Aeroplane Heaven Spitfire Mark 1A released

[Torsen 495]

30 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Some degree of engine management but no it does not overheat and blow up like the Corsair. No prop strikes, no neg G flooding.

It is not arcade,  quite sophisticated in some areas - but it is not study level either.

Thx... thats what I wanted to hear. So a clear pass then for me. And sadly again my personal opinion regarding AH is met 100% again (and my horror visions of the upcoming dc3 😞 ). But thats only me not happy so have fun with the spitfires and I will stay with the Corsair 😉

Cheers

T.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

I am a little interrogative when I see so many users saying that take off and landing are a piece of cake... In a Spitfire 😏 ?  I am full in learning to tame the Gina which is a handful so I am in no hurry to get another Spit but will read with interest your feedbacks. Knowing AH history, I need to be convinced. Its funny they remind me of Alphasim, making special aircraft I wanted to fly but never going the extra mile.  

About overheating, the FI Sptfire is a Mark 9 less sensitive than the Mark 1, I think,  but early on I blew an engine with this bird.

About the Corsair, which is indeed quite good an aircraft,  better IMHO than the FI Spit', anybody has changed the prop texture to get rid of the stroboscopic effect ? 

[Dominique_K 10,133]

13 hours ago, Chock said:

 

A beautiful screenshot knowing that you were lucky to get the lovely cliffs in one piece. They are a festival of morphing on my sim (like Etretat ! )

[bobcat999 8,444]

8 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A beautiful screenshot knowing that you were lucky to get the lovely cliffs in one piece. They are a festival of morphing on my sim (like Etretat ! )

That is what I though as soon as I saw it.  A beautiful picture, but at the moment it has to be a 'still', or nothing! 

[Paul J 349]

. . . another useful link: . .
https://no457.com/2017/04/09/spitfire-general-handling-notes/

. . .  a note:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AueVg7eVAeXMlELg_kIj1N-eak7t?e=Oo6CjR

. . .  also, thanks to the British Commonwealth Air Training plan and it's (initially British) standardisation of cockpit layouts, almost every military single-engined piston aircraft built since the Tiger Moth, (and including) Chippie, Spit, Auster, Dominie, Anson, Beaufighter (and too many others) - and on into the '50's - had a mixture lever that was the reverse of the now-internationally used "forward = full rich" system. Commonly the lever was held back behind a metal tab fitted to the throttle arm, such that closing the throttle also pulled back the mixture lever.
The above is the result of some modest research of various archives, plus my own personal experience of, or in flying two or three of those aircraft, and was prompted by the Nyxx's second video - the "AH cockpit guide and engine start", wherein at the 13 minute point, the AH narrator/pilot is surprisingly seen and heard, doing it backwards.

Lastly, just a minor note - the Spit Mks I, and at least, through IX, all used a 12 volt DC Generator to supply electrical power. Alternators were not around 'back then' - even for automobiles.

Cheesh!  I didn't mention the "full up-elevator" when starting plus two bods sitting on the stab when doing a mag check . . . . .  😂

Sorry - more digging found the Avialogs Aviation site:

https://www.avialogs.com/aircraft-s/supermarine/item/55947-a-p-1565a-spitfire-i-aeroplane-merlin-ii-engine

It needs a (free) account opened to look up a manufacturer - Supermarine - and there you will find the pilot's notes for several marks of the Spit, including the Mk I. The site allows one to browse each page of the Notes, but pdf downloads need a paid subscription.  Interestingly, I did learn that fine pitch is also fully rearward, and with its' usage dependent upon prop fitted. 

pj

Edited September 17, 2021 by Paul J

[Nyxx 6,993]

7 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I am a little interrogative when I see so many users saying that take off and landing are a piece of cake... In a Spitfire 😏 ?  I am full in learning to tame the Gina which is a handful so I am in no hurry to get another Spit but will read with interest your feedbacks. Knowing AH history, I need to be convinced. Its funny they remind me of Alphasim, making special aircraft I wanted to fly but never going the extra mile.  

About overheating, the FI Sptfire is a Mark 9 less sensitive than the Mark 1, I think,  but early on I blew an engine with this bird.

About the Corsair, which is indeed quite good an aircraft,  better IMHO than the FI Spit', anybody has changed the prop texture to get rid of the stroboscopic effect ? 

