In message ,
writes
Whilst on the subject, I am having a debate on the subject of whether planes
like the BF109 and FW190 were really as unstable and prone to stalls and
spins at the drop of a hat as modelled in the PC sim IL2 Sturmovik,
Forgotten Battles. I am taking a Kramer view (but more politely because
they're my friends) and saying that the air war would never have been won if
planes of that era could barely fly.

A humble Cessna can be a spinning, stalling brute in MS Flight Sim (in
my distant experience of trying to fling one around). Flying a similar
light, novice-friendly aircraft, it was extraordinarily forgiving...
provided you felt it through your seat and hands and middle ear, and
were much more gentle with the controls in reality than you were in the
game.

I'd hazard that the aircraft in Il-2 were a lot easier to fly when the
feedback of "get the stick out of that corner, you idiot" came from the
effort of hauling it there and holding it, and your _feeling_ the
airspeed bleed off... but that trying to model them in a computer game
played through a monitor and joystick means a lot of the crucial cues
are lost, and so the nasty characteristics are much easier to experience
because the warnings are missing.


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk