View Full Version : This might sound stupid but...........

06-05-2004, 06:22 AM
Ok, I' kinda new to this, but could someone here enlighten me on a couple of things.

1.How do you break out of a spin/stall.

2.What is trim and how do I go about it.

3.Whats with complex engine management?

I tried the guy, but it did not answer any of the questions above, so I hope you could help me. Thanks.

06-05-2004, 06:22 AM



3.Whats with complex engine management?


06-05-2004, 06:29 AM
put down flaps and rudder opposite to way your spinning, maybe rudder too. i nail the throttle others idle *shrug*

trim is letting u set the plane fly straight or in a mild turn/climb how u want
set some keys and find the wonders of lag trim

rads,mix,supercharger http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

&lt;123_GWood_JG123&gt; NO SPAM!

06-05-2004, 06:32 AM
Close throttle, center elevators, apply rudder opposite to direction of spin...pray...if no recovery, or you are too low, kiss a** goodbye http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

All the best, Don

06-05-2004, 06:36 AM
1) A spin is a stall in which on wing stalls before the other

Standard procedure for recovery: Cut throttle, nose down, full opposite rudder (opposite to direction of spin). This may take several revolutions to recover, and several thousand feet. For example, it was not unknown historically for a P-51 to require up to 10000 feet for spin recovery. That doesn't mean it will take you that long, but if it's a flat spin, in which the aircraft is spinning but will not nose down, you probably want to bail out.

2) Trim is a means by which the airctaft is et up during flight so that the aircraft will behave in a certain way. For example, maybe there is a crosswind, but you want to travel at 270*. The wind makes you drift. You 'dial in' a little rudder and aileron trim, to keep your heading while still flying straight and level. Or say you have damage to one wing and the plane wants to bank. You dial in a little trim to the opposite wing. Mostly, you will find that in FB you need elevator trim to stop the aircraft from 'bobbing' up and down. Using the control stick to do this will cause un-necessary drag and will slow you down, as well as being very annoying.

3) you will need to be much more specific...complex engine management (also called CEM) is the means by which you control things such as propeller pitch

The hillsides ring with, "Free the People",
Or can I hear the echoes from the days of '39?
~ Clash

06-05-2004, 06:46 AM
I like to think of trim as relieving pressure on the stick. Ordinarily, the plane will climb unless you apply forward stick pressure.

With a bit of elevator trim, the plane will fly level with no stick input.

Something you need to be aware of, is that IL2 has a built-in lag between trim input, and teh actual movement of the trim tabs. So as you're trimming your ailerons, elevator, or rudder, give it just a bit to see how it reacts.

Also bear in mind that the Bf109s and Fw190s have no rudder trim. Crazy Germans!

06-05-2004, 06:49 AM
There's trim, but it is only adjustable on the ground http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/images/smiley/16x16_smiley-surprised.gif

The hillsides ring with, "Free the People",
~ Clash

06-05-2004, 07:06 AM
Thanks for the replys.

Er, but how do you exactly trim? When I try to "trim" by pressing shift+key, the plane "bobs" in that direction before coming back. Does "dialing in" mean that it{trim} would be saved?????

CEM: What does it do, I mean how do you like operate operate your plane. The radiators etc.... I saw in the training videos the pilot opened and closed his radiator every now and then. Is the opening and closing like shifting gears?


06-05-2004, 07:13 AM
There are small trimtabs on rudder, aileron and elevator.
Elevatortrim is what U will use the most..= The Elevatortrim allows u to fly level in all speeds without using the stick.
When u fly level at full speed your nose will rise. With the elevatortrim u can adjust this so the plane flies level without using the stick. So when flying fast u trim down the nose and when flying slow u trim it up. U will find that this is extreemly handy in combat and then it is best to have it trimmed so the nose doesnt pull up( or u'll constantly miss your target).

hmmm ...I seem tired. hope u get the idea.

06-05-2004, 07:22 AM

It's "dialing in" because most times, the physical control was a knob that you would turn.

Trim is applied in very small increments. A single press of the key for, let's say, elevator trim, will produce very little effect. A number of presses will be needed to trim the aircraft. As you gain experience with this, you will better judge how many presses you need. real pilots constantly change trim.

If the plane is bobbing while you apply trim, you might want to recheck what the key you are pressing does, because it seems to me you are not actually using trim, this seems like you're pressing a rudder key, not the rudder trim key.

