Hello everyone,
for Ki-44 II is it better to set prop pitch manually? and if so, by what %? at 100%? does the engine speed controller work there? (I fly 109 and I can’t do this there, the engine would boil), or just use automatic prop pitch control?
And what about radiators? can it manage to cool the engine on WEP?
If your plane has an auto setting for Prop Pitch, it’s better to leave it at that.
The reason why 109’s are like that in general is because the % of the Prop Pitch coincides with the angle of the blades. This is the reason why the moment you set it to something like 100% PP on 100% throttle, you’ll immediately black your engine out. Though you can use this as a makeshift air brake by throttling down to 0%, then changing PP to anything like 75% PP or 100% PP. Useful if you’re forcing an overshoot. Don’t forget to set it back to auto.
You can treat Prop Pitch as RPM. To simply put, the higher your %PP, the more thrust you get, (generally) but since you have a higher %PP, your engine is going to overheat since your basically kind of like working the engine more. Lower %PP is the reverse of this.
Yes, the Radiators help in cooling, but the more you open them, the more draggy they will be. (except for planes like the P51’s, you can open them all up to 100% and it won’t even feel draggy.) Take note, every plane has different radiator drag coefficients.
Lowering %PP also helps in cooling too, even setting your PP to something like 90% or 95% can help a bit more in cooling.
The one thing you’re going to be looking out most of the time for most planes in general is Supercharger gears. The easiest way to describe these is think like they are gears on a car except instead of shifting up as you go faster, you shift up as you go higher in altitude and shift down as you come back down in altitudes. Planes like the 109’s, 190’s, P51’s, and etc are auto so you don’t have to worry about them so much, but some planes like the Corsairs, Spits, Zeroes, etc… don’t. So as much as possible, use MEC for climbing, and leave things at auto if you can for dogfights.
Now to answer your question.
Ki-44 does 100% PP,
4/24 on cold maps ( 4% oil, 24% water)
6/36 on warm maps
8/48 on hot maps
and its supercharger gear switches at around 2800m/2300m(100% Throttle/WEP’ing)
I know this is a long ass reply, and I apologize. I just want to be more helpful.
Here’s a link on MOBB’s very useful MEC guide It also contains MEC settings as well. Take note some of the info here can be outdated, so it’s best to go the test flight and see if it’s correct and/or adjust from there.
IDK if this is bannable, but there’s a good app called WTRTI. It’s the same as using localhost, but instead of alt-tabbing, WTRTI displays the information as a hud, and you can set up what you want to see like engine HP, your AoA, etc. Really, really helpful.
Thank you for your reply!
For now, I’m going to use just the radiators on the Ki-44 and leave the prop pitch on automatic. When I first turned on the MEC on the Ki-44 for the coolers, unlike the 109, the automatic for PP was also turned off, so I flew 50% PP for the first two games with the Ki-44. That probably explains why I thought the plane wasn’t climbing as well as it should and the reason why I asked my question here. So I assume that after turning on the MEC for the coolers, I will simply turn on the automatic for PP again and be fine. Or just use MEC and open radiators only for climbing, and than switch on automatic. The supercharger is obviously new to me, and if I’m going to fly the Ki-44 a lot and seriously, I should start using it too, and switching, for max performance.
Haha dont forget your prop pitch man also supercharger gear switch in alt is what youre gonna spend most of the time learning on a plane. The temperature of a map also affects the altitude in which youre gonna switch, a colder map could mean you have to switch to a higher alt since you climb better in cold maps, hot map could be lower, and etc
I’m glad I helped a bit. I want to add you can also individually control your engines for 2+ engine planes like the P-38 or other twin/multiengines. You turn off the controls for that(Not turning off the mec or engine.) This will grey that specific engine out, which allows you to control the engines that arent greyed out. Helpful if one of your engines is shot up and you dont want it to create anymore drag by closing rads and prop feathering (prop feathering is setting your pp to 0%, making your prop blades parallel to the air, theres also a keybind for it.)
Heres a story, the F4U corsair has 3 gear switches, 1st stays at around 200m, 2nd after that and 3rd atleast above 5km. The problem was I was at 2nd gear at ground level where the engine wasnt even producing power in the case for the Corsair… 0hp at all, and it happened because i forgot to switch… so I crashed… Awkward…
It is allowed. As long as you only use info given by the Localhost.
so tell me, at the start of every battle, every take off if I turn on the MEC, set the prop pitch to 100%, open and close the radiators as needed, and I won’t forget switch between supercharge gear 1 or 2 at the given altitudes, just these things, will I be fine?
I want to play Ki-44, when I fly my beloved 109 F-2, which I can actually do, I stand by that (i have almost 1000 battles with 109 F-2), Ki-44 is the only plane I’m afraid of today.
So first off, thank you burger bear for helping another pilot. Given what the op has asked I think less is more here info wise.
So In regards to prop pitch, unless you have an axis assigned it will default to 50%. Axis being an analog or simulated analog axis. Adjust accordingly.
Next, radiators should be set and forget on this plane.
Finally, super charger gears. They change more with speed than anything else. Air temp affects some things related to sc gear changes but it’s more related to heat spiking or ceiling related issues…
Short version, sc gears just do what’s listed. if your comfortable with shifting after some time , adjust the altitude you shift as outlined in the guide I wrote.
I hope that helps, don’t over think it, you want an advantage in combat not paralysis by analysis.
It’s been a while since I flew the Ki-44-II, but I don’t remember messing with MEC much. Definitely not as needed as with 109s. It does overheat a bit on WEP, but it also cools down fast even on auto. The plane is incredibly powerful for its BR limited only by the ammo count in my opinion. I think if you just pull it off of WEP every once and a while, you’ll be fine, and still handily outclimb almost everything you face, and definitely outmaneuver anything you can’t. It is a monster machine.
