Campaign, warm-ups, and Autopilot

I decided to jump back into the campaign after the beta patch (I had some issues before and lost all my progress, but now it's back!?) and I am now on the check flight in the Spitfire and flying full real CEM and Radiators.
My problem is this;
I start the mission and have to warm up. This takes a while, any attempt to advance throttle is met with popping and missing and generally ugliness. So I wait, eventually I can throttle up and start moving, a little forward pressure to lift the tail and then hold steady till take-off speed and then some back pressure then the plane pitches forward like the brakes locked up (and this is another issue)and it ground loops, if I get off the ground without incident it isn't long before the engine starts to run rough, huge amount of orange fire emits from the exhaust (100% Mix 100% rads 100% prop) and no changes to any pertinent control changes this except Auto Pilot it goes back to purring like a kitten none of the engine or throttle controls change, change back instant chaos. If I start the flight on AP it not only gets warmed up quicker but takes off with far more speed and apparent power, jump out of auto pilot and it's curtains - so up to this point I have been doing fine, now all of the sudden WTF? and the brakes on the Spit and Hurri are for all intent either on or off. I have an x-52 and pedals but even tapping them or putting them on a slider results in ground loop unless I'm just taxiiing out and barely moving, is this accurate? did they not use them for slowing down on rollout? are they so prone to locking up that they only use them to maneuver on the ground ?

you know that a digital info window reading of 100% mixture in british planes means you are flying on "lean" mixture ?

No, I didn't, but I would think that auto pilot would choose correct settings? but maybe not and since that particular aircraft only has 0% and 100% for prop and mixture (and I have tried all settings) something seems amiss if I can "fix" it by turning on auto pilot and it's broke without it, of course once real damage is caused it's FUBAR.

fast test with the Spit I and Ia (the two versions in game with two speed propeelrs):
Strange enough they seem notto like rich mixture , so having the mixture lever in cockpit forward /100% (should mean lean....) and they fly like charm. Sure in fine pitch one have to be carefull with the throttle not to overrev . And at coarse pitch you have proplem to mantain rpm without overboosting the engines

I would say, its WIP

All Spits in CoD have mixture control reversed: For full Rich you have to push forward (which is incorrect). The Hurricanes are correct: pull the mixture lever back for full Rich.

I destroyed a few Spitfire Merlins because of that!

now it makes sense .... even when its not historical

i realy belived at least for all Merlins 1C would have made the mixture control the same, obviously not
I normaly fly only Blenheim and Hurricane when flying RAF. And as you said, with them rich mixture is 0%. Now i know in the Spits its 100%.

I've not used the auto pilot for a while, been mostly flying online, but when I was first learning CEM I thought it would be a good idea to let the AP fly for a while so I could copy it. It wasn't very useful, the AP seemed to make changes that weren't aparent in the cockpit controls or in any of the info windows(i.e the radiator may have been closed by the AI but without the lever moving) , admittedly it was a couple of patches ago so I don't know whether it is still the case or not, but it might explain why your spit AI can fly at full tilt on a lean mix.

I've been reading BoB pilot Geoffrey Wellum's "First Light" and he describes pulling the lever fully back to get Rich mixture for take off in his Spitfire Mark 1. I'm surprised 1C haven't fixed this already -- shouldn't be too difficult!