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Hi,

being new to BOBII and just having managed to finally get this sim going properly i have a possibly rather naive question:

at the moment i am just flying with the quick missions and getting accustomed... i have a long flightsim experience though, startin with EAW and then about ten years Il2...
Now here comes what astonishes me: When i fly the easy target mission and take a Spit its just easy to get behind a BF.. the Spit can easily close in on the BF... but when i reverse the scenario and take a BF and try to fly after the Spit i can not get any closer to it and not at all in good shooting range.. despite maneuvring a lot the Spit seems to be much faster and i cant get at it...
i tried with manual prop pitch and with automatic prop pitch with the same result... its frustrating... and shouldnt the BF be slightly faster then the Spit ? It says so in the manual, every book about it which i read and is the case in all other flightsims i know.. (Il2, CloD, EAW, Janes xy )... so why is that so ?

Any setting or thing i overlooked ?

I am using no extrapower (engine) by the way....(as this makes ridiculous flight maneuvres possible, like hanging on the prop completely vertical and still going up with 70 mph with the Spit)...

Is the Spit in BOBII overmodelled ???

This is where you need Stalkervision to pop in he used to fly the 109 most of the time.See if you can find his name
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24938&hilit=stalkervision
I've sent him a PM for you

I always used the automatic settings on the engine.

I also gave the 109 speed just " a tweak " because as you I found it is a tad under-modeled strangely.

That always worked pretty well for me.


The 109 e btw should be superior IRL to the spit in vertical maneuvers because it has a higher hp to weight ratio and much better acceleration I believe.

Here is a great site to check the me-109 details if you can find all the english translations in it.

http://www.kurfurst.org/

you may be interested in this page especially.

http://www.kurfurst.org/Tactical_trials/109E_vergleich110SpitHurCurtiss/109E_vergleichsflg_Aug1940.html

What I have found is the Spit and hurricane are far overmodeled is ROLL to the 109 e.

Most of the auto-prop pitch on BF were changed before the battle but I'm not sure of this.

BTW I have managed to get my old gaming computer working and hope in a fair while to get to shooting down those pesky British nats once again.

ahh thx Stalkervision.. thats what i thought... the 109 in BOBII is undermodelled...
in fact i was flying Bf109 in Il2 and EAW about 80 % of the time in the last 12 years.. so i was kind of shocked when yesterday i could even barely catch a Hurricane, not to mention the Spit..
and i am not speaking of fancy flightmaneuvres or how to fight with the 109, i was speaking about plain SPEED... the other thread about how to fight with a 109 is interesting and profound, but it doesnt adress the problem of lack of speed (power?) in the 109 modelling...

actually i think i should measure and compare BOB plane speeds to real life data and to other sims and post it here.. maybe i ll do in the next weeks... because as it is now with the stock 2.11 version the relative speeds of the planes (relative to each other) are definitively WRONG ! Sorry for shouting.. but this sim is kind of torturing me a bit... setting it up now for four or five days now and always finding a new problem or hard edge... its a great piece of software in one way, but very frustrating in other ways i think...
how can the speeds be so mismatched after such a long time of tweaking and improving ? I mean its totally obvious when you start playing the game and try out plane performance...

How can i give the 109 an extra speed tweak and which value do you choose Stalkervision ?

thx for advice...

Hi _Zant,

I don't know how good my memory still is but I seem to remember the Mk 1 Spitfire was capable of 370 mph in level flight, the 109 was 365 mph and the hurricane was 345 mph. That's given a chance for everybody to jump on me.

We have the members of the BDG to thank for all the improvements, who are an unpaid bunch of lads who give their free time. As you no doubt know. Most publishers want the program out the door, as early as possible so that they can recover their money which means the poor punter (us) has to suffer. As far as the flight models are concerned we have stickman, Stalkervision, Ken and Buddye to thank for all the hard work they have put in to date.

I always feel it's very dangerous to compare one flight simulator against another. EAW I played for a long time. IL2, I'm afraid didn't last six months. Now to hide from the flak!

