Hi all

I am trying to get in to BOB WOV once again. I'm struggling. The landing characteristics of the spit seem way too malicious and unpredictable in my opinion and I always crash. This really spoils things as a good landing is the only way to finish a flight in this fantastically immersive sim. The spit seems more like a damaged 109G on landing to me!

I have the excellent WW2 Fighters Spitfire 1a add on from Shockwave for FS2004. I can do any number of circuits, landings (including cross wind) and good take offs in that sim without so much as a burst tyre, yet landing in BOB seems totally unpredictable. I have always read that the early Spit had fairly benign landing and take off characteristics so this is very frustrating. I also have a modest amount of real world flying hours in a light aircraft which include solo flights and hundreds of circuits/landings and I'm still here to tell the tale! My real world piloting skills are definitely 'average', but I think I have the experience to 'feel' when things are right.

Is there a modified flight model available or a good tutorial on landing the Spit? Many thanks in advance.

Tommo.

Hi Tommo,
You are probably not alone. It's always difficult landing the BoBII Spit when you haven't for a while. I find the Hurricane far easier in BoBII, personally, because of the wide track. It's all about speed in BoBII (well under 70pmh) or you bounce and it all goes wrong, and being trimmed so that you don't have to use full stick control. Pulling up the flaps quickly helps to kill lift too.

My personal real world experience is in Cessna's and they seem to fly themselves onto the ground, which is different, I tend to think. (I am not a very good real world pilot and didn't get my PPL in the end.) I tend think comments about Spitfire landing characteristics were a relative term, at the time. Plenty of kids killed themselves in Spits. And many more killed themselves in 109s. They just weren't that safe, by modern standards.

Things can be modified and I'm sure some would like different (less edgy/unpredictable) landing characteristics so this would be a nice mod.

I found I could land all FSX Spits immediately which felt a little too easy to me, but hell, what do I know.. maybe that's how it should be.

Ken is our FM expert here and understands the ACD and ACM files in the models folders best. There may be a damper setting to change, I don't know what's involved, personally. If he doesn't pop in soon, it may be worth asking this at A2Asimulations too.

Actually, I took a quick look. If you want to you could alter the
Spitfire1A.ACM, Spitfire1B.ACM files (with notepad, they are in the \models folder).

I suspect that the following may help;

Original:
#Gear {ident stiffness damping rollres friction brakepower key gear/void min max }
Gear { port 30333 363330 0.055 0.4 2500 updown gear 0 255 }
Gear { stbd 30333 363330 0.055 0.4 2500 nullkey gear 0 255 }
Gear { tail 7000 70000 0.055 0.4 0 nullkey void 0 255 }


I tried:
#Gear {ident stiffness damping rollres friction brakepower key gear/void min max }
Gear { port 60333 663330 0.055 0.4 2500 updown gear 0 255 }
Gear { stbd 60333 663330 0.055 0.4 2500 nullkey gear 0 255 }
Gear { tail 7000 70000 0.055 0.4 0 nullkey void 0 255 }

I seem to get a less bounce and tottering if your wings aren't exactly straight (my typical problem). It's more like typical FSX FM's.

In fact my successful landing rate has gone up to 100%! I don't even need to worry about pulling the flaps up now (though that's a speed thing, really, and I'd bet after six landings in a row I am just getting my eye in).

Maybe you could have a play and see if it helps you...

I may just fiddle with my Hurricane settings now.

Interesting. I suspect we have a few pilots who need all the help we can get

Tommo, I presume you are up to date with patches (2.10). There have been some mods to FMs over the years, generally to the pilots' benefit.

Landing Spits is certainly easier now, almost too easy compared to earlier patches!

Cheers!

I also changed \models Hurricane1A.ACM and \models Hurricane1B.ACM

Original
#Gear {ident stiffness damping rollres friction brakepower key gear/void min max }
Gear { port 36000 360000 0.055 0.4 3750 updown gear 0 255 }
Gear { stbd 36000 360000 0.055 0.4 3750 nullkey gear 0 255 }
Gear { tail 9000 90000 0.055 0.4 0 nullkey void 0 255 }

Altered
#Gear {ident stiffness damping rollres friction brakepower key gear/void min max }
Gear { port 66000 660000 0.055 0.4 3750 updown gear 0 255 }
Gear { stbd 66000 660000 0.055 0.4 3750 nullkey gear 0 255 }
Gear { tail 9000 90000 0.055 0.4 0 nullkey void 0 255 }


This is no way an official mod, but it is an interesting experiment for those that find landing bounce too hard to control (it is tricky in BoBII). I am not the greatest real world or sim pilot, I have to confess so it helps me. Perhaps someone else too.

Actually, there have been no recent changes to these settings, PV. This particular phenomenon has been around a long while. It's certainly different in BoBII that other sims. Bounce is way less forgiving. You could argue that others are too forgiving, but in the spirit of tuning this to suit personal setup (and capabilities) it's worth highlighting, I think.

Have you read this thread:

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=15371

Many thanks Bader and co for the responses. One of the other great features of this sim is the help you guys always provide.

I'm curently running 2.8 and have not updated to 2.10 yet, so I may do that even if it doesn't change the handling.

Bader, I like the sound of the modified files so will try that now. I will also try the Hurricane as that may be a way to get my eye in before graduating to the Spit.

Bader, I was also interested to hear your comments about real world flying. I never got my PPL either. I did about 35 hours, mostly in a small aircraft called an AT3, but also a bit of time on a tiger moth, a Cessna 152, Tomahawk and a great flight in a Harvard. The AT3 is very light and yaws a lot on take off (especially in a cross wind) so you often have to apply full right rudder to keep straight. Landings are also quite sensitive and you keep power on all the way down until you flare. I was very pleased to fly solo, but then realised that I enjouyed sim flying more. I found real flying a great challenge but very hard work and not very exciting a lot of the time. However, having some real world experience has increased my enjoyment of sim flying. It also made me realise how good the better flight sims are.

Cheers all, I'll let you know how I get on.

Tommo

Happy to help, Tommo.

Yes, sims are really quite good at simulating the real thing. Clearly they are not the real thing, but the good ones make you think about the things that matter in the real world.

I think I found flying in the congested airspace from Redhill a bit, well, dull. So it lost in the competition for time and money to other things.