Yes, thank you. And also to Burger for the great answers. I pulled the Ki-44 out of the hangar yesterday and I’m satisfied. Prop pitch 100%, I open and close the coolers as needed and change the supercharge at 2,500m and everything seems to work very well. This plane climbs even better than the 109, amazing.
And his weapons are wing breakers, works very well, like 20mm canons. I need to get used to them, and fine tune the aiming, aiming must be a bit different from the 109 F2. I think japanes 12,7mm has lower velocity.
Don’t forget that you can separate the wing and nose mounted guns using the weapon selector, and only fire two at a time. This doubles your trigger time at the cost of burst mass, a good trade in most cases, though it is awkward since the proper aiming solution for the nose guns and the wing guns is quite different due to convergence.
It’s really easy in casenof US and Japanese planes - set prop pitch to highh value (in Ki-44-II it can 90-100%) and that’s all. Just remember about spercharger gear switch, and that’s all “manual engine control” you have to do.
This plane is an absolute monster and I love making Yak-3 players miserable using it.
As I said above, I flew the 109 F-2 for a long time, absolute love, soul mate, and the Ki-44, especially the Ki-44 II remained as the only aircraft I was afraid of, without the altitude advantage I felt I had no chance against it, so I decided to try it and I totaly understand now, it’s a monster. It has everything, it climbs absolutely amazingly, it has speed too, it’s not as agile as the zero or the Ki-43 but it can handle most opponents, and the weapons are very effective, the only thing you need to get used to is the lower velocities of japanese 12,7mm.
It actually has pretty decent ballistics. Way better than MG151/20, that’s for sure. The exploding bullet is great. Anyway, I’m happy this plane is 3.7, because I don’t have to face it in my 5.0 planes :D
You’re absolutely right, MG151/20 and how currently works was one of the reasons I stopped flying the 109 F-4 and tried the 109 F-2 instead, and I fell in love with the MG151/15 and got used to it too :) and that’s why I’m having a bit of trouble aiming now with the Ki-44 and Japanese 12.7mm. Velocity of MG151/15 is almost 1.000m/s. Custom makes all things easy :) it takes a few games :) Yesterday I played my first 9 battles with Ki-44 II and got only 18 kills, I could have got much more, but aiming. When I get used to the Japanese 12.7mm, it’s going to be a slaughter!
Whilst the rest of you posts look fine - imho there are 2 things not correct.
Regarding point 1:
If we have a common understanding that prop pitch (PP) and rads were adjusted via MEC in order to have the maximum power output whilst WEPping without killing the engine due to overheating or overrev - your claim is not helpful, a lot of planes rely on reducing the engine power via PP whilst WEPping, best example is the J-21 A-1 which can be flown with full WEP the whole match - if you set the PP to 75% and both rads to 50%.
So it is a question to find the individual sweet spot considering power increase via WEP, power decrease via PP and the drag of the rads…
Regarding point 2:
Do some research about the EVG (Einheitenverstellgeraet) of 109 F-Gs and you find out the 109s in WT (and i am quite sure still in IL-2) suffer from the missing limitations of the system - the pilot was able to change PP via a thumb button on the power lever (=technically a HOTAS :-)) from ~ 20-70% - it was technically impossible to override these settings.
But in wt you can, that’s why you kill their engines. The web is full with hundreds of posts describing this phenomenon in certain (ofc Russia made) video games…
I know very well that the prop pitch works differently in German planes, and I use it myself only as an airbrake, of course I first reduce the throttle to 0%, or alternatively when gliding without engine I set the prop pitch to 0% to decreasing the drag. For all other situations, I leave it entirely to automatic PP control, thanks god…109s has it. But Ki-44 does not have! And that’s why I originally published this post, because if I want to work with radiators, I also need to work with PP.
In a few battles yesterday I left the PP for the Ki-44 at 100% all the time and practically ran on WEP all the time, I set the coolers between 40-70% as needed and there was no overheating problem. Overrev is out of the question for the Ki-44.
Difference using MEC on this plane vs. AEC are subtle but substantial. your top speed with at 100% throttle increases by about 13kph which is alot. AEC radiator is set incorrectly like many planes.
keep it simple for the sake of maintaining situational awareness. Sticking to those 3 things above in bullets is all you need. adjust super charger shifts up in altitude about 100m for every 100kph your going over 280kph. so add 100m for 300kph, then another 100m for a total of +200m for 400kph and the same for 500kph for a total of +300m ect. if you do that youll never have a significant hp drop.
First, do you have WTRTI?
Second, set prop pitch to 90% and keep rads at 40-50%. This means your Ki-44 can WEP for any amount of time you want without overheating. There are certain altitudes where you’ll have to manage the supercharger gear (1st or 2nd) and you may want to increase prop pitch above your supercharger’s critical altitude.
So let’s visualize this.
Be aware that these will change with speed, so if you’re going really fast, you can stay in the 1st supercharger gear for a big higher. At 100% prop pitch, generally you won’t be able to keep your engine cool even with 100% radiators, unless you’re in the sections in my graph marked with 100% PP (prop pitch).
If your engine or oil temperature gets to orange while at 100% PP, drop it to 90%. When you notice it getting much cooler (like engine temp below 220-230C), raise to 95 or 100% again.
It’s definitely a much stronger performer at low altitude, up high it lacks power. Don’t forget your supercharger gears of course.
And what about the rudder of Ki-44?? What is your experiences? Have you had any issue with it? I think I definetly have. It’s a thing that spoils my impression of the plane, and in many situations has made it impossible for me to aiming correctly.
Use your lift vector not your rudder.