The tweaking and improving I'm afraid, is a never ending job and is usually done once reliable data is obtained.

_________________
Prem.

Asus P6T Deluxe V2, Intel I7 960 3.2Gig, 6Gig Mem 1866 DDR3, Sapphire ATI 5870 Vapor-X OC 1Gig, 1000W PSU, Win 7 64bit, TrackIR3 Vector Exp & Track clip pro, Hotas Cougar with Uber NXT2 Mod & Simped F16 rudder pedals.

I can't even remember now pal. I believe I clicked in the basic set up screens 'added hp" but if you don't like this setting you may be able to tweak it in the BDG files.

I also tweaked the roll rate in BDG which drove me much much crazier then it's speed !

Galland and other Luftwaffe pilots always claimed the 109 E was 10 to 15 mph faster then the Spit and I have no reason to doubt them.

You want to know the ABSOLUTE BEST book on the me-109 ?

It's Me-109 by Martin Caldin

You can get it on-line but get the paperback addition some where.

Mine is totally dog eared from consulting it so much it's that good.

check out my screenshots in the screenshot pages pal.

it will give you hope !

BTW I wouldn't go by what other sims have for it. As Prim's says it isn't a good idea.

I do believe the 10 to 15 mph faster figure is correct.

and If you don't like that model it for Galland's later Battle of Britain hot rodded version...the me-109 e/ N !

many of these versions did serve in BOB

here you go..

http://www.kurfurst.org/Engine/DB60x/DB601_datasheets_N.html

Dear 'Zent,
I am not one of the technical experts around here. In BoBII terms I am still a relative newbie myself (6 months). But I will offer some advice from my own experience. With regard to your disappointment about the perceived poor performance of the 109 versus the spitfire, have you tried changing the skill levels assigned to planes? These are fully adjustable in a drop-down on the right after you click on Luftwaffe or RAF on the IA menu screen, options being NOVICE, POOR, REGULAR, VETERAN, ACE and HERO, and it makes a big difference in the flying performance of the enemy and your own side. This is possible for all the combat missions and all the planes that fly in them. Just check the various settings before you fly each mission. Try boosting the other 109s' skill levels to get them up to your standard, and adjusting the spits' or hurricanes' skill till the balance seems right to you. Eventually you should find what suits your taste.
As an experiment, fly the spitfire again in the "turkey shoot" mission with the 109's skill set on "hero". For the first several seconds it will fly straight and passive to allow you to close and have a shot, as that always happens in this mission whatever the plane is, but once it decides to veer away all bets are off, and you should find it quite a different experience.
Post how you get on. Good luck!

According to the test data from the factories, and various official establishments, the BoB vintage Spitfire I/II actually had a small level speed advantage over the Bf-109E.

See http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit1vrs109e.html for a longish account, with references to sources of information.

Even

Believe me that site was made by a 109 hater. LOTS of discussions at the ubi-zoo about that site being that way over the years.

I NEVER heard of a german pilot complaining he couldn't catch up to a spit as OUR pilot here did. Have you?

even if one believes this site there is this..

Aircraft performance in combat quite frankly isn't what it is fresh out of the factory.

Engines are run max speed from the get go in combat and are used till their performance is so noticeably bad they are replaced with reworked engines that may or may not be as good as a brand new one..

That is why I go with what galland said.

Here is a real nice performance overview of the 109 that seeks to get rid of the myths of the aircraft.

Enjoy

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/articles/109myths/

" Me 109 E:
"In personally facing the RAF in the air over the Dunkirk encirclement, I found that the Bf 109 E was faster, possessed a higher rate of climb, but was somewhat less manouverable than the RAF fighters."
- Herbert Kaiser, German fighter ace. 68 victories. Source:The Great Book of WW2 Airplanes, page 470.

Me 109 E:
"When put into a full throttle climb at low air speeds, the airplane climbed at a very steep angle, and our fighters used to have difficulty in keeping their sights on the enemy even when at such a height that their rates of climb were comparible. This steep climb at low air speed was one of the standard evasion maneuvres used by the German pilots."
- RAF Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Farnborough handling trials,Bf.109E Wn: 1304. M.B. Morgan and R. Smelt of the RAE, 1944.

