So recently, I really got into playing the Fw 190s, but this question bothers me alot, because I’m really not sure. The D-9, technically, should have better flying characteristics below a certain altitude (last time I checked, it was below 6100m) due to lighter overall weight and more engine power, but for some reason, the D-12 feels like it climbs more smoothly than the D-9. Not sure if this is just a psuedo effect. I mean at like all altitudes.
I don’t think D12 outclimbs D9 below 5500.
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D-12/13 feature better supercharger with 3 stages instead of 2 and higher max pressure. So that can offests D-12 empty mass being 200kg higher and D-13 100kg higher than D-9s. Also D-9 has slightly more fuselage drag also theres some prop diffirence but cant say a lot about that one. So yeah with higher alt D-12 and D-13 catch up very fast due to better supercharger.
Note i dont know the actual numbers on which is better when but this might explain your observations.
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Speaking of the D-9, anyone got some proper info on the climb speed? In the DCS manuals it says 280-290km/h IAS but of course this game is not DCS. Some “experts” on the forums said 240km/h IAS which seems unusually slow. And then some on Reddit say 270km/h IAS.
You can see why I am confused right now…
I climb at 310.
For one simple reason - above 5000m problems slowly show up. So I don’t want to get to the fight late enough to encounter multiple enemies at that alt.
If I climb fast, I merge below 5000m, which is an altitude that favors me in terms of speed against P-47D28, enemy Bf 109s or F4U4.
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That’s why I’m not so sure. Those superchargers are not even controllable with MEC, so it’s even more confusing. I genuinely feel like I had far more low-energy stall clutches with my Fw 190 D-12 than with my D-9 despite the D-9 supposedly having to be superior in such cases. Not to mention that the engine HP dropoff is supposed to happen at around 6.1k heights and such, but I feel less maneuverable at 4-5k already.
Here, I found out how to make climb speed graphs recently. Ita a bit bumpy but that’s just how WT reports its data, update rate is a bit too low to make really smooth graphs.
As you can see, all of them are wrong as far as WT is concerned.
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Thanks, very interesting. So am I correct in thinking that you would lose over half your effective climbing ability at 240? Absolutely crazy…
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Pretty much, though at the very start of the graph I’m still throttling up so maybe cut out everything under 250kph haha. But that’s about right.
Like Loofah said, 310kph is a pretty good speed to climb at. You can go a tad faster and not lose any climb rate as well.
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well i did some testing D-9 climbs better till 5k being 190 you might want to use 5-5.5km area quite a lot though.
where D-9 climb just plummets in 5-6kmh range from about +3km/h better at 5km to -9km/h (at lower aoa drop is to like -5km/h climb) so you might feel hard drop if you pull after someone into 5400+ territory.
as for control at lower speed that might be just random stuff happening to you some small multiplier changes that might cause it maybe the propeller being 1.75 instead of 1.8 radius on D-9 but not sure.
Note that D-9 engine pressure starts dropping around 4950 but D-12 overtakes you around 5400 in climb I would say. You definitely want to start stocking energy at that altitude for eventual zoom climb over climbing at high aoa. Closing radiator can help quite a bit for short amounts of time.
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Damn, to think the ideal speed was always 310 km/h IAS instead of 280 km/h.
I’d really be happy to see a chart like that for all other planes, climbing is such an important part of prop gameplay.
They have to be done manually on a per-plane basis, so that would take a LOT of time. I’ve done a few, and every once in a while the game throws this at you:
Which took me a while to figure out what exactly was happening, got a bug report open on it. Turns out the propeller can’t change pitch fast enough to keep up with engine RPM after a sudden throttle change.
Btw here’s the list of what I’ve done so far:
Mostly for japan since that’s what I play the most, but if you want I can make pretty much any german prop and most of the american ones.
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Interesting to see that even for planes that don’t have as much engine power as the Fw 190s, a higher speed climb is still better than a slower one.
Btw, can I ask what’s your method of measuring the climb efficiency? Is this graph technically connected to the in-game data? I’d probably like to measure myself some planes aswell. I’m also curious if weather has an effect on climb rates.
This graph is made by WTRTI, you can find it on github (yes it is ‘legal’, gaijin has said so). It takes its information from localhost:8111 which is where you end up if you click the “Open map in browser” option in-game. It comes with a bunch of stats of your plane that aren’t shown in the actual game, but you can use regardless.
What it is measuring, as I understand it, is a derivative of acceleration which then translates into climb rate (but you’re not actually climbing, it’s a little weird how that works since it is showing potential climb rate for whatever speed you’re flying at), so at whichever IAS speed (X axis) on the graph results in the highest specific excess power (Y axis) will be your best speed for climbing.
For the 190 D-9 it tops out at 310-320kph so that’ll be the best climb speed. In contrast, for example the Ki-43-1 I also tested has its best climb speed at 240-250kph.
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Just did some testing on the climb. I was wrong, the Fw 190 D-12/D-13 doesn’t have better climb rate at lower altitudes aswell over the D-9. However, the engine HP is noticeably more consistent until like 6.5k-6.6km altitude with only a sharp drop at around 2k-3km altitude (but the same is observed on the D-9 anyways). The D-9’s engine HP starts dropping constantly and noticeably already at around 4.5km. I feel like the consistency of engine HP in general is more worth it to me, since if one uses the Fw 190 as intended, the result is mostly the same, but unlike the D-9, you would struggle more against enemies who want to fight high (you can basically drain the enemy fighter’s engine HP if they don’t have superchargers meant for such high altitude fights) or bombers who think they can keep climbing to orbit to win that way. The D-12/D-13 is better at being able to fight basically any kinda plane due to that.