Hello Everybody,

 

We'd like to tell you about our plans in the medium term regarding the Fw-190. We'll begin working on the Fw-190 A-5 relatively soon, at the end of winter, and when we do that we’ll have a chance to also correct the existing Fw-190 A-3 flight model, taking all the data we have recently acquired into account. 

 

The aircraft we recreate in our sim flew more than 70 years ago and this is a long time. Aviation historians have written many books on this aircraft in general. However, many original documents were either lost or there is no way to access them in government archives where they are kept. That's why such documents are interesting for us and sometimes are found only after the work on a plane in question is already finished. Such documents are needed to correct flight model after release and sometimes when we use data from those documents they introduce significant changes.

 

When we were working on Fw-190 A-3 we didn't have data that could allow us to pinpoint its stall speed and maximum lift coefficient, two directly linked values. We didn't have its wind tunnel data and the maximum lift coefficient calculated from the wing profile somewhat differs from its value on the real aircraft. Also, its stall speed wasn't clearly given in the reports we had. For example, the flight manual mentioned the landing speed with flaps and a rough estimate of its landing speed increase without flaps, but these values can give only an approximate stall speed. The stall speed was mentioned in the British report on captured aircraft flight tests - but the mass of the aircraft, an important parameter for calculating the maximum lift coefficient using the stall speed, was omitted from that report. 

 

Last year some new data appeared on the Internet - excerpts from the Fw-190 Chalai-Meudon wind tunnel data report. We used this data directly and reduced the maximum lift coefficient to 1.17 as it was given in this report. This turned out to be a mistake as some people on our forums suggested. The mistake was verified by the full report, kindly submitted by the community member II/JG17_ SchwarzeDreizehn. The summary graphs of this report did not take into account the flow disturbances and the relatively low flow speed in the tunnel, which lowered the maximum lift coefficient results.

 

At the moment, we continue to analyze the data we have in hand. Our estimate of the Fw-190 maximum lift coefficient is now 1.3-1.4. Increasing the maximum lift coefficient will also increase the maximum angle of attack. Pitch range of the flight stick till stall will be widened, making the aircraft easier to handle.

 

The Fw-190 had an unusual wing warp as proven by documents which were found thanks to the community’s help, however, these documents have slight discrepancies. Changing this warp will result in different stall behavior, it's likely to become 'softer', but only after flying the corrected plane in the game can this be tested.

 

The main performance characteristics - speed and climb rate - should remain the same.

 

We would like to thank all the people who helped us in the search for additional documents. II/JG17_SchwarzeDreizehn, JtD, II/JG11ATLAN, JG13_opcode and all others who kept the discussion polite and constructive - it's a pleasure to communicate with you and recreate the aviation history in our sim together!