Spit 1 fuel tanks

[caldera]

Any advantage to burning off one or the other?  Just leave it at auto-burn?

[Mace2004]

Shouldn't make any difference.

[SmokinLoon]

Some of the veteran pilots in WWII burned off the top tank first to help with the roll rate.  I've not verified that, but others say that was the case.

The only plane I have actually seen official documentation on regarding burning a certain tank first is the F4U.  There is a video on YouTube that is an official training video and the instructor says specifically to burn the left wing tank first to help stave off an early stall out.  He even demonstrates the stall in the video at around the 13 minute mark. Cool stuff.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpxyyLQ7u7g

[Blagard]

Shouldn't make any difference.

In the real world in would as it affects the aircrafts centre of gravity and inertia. How it is modelled in Aces High is another thing, perhaps just on the weight. So I would be inclined to leave it on auto.

The only time I manually select a tank is when it gets hit and leaks, then I try to burn off what I can before it all leaks away!

[Mace2004]

In the real world in would as it affects the aircrafts centre of gravity and inertia. How it is modelled in Aces High is another thing, perhaps just on the weight. So I would be inclined to leave it on auto.

The only time I manually select a tank is when it gets hit and leaks, then I try to burn off what I can before it all leaks away!

I believe the Spit's tank were one above the other directly ahead of the cockpit.  This places them at the same position relative to COG so there would be virtually no difference in pitch regardless of which tank is drained first.  Also, since the plane rolls around an axis that is basically the centerline of the plane with one tank above and one tank below it's unlikely that there would be any difference in roll rates as well.  This is different from planes with different configurations such as fore and aft tanks or wing tanks.  AH appears to model these different configurations correctly so there are performance differences that can be influenced by manually controlling the fuel feed sequence.

[Blagard]

I believe the Spit's tank were one above the other directly ahead of the cockpit. 

Yep, true in respect of the Mk1 and many others variants. I must admit I was thinking about wing tanks that do not apply to the spit in general.

[LCADolby]

In the actual RL Spit, The top tank drains into the bottom.

I personally advise doing the same, as in AH draining the bottom first make the tail slightly more unstable at low speeds.

[Muzzy]

Of course if it were me, I'd want to burn the top tank first in the vain hope that there would be less of a chance of getting burned to a crisp.