The Air up there in a 51D

[Stegahorse]

the Damned started A/C testing. I took 51D. I have several results:
1) 51D won't go above 34,300 ft. when its ceiling should be 44,000 ft.
2) WEP does nothing above 10,000 ft.
3) I set "Shiftx" to have the plane descend at 1000 ft./minute and it stayed level. Manually pointed the nose down until the Ascent/descent gauge held 1k/minute and hit Shift x, Green light was on and it held level.
4) If I ditch on the feild, not on runway, I Immediately respawn in a Hangar. When I click on tower on the clipboard when off runway, I exit out only to immediately respawn in A/C hangar.
I originally thought it was something I was doing, but this has been constant since AH2 went live.

I concede that people may not "Fly" above 32,000 ft in Main arena, So I wonder if this altitude limit is a compromise?

I have determined that the "Mach Number" for the 51D is 0.77.
Is this what has been set for the 51d?

Is the Air in the arena "Strange"?

[Stegahorse]

I'd like to add:

Might the stall limiter be affecting the altitude ceiling of Aircraft?
 Is the 2.0 setting on the stall limitter overridden by the unchecked box in flight settings or is 2.0 applied anyway?

Rather have no stall limitter or the 0.05 setting.

Real pilots don't have the stall limit crutch in RL, why should we?

[J_A_B]

I managed to climb one to 38,500 offline before I got bored.  I am sure that, if I was more patient, I could have squeezed it up to at least 39,500, if not 40k.  41K might have been a little iffy to reach, but perhaps it could have been done by someone with a steady enough hand (see below). I had dumped my ammo beforehand and had about 50% fuel left onboard when I quit.  I did have all 6 guns so I could have saved additional weight by removing a pair.  


Above about 34K auto-speed isn't going to hold the P-51D in a suitable climb anymore.   Above about 36K I had to fly the plane entirely manually---trim was no longer sufficient to hold the plane in level flight, much less a climb.   Because of a slightly unsteady hand/joystick, I certainly lost some E from wiggling--the Yaw axis is VERY unstable up there!  A steady pilot would have done better, and it would take such a steady pilot to do any sort of reliable test to determine the P-51D's ceiling in AH2.

The stall limiter might indeed limit ability to climb--above about 37K I heard the stall buzzer nonstop.  Combine the annoying buzzer with having to fly solely by instruments due to viz range restriction, and you'll see why I got bored of it so quickly  

You can check to see if the stall limiter is on or not by turning your plane and "pulling" it into a deliberate spin--if you can spin it, the limiter is not on.


J_A_B

[Stegahorse]

The only wqay I got 51D to go higher than 32,000 was to let it fly level to build up speed and climb. It would not hold 34,300 but fell back to 33,700 and levelled.
Stall limiter is set in the arena at 2.0. tried offline and set it to 0.05. Whole different ballgame! Try it.