Author Topic: Blacking Out and Stalling (Read 841 times)

Billiken · « **on:** June 19, 2006, 11:25:26 PM »

Hello!

I entered my first furball tonight, and made several quick exits by way of the ocean bottom. A couple of times I was guilty of letting someone sneak in behind me, but a few times, I was in a definite position of advantage.

It seems, though, that whenever I try to manuever, I seem to black out, or get the stall buffer shaking me to pieces (I do have the stall limiter turned off, btw...).

So, I'm curious--does anyone have any idea (in general) why I would be getting flipped on a regular basis? It seems no matter what I fly, I can't maneuver with the opponent, regardless of circumstance. Regardless of what I try, I seem to be too fast and blackout, or too slow and stall (or at least nearly stall).

I plan on tracking down a trainer soon to perhaps cover some of this, but in the meantime, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

One thought I had was considering changing the responsiveness of my joystick. If you have any thoughts on that, please let me know, too.

Many thanks!

Vudak · « **Reply #1 on:** June 20, 2006, 12:08:06 AM »

Your joystick certainly could be your problem, but someone else will have to cover the technical aspects, as I'm not good at that stuff (would help them if you could say what type you have, though).

Also, what plane are you using? They each have different characteristics and some are much more likely to lose control. A Corsair is much more forgiving then a FW190, for example.

Still, if you are just yanking the stick as hard and fast as you can, they're all going to lose control (well, at least with my stick setup, and I'd bet every other one). You have to ease into it abit more (don't have to be ginger, just not ham fisted), and find out the maximum amount of pressure you can apply before getting into trouble. This will take time, but you'll get the hang of it.

As for blackouts, I have to wonder - are you talking about just the screen going black while you apply pressure to the stick, but then you come back to vision when you lessen pressure, or are you talking about a total blackout where you stay blacked out for a few moments after you release the pressure?

If it is the former (think some call that a brown out?), then learning to anticipate where you will be when you come out of it (by the lowering of your speed/G's through the turn) is one of those things everyone just has to get used to. If it is the latter, you are turning too hard and are completely knocking yourself out - experiment to find the point where you don't do that, but still make the hardest turn possible.

As for the violent shaking, try dropping a notch or two of flaps (or more in some cases). They will help you maintain lift at slow speeds, although they will also hurt your acceleration (and often make aiming difficult).

It basically seems as though most of the problems you are describing are just the teething troubles of learning to ride the edge of your flight envelope. That is the point where you are pushing it as hard as possible without going into a stall or spin. It takes awhile to get the hang of, but the closer you can get to the edge then your opponent, the better... It's definately worth the early and often frustration.

If you can't link up with a trainer, let me know... We can go to the TA and you can try following me through some manuevers while I tell you on vox what controls I'm manipulating to keep my plane flying.

S!

B@tfinkV · « **Reply #2 on:** June 20, 2006, 12:14:50 AM »

sounds stupid, but the three main causes of regular loss of control besides pilot error are:

A) joystick too sensitive

B) joystick needs calibrating in the AcesHigh menus

C) someone shot a vital part off your plane

Schatzi · « **Reply #3 on:** June 20, 2006, 05:00:06 AM »

Billiken, changing the Joystick sensitivity will only help you, when in the heat of the fight you yank hard on your stick. I myself prefer light, sensitive control - but its mostly personal preference and stick type, so youll have to play on those settings yourself.

Id suggest a staircase scheme, starting with the first slider about halfway to the top, the rest ascending. Deadband always as little as possible, as much as neccessary. Damping sill slow the overall reaction to inputs... id put that rather low as well.

Black out: Too high G means your either too fast or turn too hard (for the speed youre at). To turn around quick (ie small radius) while keeping your speed ("Energy"), use the vertical. For example, to turn around 180 degrees, dont do a flat turn, but an immelman. Try both and compare what happens (speed, altitude, space you need to turn).... youll see what i mean. Theres a few good articles on Energy and Merges ("Mastering the Merge") on NetAces.

This will also help you avoiding getting too low and slow to maneuver, ie stall.

Riding the edge of stall is something that takes practice. In the heat of a big furball, where you already struggle with your SA and (usually) multiple opponents its even harder to concentrate on your plane and stall on top of it all. What helps you with that is sticking to one plane for the time being. Untill you know what it can do and what it cant, untill you no longer have to check speedmeter, but FEEL your speed. Fly by the seat of your pants

. Some acrobatics can help you learn the limits of your plane. Flying through hangars, fly low between trees, upside down, go straight up untill you stall (maybe add some "twist" with rudder) and catch your plane on the way down......

