[REPORTED] AI aircraft not using drop tank fuel

I appears as if my AI wingmen are not using the fuel I gave them. They run out of fuel at least a half hour sooner than I do while flying in formation. Not to mention they never seem to be able to land.

Don't have a track either, but prior to todays patch, I did notice that the AI wingmen on two occasions bailed out mid channel on the way home. About the same as they did without the drop tanks. I was going to try to confirm by flying a sortie with three AI wingmen, one with a slipper tank, one with a torpedo tank and one without tanks and see if there was a significant difference.

Not likely to happen until after the long weekend, working on Sabres right now, but I will try to save a track if we do.

Do you possibly have a track of this, if not, looks like I am going flying :D

No sorry, I only had one 8 Mb track left and it was a solo flight.

My record regarding fuel to date is 340 miles over 2 full hours.

My wingman and flight is calling bingo at about 1/3 of that flight.

That required climbing to 20,000 feet though. I think I could maybe make 400 miles if I could find the best altitude.

Track file attached

I was able to get them to "bingo" in just under the 5 Mb limit.

They started hitting "Bingo" in 35 minutes.

I switched to my drop tank right after initial startup and was still on the drop tank.

I can easily go 2 hours with the tank and onboard fuel. 35 minutes is nowhere near "Bingo"

They should have hit "Bingo" after well over an hour with the tank.

Track file and mission file attached for your consideration. Thanks.

Tom

Mountain tops3.miz

bingo 35 min.trk

One hour should be no problem with no drop tanks at all unless you were to start with less than 100% fuel load for the internal tanks.

I just flew 400 miles over 2 hours and 10 minutes. I had 3 gallons of fuel remaining. All the rest of my flight had ejected by 1 hour and 10 minutes in. My main guage had just barely started moving. I may be using my flight better. I'll keep trying later on.

@nineline were you in level flight? Altitude? Climbing involved? Maneuvers?

"Bingo" does not mean "empty" for clarification. Ejecting does.

Yes, they call bingo and if you do not order them to RTB shorty after that they will call ejecting and bail out.

In the case where it happened to me, we were already halfway across the channel inbound for Funtington after escorting a strike flight against a target fairly far inland when the AI no 4 in our flight called bingo and by the time we were feet dry he bailed out.

All three human a/c in the flight managed to land with fuel remaining.

I've been flying long missions from Ford to Caen and back, up at 23,000 feet, none of my wingmen ever called bingo. You need to throttle back, though. Climb at 2,600 RPM +7 boost, and cruise at 2,200 RPM 0/ +2 boost.

The point is not to fly long missions though, but to confirm/disprove the suspicion that AI wingmen are/are not using the drop tanks.

This may be moot given the recent patch if it addressed the fuel system in the Spitfire.

Nineline, you may find you can shorten your flight by reducing the internal fuel load to 20% say of all the a/c in the flight including one with no drop tanks as a control.

For clarification I have not tried the torpedo tanks yet.