Love the old birds

    Yes I am talking about airplanes :)

    I have been reading a book called The Last Flight of the Daisy Mae and it is about a B24 crew experience in WWII. Naturally I look for one in my flight sims and I fire up my FSX sim (sorry it is not in AFS4) and take off in it over my hometown. I cannot believe how sluggish this plane feels to fly. Compared to to some of our current line up in AFS4 I had to really concentrate and watch my controls constantly to maintain altitude and speed. No aerobatics for me in this one. Anyone ever flown in one or seen one at an airshow? I think the real life pilots must have had very strong arms.

    I read that the supposedly advanced high lift quasi-laminar flow 'Davis Airfoil' was a total dog. It tried too hard and the airflow over the wing was sort of 'abused'. The plane was flying far too close to a stall, the inherent stability was poor and the B-24s had to fly in looser defensive formations because of the resulting collision risk and the plane went out of control if it carried even a small amount of ice and it broke up much more easily in a crash than the B-17. It was a bit faster, could carry more than and could fly higher than a B-17 so the USAAF liked it even though the crews did not.

    The engines were only 1,200 hp so it was sluggish at low and medium altitudes but having turbos it had excellent performance at for the day very high altitudes, well above 20,000 feet.