Nashwan, bro.
I am not trying to sound like an arrogant know it all, so please don't think I am in this reply.
Not at all. It's been a nice polite discussion, which makes a change from most I seem to get involved in
Look at the Power Curve again and see what happens as soon as you raise the angle of attack above Zero.
The speed begins to drop.
I assume you mean angle of flight, rather than angle of attack.
Yes, speed will drop from maximum as soon as you raise the climb angle from zero.
However, it will stabilise. If your climb angle is very shallow, say 1 or 2 degrees, it will stabilise at a pretty high speed.
If you start a very shallow climb at say 400 mph, your climb speed will drop, but not all the way to 170 mph. It will drop to the best that can be maintained at that speed.
The speed begins to drop. When your zoom climb is finished, your plane drops to sustained climb speed.
Yes. But sustained climb speed isn't the same as best climb speed.
Best climb speed in a Spit LF IX was 170 IAS, but it could climb at 200 IAS, or even 300 IAS.
Angle for angle the 190 is faster.
No. Angle for angle, the Spitfire will be faster at slower speeds, the 190 faster at higher speeds.
Not sure exactly what you are showing with this chart, bro. If you are trying to say the Spitfire had a large enough angle advantage it could directly follow the spit it did not.
What are you basing that claim on?
Here's the graph again:
This shows a linear drop with speed, which isn't correct, but doesn't seem to be that far off. Here's a real one for the 109F that Isegrim pointed out to me:
http://www.lanpartyworld.com/smallwoy/109Ftrial5.JPGIt's from Ring's page,
http://prodocs.netfirms.com/If you look at the Spit 190 chart again, you can see the Spitfire starts to lose climb rate as soon as it deviates from it's best climb speed, as expected.
But it's not going to squander it's 700 ft/min advantage just by climbing 12 mph faster.
Look at the 109F chart, which is from real life tests.
By increasing it's climb speed by 15 mph, it loses just 200 ft/min of climb.
The Spit has a 700 ft/min advantage over the 190. The 109F here lost 700 ft/min by increasing it's climb speed by over 50 mph.
The Spitfire could climb at 4700 ft/min at 170 mph. If the drop in climb rate with speed is the same as the 109F, then by increasing speed to 182 mph, the Spit would still be climbing at 4500 ft or so.
That means the Spit could easily follow the 190 at 182, in fact probably to more than 250 mph, which is what my simple graph suggests, and what Justin's graph suggests.
The Spit has a large climb advantage but due to his lower best climb speed he cannot point his nose directly at the 190.
Why?
Are you suggesting that a Spit that can climb at 4700 ft/min at 170 mph can't climb at 4000 ft/min at 182 mph?
http://www.fourthfightergroup.com/eagles/spit8tac.html
At altitude the Spit VIII would be nightmare but it's roll rate would severely hamper it.
That Spit had the extended wing tips which increased wing area, but resulted in a poor roll rate.
The extended span wings were pretty rare on Spit VIIIs (and IXs, if any IXs had them at all)
Heres a rough set of "power curves" I graphed for the Fw 190A-5 and Spitfire LF.IX - I used Aces High to get the climbrates at different speeds and then raised the Spitfire curve to match the increased power/climb from the Merlin 66(Since AH Spit F.IX has Merlin 61).
Those actually match the shape of curve from that 109F test I linked to above pretty well.
justin, if we set the best climb speed for 190A5 to 182mph instead of 170,
I must be missing something. It looks to me that the 190s best climb speed is at 180 mph, with the Spit's at 160.
the result is that 190A5 will outclimb and outrun the Spit LF at 252 mph, while still doing 2790 fpm.
My quick and crude graph suggests somewhere between 250 and 260 as well, but seeing the real life drop off is not linear, I think the actual figure should be a bit higher.
It's quite clear though that a Spit LF IX should be able to easily match the 190 at 182 IAS, with power to spare.
At it will Karnak. That graph is NOT a power curve. It's a "I don't know what" illustration that of the games properties.
Crumpp, that graph, and the two I've posted, are illustrations of the drop in climb rate with speed.
The Spitfire will not climb as well at 182 mph as it could at 170 mph, but it will still climb better than the 190.
An Aircraft's power curve is flat at the top and the pilot has a wide variety of ANGLE at which he can fly the plane that produce only a tiny amount or no change in Airspeed.
No, he has a wide variety of speeds, little variety in angle. You can't change the angle much without changing the airspeed, unless you add more power.
Karnak, the top of the Spitfires FLAT power curve is 170mph. The top of the 190's flat power curve is 182mph. The curves look the same just that one is higher.
Why does the Spit have to be at the top of it's curve? We've established the Spit has a better climb rate, it can fly at less than optimum and still have an advantage over the 190.
