Lavochkin La-5FN v.2

[Captain Kurt]

Captain Kurt submitted a new resource:

Lavochkin La-5FN - Lavochkin La-5FN v.2

Lavochkin La-5FN
Unit: 32 GIAP Kursk July 1943,
Pilot: Captain Vladimir Orekhov -- He ended the war with 19 personal victories

The La-5FN's story begins with one of the most remarkable engineering rescues of the war. In 1942, Semyon Lavochkin's LaGG-3 fighter, nicknamed the "lacquered guaranteed coffin" by its pilots, was one of the worst Soviet fighters in service. Underpowered, heavy, and sluggish, the LaGG-3 was being slaughtered by Bf 109s. Lavochkin's design bureau faced...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Hiede]

Another Great airplane Kurt,Thanks.

Hiede

 

[Browncoat]

Hello Captain! This is a wonderful surprise! This La-5FN will pair nicely with the ones I have from Thicko. I did notice two things. First the front engine fan doesn't appear to change/open when the cowl flaps are opened. Perhaps this is intentional. Second, only the port cannon fires for me, or at least is it the only one the puts out tracers and muzzle flashes.

For anyone grabbing this wonderful bird, I recommend Lawdog's La-7 sounds.

 

[beepee]

Again another great airplane
Thank you Captain Kurt
Beepee

 

[normb]

Thank you for another treat! Off to the aerodrome...

 

[skylane]

Thank you for another very nice airplane, Kurt!

I noticed the same thing as Browncoat, only the port cannon seems to fire when you look ath the plane from the outside.
The "cowl flaps" also do not move on my install.

 

[Captain Kurt]

First of all thanks for the feedback. The .dp is an easy fix, a single digit in the wrong place. Now both cannons are working. I'm replacing the download zip to incorporate the fix. For those who have already downloaded, here is the repaired.dp file.

There does not seem to be any problem with the cowl flaps. They don't open very far and the camo blends so you may not be seeing it. The command is Shift E to open and Ctrl E to close.



The engine fan is a different story. It's not a fan, it is obvoiusly some kind of a shutter vent system, but I have absolutely zero information on how it was constructed or how it worked i.e. open/closed. Even the Russian publications, which are usually much more detailed than western reference materials, make no mention of it and their plans only show a simplified facsimile. So I did nothing to try to animate it.

Browncoat, if you have that information, would you share it with me? I might update the model if I can see how the vents work.

 

[Browncoat]

Hello Captain,

Thank you for the DP fix! The cannons work as expect now. Attached are two photos from La 5/7 Fighters in Action, Aircraft Number 169, Squadron/Signal Publications. One (IMG 5446) shows the 'vanes' of the engine 'fan' closed, the other (IMG 5447) shows them in their open position. It appears that they 'scissor' open.

Thicko's La-5 series has the 'fan-vanes' retract inwards. Perhaps he used this as a more simple animation to express the opening of the fan-vanes? That is completely a guess on my part.