F2A "Buffalo"
F2A-1
AEC:
The F2A-1's blunt nose and lack of power does not help itself in the slightest. At the bare minimum because its turn radius is so small it can make some over arching corners feel more like direct straight lines rather than curves. Plus it has decent energy retention. However its top end acceleration feels more like "what acceleration" and you'll be stuck at 70% of your max speed for the duration of the race. The engine does have overheating problems, they start at "the chicane" or 2 miles before Hagen. From there until the end of the race I'm stuck in a brutal overheating cycle of 92% throttle and 103% WEP. Anything greater and the engine would over heat too much to but worth the moment of extra thrust.
MEC:
I'm not entirely sure how the radiator works on this R-1820 Cyclone engine. There's no cowl flaps, or at least nothing visually modeled, and I can't find any information regarding the buffalo and its engine cooling systems. Regardless the rad% does work even if nothing is visually modeled. I found that 92% prop pitch and 20+% radiator is enough to infi-wep with this plane. Any attempts to perfect this further may be fruitless as the engine will easily get stuck in an overheating cycle.
F2A-3
AEC:
The F2A-3 maintains all the cons of the previous models and none of the pros. It does have a higher horse power rating but at the cost of severe overheating consequences. It overheats in practically the same spot as the F2A-1 but this time falls into a more viscous cycle where even 100% throttle is enough to kill this engine. This Buffalo feels the most "grounded in reality" compared to the other variants. I feel like I'm actually taking corners with inertia left to spare rather than practically teleporting from one spot to another.
MEC:
Despite not being animated the plane reacts to having "cowl flaps" open. Or if they aren't cowl flaps there's something on this engine's radiator system that severely hemorrhages top speed as if non-existent cowl flaps were open. The F2A-1 could infi-wep on the correct settings but for the F2A-3 not even reduced pp% and full rad% is enough to keep this engine cool. To avoid total engine melt down after "the chicane" you'll need to open the radiator up 100% regardless of where you were before it and potentially even reduce throttle. Which makes this the first plane in the study where its radiator equipment suite is not enough to cool the engine itself. At least it's historical.