Author Topic: The Mossie's flight endurance still seems too short (Read 1255 times)

Karnak · « **on:** September 13, 2002, 09:24:27 PM »

These are the flight durations of the Spitfire Mk IX and Mosquito Mk VI when the Fuel Consumption multiplier is set to 2.0.

Spit_9 -- 35/+21=56
Mossie -- 34/+16=50

This seems very, very wrong.

The Spitfire Mk IX had a max range of 434 miles on internal fuel. The Mosquito Mk VI had a max range of 1,220 miles on internal fuel and 1,860 miles with drop tanks. Yet in AH the Spitfire Mk IX has a greater time endurance than does the Mosquito. I know the Mossie had a higher cruising speed, but not THAT much higher.

The amount of fuel was originally too little, but Pyro fixed that. Now I'm thinking that Pyro may have looked at the fuel consumption rate and thought it was for one engine when it was for both, then doubled it to account for both engines.

The Spitfire Mk IX has 137 gallons of internal fuel and is powered by one 1,565hp Merlin 61.

The Mosquito Mk VI has 543 gallons of internal fuel and is powered by two 1,635hp Merlin 25s.

Could Merlin 25s really drink that much faster?

thrila · « **Reply #1 on:** September 13, 2002, 09:54:22 PM »

If there was ever a contender for most porked aircraft i'm sure the ta152 would have contender with the mossie.

Hey, maybe the fuel tanks are leaking and covering the a/c in highly flammable fuel. This would explain the low flight endurance and the 1 ping " oh bugger, my mossie is on fire" issue.

Karnak · « **Reply #2 on:** September 13, 2002, 10:16:40 PM »

Mosquito cruise speed was 295mph.

Spitfire cruise speed was 280mph.

At these speeds we can clearly see that the Mosquito will never reach four times the distance of the Spitfire in slightly less total time in the air.

The Mosquito is consuming fuel too rapidly.

funkedup · « **Reply #3 on:** September 13, 2002, 10:42:57 PM »

There's GPH (gallons/hour) figures and tank capacities in the pilot's notes on Snafu's site. It would be pretty easy to test the plane offline with 1.0 multiplier and see how long it takes to drain a particular tank, calculate the GPH, then compare to the pilot's notes.

Maverick · « **Reply #4 on:** September 14, 2002, 01:30:22 AM »

you think the mossie is bad, try the FM2 and the F4F!!! They are a 2 sector limit plane unless you do not climb more that 4 or 5k

Karnak · « **Reply #5 on:** September 14, 2002, 02:02:21 AM »

I just set the fuel multiplier to 1.5 in offline mode (I'm told that 1.5 is the MA setting) and took off of a CV with an F4F, full fuel, no DTs. I climbed to 13,000ft on the AUX tank (that covered one sector) and then flew two more sectors using a quarter of the MAIN tank.

It may be off, but not as badly as you suggest.

Wilbus · « **Reply #6 on:** September 14, 2002, 03:51:04 AM »

Does seam very weird for sure.

Maverick · « **Reply #7 on:** September 14, 2002, 11:39:23 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Karnak
I just set the fuel multiplier to 1.5 in offline mode (I'm told that 1.5 is the MA setting) and took off of a CV with an F4F, full fuel, no DTs. I climbed to 13,000ft on the AUX tank (that covered one sector) and then flew two more sectors using a quarter of the MAIN tank.

It may be off, but not as badly as you suggest.

I flew it with the setting in the online MA. I got 2 sectors at 10k max alt and was out of gas. You play with ofline settings if you want, offline is irrelevant to game play IMO. These planes are seriously short ranged.

LLv34_Snefens · « **Reply #8 on:** September 14, 2002, 07:18:33 PM »

The F4F/FM2 has fuel for 32 min of flight on 100% internal tank. I just tested the F4F myself tonight in MA (multiplier must then be x2, compared to my offline tests). This is compared to the 109's 25 min in MA.

However, even this longer endurance seems too low when the F4F (at least in my limited sources) had a range of 770 miles vs the 109G's 350 miles, given the 109's faster cruise.

Karnak is right however. The Mossie's range is a joke and I'm not even a RAF fanatic. Actually I only flew it once when testing it's fuel endurance some months ago, and at that time I didn't even analyse the results, since I was just trying to write down my results and finish the test as fast as possible. According to my data it should have something like 3 times the endurance of the 109's. (just looking at their ranges, I don't know their cruise speeds).
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Karnak · « **Reply #9 on:** September 14, 2002, 08:10:44 PM »

Yes, it definately seems the F4F is jacked on the flight endurance as well. Seems to be about as jacked.