Me 109 E-4:
"I took a performance climb at 1,15 ATA and 2300 RPM (30 minute limit). A climb speed of 250 kph gave an average rate of climb of 2145 ft/min. Bearing in mind the maximum boost limit of 1,35 ATA the "all out" climb must be impressive."
- Charlie Brown, RAF Flying Instructor, test flight of restored Me 109 E-4 WN 3579. Source: Warbirds Journal issue 50. "


I personally used the 109's outstanding CLIMB to leave spits in the dust. If a spit comes after you this is what one should always do.

Head on let the spit pass (don't reverse yet) speed to max and go into a shallow high speed CLIMB and as you get separation gradually increase the climb angle.

The spit will reverse and come chasing you and end up FAR below and behind you.

Then level out.. speed up and reverse and then go looking for that spit FAR BELOW YOU who will have ZIP for airspeed and "e' now.

Z and B him to your hearts contents and then climb away once again to recover e..

If he is behind you turn into him to get rid of his extra "e" and then speed away and do the same thing.

OK guys, nice to see there is life to this place !

To Stalkervision: Thx a lot for the interesting comments.. the book of Martin Caidin i own for many years...its great, lacks performance charts though...

To Prem: I am of course glad for the work of BDG ! If i ask a question about FM not to be overly critical, but just because i was a bit astonished to see such a difference in how Spit vs. 109 feels in BOB as compared to other Sims... anyway, i think history is always a matter of interpretation, purely objective truth can not be found if things are past...

To Shadowshooter: i think the experience setting should not have much to do with the acheivable top speed of planes... this are two different things.... its different for combat situations though where a good pilot may be able to obtain/retain more energy in maneuvring then a bad one.. but i am asking about speed and plane performance...

To all: I did some quick researches and tests... here my findings:

I did sealevel speed tests only. Speed tests on a given height are difficult to do without a level autopilot... so i flew just over water, keeping the horizon in the gunsight and plane as stable as possible, planes were not trimmed.. so a trimmed out plane might give slightly better performance..

In BOB the BF 109 E4 has on sealevel 462 km/h
with extra hp (BOB option)
it has on sealevel 541 km/h

The Spit 1A has on sealevel 460 km/h (286 mph)
with extra hp it has on sealevel 474,8 km/h (295 mph)

according to other sources:

http://www.spitfireperformance.com Spit has 455 km/h (283 mph) sealevel
109 has 484 km/h (301 mph) "

AAA Accusim: 109 E4 has 466 km/h (290 mph) sealevel


With other words: it seems the Bf 109 in BOBII without extra boost is an interpretation of the true 109 wich puts it on the rather low end of the spectrum of possible top speed interpretations..
with fewer words: they (whoever) choose the BOBII 109 to be a bit on the weak side...

and the Spit very slightly on the stronger side of possible interpretations..

in effect in BOB they should be almost equally fast... flying level they are...
but the mystery remains why i can easily i mean EASILY get a 109 when i fly a Spit... with GET i mean catch up to it..
and find it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to catch up if i fly a 109...and still very tedious and long even catching up to a Hurri...

it might be a question of the modelled drag which makes the 109 loose E massively... actually the BDG people should know...
pilot voices of flying the real planes seem contradicting: depending on source some say the Spit could climb and was fast as the 109 or even better... but the majority claims the E4 could climb considerably better and had a slight but definite speed advantage in most heights... as all those are subjective its hard to tell what might be true, but i wonder how an evasive spiral climb could have become a standard maneuvre of the Luftwaffe if the 109 did not have a climb advantage...

and the extra HP option on the other hand ridiculously boosts the 109 so that relations get VERY unrealistic....i feel tempted using it, but it would be kind of a shame to win with an artificially boosted Überplane...
extra boost in the Spit makes impossible flight maneuvres possible like hanging vertically on the prop and still climb...well, its not needed for the Spit, as its slightly optimistically modelled anyway

it would be wonderfull to be able to handchange the amount of extra boost ! There must be a parameter somewhere !

