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Supercharger & Mixture Guide


GreyKnight

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Ok, now I've got a question.

Should I normally be flying at less than 100% mixture?

The table tells when to step-up the SC and when to increase mixture. I usually fly at 100% except when taking off from a carrier with it at 120%.

I would think that as the oxygen thins at higher altitude you'd have to decrease fuel mix or it would begin to run rich. just like leaving it at 120% after take-off and climbing a few 100 meters & the engine bogs-down & starts to cut-out.

I'm totally confused now. Although it might help explain why I often have trouble keeping-up with my group during coops.

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  • 10 months later...

Ok' date=' now I've got a question.

Should I normally be flying at less than 100% mixture?

The table tells when to step-up the SC and when to increase mixture. I usually fly at 100% except when taking off from a carrier with it at 120%.

I would think that as the oxygen thins at higher altitude you'd have to decrease fuel mix or it would begin to run rich. just like leaving it at 120% after take-off and climbing a few 100 meters & the engine bogs-down & starts to cut-out.

I'm totally confused now. Although it might help explain why I often have trouble keeping-up with my group during coops.

[/quote']

If it helps any I generally leave the SC in stage 1 until I hit about 7500 ft or higher for most aircraft, and I only run 120% when I'm below 2000 ft. I usually run 100% mixture until about 12-14000 ft then I drop to 80% and stage up again on the SC if the a/c has that capability. This prolly isn't right, but it works well enough for me in-game.

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  • 7 months later...

I've mostly flown light single engine aircraft, with only a few multi engine hours. The only War Bird that I've flown was a Stinson L-5 Sentinel observation aircraft.<br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">But in each and every one of them, the rule of thumb was to take off at full rich and start to lean back at around 3,000 ft. <br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">If you run too rich, you carbon up the cylinders and valves. Too lean, and you'll overheat. You have to watched your cylinder head and oil temperatures so that you didn't get it too lean. Buy we definitely didn't run full rich up to 12,000 ft.<br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">As far as propeller pitch. Each aircraft has factory recommendations for RPM (Pitch) and Manifold Pressure (Throttle) for Take Off, Climb, Cruise, Economical Cruise and Combat Power. I'm not sure how well any of this is modeled in IL2 and I've never found any guide or tutorial that helps you learn how to get the best performance out of the plane. <br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Almost everything I read is 100% pitch and 110% power. That might be what works in IL2, but you would blow up the engine of a real plane.

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Almost everything I read is 100% pitch and 110% power. That might be what works in IL2, but you would blow up the engine of a real plane.

Yup, it's like jamming the throttle open (on a motorcycle) and riding everywhere in second gear. Fantastic acceleration, but all sorts of things start to go wrong at these kind of revs. Valves start to flutter, overheating occurs very quickly, vibration starts to undo bolts, all the ancillaries run much too fast (superchargers, magnetos, dynamos, oil pumps etc) and bearings start to fail. Oil thins out under high heat and loading - the balls-out stuff really is about combat, not transiting to it.

Actually, this discussion brings up some of the things that really bug me about the on-line game. I get really pissed when flight-leaders take off and disappear into the distance at 110% throttle and fully-fine pitch. One of my old squad was notorious for it. He would jump into the #1 spot and tear off at full speed, without considering that it's just not possible for the rest to catch up and form up from a ground start. He would hurtle away to the target area and inevitably get bounced by the enemy. Then the TS would get really ripe - on the lines of "Where the **** are you, you ******s." and similar **** words. It never seemed to occur to him that the old convoy routine of 'put the slowest vehicle first if you want to maintain cohesion' actually applied to formation flying as well. He inevitably died alone, totally out-numbered, with the only advantage being that he'd probably brought the enemy down a few thousand feet so that the rest of us had a better shot when we finally arrived!

He would curse and swear at us - then he'd start accusing the other side of cheating or porking the missions - and start ranting in the chat bar. It got so embarrassing in the end that we just fired him out of the squad, and got along much better after that.

After taking off, the Flt Ldr should throttle back to a maximum of 80% throttle, often less, and either do a circle to allow the flight to form up, or stay at that setting until his comrades have caught up if a "straight to target" line has been decided on. Once assembled a flight can increase settings as a group, and ensure that the enemy get confronted by a whole flight or two of coordinated aircraft acting in harmony.

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Ok' date=' now I've got a question.

Should I normally be flying at less than 100% mixture?

The table tells when to step-up the SC and when to increase mixture. I usually fly at 100% except when taking off from a carrier with it at 120%.

I would think that as the oxygen thins at higher altitude you'd have to decrease fuel mix or it would begin to run rich. just like leaving it at 120% after take-off and climbing a few 100 meters & the engine bogs-down & starts to cut-out.

I'm totally confused now. Although it might help explain why I often have trouble keeping-up with my group during coops.

[/quote']

I have the same guide printed and I'm sure the line in question that reads

"INCREASE MIXTURE @

METERS FEET"

should just say DECREASE MIXTURE, nothing but a confusing misprint.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1. DDz Quorum

Must be your eyes guys.. ;)

This is an example of the database corruption we had, I have copied back missing text and attachments.

If you see topics/posts like this then please report them and I will endeavour to re-instate the missing stuff from backups.

Again if there are any who would like to volunteer their time to help it would be much appreciated.

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