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New Spit, First Impressions and the trials and tribulations of a new owner.


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I'm really into the jets and my beloved Huey. I have the paid for P51 but rarely use it.

I thought to buy the Spit mainly as a thank you gesture (but 50% off is not to be sneezed at) for the awesome thing ED are doing with the free for all month, but I had all the jets and helis that appealed, plus all the terrains.

 

So enter the spitfire. I had quite a few hours in the spit on another sim dealing with the south of England and France, so I was not totally unfamiliar with it.

 

First Impressions in VR. Just sat in the cockpit on the ground. Wow, it has so much atmosphere. I think it has probably the most realistic looking panel of them all.

 

Going through the tutorial on starting the engine was also very atmospheric, the sound of the flight surfaces hitting the stops transferred to my seat via the buttkicker made it so realistic.

Unfortunately the tutorial stopped working there, so had to look up some YouTube vids to learn how to start it. Probably five years since I was on the other sim.

 

So engine running and first taxi. No surprises there, weave along tapping the brake and using the rudder. A pig that requires being ready to stop an input before you start it. I always found taxying a spit a dreary business.

 

Take off. Prop lever full fine, feed in the power smoothly looking for some rudder authority so I can finally let go the brake lever altogether.

Whoa, what the Hell.... kept it on the runway albeit only just and took off trying desperately trying to level the wings and gain enough airspeed to trim out the rudder.

This was not how I remembered it. The spit was always forgiving provided you eased the power in gently. This one was behaving as if I just banged the throttle forward.

 

Hmm. Remembered the P51 being like that and remembered the "take off assist" being the culprit. Sure enough it had take off assist and it was on, obviously I had been fighting it for control of the rudder. Switched it off and tried again. Different creature altogether. They really need to do away with take off assist. It helps no one.

However it wanted to stick its nose in the air and I'm trying to get some nose down trim into it.

My fault, I hadn't checked the trim gauge and set neutral trim before take off. It is way nose high on spawn.

Set neutral trim and tried again. Once again a different bird. It tracked beautifully down the runway and flew itself off with minimal stick input.

 

Tootled around a bit setting 2750 rpm and 12 boost, watching the rad temp and all felt fine, got her trimmed up nicely and sat there picking my nose and watching the Normandy scenery go by.

Realised the canopy was open and flicked the switch to close it..

Wham! The canopy closed and the spit was suddenly trying to fly sideways, crabbing left and trying its best to roll on its back with me grimly trying to get some opposite trim in.

Looked at my canopy switch control binding to see if it was somehow double booked. Nope.

Opened the canopy and no change. Thought it may be a temp glitch so restarted the PC.

 

Took off again with closed canopy, trimmed her out and tried again. Opened canopy, nothing she was fine. Closed it, nothing. Just flew serenely on for a couple of minutes.

Wham, once again she tried going sideways. A look over my shoulder showed rudder was over to the left. What the Hell. Must be an axis problem.

 

Turned out it was a new helicopter collective stick I had made. As usual, DCS had mapped it to every axis and it was just off the bottom, just enough to caused some sensor jitter. You could see it coming and going in axis tune. Bottomed it fully and it stopped, unbound it from the spit and all appears fine now.

 

Once trimmed she sure handles sweet. Tried introducing some JU88s to shoot down. Found after spending most of my time launching missiles from miles away and radar laid guns, I can't hit a barn door with the antiquated guns on the spit.

Meanwhile, there I am, tongue stuck out the corner of my mouth trying to line up the shot and sitting there and unknown to me the gondola gunner was filling my starboard wing full of holes. According to track notes, 104 to be precise all told. No sound of impacts at all.

I only knew I was really in trouble when flashes appeared on the engine cowling. I was suddenly looking at the outside view of the spit as it rolled over and started going down. That's when I saw the wing...

By then it was time for a beer in the sunshine.

 

Overall I am mightily impressed with the Spit. It is leaps and bounds better than the mustang in my opinion. Very realistic.