CEM- Forget everything with "changing gears in a car". Forget it completely.

Radiator: obviously this needs airflow to function. In an airctaft with an water cooled engine, you need to open the radiator doors to allow airflow. For an aircooled engine, you open the cooling flaps (not to be confused with wing flaps) to allow more airflow. the compromise with both is that you are also causing drag, which will greatly affect your performance. In real life, you would not be flying around at full power all the time. I find that flying at about 95% power with radiator doors at position "2" is a good compromise in a lot of planes. It still allows me occasional spurts to full power without overheating.

The car gear thing has been used, very improperly in my opinion, many times to illustrate prop pitch, not the radiator controls. It is so confusing to make that analogy that it is plain wrong, and is in fact backwards in it's logic. The example is useless unless you already know what prop pitch does. Also, prop pitch is a little odd in FB because of it's terminology. Prop pitch literally controls the angle that the prop blades 'bite' the air. It also depends on the type of propeller the aircraft you are flying is equipped with.

Try this link:

The hillsides ring with, "Free the People",
~ Clash

06-05-2004, 07:23 AM
The plane may bob in the direction you are trimmin gto, but it will not return to exactly the same place it was before. Your flight path will be slightly altered.

CEM referes to many things. First, there is the radiator. Opening it cause some drag and a loss of top speed, but allows for more rapid cooling of the engine. Unless the plane is equipped with automatic radiatro flaps, I usually leave them wide open. But then again, I can fly or shoot for ****, so may or may not be wise. http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

I believe most planes use automatic fuel mixture, but on others, it's necessary to reduce the mixture as you cliimb higher. I'm not sure how accurately this is modelled, but suppose you fly something like an He111 at 10K. The engine performance is significantly reduced, and you'll see smoke trailing out of the exhaust. Reduce the mixture, and the engines come back to life. It's been my experiecne that toying with the mixture yields few benefits unless at extreme altitudes, although someone else may be able to speak to that point.

Then you have prop pitch, which is the trickiest of them all. German fighters have an automatic prop pitch that changes with the throttle. As you reduce throttle, the prop pitch changes, and the RPMs are also reduced.

The Stuka, He111, and the American fighters use a contant RPM pitch governor. As you change the throttle, the pitch adjusts to maintain your RPMS. Unless I'm landing, or crusing slowly at altitude, I always leave it at 100%. Again, others can probably help you with that more than I can.

As for the Russian planes - heck if I know! i don't fly 'em, unless it's an IL-2. http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

Some planes, such as the He111 and Stuka have manual superchcargers, as well. You'll want to set them to the next stage as you climb above 3000 meters, and you'll see a boost in your manifold pressure gauge. Just remember t oset them to the 1st stage when you decend below 3k.

Hope all this sheds a bit of light on it. http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

06-05-2004, 09:23 AM
For the default key assignments (on your "control key reference") the shift key plus a "trim" key is used to return the trim setting to neutral/default.

Trim settings in game operate like small continuous controller inputs, in the direction shown in their description.
That is - positive elevator trim is like pulling back slightly on the stick. Right rudder trim applies a small amount of right rudder, and right aileron trim applies some rightward roll.
Trim on all three axiis is only available on a few aircraft in the game (P51 is an example). Most have at least elevator trim - which you should get accustomed to using as it will improve your gunnery significantly.

Complex Engine Management requires you to assign keys to several functions (per the ref card they are not defined by default).

Magneto settings - aren't generally necessary.

Mixture - increase and decrease required (not all aircraft have manual mixture - for those that do 120% can give a small power boost at low altitude). If your engine starts to sputter,lose power and produce smoke as you gain altitude (&gt;3500m usually) its time to lean your mixture (one press down to 80% is fine).

Supercharger - increase and decrease required. Again not all types have manual supercharger staging - refer to the aircraft guide document on FB disc 2. Note using a high supercharger gear at low altitude will often result in engine damage.

Engine selection - you'll need this for multi-engine types. Engines are numbered from your left to your right. Define a key for each engine and another one for all - under full CEM you have to start them individually.

