Mixture Control Bug for AI Planes

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I hadn't played IL2 BoX for a while so after firing it up again, I noticed the AI planes seem to be running their engines with over-rich mixtures (seen as dark exhaust smoke trails). I don't remember this issue with earlier versions of the code but I could be wrong.

[LukeFF]

Not a bug.

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Do you mean running over-rich mixtures is intended?

[unreasonable]

You need to read one of the recent DDs - I cannot remember which one.  Planes will now show exhaust trails when their mixture is too rich; yours as the player as well as the AI's.  As the German planes mostly had auto mixture control you will most often see this when they are using full power or close to it.  The visible exhausts fit the RL video evidence and contemporary pilot accounts very well, so do not worry about it.

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Thank you for your reply.

 

I wasn't able to find the DD you mentioned. But there was a discussion about this topic elsewhere on the forum in which it was mentioned the black smoke was due to the poor quality of the synthetic fuel (rather than an over-rich mixture as such) used by the Luftwaffe. So I understand the reason for the German aircraft emitting black exhaust smoke.

 

Oddly, the La-5FN (auto mixture control) also emits a similar darkish exhaust; yet the Yak-1b (manual mixture control) does not unless you use an over-rich mixture at altitude. This seems to suggest the over-rich mixture reason assuming the VVS had better quality fuel. But AMCs are designed to set the correct stoichiometric ratio for a given density (varies due to temp and pressure altitude). If you're interested in how they work, you can check this link. http://www.flight-mechanic.com/automatic-mixture-control-amc

 

My aircraft (Yak-50) also has a Soviet M14P engine. This radial has both an AMC and a supercharger. It doesn't emit darkish exhaust (ie over-rich mixture) at any throttle setting including 100% rpm and maximum manifold pressure. I'd be getting my LAME to adjust the AMC to stop it!

 

[unreasonable]

It was added in DD 204 although no detail is given.  Sometimes the devs explain what they are up to in the Russian forum, but I do not know if that is true in this case. 

 

If you think there is something specifically wrong you could document what it is and post a bug report; I am certainly not qualified to judge the details of this!   New features do get implemented incorrectly sometimes (cough! Spitfire cooling! cough!)  and sometimes get adjusted from community feedback. No guarantees of course.