Rolling in a FW 190

[noxnoctum]

Can someone explain how to roll "correctly", by that I mean in such a way a way as to take advantage of the 190's super fast roll rate to get out of sticky situations? Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to learn to use the roll to negate the 190's turn disadvantage. How do I do this?

One guy was telling me I need to use it to quickly roll out and dive away before the enemy can tell what direction I'm going... but I'm having trouble visualizing this... can someone help me out here?

Also, I've heard it's good in a scissors fight because of the roll rate... but I must be misunderstanding something here, because to my knowledge a scissors fight is two guys doing yoyos opposite each other (i.e. no rolling necessary).

Thanks for the help guys.

I really want to learn to fly this plane, I absolutely LOVE the insane dive control you have with it even when you're blasting by at 800 kphs, not to mention the armament and ammo quantity.

Plus it just looks badass ;).

I managed to pull off a few swoop and dive BnZ kills with it today... pretty satisfying to make that split second shot and glance over my shoulder to watch my target hurtle toward the ground in a ball of flame whilst soaring up towards the sky again, untouched .

Also, another problem I've been having... when I climb several thousand meters above the fray where everyone is dogfighting... how do I tell who is who? Now obviously, if someone's firing I can identify by tracer color, but I would like to not be restricted to only attacking when someone's shooting at my teammate. How do you tell which dark colored dots are which?

[dduff442]

At lower speeds (<350kph) the FW-190 still rolls better but the advantage is most pronounced between 450-550kph. At high speeds, the late-model P-51s roll better so they're your natural threat.

Fast rolling helps hugely in a flat scissors (or any sort of scissors) because you can switch direction faster than your opponent. The 190's excellent at flat and vertical scissors manoeuvres, especially the former. Get use to the noise of turbulence over the wings that happens when those little eddies appear at the wingtips in tight turns... You need to turn the 190 at its limit with out snap-rolling. As soon as the turbulence get's loud you're turning perfectly but pull any harder and you'll stall and probably die.

I often hear about it being good at 'fast rolling scissors' but I've never seen much point in this. The whole point of a scissors is to move forward slowly while keeping your plane speed high.

A slight rolling scissors or (better IMO) a jerky series of small 'dinks', just enough to throw off a pursuer's aim, can be very useful when you want to get a pursuer close enough to you to use a decisive evasion manoeuvre (like a flat scissors) but that's about all the use I have for rolling scissors in the 190. Small turns (or open curves) won't slow you down much -- the 190 loses energy in turns because the angle of attack quickly gets very large in sustained manoeuvres. Quick small changes of direction don't have so much of an effect.

There are numerous ways the roll speed advantage can be used to throw off close pursuit. You can feint in one direction, then rapidly reverse the direction of roll and turn away (propably scissoring back into him to seal your escape). Alternatively, you can do a 3/4 roll and then turn hard (your pursuer will probably not have done more than a 1/4 roll in the meantime if you're doing 475-550kph).

Some people just roll constantly for a couple of seconds and then turn off in a random direction. If you're using external views, that's fine as you'll be able to tell if your enemy is well positioned to follow you. If you're using cockpit only view, this is a bit chancy. Probably your opponent won't be aligned to follow your turn but it's really random chance.

Some people use the scissors to attack and it can be a way to turn defense into attack in an instant provided you start out at high speed. A Spit within 150m could easily end up in front of your guns if he doesn't react quickly enough to your scissors. Personally, I don't like this tactic though. This amounts to 'betting the farm' on scoring a kill in the scissors. If your enemy goes for a high yo-yo or if you just cant get your guns on him, you'll soon find yoursrelf at 250kph while he has plenty of energy and (if it's late-war) probably accelerates better as well.

I find it best to use the FW-190's strengths in this regard to evade only: after one or two scissors, you'll be crossing over your opponent head on and that's the time to make your getaway. Just head on straight and by the time your opponent's turned to follow you'll be gone.

Diving (often preceded by one of the manoeuvres above) is another excellent option for the 190 but has the disadvantage of probably leaving you well below the fight afterwards. It's best to evade without losing altitude if possible if you want to stay in the fight.

As regards attack, if there's a big furball around you don't need to dive on a specific opponent. Don't even dive right into the middle in fact; dive short of the fight, pull up slowly so that the angle of attack stays small and you retain energy, blast into the fight at 650-700kph (faster if you like but the 190 doesn't turn so well at very high speed) and you can pick a target as you go. Nothing turns like a 190 at 650kph and you'll have no problem finding a target if there are enough of them around. The 190 has so much blasting power that even extreme deflection snap shots have an excellent chance of scoring.

If the attack works out, that's great. If it doesn't, don't turn more than 90-120deg trying to get your guns on him (try and keep it below 45deg if possible in fact). Just fly straight on and when at a safe distance do a slow, high banked turn or half-cuban to reverse direction back into the fight while retaining energy. This will have you in position for another attack within 30secs without bleeding off too much speed.

Ideally, getting some practice in with a wingman would be perfect. The 190 is not a solo machine. It's basically useless 1-on-1 but 4 v 4 it's unbeatable. The Thach weave is ideal for the 190, but this would require joint training, a bit of discipline and mutual confidence.

I love the 190. It's very hard to enjoy any other plane as much when you've gotten used to it. I don't know how much experience you have with it so I'll mention that the A-4 and A-5 are excellent but the A-6 (the 1943 model) is the best. All these models are so superior to their contemporaries it's almost unfair.