It's easier but its still the same dance its just a bit more easier. I agree with the FG but I like this MKI more than the FI, even if the FI is more polished. This Spit has a really good feeling. 

As for the Dove cliffs I went and did that, there seem fine now! Easy to take good shots of them.

One from tonight.

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by Nyxx

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

10 hours ago, Torsen said:

Thx... thats what I wanted to hear. So a clear pass then for me. And sadly again my personal opinion regarding AH is met 100% again (and my horror visions of the upcoming dc3 😞 ). But thats only me not happy so have fun with the spitfires and I will stay with the Corsair 😉

Cheers

T.

It is personal choice.

My experience is where engine damage is modelled you very quickly learn to avoid it (unless it is stupidly overdone) so it only matters for the first few weeks and then is irrelevant - so in a sense for me engine modelling is a gimmick like opening cargo doors that long term is not something I need.  It is not as if real world Spitfire pilots were regularly blowing up engines and doing forced landings.

But yes if it is something you personally think is important as far as I know AH have no intention of modelling engine damage so give it a miss.  By all accounts, they are moving on to the DC3.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[Dominique_K 10,133]

6 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

 

My experience is where engine damage is modelled you very quickly learn to avoid it (unless it is stupidly overdone) so it only matters for the first few weeks and then is irrelevant - so in a sense for me engine modelling is a gimmick

There is a small city in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences. Lovely name, they should open the Simulation Aircraft Hall of Fame.

One of the features of a fine simcraft modeling is to punish you if you, generally speaking, redline anything.

yes you learn to avoid overheating but the sword of Damocles is still above your head. As you avoid to land at too high a speed or turn at stalling speed, should the modeler skip these parameters ? 

[Torsen 495]

8 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

It is personal choice.

My experience is where engine damage is modelled you very quickly learn to avoid it (unless it is stupidly overdone) so it only matters for the first few weeks and then is irrelevant - so in a sense for me engine modelling is a gimmick like opening cargo doors that long term is not something I need.  It is not as if real world Spitfire pilots were regularly blowing up engines and doing forced landings.

But yes if it is something you personally think is important as far as I know AH have no intention of modelling engine damage so give it a miss.  By all accounts, they are moving on to the DC3.

Sure it is Glenn and a very subjective thing. And you are 100% right that is only limiting you until you know your plane and treat it with respect. But if you don't need to take care from the very beginning, will you learn to fly it right? That again is subjective. But in addition as pointed out by some here with deeper knowledge of the Spits AH took some artistic freedom to put a Spitfire together that seems to be mixed up of several versions and with some things that actually should work different. For me its an essential part of the immersion that I can't fire up a Spit Mk1 and then leave it there with the engine running, make myself a tea, come back 10 min later and its still green on temps and happily roaring. 

In the end most of us are armchair pilots and won't never have the chance to get into a real Spit. And if we can attract more to our hobby with a nice to fly Spit all happy. 

Cheers T.

[Chock 17,769]

19 hours ago, Paul J said:

 

It needs a (free) account opened to look up a manufacturer - Supermarine - and there you will find the pilot's notes for several marks of the Spit, including the Mk I. The site allows one to browse each page of the Notes, but pdf downloads need a paid subscription.  Interestingly, I did learn that fine pitch is also fully rearward, and with its' usage dependent upon prop fitted. 

pj

The AH Supermarine Spitfire Mark 1 comes with two PDF manuals - one of those is a new one from AH which details their add-on, the other is a scanned copy of the original Pilot's Notes from the Air Ministry for the Mark 1 which were produced in 1940, so users don't have to worry too much about seeking that one out although as is the case with all of those Pilot's Notes produced around that time, they were actually type-specific and intended to be a supplement to the other more general notes piloting which the Air Ministry also published. 

With regard to engine damage modeling, this was actually a slight minus point with the Spitfire in real life, in that it usually had to take off comparatively quickly after having fired up because it generally needed some high-speed airflow to maintain adequate cooling of the glycol system. Not that the Spitfire is alone in this of course, even modern planes suffer from this on occasion; yesterday in real life I had a fire warning come up on an ATR which I was headsetting out of Stand 16 at EGCC because the tailwind component (7 knots) combined with the pushback speed (probably 6 knots or so) gave it a combined plus 12 knot wind up its tailpipe, which caused the problem. We had to pull it back on stand, let it recover a bit, then the crew dry-motored the engine to get rid of residual fuel and we cranked it up again 15 minutes later (it was fine in the end), so this kind of overheating on the ground malarkey is certainly not limited to 1940s fighter planes.

