No CloD não tem o "Level Stabilizer", tem um piloto automático de tres eixos que deve ser configurado, a altitude do alvo em relação o nível do mar deve ser considerada e até a velocidade do vento, se vem de frente ou de trás.
Não esquecer de armar as bombas, abrir a porta do bomb bay - no Ju-88 tem que "rodar a manivela"...
Sokol1You will have to define most of the keys yourself in the options, as a lot of them are not mapped by default.
The blenheim is simple. Just trim it to fly level at a speed and altitude of your choice, go to the bomb-aimers position and press the "loosen straps" key. This will allow you to look through the targeting reticule, which is a simple metal indicator moving on a line: you input your altitude and true airspeed (there's a conversion table for true airspeed in the final pages of the game manual, you can find this somewhere within your steam folder as a PDF file) and the targeting indicator moves.
Set it to the correct values, open the bomb-bay doors, select single or salvo release (click the switches on the bombardier's instrument panel), go to zoomed-in view and when the target is under the targeting indicator drop the bombs.
The German ones are more complicated. I also have a feeling that the directional gyro is bugged in the Ju88 and that prevents the autopilot from working correctly. I had better luck with the He-111.
The way it works is that the autopilot gets your current heading from the directional gyro (the gyroscopic compass) and your intended heading from a separate heading "card" in the same instrument, it compares the two and decides which way to turn to get you on your chosen course.
This means, the directional gyro needs to be accurately set before engaging the autopilot. The best time to do this is while sitting on the runway before take-off, with throttles at idle and the aircraft under no acceleration whatsoever. If you throttle up and step on the brakes to keep it steady, the magnetic compass will give you inaccurate heading values.
If you are on an air-start mission you will have to calibrate it mid-flight, so don't be afraid to enable the mouse cursor so that you can get the help pop-ups when mousing over the instruments and also pause if you need to between adjustments.
For a start, climb to your selected altitude, trim the aircraft to fly level and let it settle for half a minute or so in order for the compass to stabilize. Next, look at your magnetic compass or the repeater compass (this one wobbles a lot in turbulence though, so i prefer to use the magnetic one) to see your current heading. The easiest way to do this is to enable the mouse cursor (default key is F10 to toggle it on/off) and mouse over the compass, it will give you a pop-up window with your heading.
Afterwards, you need to align the directional gyro so that's it's pointing the same way as the magnetic compass. I don't have it mapped to any keys, i just click on it to increase/decrease the values. This is where pause comes in handy if i'm doing this mid-flight.
At this point you should have the directional gyro properly calibrated. Now, if you look at this instrument you'll see that it has a second row of headings, this is your intended heading.
I have mapped keys to this function because they are usually hard to find and click in the cockpit, i think they are called "course autopilot increase/decrease" in the options. I have also mapped keys to enable/disable the autopilot because it's also a bit hard to find the controls for it in the cockpit in some aircraft. This is labeled "course autopilot mode next/previous" in the options.
First of all, in order to let the autopilot stabilize and not make any sudden turns the moment you turn it on, align your intended heading with the current heading displayed on the directional gyro.
The directional gyro, NOT the magnetic or the repeater compass. This is important, because the gyro will drift and lose accuracy over time, so it will always be a bit off compared to the compasses. These two functons are on the same instrument for this reason.
Assuming you did this correctly, this tells the autopilot that you want to keep flying the heading you already are flying, so it will only do minimal corrections once you turn it on and it will stabilize after a while. So, go ahead and turn it on.
There are two autopilot modes selected by a 3-way switch (off, course mode and R.22 mode), which is why i don't use the "cycle autopilot modes" command and prefer to use the "autopilot mode previous/next" commands.
I have a feeling that the R.22 mode is used with radio beacons for night flying and/or bombing or landing in such conditions but i'm not sure.
For what we want to do now (a normal, daylight attack) the course mode is fine, so select that one.
Keep in mind that the autopilot only controls heading (or course, i'm not exactly sure which one) so you can still be climbing or descending by using elevator trim and the appropriate engine power settings.
Once everything is stable you can make course corrections by turning the intended heading indicator left or right. You do this either by clicking the relevant control in the cockpit, or by pressing the keys you have mapped to it (the "course autopilot increase/decrease" buttons we talked about before).
From that point on, it's a matter of working the bombsight. Before that however you need to do your bomb setup with the so called "bomb distributor" instrument.
You can either map keyboard commands to this, or look at the cockpit instruments and click on them (i prefer clicking since they are easy to spot and this reduces the amount of keyboard commands i have to remember).
In the Ju88 you can find the bomb distributor below the instrument panel on the co-pilot's side, next to the magnetic compass. In the He-111 the bomb distributor is located in the nose cone, just pan your camera down and you'll see it. There are three things to do here:
1) Set the amount of bombs you want to drop at once (the salvo).
2) Set the amount of meters between bomb impacts on the ground. Instead of using a millisecond delay timer, this one actually calculates the correct time intervals to get the bomb spread you specify, as long as you have the correct true airspeed and altitude values input to the bombsight.
3) Arm the bombs.
Finally, open the bomb bay doors. In the Heinkel they work just fine with a toggle key. The Ju88 however has a manual control, to operate the bomb doors the co-pilot/bombardier has to turn a lever. So, you need to define separate open and close keyboard commands for the Ju88 (or click on the lever in the cockpit), as long as you keep pressing it the bomb doors will open/close.
The rest is similar to the previous IL2 series. Input your altitude and true airspeed to the bombsight, move the crosshairs over the target and engage bombsight automation. If you've done things correctly the bombs will drop automatically.
Finally, a bit of important information.
1) What the bombsight actually needs is your speed over the ground and not your true airspeed (which is indicated airspeed corrected for altitude changes, etc). Ground speed=TAS ONLY when there is absolutely no wind.
This was not a problem in IL2, but in CoD you also have to take the wind into account if the mission has a weather layer enabled.
2) To do an accurate drop, what the bombsight also needs to know is your altitude over the target, not over sea level.
Example: I'm flying a He-111 at 5000 meters of altitude, my airspeed indicator shows 250km/h indicated airspeed, there's a 10km/h headwind and the target is 500 meters above sea level. Assuming i did everything correct up to this point, the values i need to enter into the bombsight are:
a) Ground speed: According to the manual (page 112), 250 km/h IAS at 5000m equals a TAS of 322km/h. Since there is also a 10km/h headwind, my actual ground speed is TAS-headwind = 322 - 10 = 312 km/h.
b) Altitude over target: I'm flying at 5000m over sea level and the target is 500m over sea level, so my altitude over target is 5000 - 500 = 4500m.
Phew, that was a short novel alright
I haven't had much success myself with level bombing yet but i'm experimenting almost daily and trying to put theory into practice. I hope it helps somewhat.
