Last evening I had one of the most enjoyable flights I've had in a long time, thought I'd relate it here. The most significant part of this is that I was aloft for roughly an hour and a half without landing. Took a P-51 up (have a hard time remembering field numbers) from I think F5 or F6, and went west to scout F15/F16? in rook land. After getting to 17k+ I throttled back and cruised using approx 40 inches man. Didn't find anything interesting so made a wide slow turn back to the east and headed for F4? which was in rook hands then. Didn't see anything of note so I kept heading NE past F7. I just switched my monitor to 1280x1024 and find that distant dots are now so small that I've really got to concentrate on a small area. I suspect that's why I was missing con's. At any rate I eventually decided to cut my altitude to around 12+k and turned back toward F4. Now as I approached I could see several lower dots above the field (too far for ID). Putting the 51 in a slight dive of -500 ft/min I started in. Sure enough, several reds hovering over their field, and me coming in at 450+mph. First pass through nothing, the Spit I lined up on obviously knew I was there and jinked out of the way at the last second. Ah well, very slight pull back on the stick, hit WEP and get +3k ft/min on the roc indicator and keep on trucking. Looking around a bit while climbing back up (no one goin fast enough to follow me) I see a LA-5 off to my low right in a climb away from me. I level, kill WEP, start a slow diving turn to the left, making an increasing-speed 270 degree turn til I'm just below him and climbing. He doesn't see me! I come up at probably +200mph difference below and behind, open all 6 50's and there goes his wing. That's one. Resuming my climb, I get back to 13k and start looking for more reds. Back and forth I went over that field for what seemed like forever, fuel holding out pretty well, making slashing passes, getting occasional pings on a red here, there. Throttle back when cruising, don't know when I'll get more fuel.
In the end I only managed to get 3 kills total out of this marathon (really lousey gunnery), but the point is that it felt realistic, the time involved, the fuel monitoring, keeping speed as much as possible on the turn-backs, etc. And eventually landing with an (almost) empty fuel tank. My concern here was living to land and keeping out of harms way. It turns out both are possible in the P-51 while also getting the occasional kill.
Sorry to ramble on so long, but I just had to relate the feeling of accomplishment on landing after that long in the air.
Dhog out