Give it some time, practice, fight people like Batfink or BaitBug, practice, ask questions, read some and practice again - i think your on the right way to learn fast

.

Edit: One thing i forgot: Film your fights. You can review them later and watch them also from the opponents perspective. Its a great tool to help you see how you got outmaneuvered. And you can always pot films here, youll get plenty opinions on what was good and what was not so good

.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #4 on:** June 20, 2006, 05:58:34 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Vudak

if you are just yanking the stick as hard and fast as you can, they're all going to lose control. You have to ease into it abit more (don't have to be ginger, just not ham fisted), and find out the maximum amount of pressure you can apply before getting into trouble. This will take time, but you'll get the hang of it.

Ham fisted it sounds like, that and your stick scaling may need adjusting to fit your flying style......

Batfink & Schatzi had valid points too.....one of most important things is learning the flight envelope of your plane from blackout/compression ( fast end ) to buffeting/stall ( low end ) of the flight envelope. Each plane is different

1 thing you will black out quicker and stay blacked out longer the more often these happen in succession, meaning if you dip into the tunnel and barely blackout but release stick pressure and recover, you will be ok for most part, but if you pull max G's ( 6 + ) and hold it there to long, then recover but almost immediately repeat the same and go into Blackout you will experience longer time before regaining control/ conciousness......this is the upper end of the flight envelope vs the stalling end of the flight envelope where you are slow...

some will suggest stick scaling, at least for the elevator input anyways, some will scale all 3 flight axis ( pitch/roll/yaw or Elevator/aileron/rudder if one prefers ).

read Hammer's new write up on Controller setup , on netaces.org or the updated help file ( find it under support on the Aces High home page ).
you can fly with a light touch and be 100% across the top on all scales, gingerly as Vudak put it, or you can throw a gentle swing/arc into your scaling if you have a heavy hand ( ham fisted )........the arc should be from low left increasing smoothly upwards toward the right side. Hammer's article is more detailed in explaining this.......

as for my personal taste, I fly 100% across top of all stick scaling of the axis, where as others fly with gently sweeping arcs from left to right, it is a matter of preference in this area of setting up one's controllers, WHAT YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH!

email the trainers at:

trainers (at ) hitechcreations.com

we be glad to hook up with you and help try and solve your problems.

or if you in a hurry, find one of the many helpful vets in the game, in the MA / TA / DA/ or AvsA arenas, always someone willing to help another in this community....

when emailing the trainers list, please include your ingame gameid your AH messageboards username, for it helps use in knowing who we are working with

~S~

TexMurphy · « **Reply #5 on:** June 20, 2006, 06:42:49 AM »

To simplify this...

If you come in with higher speed then your enemy then you have a wider turn radious. Compare with fast driving car and a slow driving car. A slow driving SUV will turn inside a fast driving buggy.

You will black out if you try to turn with the slower plane.

When diving in on your enemy you are almost always faster then him, never expect to be able to manouver with him. You have to be proactive and setup your attack so that you will be in position when and where you wana fire. If you miss the approach just climb back up.

Second thing. If you always turn to manouver with your enemy you will always get outmanouvered. Flat turn, left right two dimentional turns, are the worst way to manouver with your enemy.

The flat turn is a slow way to reverse your heading, it pulls alot of G (easy to black out) and it reduces your speed alot, hence easy to end up low on speed and stall.

Less simplified but still very important.

Manouvers that reduce speed do have a advantage as they make the reverse tighter. As I said the SUV can out turn a buggy if its slower. But you have to convert the speed into altitude. If you just slow down and remain on the same altitude you cant dive off and gain speed again.

Speed builds altitude and altitude builds speed. Basic rule of Energy management.

Manouvers where you dont gain altitude means you loose energy and hence your ability to quickly regain speed.

So in short.

You come in too fast, pull too hard on the stick and use too many flat turns. Thats the cause of both to the blackout and stall problems.

Tex

DamnedRen · « **Reply #6 on:** June 20, 2006, 02:28:31 PM »

Stalls.....

There's an old saying in flight.....pull back on stick, houses get smaller....pull back more, houses get bigger.

Two reasons for this;
1) you have lot of speed and loop over the top/
2) you slow to the point your plane doesn't have enough forward speed to maintain flight and you stall. This condition is caused when your planes wing angle of attack gets too high and lift is spoiled.

