DCS Normandy Plane Set – Planes Comparisons

The Bf109K-4 is the best overall of the fighters. It turns better than a Mustang and is almost same top speed, just a tiny bit slower. It however runs max power for 10 minutes, while Mustang runs max power for 15 minutes – a 5 minute max power advantage over the K-4, plus the Mustang being faster than the K-4, the Mustang can escape and fly away. The Mustang doesn’t fly well at low speed but the K-4 does fly very well at low speed. The Mustang is as maneuverable as the K-4 at high speed chases, when the lift over the aerofoil is enough to turn as tight as you want, the limiting factor on both planes then being G-Loc.

I haven’t properly flown the P47D yet but initial impression is that its a good dogfighter and turns well and rolls well and has nimble characteristics and long time at max power.

The Spitfire IX is the best turn fighter, but it only has 5 minutes at max power. It is also slower than the Axis planes, the K-4 is way faster, but the FW190A-8 is about the same speed, possibly slightly faster.

FW190A-8

The FW190A-8 is underrated because although its a crap turn fighter, it has long duration at max power, certainly longer than 15 minutes. It can mostly fly away from a Spitfire IX, and it has much longer max power duration than a Spitfire IX in any dogfight or climb or chase scenario. Many times a Spit will burn out its engine trying to take out a axis plane such as a FW190A-8.

The A-8 has a low cockpit workload, its pretty easy to operate ie takeoff land cruise etc. It doesn’t overheat or require special use of cooling rad or cowl flaps etc. Close the cowl flaps though for speed, it never overheats.

The artistic aesthetic production of this ‘module’ is better than all the others in my opinion, it looks really polished throughout. The FW190A-8 is also for sure the best bomber killer, with 4 x 20mm canons and 2 x 13mm heavy machine guns, ideal for taking on B17G formations head to head. A-8 also has plenty of ammo, something like 700 rounds of cannon, plus the 13mms.

The A-8 may have flap damage that cant be seen from the cockpit so on landing watch out for asymetric roll from a missing flap.

The A-8 (unlike the K-4) has excellent high speed control, in a boom zoom at speeds up to near 700kmh it handles well and elevator responds well.

The FW190D-9 is the fastest plane often and Mustang struggles to catch it in a chase. it cant turn fight so needs to boom zoom ambush or drag and bag in two’s or more planes. The Dora also runs max power for a long time, at least 10 minutes.

Bf109K-4 start up – what switches do I need to select?

Ill put a video here to demonstrate. Timestamp at 34:30 shows start procedure.

First make sure you have assigned all the key bindings in ‘adjust controls’ if its your first time flying the plane.

Basically select Right WIN button and Home button to start the engine auto start sequence. select \ then F8 then F1 to rear refuel. consider if you want full fuel or not. I recommend full fuel on the K-4, but to reduce fuel on the Mustang. Since the Mustang carries heavy amounts of fuel for long flights with the tank full.

in the cockpit you want to select the gun master switch and flick it up. Its located left of the gunsite on the instrument panel next to the bullet counters.

Looking directly down theres a MW50 switch at the bottom of the instrument panel. It needs to be flicked to the right, so you can use full power for 10 minutes at a time with a 5-10 min rest break in between at lesser power. If you dont flick that switch youre limited to 1.4 ata for a minute before your engine blows! With MW50 you can do 1.79ata for 10 min x 3 with rest breaks. Note not all servers offer MW50 on the K-4 at all airfields. In the select role screen you can see the name of the airfield youre at and it will also sometimes specify “MW50” or no “MW50” etc. Thats IMPORTANT to remember, because theres a bug where if you takeoff without MW50, you will see your plane start to vibrate bad at full throttle and yet your manifold boost gauge will be showing 1.79 ata, but thats a bug you dont have mw50, also there is a circlular mw50 guage on the mid top left of the instrument panel that will show a reading the needle will be active and between 0 and 1 when you actually have MW50 in the plane and its ‘working’ and not run out etc. At full power the K-4 with MW50 should not vibrate.

You also want to select the prop governer switch on the lower area near the throttle lever. Its a small switch that stops the prop revving out and breaking in unsder 3 minutes after takeoff if you dont select it.

find the lights and turn them off if need be, they will be a fuse switch in one of the fuse panels. Hover mouse over fuses to select the wing nav lights and then look out the window to confirm the lights are off.

for extra good form you could select the oxygen O2 on. Its roughly located on the right side of the cockpit and is associated with blue colour. When if oxygen is flowing the guage reacts like breathing open close type motion. I dont know if you actually need this on at high alts or if its not modeled.

Also the joystick has a fire button protectr safety cover thing that needs to be lifted back by selecting on keyboard Left Shift and Space bar.

Finally, you want to load the first slug into the 30mm canon, so that the canon fires when you pull the trigger. On keyboard select Left Alt and Space bar.(Press and hold). If you listen carefully you will hear a clunk sound. Its done and you are ready to taxi and takeoff.

Dogfight Spitfires in a vertical loop only. You have an advantage: More energy can be banked by long climbing extended loops. You can drop down on the spit and blast it heading down.

K-4 characteristics:

limited but deadly 65 rounds of 30mm. Builds up speed so fast in a dive once your at 700kmh you will often and easily crash into the ground if you dont use elevator/stabiliser trim to lift the nose.

I ran the K-4 withoput MW-50 today with a stop watch at 1.44 ata for 25 minutes before engine failure. I participated in 3 combats. The plane took hits in the 3rd combat but I dont think that stoped the engine. So the good news is without MW-50 the K-4 can still operate for 25 minutes at pretty high power. However I didnt adjust the throttle for this test. If I did rev the engine up above that I believe it would have broken.

The K-4 is stable at 400KMH.

Cut power and use trim in a 600KMH dive into a boom and zoom. At high speed like 600KMH, your stabiliser trim can be used effectively to bring the crosshairs onto the target aircraft.

FW190D-9 How To Stop The Engine Seizing/Stopping?

You need to know two things: 1, The engine cowl flaps need to be manually operated and 2, the landing flap has its own button and flaps deploy slowly, so when landing ensure your not still stuck in takeoff flap and that you have deployed full flap, ie landing flap.

So yes the engine cowl flap needs to be operated manually with LALT and A to open and LCTRL and A to close. If you are high power with MW50 on and you have left the rads auto and you then turn off MW50, the engine will immediately exceed oild temp and cook and self destruct.

Better you manually open rads and monitor oil temp to see it go down below max range. Especially at high power and low speed get the rads open and especially be careful of the situation where you switch off MW50 and the engine cooks.