OK, over and out and thx for the interest...

an update,

i forgot to test in BOBII with the throttle gate deactivated. So the former values were 90 % power values...

with 100 % power we get this:

Bf109 E4 : 477 km/h (296,4 mph) on sealevel (this is rather an optimistic value and spot on with the better sources it seems)

Spitfire1A: 484 km/h (301 mph) on sealevel (this is an even more optimistic value and seems to be taken directly from http://www.spitfireperformance.com

i dont know whether i can believe that the Spit was actually faster then the BF on sealevel....

in comparison values for the E4 from Il2 (Ultrapack3)

E4 - 460 km/h (all sealevel)
E4B - 450
E4N - 470

Spit IIa from 1940: 480 km/h !!

So Il2 seems to come to rather similar values and makes the E4 even slower...

Maybe i start believing after all that the Spit were a bit faster (which also explains that you cant get them in normal pursuit).....
I still doubt that this was historically indeed the case, but i have to bend the knee now and say: BDG, your FM under close examination is better then i thought initially...in the end its a question which sources you believe in...

Maximum speed is also a function of altitude, and varies by plane.
Also, prop pitch is a factor, though in most cases for level flight
you should get best performance at full coarse.

The BoB2 manual includes a section on performance that dates
back to the Rowan original, which cites the spit as having a Vmax of
346mph while the 109's is 348.

Our flight model guru is Blue Six, and if you search his posts, you should
find a lot of detailed discussion on choices made for spit and 109 performance.
He did a lot of stuff early on ('06ish) but has taken several runs at it. Note
that the forum search engine has a dead spot for pretty much all of 2008
and late '07 for some reason, and that was a very active year for us. Thus '08
threads have to be paged through manually. I know that somewhere there were
a lot of performance graphs posted at one time.

Mr. Zent,
I offer you this quote (an old favorite) which you might possibly find of interest. It is a first hand account by a German pilot of the pursuit of a Spitfire by 3 Emils at very low altitude (treetop) and how they failed to catch it. (15th August 1940)

Three pilots of the 7th Staffel—Lt. Gerhard Mueller-Duehe, Lt. Walter Blume, and
myself—were returning from a mission over southern England. As we neared the French
coast, we saw ahead of us a single fighter, and assumed it was one of ours. Shortly before
we reached it, it turned, and we recognized it as a Spitfire.
Because we were all short on fuel and ammunition, we cut across his path, hoping to shoot
him down or force him to land on French soil. The fight became a low-level chase around
trees and hedges, in sharp turns. His Spitfire counter-attacked; its pilot was an excellent
flier. Due to lack of fuel and ammunition, first I and then Lt. Blume had to give up the
pursuit; Lt. Mueller-Duehe was the last to quit. The Spitfire was at that time headed
toward England. When the last Bf 109 turned homeward, the Spitfire turned about and
prepared for a landing on the French beach at Wissant. Lt. Mueller-Duehe saw this, and
thought the pilot must have suffered a severe wound. After landing on our field at Caffiers,
M-D jumped into a staff car, and shortly thereafter reached the Spitfire and its pilot.
German Army personnel stood guard and had taken the pilot prisoner. He was very
confused and unhappy, which was certainly understandable. M-D shook his hand and
asked him why he had landed on the wrong side of the Channel. The British pilot confessed
that he had lost his orientation completely and had thought he was landing on the English
coast. (Jupp Buerschgens, quoted in JG 26 - Top Guns of the Luftwaffe by Donald L. Caldwell)

Yes, I realize the spit did a few sharp turns, as one would expect. And they were low on fuel (as was the spit, or he wouldn't have landed on the beach). But if they had a speed advantage at low altitude couldn't the 3 of them have dealt with one little Spitfire?

Lovely tales to read but when dealing with performance you need a solid hard testing regime.