Combat Trim - Good or Bad?

[bustr]

Recently YUCCA talked me into turning Combat Trim back on after more than a year with it off. I found it to have some advantages along with some disadvantages.

Pro.

1. I could hold my pipper steadier on target while firing.
2. It was harder to force a stall in a turn fight.
3. I could spend less cockpit time controling the plane.
4. Take off and landing was easier.
5. I could hang longer on my prop in a rope.
6. I performed a rolling siccors in a La7 against a G10 on the deck that I never stalled from. It finally got the angle on the shot. That was a first for me in keeping a siccors going much past 3 passes. The La7 was very stable with combat Trim on.

Con.

1. If I did not pay attention I gradually bled E while looking around because the trim tried to keep you pointing in the last direction you placed it. With trim off I always set my pitch slightly nose down so I would not loose E from the gental nose up attitude that creeps in while cruising over an engagement.

2. Pushing the nose down is a chore. There is a noticable delay.  

3. There is always a slight delay while waiting for the auto trim to trim. Some times the stick inputs are delayed by it.

4. I seemed to loose the ability to push to the bleeding edge with a spit5 in a multi con turn fight. I was not always able to snap my tail out of the way as fast in my P47's. I don't think I was getting my P47 turned as tight with Combat Trim as without it.

I have to admit it gave me greater platform stability for gunnery, and with La7's and Yak's I wasn't getting the wings stalls from pushing the edged too far. But I also didn't seem to get the bleeding edge turns quite as tight anymore.

So at this point in my skill development, am I gaining anything by going back to combat Trim, is it different in AH2 than AH1, or is there a technique for "manipulating" it to gain an edge? How does it actually work vs. manual triming?

After all if YUCCA is using it with his monster abilities, it must have some positive stratigic attributes.

[SkyChimp]

BAD!!! but I leave it on because of my pos stick.

Even though I don't fly anymore I still know its a pos. It was a pos when I bought it hehe..


BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D

[cav58d]

I guess the main reason for me that I leave combat trim on is because I spilled some sort of liquid all over my MS Sidewinder and only have the HAT and buttons "1", "2", and "3" functioning...If i were to have other available buttons on my stick then I would definately fly manual trim, but I find it way to difficult to fly a stick, and also try and fly a keyboard @ the same time....

I do trim when needed though - ie-turn fight, loop or immelmen

[Noir]

I turn way better with manual trim when I set it to max nose up, and same tweak saved me from many compressions in 109 and La's.

Also when you compress and still want to try a cherry picking, nothing is better that manual trim to counter the nose up tendency, and still have a precise shot at high speed.

Another thing I saw with combat trim is that it plays with your roll rate (ailerons) and before I used manual I never noticed that some planes roll better in a way that the other....and yes another thing, combat trim plays with rudder also, resulting of rudder changes while diving on ground target, wich gives a weird feeling especially in F4U in wich I suspect the rudder to  compensate for torque on low speed climbing.

And you said it for E managment manual trim saves some E, and you feel better your plane, example you can feel when the spit "climbs like a wing" at low speed, giving better chances for rope etc....

On the take off landing part I never had trouble, and it can be nice to use manual to keep F4U nose up while landing etc.

About the stability I've had some problem but figured I was tryin to shoot while being to slow, focused on my zoom. Maybe combat trim can help in this....

One con is when when you calbrate your trim for the diving speed and have to pull stick like mad to climb when slower....its a reflex to have and personnally I changed all trim controls to be close to view/flaps controls.

On another subject I think default controls aren't optimized at all and advanced players should think about a remap, I've done it and not to have to move the left hand allover the keyb in dogfight is a great time and life saver.

I hope my text is nearly understandable and will help you

[Ack-Ack]

Problem with Combat Trim is that in some planes it can hinder performance and the envelope where CT is effective in a lot of cases is small.  It doesn't work very well at high or low speeds and with multi-engine planes.  It does not take things like the lift generated by flaps so CT will actually try to trim the plane to counteract the lift generated by the flaps.

Having said that, some people do use it and some even can even fly quite effectively with it on.  At least for me and for the plane I primarily fly, CT is a hinderance and I do not recommend using it in the P-38.

Here's Lepthurn's article on Combat Trim and how it works in AH.



ack-ack

[mechanic]

good when half a wing falls off or fighting a zeke in an la5

[Howitzer]

I will turn it off to trim out of a dive, or to get a quick snap on someone, but I find that the nose seems to "bounce" quite a bit for me when it is off.  I can't hold the nose still enough to shoot accurately when it is off..  

Thats my only problem with shutting it off.