The heating issue with the Spitfire was exacerbated by a couple of the features of the Spitfire's component layout, notably the fact that the starboard undercarriage leg is in front of the coolant air inlet, which blocks it quite a bit, and the fact that the flaps, when deployed, block the exhaust of heat from the radiator to the rear.

In real life at RAF OTU's in WW2 where Spitfire pilots were trained, students were fined five shillings if they boiled their engines on the Spitfire, and fined a similar amount if they taxied in with their flaps down, which is where that 'no taxying with your flaps down' RAF rule originated, even though it's not a bad idea for other reasons too of course. The fines were shared out between the instructors and the mechanics, so they tended to do well at OTU's for beer money.  Whilst the real Spitfire's Merlin engine could indeed be damaged by such mishandling it on the ground, in a simulator, this would probably just be an annoying feature, like it was annoying having to faff around with that ATR yesterday to get it on its way. I can think of better things to do than sit on a towbar for 15 minutes monitoring the headset and discussing what to do with the crew, whilst waiting for jet fuel to evaporate when I really needed to be getting on with working on another aeroplane. So whilst it can be 'cool to have it', such realism features would probably be a bit like some of those eye candy features which people use once, think: 'nice', and then never use ever again, because if you are flying your Spitfire properly as you should, then this sort of thing should not happen, which means if you are still abusing the thing after a week or so of having it, then you're kind of 'doing it wrong'.

What is more relevant to those who like realism in the long-term, is the way it flies, and this I am happy to say, is very impressive for the most part, although there are one or two things it does not do which the real Spitfire would, for example, if you read the Pilot's Notes for most RAF fighters in the Thirties and Forties, they usually state that 'flick maneuvers are not permitted', which is invariably because flicks tend to stress the airframe a bit and not that such admonishments were likely to stop spirited young men from doing it anyway, so the Spit certainly could do a flick in real life, however, I can't seem to get the AH one to pull one off, but then again that's true of most other MSFS aeroplanes too, to be fair. But in spite of this missing stunt, what the AH Spitfire does do in a hugely impressive manner and without a shadow of a doubt, is fly around convincingly in every other respect, with it being right on the numbers in terms of acceleration, deceleration, clean and dirty config speeds, and so on, and this, if you are a purist, will certainly please you more than the novelty of seeing some steam come out of the cowling vent if you overcook the engine. You can fly a circuit in the AH Spit literally by those included Pilot's Notes and see that it behaves just as the real thing does, even to subtle piloting tricks such as adding a burst of power to ease it down and so on. This is why it is easy to fly it, not because it is simple, but because it is replicating the beautiful handling of the real thing so well.

So it's the flight model which is the strong point of this one, and that after all, is why we want to have a pretend Spitfire in the first place, not so we can break it. Purists will therefore appreciate it for this aspect I am sure. This in no way means that I would not prefer to have my cake and eat it too, but, it's not my priority in comparison to the things it does offer, so if you let the lack of ability to break the thing put you off getting this one, you will be missing out on what is a joyous replication of the real thing. Aeroplane Heaven indeed.

Another caveat though - the paint jobs are not as good as they could be. The code letters for the squadron markings are inaccurate in terms of the font, as is the one used for the serial numbers. This is an easy repainter fix of course, but it's a bit sloppy when there is plenty of contemporary photographic documentation of the real things to assist in creating such things.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Chock

[Nyxx 6,993]

47 minutes ago, Chock said:

what the AH Spitfire does do in a hugely impressive manner and without a shadow of a doubt, is fly around convincingly in every other respect, with it being right on the numbers in terms of acceleration, deceleration, clean and dirty config speeds, and so on, and this, if you are a purist, will certainly please you more than the novelty of seeing some steam come out of the cowling vent if you overcook the engine. You can fly a circuit in the AH Spit literally by those included Pilot's Notes and see that it behaves just as the real thing does, even to subtle piloting tricks such as adding a burst of power to ease it down and so on. This is why it is easy to fly it, not because it is simple, but because it is replicating the beautiful handling of the real thing so well.