I am less impressed with my gunnery skills.

 

Oh and final thing, where is the seat height adjuster? I find I am sat too high in VR and have to crouch to see the top of the gunsight reticle.

 

Hope any newbies might find something of interest to help them in this tale of woe.

 

Once I have finished the household chores I will try doing circuits and bumps. I bet I will find getting back on the ground "interesting".


Edited by Tinkickef

System spec: i9 9900K, Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Ultra motherboard, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 RAM, Corsair M.2 NVMe 1Tb Boot SSD. Seagate 1Tb Hybrid mass storage SSD. ASUS RTX2080TI Dual OC, Thermaltake Flo Riing 360mm water pumper, EVGA 850G3 PSU. HP Reverb, TM Warthog, Crosswind pedals, Buttkicker Gamer 2.

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Welcome in the Spitfire club!

In VR I don't use seat adjustments most of the time, I simply recenter the view to my taste, it works ok. I don't have my default PoV that high on my Spit bird, maybe something odd on your install....

Whisper of old OFP & C6 forums, now Kalbuth.

Specs : i7 6700K / MSI 1070 / 32G RAM / SSD / Rift S / Virpil MongooseT50 / Virpil T50 CM2 Throttle / MFG Crosswind.

All but Viggen, Yak52 & F16

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Been practicing landings.

 

Standard curved approach.

 

Flaps down and prop full fine.

 

Remembered 100kt approach, dropping to 80kts over the fence from the old days.

 

Throttle back to drop speed to 70 at threshold, keep far end of runway just showing above the cowling.

 

Hold it, hold it, stick coming back, a couple of feet before the wheels touch, stick coming back, allow the nose to rise above the horizon, it's going to be a greaser.....

 

Screech. Boing. Ah crap, why am I back up here when I want to be down there?

 

Crash, boing, oh jeeze its still flying....

 

Clatter, boing. Just let go of the stick imbecile...

 

Bang.. Oh we're going off onto the grass are we...

 

Pulls fuel cut off and sits in blissfull silence...

 

It did not go well... on many occasions.


Edited by Tinkickef

System spec: i9 9900K, Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Ultra motherboard, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 RAM, Corsair M.2 NVMe 1Tb Boot SSD. Seagate 1Tb Hybrid mass storage SSD. ASUS RTX2080TI Dual OC, Thermaltake Flo Riing 360mm water pumper, EVGA 850G3 PSU. HP Reverb, TM Warthog, Crosswind pedals, Buttkicker Gamer 2.

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Seat adjustment is on the starboard side, next to the seat and behind the emergency undercarriage lever. It looks like a handle jutting out of the seat towards the instrument panel at 45°.

 

Other than that welcome from an American learning the Spit for the first time. I'm not sure where, but I found an abbreviated startup which might come in handy for you so I figured I'd share.

 

Startup(from left to right)

Set takeoff trim

Pitot heat on

Fuel pump on

Throttle cracked

Carb intake full forward

Magnetos on

Fuel cock on

Booster and starter switches uncovered

Primer unscrewed

Prime as needed

Brakes full on

Depress starter and booster coil

Mixture once the engine catches

Cover ignition switches and screw primer

 

And boom you're flying in less than a minute. Things had to be simple when you were scrambling 4-5 times per day during the Battle of Britain.

 

 

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

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Remembered 100kt approach, dropping to 80kts over the fence from the old days.

 

Throttle back to drop speed to 70 at threshold, keep far end of runway just showing above the cowling.

 

Hold it, hold it, stick coming back, a couple of feet before the wheels touch, stick coming back, allow the nose to rise above the horizon, it's going to be a greaser.....

 

 

Is there a reason you're quoting kts in this, even though the ASI is in mph?

You're speeds, when converted to mph are OK though.

 

 

Also, pulling back on the stick and raising the nose up "above the horizon" causes a LOT of people to bounced on touch down. Letting the attitude sit a bit less extreme will put you on the front two wheels first, and is far less likely to result in the bouncing. The spitfire likes to land on the main gear, irrespective of what purists will tell you.

