December the 18th Bomber AAR

Well, we managed to get our Blenheims in the air this time - initial bomb run was far off target for some reason, need more practice I guess - I went around again and Hinkel flew a low level attack, Speedy and I tried coming in the second time but the server went down on the bomb run, so no joy!

I'm going to stop recording track files on the ground as it seems to make the game crash a lot compared to in the air, which postpones our lift off time, so I'll wait until after take off to start recording.

At least we can fly the Blenheims now though.

I'll make a video about using the gyro-autopilot thingie (and generally level bombing I suppose) for next week as Hinkel was having trouble with that (though it's Christmas Day next Thursday so I guess we're on leave, unless Speedy wants to try his new stick. )

Although the progress is slow, I'm quite enjoying the change of approach / pace compared to flying Fighters, in fact you might say it's an entirely different type of flying, all together...

very hard to do but i also do enjoy the bombing

I did some bombing today, turns out the Blenheim bomb sight actually works off Indicated Air Speed rather than True Air Speed (or at least when I use TAS I end up far short of the target, and IAS is within a few buildings length from 18,000ft, which is good enough for 1940) - not sure what effect using IAS will have when we have to take wind into account though, so will have to test that out.

Also seemingly there's a difference of 5mph between the Pilot's speed gague and the Navigator's speed gague, but using the Pilot's seemed to work well enough.

I know why we were far to the left of target on our run in to Amiens as well, turns out I've been adjusting the magnetic variation wrong.

I thought +10 degrees West meant that you get the magnetic heading from the compass and add 10 degrees to get the true heading, i.e. 35 degrees on the compass is 45 degrees in reality.

Turns out that +10 degrees West means the magnetic compass is 10 degrees too far, so you have to subtract 10 degrees to get the true heading, so 35 degrees on the compass is actually 25 degrees in reality.

As such I've been flying around 20 degrees too far to the left all this time, and somehow never got lost.

Not bad for 18,000 feet with a 20 mph wind from 8 o'clock and a 4 degree drift angle.

The bombs don't seem to drop in a very uniform fashion, not sure if they're deflecting off the bomb bay doors or if it's just random tumble or some such - makes it pretty unlikely that you'll get a wholly accurate line of bombs, might be better if you drop them in salvo mode, but then they'd probably be too close together - better to consistantly have some bombs off target, than to sometimes hit the target with all your bombs and other times miss the target with all your bombs.

It is good to try something different. I. do have some catching up to do, as I haven't managed to drop any bomb yet! Will try to get some practice in.