20.04.2010, 21:44
Neville Duke was one of aviation history's most respected voices on World War Two fighter matters. He was the RAF's leading fighter pilot of the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. As one of the leading test pilots after World War Two and the author of numerous books on aeroplane issues for decades later, his works remain studied to this day on issues such as we are discussing.
Neville Duke authored a booked named "Test Pilot", if I actually got the title right.
Though it has been years since I read a book of his from front to back, I do remember that he stated amazing work done on frontline aircraft in the field, sometimes under horrible weather conditions. As a matter of fact, bad weather ment more fighters on the ground and more time to work on them. Various field kits were made available to both Allied and Axis ground crews to customize their aircraft for the ever changing combat demands.
For the reasons which I stated in several posts, Neville Duke revealed that his tests on aircraft showed wide variances in the performance of frontline fighters among one another. A difference in the performance traits of frontline fighters was also clear compared to factory aircraft which were unaltered.
Some of the field kits were performance enhancing and others added weight for the sort of hybrid roles that frontline fighters often flew.
Added to this are the unauthorized modifications.
A bunch of categories of these kinds of alterations to frontline fighters with examples are given in several of my previous posts.
These frontline - authorized and unauthorized - modifications changed the flight characteristics to depart from factory new aircraft and test pilot data.
Frontline fighter performance with its variation by type, location, time, damage, weather, wear, field modification, and battle circumstances is impossible to simulate with our current skill and technology in IL-2.
Therefore I continue to support the use of factory and/or test pilot data to evaluate IL-2 flight models. This is for the sake of ingame fairness and the realization of our technical limitations.
All these points were very well expressed by me in several previous posts.
Neville Duke authored a booked named "Test Pilot", if I actually got the title right.
Though it has been years since I read a book of his from front to back, I do remember that he stated amazing work done on frontline aircraft in the field, sometimes under horrible weather conditions. As a matter of fact, bad weather ment more fighters on the ground and more time to work on them. Various field kits were made available to both Allied and Axis ground crews to customize their aircraft for the ever changing combat demands.
For the reasons which I stated in several posts, Neville Duke revealed that his tests on aircraft showed wide variances in the performance of frontline fighters among one another. A difference in the performance traits of frontline fighters was also clear compared to factory aircraft which were unaltered.
Some of the field kits were performance enhancing and others added weight for the sort of hybrid roles that frontline fighters often flew.
Added to this are the unauthorized modifications.
A bunch of categories of these kinds of alterations to frontline fighters with examples are given in several of my previous posts.
These frontline - authorized and unauthorized - modifications changed the flight characteristics to depart from factory new aircraft and test pilot data.
Frontline fighter performance with its variation by type, location, time, damage, weather, wear, field modification, and battle circumstances is impossible to simulate with our current skill and technology in IL-2.
Therefore I continue to support the use of factory and/or test pilot data to evaluate IL-2 flight models. This is for the sake of ingame fairness and the realization of our technical limitations.
All these points were very well expressed by me in several previous posts.