There's more to stalls than just "power off" as mentioned above. You can also stall at high speed. This is normally referred to as an accelerated stall and is normally cause by rapid movement of your joystick to the full aft position. More commonly put, you "yanked" the stick back to pull G's in a dogfight which produced the accelerated stall. If you heard the term "snap roll" that's what is happening.

In 95% of all the cases of stall listed above if you push the stick straight forward as you see the onset of the stall the plane will normally begin flying again. If you're slow you may want to cut the throttle some as the propeller torque can cause a slow moving plane to snap over and over again. Your object is to immediately get the nose down then neutralize the controls and let the plane begin flying.

Black outs...positive G's. Red outs...negative G's. Black outs normally mean the blood rushed away from your head and as the G's forced are eased off it takes a little time for the blood to get back up there. Red outs means the blood is pushed up into your head and you see red. It's much easier for the blood to ruch back away from your head so the time in red out is normally much shorter than black out.

Black outs occur more quickly at higher speeds because you can pull more G's at higher speeds than when slower. Most WWI planes flew around 125 knots and those pilots rarely had black outs. You will not if you fly any AH2 plane below 150 mph it's almost impossible to black out. Pull as hard as you want. It just ain't gonna happen. Double the speed to 300 mph and all of a sudden it doesn't take much pull on your joystick to start seeing a black out. The harder you pull and the longer you pull the longer the blackout.

The game offers you the ability to adjust your joystick sensitivity as mentioned by some of the others excellent advice above. If you have your stick so sensitive that the slightest touch at high speed puts you in a black out then perhaps it's just set too sensitive. Some folks above have noted how they've set there sticks up and it is personal preference. I set mine up to more closely mimic what the controls on a real plane do. Slight pressure on the stick means slight control surface movement. More pressure means more control surface movement until you get all the way up to full stick movement equals full deflection of the control surface. What this means is at high speed you ease the stick back without going into black out and retained full stick sensitivity at those speeds. At low speeds you have to pull the stick back further as you slow. Again this is like a real planes controls work.

Any trainer can help you set your stick up so your black outs will virtually go away.

Hope this helps.

Billiken · « **Reply #7 on:** June 21, 2006, 09:51:51 AM »

Thanks for all the suggestions. I made some changes to my joystick to make it slightly less responsive at the very lowest increments, and that seems to have helped with the ham-fistedness. I worked in fighters all last night, and felt I made some progress.

I want to qualify the rest of this post with a few things--I've been working principally in the F4U-1D. The F4U is my favorite warbird, and the 1D is what I happened to pick when I first flew in AH. I tried flying with some ordinance, and discovered that you are completely unmaneuverable, so most of what I'm going to write here deals with an empty plane, full or 3/4 fueled.

Please let me know if you see any inconsistancies with the following comments:

It seems that you really can't do any sort of vertical maneuvers below 200 mph, and for them to be smooth, 225 seems the minimum.

In doing an immelman, I lose about 100mph, and gain between 2k and 3k of altitude running full throttle.

I experience strong buffeting on the elevator anytime I get the nose above 50*-60* (degrees), and it seems to continue until I get into a nose down attitude of about 40*.

I'm estimating that, in order to really maintain a dogfight, I'd probably need to come in at roughly 300mph to really survive the first pass. If I come in below that, after one maneuver, I'm usually in lead, and shortly thereafter, in the tower.

Thanks to all! I did record 3 kills last night. Special thanks to my victims.

SwS · « **Reply #8 on:** June 21, 2006, 11:36:28 AM »

From one Noob to another.....get a trainer or find a good squad that will show you the ropes. They will be able to answer almost every question you have.

Schatzi · « **Reply #9 on:** June 21, 2006, 04:28:43 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Billiken
Thanks for all the suggestions. I made some changes to my joystick to make it slightly less responsive at the very lowest increments, and that seems to have helped with the ham-fistedness. I worked in fighters all last night, and felt I made some progress.

I want to qualify the rest of this post with a few things--I've been working principally in the F4U-1D. The F4U is my favorite warbird, and the 1D is what I happened to pick when I first flew in AH. I tried flying with some ordinance, and discovered that you are completely unmaneuverable, so most of what I'm going to write here deals with an empty plane, full or 3/4 fueled.

Please let me know if you see any inconsistancies with the following comments:

It seems that you really can't do any sort of vertical maneuvers below 200 mph, and for them to be smooth, 225 seems the minimum.

In doing an immelman, I lose about 100mph, and gain between 2k and 3k of altitude running full throttle.

