Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: badhorse on June 24, 2011, 11:21:53 PM
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In the game, does the dive brake on the L model do much good? I deployed the brake and chopped the throttle, put the nose down and the airspeed still built up rapidly. Things started shaking so I slowly pulled out of the dive.
Not what I expected.
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I am not a P-38 driver, but....
The P-38L does not have dive brakes, it has dive recovery flaps. They force the nose up when you get into compression, allowing the pilot and aircraft to escape the dive.
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In the game, does the dive brake on the L model do much good? I deployed the brake and chopped the throttle, put the nose down and the airspeed still built up rapidly. Things started shaking so I slowly pulled out of the dive.
Not what I expected.
Because it is not a brake, it is a flap. It isn't meant to slow the plane down at all. It's meant to keep it from becoming impossible to pull out, really, for pilots who forced the compression issue. It has never been called a dive brake by anyone who knew what they were talking about.
A P-38, without dive flaps, flown properly, will recover from a steep dive, as soon as it reaches thick enough air. In AH II, this may not always be true, but it should be. In real life, according to all of the real P-38 pilots I ever spoke with, the only way to auger a P-38 in a steep dive was to either keep forcing it down past the point of no return, or panic and stop flying the plane. It simply can't get going so fast that it won't recover, if you use the correct method, which was to keep power applied, you'll need it, and keep a steady pull on the yoke until you got down below 15K or so, and the plane would recover with room to spare.
Also, Widewing recently posted that the dive flaps do not work if you use auto trim, which you should not use in a P-38 to begin with.
If you're looking to use a P-38L as a dump truck to deliver ordnance in a screaming vertical dive, just choose another plane.
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Not what I expected.
It's not what the P-38 expected either, it expected the person at the controls to know that the dive flaps aren't dive brakes and don't work as such.
ack-ack
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It's not what the P-38 expected either, it expected the person at the controls to know that the dive flaps aren't dive brakes and don't work as such.
ack-ack
ack-ack I really expected better from you. Everyone has to learn some time. There was a time when even the great P-38 driver ack-ack didn't know everything. It amazes me how many people on these forums forget that.
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ack-ack I really expected better from you. Everyone has to learn some time. There was a time when even the great P-38 driver ack-ack didn't know everything. It amazes me how many people on these forums forget that.
He's just jealous. He's a P38J driver. SAPP hasn't allowed him to upgrade his J-15 with a retrofit of dive recovery flaps yet :)
Of course I'm not even allowed into a 38J so I guess I should be the one complaining! :)
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He's just jealous. He's a P38J driver. SAPP hasn't allowed him to upgrade his J-15 with a retrofit of dive recovery flaps yet :)
Of course I'm not even allowed into a 38J so I guess I should be the one complaining! :)
Keep plugging away. You'll get WEP some day!
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Hey of you practice it you can recover from a 10k dive in the J at full throttle...
...without ripping your wings off!
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I use them when i get into a turn fight and i put 1 notch of flaps and it works great
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I use them when i get into a turn fight and i put 1 notch of flaps and it works great
If you're slow enough to use the regular flaps on the P-38L, deploying the dive flaps as a further aid in turning is useless.
ack-ack
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The dive flaps aerodynamically speaking redirect the shock wave that impenges upon the horizontal and vertical stabilators. It is that thick highly densified region of air that you cannot pull against in a transonic dive. The dive flaps when deployed split and redirect the shock wave at a greater angle so it does not contact the stabilizer region as directly. I wish i could draw a diagram.
In general at lower altitudes the speed of sound increases due to the increased density of air molecules (faster transferance of a pressure wave due to decreases distance between air particles). So the planes true air speed is further from the actual speed of sound at that alt.
All in all if you fly the 38 long enough it will become a habit to pull the throttle back when you dive. I've compressed once or twice in the last three years, when at first i was doing it all the time.
And Yes i am LEDPIG i just haven't been on in a while. Hello everybody :) {waves}