I’ve been playing Warbirds II (offline - I’m scared to go online - wuss), which is a Second World War combat flight sim. I’ve got two questions - one general and one specific:
Question 1: When I roll the aircraft, I move the joystick and the aircraft rolls (to the left, say). If I hold the stick in that position, I keep rolling round and round. The further I move the stick the left, the faster I spin. When I recenter the joystick, the roll stops. An equivalent thing happens with the elevator (although gravity has an effect, obviously). However, when I use the rudder to steer, the plane seems to move to the left (say), but only for a second. If I move the rudder all the way to the left, my plane jerks to the left, but then seems to go pretty straight. When I recenter, the plane jerks to the right. Why can’t I use the rudder to go round and round in a circle? If it makes a difference, I’m normally flying fighter aircraft. I’ve only noticed this phenomenon in this flight sim, but I’ve only recently got a joystick with rudder control. I’m assuming that it’s a fairly accurate representation of actually flying these planes.
Question 2: When flying the Hurricane Mark I and Spitfire Mark I, I’ve found that the engine cuts out if I push the stick forward, even just a little bit. At first I thought it was a problem with my joystick, but it seems only to happen with these two planes. Is this a quirk of the sim, or did these planes do that (for oil pressure reasons, maybe)?
Obviously this is all from a flight sim, not real life, but I can’t see why the makers would put things in it that were so different from reality.
Thanks for your help!
Aeroplane controls work like this: the ailerons control which direction the kite is going and the rudder controls which way the plane is pointing. When you apply rudder to a boat, the keel bites the water hard enough to prevent sideslip. There isn’t much of an analogous effect in the air. So left rudder by itself will only cause you to swivel leftwards - the plane carries on its own sweet way. Stop applying rudder, and the fin itself corrects the situation so that the plane once again points the way it is going.
Strongly dihedralled wings will automatically bank under the influence of rudder, which is why trainer-type model aircraft are typically built with only elevator and rudder controls. But a wing of this type will always try to bring your plane right side up, which is not what you want in a fighter. You want a plane that will respond to any ridiculous aerobatic demands you place on it, not fight you and try to put you belly downwards.
Spits and Hurries cut out under negative G because the engines had carburettors. A carb is a gravity-sensitive device. Without gravity, you get no fuel going into the engine, so it cuts out.
So props to the software manufacturer for building in this level of realism… and to me for finding a suitable subject for my 2000th post!
Yes indeed, thanks very much!
I guess then that later models of the planes had some kind of system to prevent the -ve G’s being a problem. When I get home, I’m going to try flying them upside down to see if it cuts out then too…
Someone invented a G-neutral carburettor. I forget who, but legend has it that the prototype featured a contraceptive cap as an integral part. And planes with fuel injection were equally happy any way up. A sudden nose-over was one way for an Me109 to get away from a Spitfire; the Spit’s engine cut if the pilot duplicated the manouevre.
Strictly speaking you ought to find you need ailerons and rudder together to get a properly balanced turn - there should be a sideslip indicator on your control panel. If you have a stick with no rudder function, chances are the program auto-compensates for you. In Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, which I’m still getting mileage out of, auto-rudder is selectable for.
I would suggest that you use the auto rudder function on your flight sim (unless you desperately want to be able to use the rudder to point your guns at the enemy.) You may feel that it is more “realistic” having to use the rudder yourself, but because using the rudder in a real aeroplane is very instinctive and relies on you feeling what the aeroplane is doing, you don’t really have to think about it much. This doesn’t translate well to a PC flight sim.
Instead of doing a “push over” in the early model spit you can do a half roll and pull, that’ll keep your engine running but takes too much time if you are chasing someone, best to use a later model spitfire if available.
Even the later models did not have any kind of inverted oil system (I think) so if you want to be realistic you should try to keep negative g manouevres to a minimum to avoid damaging the engine (though the sim probably wouldn’t model a loss of oil pressure.) Of course, in the middle of a dog fight, the niceties of engine handling can get chucked out the window if necessary :).
1920’s SDR - you’re right, it is a bit hard to use the rudder correctly using only the screen as a guide, but from time to time I do manage to get an enemy plane by rudder corrections so it’s worthwhile. 
They in fact have 4 Spitfires to choose from, and normally I go with the latest. However, I do like the earlier one because instead of having cannon, it has rows of machine guns - and it’s quite entertaining to see that in that short burst you’ve fired enough bullets to hit the enemy 120 times (and that that was only just enough to shoot him down).
The sim does take oil pressure into account, and according to the manual flying inverted for any length of time will cause the engine to overheat and jam up. I’ve never seen this happen, but then flying upside down for a length of time is not necessarily the best way to survive in a dogfight!