Fw 190 A-5 cowls opening/closing

[=LD=Bulldog*]

S!

 

Am getting used to the Fw 190 A-5, which I now adore and would like to know more. With the outer cowls, do you have them fully open when in flight? When do you close them? I assume in a dive to get away from an enemy... 

 

How does the A-5 compare to the A-8? I assume that the latter is heavier.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

S!

 

Bulldog

[ITAF_Airone1989]

You will have to open it just during really hot summer days, or when you use the boost for a long time.

Most of the time the temperature don't go over 80°, so no reason to open it.

 

Yes, A8 is heavier and have different bomb load

[=LD=Bulldog*]

Thank you and very much appreciated.

 

Now have a stopwatch for the 10-minute boost, which helps.

 

S!

 

Bulldog

[easterling77]

I'm currently flying an A5 career on the Kuban with 29-30°C most daytime at the moment.

I there usually use 15% even on combat power and this fits for enough fighting time....you wont need much of them.

[percydanvers]

The A-8 is the last Anton and I liken it to a sledgehammer. Truly overwhelming firepower, but it's heavy and unwieldy. Great for killing bombers. Decent against fighters in the hands of a true master, but for fighter combat you mostly want the A-6 or D-9.

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

It would be awesome to fly the early versions of the Anton when it was introduced and almost unstoppable. 

 

You know, the story everyone read about the first Spits meeting radial engine german fighters. Late 41 I think, A1 and A2 a bit later.

 

Also, the A3 is a riot in Stalingrad, but not historically accurate. Its up to you to fly it there or not, for accuracy's sake.

Edited January 27, 2022 by I./JG52_Woutwocampe

[FeuerFliegen]

At max speeds the cowls have a huge cost on speed; when I tested it the difference between 0 and 100% could be as much as 44kph, which I question if that's historically accurate.

[SCG_motoadve]

2 hours ago, SCG_FeuerFliegen said:

At max speeds the cowls have a huge cost on speed; when I tested it the difference between 0 and 100% could be as much as 44kph, which I question if that's historically accurate.

I wonder the same, seems to be a lot of drag penalty for such small sized cowl flaps.

[JtD]

Fortunately this was tested. For Werknummer 665 it was 35-40 km/h at combat power (2400/1.32). It should be noted that a lot depends on minor details, and that in practice it was hard to achieve an actual "closed" condition.

 

The drag is not coming from some tiny flaps, it is coming from air flowing through the engine instead of around it. It concerns nearly half the fuselage cross section and has a huge effect. In particular as the Fw190 was a fairly low drag aircraft to start with. Total parasitic drag goes up by around 25%, according to Fw190 drag data (which also translates to somewhere around 40 km/h top speed loss).

 

[FeuerFliegen]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:23 PM, JtD said:

Fortunately this was tested. For Werknummer 665 it was 35-40 km/h at combat power (2400/1.32). It should be noted that a lot depends on minor details, and that in practice it was hard to achieve an actual "closed" condition.

 

The drag is not coming from some tiny flaps, it is coming from air flowing through the engine instead of around it. It concerns nearly half the fuselage cross section and has a huge effect. In particular as the Fw190 was a fairly low drag aircraft to start with. Total parasitic drag goes up by around 25%, according to Fw190 drag data (which also translates to somewhere around 40 km/h top speed loss).

 

 

 

In testing the La-5FN and from what I recall, was also around 40-45kph loss between 0-100%,  this makes more sense than if you were to just compare the size of the cowl flaps themselves.

 

Another odd thing when it comes to cowl flaps is the fact that the Ju-88, the difference between 0-100% cowl flaps is only about 4kph (so for the most part there's no reason to close them for performance reasons unless it's getting too cold), and those cowl flaps are WAY bigger than anything from the Fw190 or La-5/La-5FN