Pitch controls for P-51 - limit saturation?

Hi there,

being new to DCS and the P-51D I'm now starting to learn a bit of dogfighting. Mostly I use the 1 vs 1 mission with another P-51D as adversary.

Although I rewatched "The Art of the Kill" (anyone still remember that one?) on Youtube I do get my a$# handed back to me 99% of the time. Got some maneuver kills though.

The AI really likes to fly into the ground or collide with me.

Anyhow, point of this is the question: should I limit the saturation of the Y-axis (pitch) in the DCS controls setup for the P-51D?

All the time when I'm in a tight turn I pull a bit too hard and the plan flips over. It's really beginning to take the fun out of it for me.

Should I stick with the original setting and wait until I have build up enough muscle memory, or should I limit the saturation? If so, which value would be good? I read something of about 60 - 65 %

How have you set this up?

Cheers,

Emacs

Hi there,

 

being new to DCS and the P-51D I'm now starting to learn a bit of dogfighting. Mostly I use the 1 vs 1 mission with another P-51D as adversary.

Although I rewatched "The Art of the Kill" (anyone still remember that one?) on Youtube I do get my a$# handed back to me 99% of the time. Got some maneuver kills though.

The AI really likes to fly into the ground or collide with me.

 

Anyhow, point of this is the question: should I limit the saturation of the Y-axis (pitch) in the DCS controls setup for the P-51D?

All the time when I'm in a tight turn I pull a bit too hard and the plan flips over. It's really beginning to take the fun out of it for me.

 

Should I stick with the original setting and wait until I have build up enough muscle memory, or should I limit the saturation? If so, which value would be good? I read something of about 60 - 65 %

 

How have you set this up?

 

Cheers,

 

Emacs

Do you have rudder pedals, keeping ball in center in tight turns is very important, When plane is skidding a lot it is prone to drop wing.

I would not take away any saturation of pitch, in some cases you would need that. I would set nice curve that's it.

And the plane will stall anyway if you pull too hard, you will bleed out of air speed anyway and plane will stall at some point even with saturation set to 50%

You should never use saturation to artificially limit the axis.

I would also recommend to go only for a slight curve - i use 10 on pitch and roll axis for all WW2 fighters - and just really practising riding the edge.

It is one of the key skills to learn and master in any plane and very satisfying once you are there. Can be a long road but a rewarding one.

If you like hop over to Agathos Flightschool at Youtube and check my basic tutorials on coordinated flight, stalls and spins - they are recorded in Warthunder but the principles apply to other sims and RL - and than practise practise practise.

Good luck and happy hunting.

Ok - thanks for the feedback.

Yes, I do have rudder pedals (old TM RCS). It's not very precise anymore, but I'll keep watching the ball. Do you reset rudder trim before going into a fight?

I have now removed the saturation limit and have set the curves on pitch, roll and rudder to 10.

We'll se how that goes :)

Sometimes I really wish for some forcefeedback in those Hotas sticks. A few decades ago I spent quite some time flying glider planes in the real world. You could tell so much about the state of your flying just by the way the stick "felt". And the subtle shaking of the plane when you got close to a stall. After some time I could even tell by the way a spot of rough air bumped the plane, if there was a thermal uplift hitting more the left or the right wing.

Much much better feedback in the real world compared to any sim I've seen.

Cheers,

Emacs

If you like hop over to Agathos Flightschool at Youtube and check my basic tutorials on coordinated flight, stalls and spins - they are recorded in Warthunder but the principles apply to other sims and RL - and than practise practise practise.

Thanks for the link and for doing the videos!

I think I stumbled upon your channel before.

Cheers,

Emacs

Sometimes I really wish for some forcefeedback in those Hotas sticks. A few decades ago I spent quite some time flying glider planes in the real world. You could tell so much about the state of your flying just by the way the stick "felt". And the subtle shaking of the plane when you got close to a stall. After some time I could even tell by the way a spot of rough air bumped the plane, if there was a thermal uplift hitting more the left or the right wing.

Much much better feedback in the real world compared to any sim I've seen.

 

Cheers,

 

Emacs

I think there are some gaming chairs which dive you feedback like shaking etc.

Feels very good with a 10 curve and 100% saturation.

I've just practised aerobatics for an hour and in this scenario the controls are very fine and lively. I see the onset of the stall/departure when the cockpit starts to shake a bit.

Was doing mostly level stuff and never got above 4 to 4.5g in the turns.

Keeping the ball centered requires very, very fine input with the rudder and sometimes a bit stick into the oposite direction (outside) to keep her from "falling" into the turn.

That was very similar in the gliders back then. Slight pull on the stick, rudder a tiny bit into the turn and stick ever so slight crossed with the rudder keep her at a given turn rate.

It is very difficult to do this tiny bit of rudder input on my RCS. The springs are still pretty strong and it requires some force to get it out of center. Maybe I need to give the rudder a different curve. Maybe 25 or even 35.

Loops are much better now with the full pitch saturation! Quite a difference :)

Cheers,

Emacs

Playing with the rudder axis configuration I see that my rudder doesn't cover the full range of values.

Let me see if I can explain this.

When I have my feet off the rudder the red dot in the DCS axis config is perfectly centered. No deadzone required.

When I push the left foot down the red dot moves along the curve the left end of the scale. 100% left foot results in 100% left red dot.

But when I push the right foot down, the red dot travels only about two thirds of the way to the right side of the axis. 100% right foot results in about 70% right red dot.

My RCS doesn't give me full rudder authorothy to the right. That explains a lot of my awkward taxiing - particularly bad right turns.

In other words, the maximum value generated by the potentiometer in the RCS rudder is not what DCS expects as maximum value (255 I guess).

Can I configure that somewhere?

Cheers,

Emacs

Playing with the rudder axis configuration I see that my rudder doesn't cover the full range of values.

Let me see if I can explain this.

When I have my feet off the rudder the red dot in the DCS axis config is perfectly centered. No deadzone required.

When I push the left foot down the red dot moves along the curve the left end of the scale. 100% left foot results in 100% left red dot.

But when I push the right foot down, the red dot travels only about two thirds of the way to the right side of the axis. 100% right foot results in about 70% right red dot.

My RCS doesn't give me full rudder authorothy to the right. That explains a lot of my awkward taxiing - particularly bad right turns.

 

In other words, the maximum value generated by the potentiometer in the RCS rudder is not what DCS expects as maximum value (255 I guess).

 

Can I configure that somewhere?

 

Cheers,

 

Emacs

You should be able to do it from windows level, just calibrate this device according to device manual.

When you got enough speed you can easily pull more then 10G in this bird so be careful :P

Emacs, great to see you improve. And nice that you get the same good feedback of a 10% curve with 100% saturation. It has a reason why i settled on that in DCS. ;)

Rudder aix is a different animal, as it depends even more on the rudder you got. I have an old SIMPED F16 which already has a build in curve to simulate a good rudder control similar to a real plane. So i need very few changes in most sims. DCS is about 5% or so atm.

But you can experiment with anything from 0 - about 35. I would not go beyond 35 cause than your upper curve gets very unpresice and rather "sporty". But if it stays to sensitive just try more. It all boils down on the rudder when you get a good feedback for those coordinated maneuvers.

About the wrong calibration. Look in the window game controler settings the curve is properly recognized. If not, just use the wind calibration there.