[GRUNHERZ]

I call combat trim RTB trim because it makes it very easy to RTB a 109 after a fight without having to deal with the torque effects, but only after a fight. During fights I leave the aileron and rudder trims centered but I do have ele trim mapped to my stick to deal with compression issues.

[Kermit de frog]

I leave it off.  It gives you another challenge and it's fun.

[Wilbus]

I have never used it actually, untill a few days ago.

I started using it to counter some very severe nose bouncing and it has helped, alot. I've always trimmed manually before, and I have the trim set to my joystick rotaries so can't get a better way to trim, still, the CT helps alot against nose bounce.

Depends on planes really. 190's can gain from CT quite a bit thanks to a high range of speeds where it performs good.

I do turn it off in close combat turnfights, and to pull out of very high speed dives (such as 109 power dive) or when planes compress.

I see alot of comments in this thread that turning CT off enables you to turn better and ride the plane closer to the edge. This is just a feeling you guys have, it doesn't enabled the plane to turn tighter with it turned off and trim applied to fully possitive.
You can try it your self, turn it on and start turning, you'll see that the plane can ride just as much on the edge with it on as off.
You can also try a turnfight and apply full negative trim. You will still be able to turn the planes on the edge and stall them.

This is totally different compared to the way IL2 modells the trimming as if you do not apply possitive trim in a turnfight there you can't pull the "virtual" stick all the way back.

As long as the plane can be stalled it can be flown on the edge.

However, like AckAck said, the use of flaps or such things kind of counters the CT but if your stick is pulled fully back so is the elevator, no matter where your manual trim sits or where the CT sits.

Some planes I have started useing it in and some not but I'm always prepared to go manual.

[DREDIOCK]

Curious
how does manual trip relate to how they sed it IRL?

Here we have sticks and throttles and keyboards with all kinds of wheels and buttons we can press without moving our hands more then a few inches.
IRL it would seem to me that they would need about 4 hands to be able to manipulate the trim this way and that while in combat as fast as we can do it here.

Think about it.
feet on rudder pedals. one on stick and one on throttle.
that pretty much takes up all of your human input or ouput as the case may be devices.
Here not only can you do that but with your thumb you can adjust trim too..on the fly,while in the middle of a fight..at the same time.

which means we can probably do things with aircraft here that were probably never done IRL combat situations

Am I wrong in this way of thinking?

[Wilbus]

Well, you are both right and wrong

While we do have many things "close" together and can do alot of things faster, trim may not always be such a thing.

Trim on planes were set on different places, not sure if any WW2 fighters had it on the throttle though but they did have it in close proximity and easy to reach.

Manual trim in flight sims like this is a tough thing to get realistic I think. Again, looking at what kind of trim I use in the gliders I fly it is a small lever on the left side of the cockpit situated right infront of the airbrakes. Easy to reach, fast to reach, easy to use. Only thing that needs trimming in a glider is elevator.

What is bad with trimming in games is that you don't feel the trim,  you sense the "need to push my stick forward to maintain level flight" and thus you trim it. In R/L you get a much much better response to when the plane is perfectly trimmed and in that case combat trim can be considered more realistic then manual trim in a game. Another thing is that in AH manual trim is very slow IMO, the time it takes to move it from fully negative to fully possitive is a matter of quite many seconds.
This too would depend on what kind of trim that was used. The lever I spoke of before can be moved through the whole range in under a second without trouble, and it gives a big input difference.

Piper Cherokee (4 seat prop plane) uses a rotating sort of lever instead and it takes much much longer to change from full to minimum.

[Flayed1]

I was watching a reenactment of a combat log from a P47 pilot and he had lost all controll over his ailerons and had to use the trim tabs to turn the plane. It took a great deal of time for the tabs to make much of a difference and finally turn the plane.  Also the trim controlls were small nobs on or neer the base of the throttle.

[DREDIOCK]

Yes but in your glider you dont have a throttle.

In the game you can map the trim controls right to the throttle if you have one (I dont) And thus you can be working both the throttle and the trim at the same exact time without taking your hand off the throttle.

[Wilbus]

Yes I know that Drediock, which is why I commented on that I am not sure wether any WW2 fighter had trim knobs or similair on the throttle.

Another thing is that normally trim wouldn't have to be used that much/fast. You set the trim then you fly, while it may be a factor in a turnfight to get the load off your arm this can be done while not throttling back or forth. It didn't take very long to change the trim and one doesn't have to look for the trimknobs/levers as a pilot, you know where they are. Just the way you know where the gear shifter is in your car.

I really don't think trimming or that it was hard to do or took too long to do was an issue.

While you mentioned there is no throttle in a Glider you're correct. However, the speedbrake is used like a throttle, specially when landing and there really isn't that much need to constantly trim the plane.