RE8's Benign Stall Characteristics

[Bullethead]

That's weird, I've found the DH2 quite nice to recover. Snaps in fast but comes out gently and dives nicely with a bootful of rudder.

Well, in real life, planes sometimes have different types of spins they can get into, that different in difficulty of recovery. It could be this happens on OFF, too, and I'm just always getting into the nasty variety .

 

[duck]

One nice feature of the Harry Tate flight model in OFF is that it's REALLY stable, just like RL. Makes it easy to fly and sight see but try avoiding an attacking enemy and it's a relatively unresponsive dog. This in fact was what made it so dangerous. The Royal Aircraft Factory never quite understood that stability is nice in peacetime but deadly in combat. To see what I mean, do a flight in the Sopwith 1 1/2 strutter, a similarly underpowered aircraft with decent maneuverability and then fly the RE-8. In the Strutter, you have a fighting chance to maneuver with the enemy; with the Harry Tate I start looking for the field in which I'm imminently going to land. Without power.

 

[Bullethead]

One nice feature of the Harry Tate flight model in OFF is that it's REALLY stable, just like RL. Makes it easy to fly and sight see but try avoiding an attacking enemy and it's a relatively unresponsive dog. This in fact was what made it so dangerous.

I disagree. I find the RE8 fairly maneuverable for a 2-seater. Sure, the aileron authority sucks, but using a lot of rudder speeds the roll rate up to a decent level. You can stand the RE8 on a wingtip and haul back on the stick, using lots of bottom rudder to keep the nose level, and do insanely tight turns. And you can do them all day because the thing doesn't appear to lose any speed in these hard turns. In fact, I find the RE8 a bit more maneuverable than the FE2, mostly because the latter WILL slow down, stall, and go into a spin if you do this sort of turn too long, whereas the RE8 won't.

 

[duck]

We'll just have to disagree. I often use the Strutter as a fighter with decent results and I've never been able to do that with the Harry Tate.