Eye level (seat) height in the Military version

[Jacques]

I seem to have some trouble telling when I am in a gradual climb or descent using only visual clues. What is the proper seat height for a pilot in the Mustang?
Were they able to see any of the cowling in front, or were they seated lower than that?
Currently, I have myself seated so they top of the glare-shield is roughly on the horizon.
Anybody have any suggestions or accurate criteria?

[FlipS]

Would you use the optical gunsight, then the center of the circle should be right in front of you. After leveling off, you must see the center only few above the horizon, depending on the height you are flying.

[Nick - A2A]

Hello Jacques - you may find this previous thread helpful. Similar issues with the cockpit ergonomics and how they transfer to a PC monitor were discussed.

Cheers,
Nick

[CodyValkyrie]

As with others, I tend to align my height based upon the optical sight. Having a TrackIR helps tremendously with situational awareness, but I understand that many people cannot afford this or do not wish to add it to their sim setup. An alternative is to increase your FOV (field of view), either by adding monitors, reducing zoom, or a combination of both. This will help you gauge the horizon while flying, which is especially troublesome sometimes in these old warbirds. This problem, for me, is most apparent during the touchdown phase of landing where your view is the most restricted. Many real world pilots used, and continue to use, a curved approach when landing to keep as much view of the runway as possible before touchdown. To be frank, forward visibility on fighter planes of that era often sucked. The Corsair is a notorious example, as it departed in many ways from the typical Grumman style with the cockpit placed high and the nose being stubby, giving a much better view. Upon introduction to the Navy, Corsairs spent a lot of time not operating from carriers due to the poor visibility, although it was negated, to some extent, at a later point with changes in procedures.

[Jacques]

Hi Flips, Nick and Cody
I'm just getting ready to try out your suggestions- I have the optical sight activated, which I hadn't before.
I'm going to experiment with putting myself closer to the panel. Before I had opted to zoom out to get a better overall feel for the where I was in relation to...I guess everything, the P-51 being a new experierience for me.
Cody, with this aircraft I have, for the first time, started making those sweeping turn approaches. For some reason I found this very hard to do in the P-47. I feel really comfortable executing them now, probably because I spent 8 of my 19 hours so far completing touch and go's.
Each A2A aircraft I buy challenges me in a new and different way. And once I've mastered that, the knowledge gravitates back to all those I've been flying previously, and then I'm much more proficient at flying those earlier aircraft, as well. Thankfully, we're always learning!

Today's lesson (so far): was a crash at the end of the field and still not sure why! Anyway, thank you all for your advice!

[Alan_A]

If you were flying along happily and then crashed (as opposed to doing something to contribute), could be a scenery design issue. Scenery designers aren't always careful about where they put bounding boxes, which means that you can be taxiing or flying near the airport and crash into something that isn't visible, but that the sim recognizes as a solid object. That's the reason I keep crash detection off at all times.

If on the other hand it's a flying issue... well, we've all been there...

[Jacques]

Naw Alan,

Simply a case of me trying to sort my sight picture out front, especially when using Track IR. Which visual cues people use in the cockpit to tell when they are straight and level in the P-51.
I also agree with your point about carelessly placed boundary boxes, so my crash detection is also always set to "off"!