I experience strong buffeting on the elevator anytime I get the nose above 50*-60* (degrees), and it seems to continue until I get into a nose down attitude of about 40*.

I'm estimating that, in order to really maintain a dogfight, I'd probably need to come in at roughly 300mph to really survive the first pass. If I come in below that, after one maneuver, I'm usually in lead, and shortly thereafter, in the tower.

Thanks to all! I did record 3 kills last night. Special thanks to my victims.

I do not know the Hog well enough to remember speeds of the top of my head - are you using flaps to help you over the top in immelman?

Wtg to the three scalps

.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #10 on:** June 21, 2006, 05:29:29 PM »

F4U-1d will go into a vertical maneuver at 120 kias, and can even pull off a immelman at 110 kias if need be, with use of flaps aileron/rudder authority......

remember it takes time, lots of it, and practice lots of it.......

The F4U series ( all of them ) will climb straight vertical nose up to a speed of "0" or dang near it, but same as above rudder/aileron control and flaps even if you like, is possible to do with and without flaps.......sometimes can even do a tail slide straight down before nose over powers with its weight and flops around nose down first.

not that anyone should fly the HOG this way........more so nowadays than before I just pop flaps notch our or in when it feels right, but for a quick not to precise key as for when and what speeds to drop each notch:

220 to 190 kias - drop 1 notch
170 to 160 kias - drop 2nd notch
aroound 140 to 130 kias - drop 3rd notch

120 to 110 drop 4th notch - 100/95 or below drop all out......5th notch......

bring back in acording in reverse, I try to bring flaps in and not let the auto speed retract take effect before hand.......

from my experience F4U-1 , 1C, 1D and -4 all are quiet easily maneuverable even when dipping well below 150 KIAS, just remember its BIG RUDDER, and excellent roll rate and floating flaps........learn how to use them for your given situation.....

look for Widewing, Badboy, BluKitty, SirLoin, Balsy, Jish65, wetrat to name a few for help in the HOGs ....... oh and did I mention....practice?

Rolex · « **Reply #11 on:** June 21, 2006, 05:53:32 PM »

Please don't tell anyone this secret, but the F4U-1 might be the most under-rated plane in the plane set. Shhhhhh... not a word to anyone.

Stoney74 · « **Reply #12 on:** June 22, 2006, 12:57:33 AM »

I agree with Rolex on the F4U-1. Its the Hog I first started flying a lot when I first started.

The biggest key for me was learning to make smooth control movements. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast as they say. Beyond simply blacking out, there's no reason to have any sort of expectation of turning crisply at speeds in excess of 300 mph indicated. It also applies to low speed handling as well. If you "yank and bank" at low speed, you will stall/spin the plane and not have any sort of smooth, controlled maneuvers. Especially when working the vertical, start your pull gradually and as the plane slows, increase the deflection of the controls. If you get the buffet, you're right on the envelop of departing controlled flight. Also, make compound maneuvers. As some others have alluded to, don't turn the plane in any single dimension. Climb and turn at the same time, or descend and turn at the same time. This applies to immels and split-s's as well.

One technique I like is, after the merge and you're going vertical, look behind you (keeping the enemy in sight) and keep the center of the canopy centered on the enemy with aileron. As you go over the top, you'll be able to develop the direction the enemy is going to wind up in as he rolls out, and then make adjustments as necessary. Then you can complete the loop/immel/vert barrel roll/chandelle with your nose pointed at the enemy. You have to learn how to make the controll inputs necessary to accomplish this, which will only take some practice. Try going in the TA and just play follow the leader or mess around with some 1v1. You may be able to find a trainer in there as well, and they're always more than glad to help...

Good Luck,

Billiken · « **Reply #13 on:** June 22, 2006, 09:00:58 AM »

Great stuff, thanks!

Stoney, when you say "if you get the buffet..." I'm not clear if that's perfcectly OK and expected, or if I should try to avoid this with smoother movements.

Thanks in advance!

TexMurphy · « **Reply #14 on:** June 22, 2006, 09:50:27 AM »

Billiken

Im quite sure you will become a good pilot. You know why? You picked a plane because you like it and you want to learn to fly it well.

That is a very good sign. Worst way to learn is by asking "What is the best plane?".

If you look to your own skill instead of the plane you are half way there. Ofcourse there are planes which arnt well suited for new pilots but basicly any plane post 1943 is competetive and hence can be learned by even a new pilot with the right attitude.

Tex