums up my thought process, you just said it better than I did and added some things that I hadnt thought about.  

 

glad it helped clarify the question...Perhaps AKAK has an answer.

[Ripley]

Do 51s breed sucky pilots? Yes.

I remember talking to an Air Force pilot who flew F-16s at Nellis back in the mid-80s. He had done some exchange training with the US Navy. He bragged up the 'electric jet' versus the mighty aluminum cloud (F-14) and noted the abilities of the Hornet. He then made a comment about Navy pilots being really good because their planes weren't as high performing.

I was a kid and didn't know the questions to ask though in hindsight, when it is easy you don't have to learn the right skills. With a Spit or Zero (not the plane in question) you know that when you are in trouble simply pull on the stick and most of the time you are out of trouble. For a PonyD simply drop the nose, go to WEP and most of the time you are out of trouble. Requires little skill other than this. The ease of these planes limits the need to learn the limits of their ability.

A good 190 driver has to always be aware of the setup (SA), great at estimating speed, timing all kinds of actions to avoid getting in trouble. Many planes are great with limitations. Finding those limits is the skill set.

Just my two cents.

Boo

I agree with your post for the most part. What I get from it is Pony pilots who never fly any other plane never really get accustomed to using much ACM because they get used to being able to nose down and 'extend', and I can see that as true if the pilot in question never pushed himself to get aggressive.

I found the choice of comparing the Pony with the 190 rather interesting though. The D-9 almost mirrors the 51D in performance, and exceeds it in some instances (like climb rate/top speed under 20k) with WEP engaged. I suppose you could be talking about one of the other models.

[Saxman]

Yeah, the Dora is flown very similarly to the P-51 by most pilots: Blow through with a lot of altitude, extend out of con range, lather, rinse repeat. There's probably only a handful of pilots who actually mix it up in the 190D.

[Chalenge]

it was the first AMERICAN plane designed for maneuverability, which makes sense as far as AH goes because not a single American plane in AH maneuvers well without flaps, and even then most of them dog it.

The original agreement was for a 400 mph plane built with armamant to protect the pilot and with substantial firepower. Four .50 caliber were to be mounted supplemented with a "special" armament of an additional four .30 caliber. The aircraft was able to obtain this with an engine capable of producing 1030 hp at 16,000 feet using 90 octane fuel. Additionally the aircraft manufacturer was to be able to produce 50 aircraft per month.

You can read between the lines and see that no one was happy with the Allison engine but they still made it work.

[BigR]

Ya'll keep whining....Ill keep dominating in my Cadillac of the Skies  

[Biggamer]

F6F turns really well