Innominate · « **Reply #10 on:** September 14, 2002, 08:17:22 PM »

Snefens, Does the FM2's range you're using include it's droptanks?

LLv34_Snefens · « **Reply #11 on:** September 14, 2002, 09:03:15 PM »

Well, it was the F4F-4 I was flying in the MA tonight and not the FM-2, but the tests I did 2½ months ago (when 1.10 first came out) showed them to be similar in fuel-capacities/endurance. I doubt this has changed.

But no it was not with DT's, only 100% internal fuel. Unless something changed, using DT's would give them another 26min flight; give or take a min or so.

PS: The tests I refer to can be found at my site. I started making them to assist myself when flying planes with multiple tanks, since knowing how much fuel you have left in those planes was easier to find by timing flight-time and comparing it to the planes endurance.
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AtmkRstr · « **Reply #12 on:** August 31, 2003, 05:13:32 PM »

PUNT!

food for thought:

1220 miles / (295 miles/hour) =~ 4 hours
1860 miles / (295 miles/hour) = ~ 6 hours

MA has a burn rate of x2, so the mossie should be able to cruise for somwhere on the order of 2 hours. Lets say perhaps the Merlin 25 burns twice as much gas when run at full throttle compared to cruise settings, then it would be able to stay in the air at max throttle for somwhere on the order of 1 hour.

My handy fuel chart made by Snefens says it can fly for 43 mins on full throttle.

There's gotta be something wrong. My figures are rough, but are so conservative that the AH numbers should be higher, not lower than mine.

Thanks for the awsome charts Snefens!

LLv34_Snefens · « **Reply #13 on:** August 31, 2003, 05:55:35 PM »

That's an old chart then.

On my latest I have it listed as going 43 min in MA with the x2 multiplier. Still too short compared to your figures.
That was the 20th Feb 2003. Did we have any updates since then?

Karnak · « **Reply #14 on:** September 01, 2003, 01:47:53 PM »

AtmkRstr,

There are a few threads out there where I have posted test results based on fuel consumption rates given in the Mosquito FB.VI's pilot notes. Those tests offer much greater data than this thread. The results, in short, are that our Mosquito is consuming fuel twice as fast as it should. (This is taking the MA fuel cunsumption rate into account)

Edit: Here is my test:

I obtained a PDF file of the Pilot's Notes for the Mosquito FB 6 to use a fuel consumption guide.

On page 11 of the pilot's notes it lists the fuel capacity of the Mosquito FB 6's various fuel tanks:

MAIN SUPPLY
Centre tanks....................50 gallons
Inner tanks....................286 gallons
OUTER TANKS................116 gallons
_____________________________
Total........................ .....452 gallons
Long-range tank...............63 gallons
Wing drop tanks..............200 gallons
(2 x 100 gallons)
_____________________________
Total fuel capacity...........715 gallons

On pages 30-33 of the pilot's notes there are flight planning charts that give the fuel consumption for various speeds, weights and altitudes.

For the ease of calculations I selected settings that would consume fuel at a rate of 100 gallons per hour so that I could simply use the 50 gallon Centre tank. If the fuel consumption was correct, then the fuel should last half an hour.

The settings were:
AUW: 17,000lbs
Altitude: 10,000ft
RPM: 2,400
TAS-KNOTS: 275

TEST SETUP
Using the AKDesert map in offline mode I set the fuel consumption to 1.0000. I selected A56 as my take off field, planning a southwest flight along the channel.

To get roughly an All Up Weight of 17,000lbs I set the Mosquito to full fuel, no external or internal stores, 150 rounds per 20mm gun and 500 rounds per .303 gun.

TEST

Once on the runway I selected the right inner (RI) fuel tank before starting the engines so as to keep the centre tank (AUX) full.

I then took off, climbed to 10,000ft and set a southwest heading.

I then reduced my RPM settings from 3,000 to 2,400 and reduced my boost setting from 14lbs./sq.in. to 8lb./sq.in.

The Mosquito's airspeed declined until it settled at about 265mph. (This was 265mph true airspeed, not indicated airspeed)

I then switched to the AUX tank and started a timer simultaneously.

RESULTS

The AUX tank was drained in 13 minutes and 52 seconds which indicates a fuel consuption rate with those settings of approximately 200-225 gallons per hour, or more than twice the fuel consumption listed for those settings in the Flight Planner Charts of the Pilot's Notes for the Mosquito FB 6.

CONCLUSION

The Mosquito FB.Mk VI in AH is consuming fuel at more than twice the rate it should be.