Basically title. What are some weapons/options/mechanics that have been forgotten about but are still fun and interesting to you?
An example would probably be the Schräge Musik for the bf 110 i think.
Recently learned:
The Italian propeller fighter, C205 serie 1, has a nifty little modification. One of the wings is longer than the other which conveniently balances out left-turning tendencies by adding counter-lift.
As a consequence, you can fly the C205 serie 1 in a straight line, shallow climb and shallow dive without needing trim - or barely any. It also seems to maintain coordination in turns much better than other fighters before needing rudder.
At first, I thought italian props were badly modelled as I didn’t need to wrestle with the plane like I need to with the Spit Mk IX, F4Us and Bf109s. Nope. They just designed it to be easy to fly!
Not as impactful, but still interesting:
Your aircraft’s propeller, if the engine is turned off, seems to genuinely adapt to your pitch%/RPM/airspeed settings and conditions
As a consequence, you can make the propeller stop rotating and restart it with the engine dead to amuse yourself
1 Like
It’s not just that one! It was introduced with the C.200 I believe. I think it was about 20cm shorter on the right hand side.
CCRP is one that I feel is only heavily known or used by the Sim community. The new map options have opened its use up a lot recently, I doubt many knew about it before,
Likewise Ripple modes are probably rarely used in favour of the more obvious bomb series options
MEC in general is probably also rarely used and when it is are probably used incorrectly
4 Likes
Breda 52 90/53 has rangefinder in the game, which is probably a reference to special systems (large T-shaped optics) used for 90/53 batteries.
Working wing slats. On top of that, the first mass produced jet in the world, Messerschmitt 262, actually is equipped with slats as well and visible in game.
What’s the MEC? As for ripple, that’s all I personally use because it’s more accurate when it isn’t bugged.
Manual Engine Controls.
Where you adjust prop feathering, fuel mixture, radiator, etc
Never had it bug. But I just wish it had more options/all the options bomb series does. Main time when I use bomb series is when I either have a mixed bomb load I want to drop on 1 target or when I want to dump all my bomb load at once in a loft attack and the amount I have isnt 2, 4 or 8 bombs
It bugs a lot for me, mostly just not always dropping the selected amount. Especially with my old control stick.
I could never figure out manual engine controls for my keyboard, so I never used it, but I know it’s really useful for
Very strange. Never once had an issue. Can send me a clip next time it happens if you want and i’ll see if I can spot the cause
Sure, hasn’t happened in a while, but if it does next time I use a bomber I’ll Nvida clip it.
1 Like
One key use for MEC.
Normally, people use it to “Perma-WEP.”
However, if you fly sim there’s another massive advantage.
You see, in ARB you can tell when an enemy died because their red marker faded out.
In ASB? If you see a plane on fire diving away, you’ll assume they’re dead or will be soon and not chase them.
Well, you can put fire out by turning your engine off, diving to pick up massive speed and then keeping your plane as unstressed as you can to get rid of that fire.
However there’s one big issue: Your oil is burned off, your engine is cooked and will die soon after restarting.
What do?
Turn MEC on if not on already. If there’s still coolant fluid in our radiators, set them to 100%. If they’re out of fluid, set to 0%. Set engine RPM/prop pitch to ~75%. You’ll barely have any thrust and you don’t want to climb, but it’ll be perfect for level flight. In some planes, it’s also worth pumping your mixture up some to running rich - you’re losing a ton of engine power, but the extra fuel will keep it cool. Finally, throttle down to some 70-80% - just enough to keep speed and be able to do some gentle maneuvers.
It’s probably shameful (I fly recklessly) how often these settings have turned certain death of a near-black engine with oil spraying all over 40 kilometers from my nearest airfield into a gentle touchdown.
2 Likes
I really need to get into prop sim.
Yeah, I’m more of a jet player myself. I guess the speed and agility appeal to me more. Not that I dislike props, jet are just more my speed.
Flight models and modelling in general feels more nuanced at props too. Like…
Gyroscopic precession. Take a propeller plane with a sufficiently over-tuned engine with a sufficiently light airframe. Bf109s and spitfires are perfect. Put her in level flight, give her perfect trim. Let go of any rudder and pitch down suddenly and watch your slip indicator or the aircraft’s nose compared to some fixed point. You’ll notice the plane’s nose kick over to the RIGHT. Now reset. Pitch up suddenly. Your plane now throws its nose to the left.
You’ll usually not notice it in a dogfight as you’re also banking left and right and the adverse yaw overpowers the gyroscopic precession.
Fatter and weak-engined planes also don’t do it as much, but it’s very visible in spits and bf109s.
I’m also yet to get a objective confirmation, but I’ve observed a tendency.
If I fly my spitfire without vertical targetting, opening fire has recoil but it’s not significant. If I do it with 400 meter vertical targetting though, I noticed it feels it pushes the nose down slightly.
As just a small appreciation: We also got proper left-turning tendencies modelled and proper thrust-speed curves unlike MSFS2020 where props feel like flying jets.
On MEC and Bf109s and spitfires…
It’s possible to kind of “stall” your props and lose thrust despite increasing engine power. This is because the prop diameter is too small for the current IAS experienced at the amount of power.
Basically, to handle the engine power at low IAS with small diameter and fixed propeller pitch, engine RPM would spike and over-rev the engine. However, we don’t want that as it would kill the engine so propeller pitch angle is increased (in game terms, pitch% go down) which at such low speeds causes propeller stall.
This is why when we bring prop pitch to 75% we also bring throttle down to 75-80% because in addition to running cooler, we don’t lose nearly as much thrust as we’d expect due to the stalling described above. This relation is… somewhat unpredictable in most planes though since MEC there is about setting RPM rather than pitch directly and your aircraft’s systems handle pitch to achieve that desired RPM but a kind of relationship still exists
Back to the prop stall. In Bf109s you can force manual pitch in low-speed dogfights to avoid stalling your propeller in high risk high reward game. Watch your engine RPM - if you end up speeding up either go back to automatic or decrease pitch% (increase angle) - because if we bring the RPM over 3200 in the Bf109, we destroy our engine. This won’t work on spitfires as consistently because there we play with target RPM and the pitch is always automatic.
Also gotta pay attention to altitude because less dense air = higher risk of over-revving.
1 Like
Yep, Spitfire is the aircraft i’ve always tried to play but i’ve heard its a bad aircraft to start learning the prop side of Sim, because of how hard it is to fly. But I do want to get rudder pedals first as well
The Strv 122 PLSS’ and Object 775’s periscopes :)
If your tank or ground vehicle has a laser rangefinder you can spam it at modern helicopters in sniper view Ex: the Ka-50/52, AH-64D to trigger their laser warning receiver and give them a little panic attack and potentially waste flares and chaff all for nothing :)
1 Like
The Amx A1-A does have gun EEGS with a little trick. If you can manage to lock a plane with the targeting pod
1 Like