Prop Pitch - the most important element of CEM in the game. Some types (all German and late Spits) have auto pitch control - which can be switched to manual (risky if you don't know what you're doing). For others you can mostly get away with leaving it a 100% - though you won't get best performance and some situations - eg long dives - will result in engine damage.
Basically for a given throttle setting you use pitch control to maintain a desired RPM (say 3000rpm for Hurricane II at combat power). High pitch % means the prop is able to turn faster - this can give you better acceleration but lower max speed (this is where the car gear shifting analogy creeps in - high pitch equating to low gear). Max pitch is frequently an inefficient setting and if you dive with this your engine can over-rev and tear itself to pieces. In game settings between 70 and 100% are the usual range for non-auto types - though you may have to go lower in the fore mentioned power dive situation.

Hope that helps



06-05-2004, 11:34 AM
Due to the difficulty in flying the multitudes of aircraft included in the game, you might try focusing on one particular aircraft (or aircraft family). If you choose one, feel free to ask more questions specifically about it, it is almost impossible to explain all the details for All the aircraft in this sim, much simpler to describe the specifics of one aircraft (also much easier to become effective at flying if you focus on one aircraft).

06-06-2004, 04:14 AM
Er, the IL-2? I'm flying a campaign on that now. Great fun seeing those tanks blow up, and the occasional plane too.http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

06-06-2004, 05:38 AM
Er, the IL-2? I'm flying a campaign on that now. Great fun seeing those tanks blow up, and the occasional plane too.http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The IL2 is pretty straight forward - CEM for this one is not much of an extra burden. The plane has manual mixture and prop pitch - neither of which will require heavy adjustment in your normal flight regime (100% mix will be fine up to ~3000m).



06-06-2004, 02:58 PM
Okay, this isn't about trim (which I know nothing about), but spins. You asked how to get out of spins. For a NORMAL spin, what people said (cut throttle, elevators neutral, rudder full opposite of spin) works. FLAT spins (where you're spinning like a frisbee--happens a lot to the P-39 and P-47) actually CAN be recovered nearly every time. Apply elevators and rudder like for a normal spin, but slam throttle back and forth from full throttle to zero and back again. I have no idea whether this works in real life, but in the game it breaks the flat spin like a charm.


06-06-2004, 05:13 PM
Text book recovery from a spin is:

Throttle to idle.
Center alerons.
Pitch down.
Aply opposite rudder.
Once the aircraft is stable, gain airspeed and pull up.

Trim is a small airfoil on the end of your elevator. As you increase airspeed most planes tend to pich up, so you adjust the trim down to level out. If you have a nice joy stick with lots of buttons its a good idea to program your trim controls on your joystick.

Advanced enginge controls alloe players to manually opperate fuel mixture, propeller pitch, turbo charges, and muliple engines. Read the manual and prepare to spend some time practiceing. No one learns this stuff over night. Most players here have real aviation expieriance, or their die hard flight simmers.

If you want some more detailed help, click on my signature, and go to the message boards.


06-06-2004, 05:34 PM
Spin recovery the way I was taught (in real life, but works in FB):

1. Reduce power to idle.
2. Neutralize ailerons.
3. Apply opposite rudder.
4. Shove the yoke "briskly" forward (the only step everyone else seems to be missing.)
5. When the rotation stops, you'll be nose-low and picking up speed like Wile E. Coyote attached to an anvil. So chances are you'll want to recover from this dive before the aircraft reaches maneuvering speed. Ease back on the stick. (Don't JERK it, or you'll stall again--or, worse case scenerio, your wings will collapse and you'll continue to plummet and all your buddies will see of you is a little puff of smoke (like Wile E. Coyote again--beep beep. http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/images/smiley/88.gif) as you hit the ground.

Trim, as others have said, exists to lessen a pilot's work-load and make the plane easier to control in straight and level flight. It's always better to make move the yoke to the desired flightpath and THEN trim out the yoke pressure.

I haven't come up with any good flat-spin recoveries because I tend to enjoy turn and burn dogfights on the deck and don't have TIME to recover! http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/images/smiley/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif

But I'll try EMitton's tactic next time it happens!

The Goat

06-06-2004, 10:47 PM
(in thick Russian accent...)

You just try wrung guy. Must ask rrright guy...or ask Comrade 54th_Babooshka...she know everyting (not being guy).

I think you got your question answered and was just in a goofy mood. http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif


* _54th_Speeder *


[This message was edited by SithSpeeder on Sun June 06 2004 at 10:00 PM.]