B-239 Buffalo
B-239
AEC:
My notes for this aircraft as I was flying it goes as follows: "The energy retention and lack of high speed compression are both so good I feel like I'm moving through the air with no inertia." Or in other words this aircraft feels like flying in Minecraft creative mode. According to wtapc.org the thrust to weight for the B-239 is significantly higher than the American Buffalos. 0.480 For the B-239 and 0.398 for the F2A-3. The B-239 actually has 179 less horsepower than the F2A-3 despite having the exact same x-ray model and yet somehow the F2A-3 beats this aircraft by 20 seconds. I'll have to do a deeper dive into this some day, I feel like there's something fishy here… The data I have isnt lining up with my assumptions.
MEC:
There are no radiator controls whatsoever on this aircraft so the only way to cool the engine effectively is through prop pitch %. I'll do a better explanation and paper on how prop pitch % affects engine and cooling performance in the future. Just trust me for now that while only having prop pitch% is a bummer its not the end of the world. It's more than enough to effectively cool the engine when you need to. Whenever the engine was threatening to overheat I would move from the 95 ish % I was at to 50% and that would be enough by itself to flash cool the engine. I would then raise % back to where I was and that's enough to be an effective racer. Unfortunately however it's difficult to beat the AEC algorithm with just prop pitch % alone and so the B-239 performs either the same as its AEC data or slightly worse. If you are going to race this plane just rely on the AEC.