Yak 7b 36 max altitude

[R33GZ]

Hi all, I was flying around one of the new 'thunder' clouds the other day and thought I'd see if I could fly over it. 

 

I slowly circled the massive beast until I was cloud surfing the top at about 7.5k. My poor ol Yak7b was trimmed about 10 degrees nose up and wallowing around at about 210kph, rads closed And throttle and pitch at about 90 percent... But she was holding that alt.

 

Made me wonder what it's max alt is. Wikipedia has the yak 7a max alt as a whopping 9.5k - there is no way I could have achieve that... Anyone else tried it's maximums? Possibly in a full power overheat climb I could have hit 8.5.... Maybe.

 

Just curious ?

Edited January 17, 2022 by R33GZ

[BlitzPig_EL]

Did you lean your mixture out and engage the second supercharger gear?

[R33GZ]

Oh yeah... Mixture was so low the engine was close to stalling lol and yes, supercharger at 2k. I think the mixture was about 20 percent, but I could be wrong... I do remember the engine sounding like it was struggling ?

[R33GZ]

I just thought of something. I took off with 100 percent fuel, had 1 medium length dogfight and then began the conservative climb... At a guess, I probably still had at least 85 percent fuel. I guess that extra weight would have affected my climb at its extremities? 

[69th_Mobile_BBQ]

I haven't tried it, but probably will now that you brought it up.    The only things I can think of to suggest is adding more mix and not really being all that worried about the exhaust blowing a bit grey.  At that altitude, it's probably unavoidable if you want any sort of "normal" power level from the engine.  I'd also say try bringing the pitch trimmer setting more towards 0% or a little more nose-down and seeing if you can still get the speed up into a hands-free (stick centered or light backpressure) climb. After all, increased speed is increased lift and the thinner the air, the faster you'll need to go to continue going up.

[reve_etrange]

I found it was pretty hard to stay above "9700m". I suppose the HUD is the correct altitude? It's about 700m lower if I start at a similar altitude. Unfortunately I didn't have the instrument panel on when I took the screenshot (and had started on runway). I took off with 50% fuel and no ammo, from Stalingrad in winter, and climbed around 250kph most of the time.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by reve_etrange

[CountZero]

Yaks should be bad up high but Yak-7 is especialy bad, out of all yaks its worst , even Yak-1 performes better then it up high.

[69th_Mobile_BBQ]

 

10km is the best I could hold steady for roughly 60 seconds.  The dashboard dial is ASL the tech readout is AGL. I was above the Kuban Autumn map mountains hence, the discrepancy.

 

 

With a slight descent from 10km and careful pitch trimming, I was able to be mostly hands-free at 9.7km at a speed of roughly 300kph.  (Again, still over the mountains so the tech readout is different than the in-plane altimeter.)  

 

The thing I find interesting is that the techno-chat reported low pressure in the oxygen system on the way up to 9.8km.  I do believe the plane can go higher, but the oxygen system might not be able to handle it!  Also, I'm pretty sure the Yak7 that was tested and rated at 10.66km (according to the in-game specs) most likely did not have any guns mounted on the plane.  I emptied the ammo, but obviously could not unmount the guns themselves. I did this from Tuapse airfield, 100% fuel on runway, Kuban autumn map and used a headwind assist. I didn't really see any (power gain/loss) benefit to using less than 50% mixture above 5km.  I was down to fumes by the time I got to 10km and ran out of fuel about 10 minutes later. 

 

Maybe with more practice, I can get up there and back to ground with the motor still running.

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by 69th_Mobile_BBQ

[K3FKefuddle]

In reality latitude and time of year will probably determine your max alt. In the context of IL2, I'm thinking Summer, Kuban and the troposphere could go all the way to 45,000'+. Moscow, Winter and it could be as low as 15,000'. If IL2 models atmospherics...