So it's the flight model which is the strong point of this one, and that after all, is why we want to have a pretend Spitfire in the first place, not so we can break it. Purists will therefore appreciate it for this aspect I am sure. This in no way means that I would not prefer to have my cake and eat it too, but, it's not my priority in comparison to the things it does offer, so if you let the lack of ability to break the thing put you off getting this one, you will be missing out on what is a joyous replication of the real thing. Aeroplane Heaven indeed.

From my very first flight, I thought this "feels" right but did not have the words to put that over, you have Alan, thank you. 

The more I fly her the more I love the way she handles and like you point out so well, coming into land is a joy. She just feeds you with what she is doing and what you need to ajust. 

Cheers Alan.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Nyxx

[Matchstick 1,886]

Just in case anyone else was waiting Just Flight have added the plane to their store for a very reasonable £21.99 which is a couple of quid cheaper than even buying from Airplane Heaven direct plus you get ~5% back as points to spend on a future purchase.

https://www.justflight.com/product/aeroplane-heaven-supermarine-spitfire-mk1a-msfs

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Any thoughts on the "under development" Mark V?

Is it possibly worth waiting a bit to get the newer airplane?

I bought the Justflight Arrow and then the TurboArrow... never fly the non turbo version anymore.. 😉

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Any thoughts on the "under development" Mark V?

Is it possibly worth waiting a bit to get the newer airplane?

A Mark V, and specifically a Mark Vb, would be the Spitfire variant I would want above all others for the sim, so I'm certainly looking forward to seeing Aeroplane Heaven bang theirs out for MSFS. Of course it won't be the first time they've made a Mark V for a sim, but what it will almost certainly be, is - like the real thing - a souped-up version of their MSFS Mark 1A, and if it is, then it will be truly excellent because their Mark 1A  for MSFS is great.

I am currently working on my channel review of their Mark 1A Spitfire (it got held up because I was ill last week and was also doing my airside and maneuvering area permit exams for Manchester airport), but I also wanted my review to have a fairly interesting 'history bit' with some new and informative stuff in it, rather than what most people do when talking about the Spitfire, which is to trot out the same old nonsense they read off wikipedia about how bloody marvellous the Spitfire was and how it was all down to RJ Mitchell and nobody else.

Anyway, to answer the question, if you like the Spitfire and want one which flies very much like the real thing, then you will certainly like the AH Mark 1A, because it is pretty much bang on the book figures in terms of how it flies, so it is more than a mere lookalike. As I'm sure you know, the Mark V was a strengthened Mark II Spitfire with a Merlin 45 engine, metal ailerons, heated guns, slipper drop tank fittings, a better undercarriage, better canopy, better windscreen armour, and - depending on where it was built - a better constant speed propeller which was either a broad composite wooden-bladed Rotol one or a narrow-bladed metal deHavilland one; the Rotol-equipped ones built at Castle Bromwich being the better of the two versions.

So what this means for us in the sim, is that we'll get a more usable Spitfire in the Mark V in terms of performance and range, but it will still be one of the light ones which retains the agility of the earlier variants and will enjoy the great flight model of the AH Mark 1. So it's up to you really, the AH Mark 1 is fab, but the Mark V will be a little bit more fab, and of course the Mark V was the one which started to wear grey/green camo rather than the green/brown BoB temperate land scheme, so it looks cooler too.

Realistically, the Mark V was only just about able to fight the Fw190A in 1941, and it was the Mark IX, which was basically a re-engined slightly faster Mark V that was able to better the superb Focke-Wulf, but I still prefer the Vb, because it was the variant which the RAF first went on the offensive with after the Battle of Britain, strafing up the Wehrmacht in occupied France and letting the N@zis know that our grandads who flew those things were the ones their momma warned them about, and that they'd definitely picked a fight with the wrong country when they picked on Poland and brought us into the war against them.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Chock

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

2 hours ago, Chock said:

So it's up to you really, the AH Mark 1 is fab, but the Mark V will be a little bit more fab, and of course the Mark V was the one which started to wear grey/green camo rather than the green/brown BoB temperate land scheme, so it looks cooler too.

Thank you, this means I will happily wait for the Mark V.. 🙂