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Is there a reason you're quoting kts in this, even though the ASI is in mph?

You're speeds, when converted to mph are OK though.

 

 

Also, pulling back on the stick and raising the nose up "above the horizon" causes a LOT of people to bounced on touch down. Letting the attitude sit a bit less extreme will put you on the front two wheels first, and is far less likely to result in the bouncing. The spitfire likes to land on the main gear, irrespective of what purists will tell you.

So land slightly less than 3 point attitude?

 

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

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Is there a reason you're quoting kts in this, even though the ASI is in mph?

You're speeds, when converted to mph are OK though.

 

 

Also, pulling back on the stick and raising the nose up "above the horizon" causes a LOT of people to bounced on touch down. Letting the attitude sit a bit less extreme will put you on the front two wheels first, and is far less likely to result in the bouncing. The spitfire likes to land on the main gear, irrespective of what purists will tell you.

 

 

Just used to aircraft where the ASI is calibrated in knots that's all. A lazy bit of writing nothing more. Yes I should have put mph.

 

I will try your two wheeled approach and see if it works better. I was mainly a Blenheim pilot in another sim and certainly the best way to land that was on the main gear first in an almost flat attitude and let to the tail sink on its own. Far easier to keep the sink rate under control, the blennie was not known for its excess power if you got a little slow with a high A of A.

System spec: i9 9900K, Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Ultra motherboard, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 RAM, Corsair M.2 NVMe 1Tb Boot SSD. Seagate 1Tb Hybrid mass storage SSD. ASUS RTX2080TI Dual OC, Thermaltake Flo Riing 360mm water pumper, EVGA 850G3 PSU. HP Reverb, TM Warthog, Crosswind pedals, Buttkicker Gamer 2.

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My trick for landing spitfire follows as.

The most important thing, i cut off the power before touch down, no rapids throttle movement.

After touch down, rapid movement with rudder left/right to keep it straight, when speed slows down i start squeezing brake handle,( I use warthog stick so this is only button no axis ) I push brake in and out to not reach high braking force.

Always touch down spitfire as gentle as possible, is it 2 point or 3 point if you hit ground hard and left or right wheel hit it first, it is very likely to go out of control.

Lots off players main problem with landing warbirds, is that they try to land them like f-18,Just set sink rate and keep it until touch down.


Edited by grafspee

System specs: I7 14700KF, Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Elite, 64GB DDR4 3600MHz, Gigabyte RTX 4090,Win 11, 48" OLED LG TV + 42" LG LED monitor

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Taxiing... that is still my nemesis in the Spitfire, still i am getting there , binding a button to brakes helped considerably as does pulling back on the stick whilst taxing ... and during take-off for that matter

SYSTEM SPECS: Hardware Intel Corei7-12700KF @ 5.1/5.3p & 3.8e GHz, 64Gb RAM, 4090 FE, Dell S2716DG, Virpil T50CM3 Throttle, WinWIng Orion 2 & F-16EX + MFG Crosswinds V2, Varjo Aero
SOFTWARE: Microsoft Windows 11, VoiceAttack & VAICOM PRO

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Oh and final thing, where is the seat height adjuster? I find I am sat too high in VR and have to crouch to see the top of the gunsight reticle.

 

Re your reticule issue, this "fixed" it for me YMMV:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4153523&postcount=8

SYSTEM SPECS: Hardware Intel Corei7-12700KF @ 5.1/5.3p & 3.8e GHz, 64Gb RAM, 4090 FE, Dell S2716DG, Virpil T50CM3 Throttle, WinWIng Orion 2 & F-16EX + MFG Crosswinds V2, Varjo Aero
SOFTWARE: Microsoft Windows 11, VoiceAttack & VAICOM PRO

1569924735_WildcardsBadgerFAASig.jpg.dbb8c2a337e37c2bfb12855f86d70fd5.jpg

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