The 1944 A-8 is only good against bombers really. The extra armour is too much against fighters. The A-9 is a slight improvement but will still struggle if there are lots of P-51s around.

dduff

[Blackdog_kt]

Listen to this man, he speaks the truth.

I was never much of a hot-shot because i have trouble putting these things to practice, but they are true. It's more a case of me lacking talent and sufficient practice, even though i understand the principles :grin:

Another thing to note is the distinction between instant and continuous turn rates. It also depends on speed, but in general the 190 will loose in a prolonged turn fight. The thing is that it's very good in instant turn rate and you can combine this with the fast rolling to create enough separation when scissoring.

Try this out in the quick mission builder if you want to, get up at a nice altitude and accelerate to 550kmh. Roll fast to the side and pull sharply on the stick without going over the top and inducing a stall. Don't keep at it, just apply one gradual but swift and decisive pull on the stick are you are banked. You'll have turned quite a few degrees and you only lose a small amount of speed. On the other hand, keep turning and you'll soon find you're getting slow enough for most of the enemies to gain an energy advantage over you.

Another thing is that the 190 has terrific control response at high speeds and is also good at negative maneuvers. You can also use this in conjuction with fast rolling to confuse your opponent. The whole point in a scissors is that the defender has the advantage of reaction time, the attacker must react to what you are doing and for most human brains this means between 0.6 and 1 second of delay before he even starts moving his controls to react. So, in every single move he will be lagging a bit behind.

If you keep doing the same thing and he has an aircraft that's better at the altitude and speeds you're fighiting, he can make up for this delay through superior aircraft performance. So, your aim is to combine the reaction time advantage with other maneuvers that will make it harder for him to close the eliminate the reaction gap. This means either playing the aircraft to its strengths, for example the instant turn rate thing which will enhance your gains because it combines reaction time advantage with maneuvers your plane is good at, or fooling the opponent into thinking you'll do something and then doing something else.

If you can get him to commit to a maneuver that's a reaction to your bluff you not only get 1 second of separation thanks to his initial reaction time, but also a second of him turning the wrong way, another second of reaction time before he realizes his mistake and tries to correct it and possibly one more second before he is finally pointing his guns at you again. This is important, we 're talking 3-4 seconds worth of separation. At speeds above 500kmh that probably means you have enough room to reverse into him, which either ends with you getting the chance for a snapshot from the front quarter (which the 190 is good at, even if head on attacks are always a risk), or simply flying straight past him at full throttle with your nose pointed slightly low and accelerating away from him. If you manage to build enough distance this way, you can either disengage completely or turn around in an energy conserving turn like the ones described by dduff442 in the previous post and go for another head on against him.

So, how do you do it? It's very simple, you fly backwards. Let's say you're getting bounced and he's coming from your high 5 o'clock, so you naturally break into the attack to the right. Don't keep breaking though, keep turning just enough to make him start pulling lead (aka turning harder than you), then slam the rudder left (=upwards in relation to the horizon since you're banked to the right) and push the stick forward. Congratulations, you just managed to move the bandit from your 5 to your 3 o'clock and build 100-200 meters of lateral separation, while losing only about 100kmh of airspeed in the process ;)

The thing is, all these maneuvers take a lot of practice to pull off in the 190 and they don't always work. My main problem is that i usually don't maneuver hard enough and when i do, i overcontrol the plane and do it wrong. That's why i prefer playing it safe, trying to be faster and higher than the opposition before i enter a fight. The disadvantage to this is that i don't get in enough hot spots to practice and refine my evasion techniques. So it's a simple choice...you can play smart and safe and maximize your survival, your kills and deaths will be fewer but you will also not get enough practice in saving your skin. Or, you can mix it up aggressively, get a lot of kills and learn how to maneuver the plane to the edge of its performance, but you'll also die more often :cool:

[dduff442]

I remember that even after learning a bit about manoeuvres and studying tactics guides like 'In Pursuit' (which is excellent and free on the web), I was using the scissors but not as effectively as possible because I basically only partly understood why I was doing what I was doing. Then I read some other sim pilot's remark about the moment to reverse your turn being when you see that your adversary is outside your turn.

If your opponent is tracking you (lead pursuit) or following your turn, then reversing the turn just puts you in front of his guns. The 190's poor sustained turn performance turns into an advantage here, though. Suppose you do a quick 3/4 roll and then turn away as hard as the machine allows to get away from a pursuing Spit. As soon as you start to turn, the Spit is already late because he can't match the 190's roll performance. Now when the 190 is turned hard it will quickly lose speed... even if the Spit pilot cuts his throttle he actually can't bleed speed as quickly. The rapid slow-down effectively tightens the 190's turn, sending the Spit shooting past.

The moment the Spit's wings have him pointed to pursue is the moment to reverse. If your playing with cockpit view only, then the moment he disappears from view to the rear or a split second afterwards is the time to do it. You'll need to get your eye on him immediately after reversing so as to avoid his guns as you cross over. With external views on this is a piece of cake with enough practice; with a locked cockpit, the main problem is evading your pursuer's guns while you manoeuvre him to within 250m without losing excessive energy -- close enough for this to succeed but also close enough to get shot down. That's where the dinking comes in handy.

Cut back against him hard and you'll be nearly head-on as you cross. I usually only reverse once and make good my escape at this point, but if you reverse a second time exactly as your paths cross you will have a decent chance of scoring a rare dogfight kill with a 190. It's chancy though and you will need to dive away if it doesn't work out.

I should mention that while this will work against any lone pursuer exept maybe a P-51 in the very high speed domain (and you can use other tricks against them), it's no use whatsoever against a staggered pair of attackers. Evading one will just tee you up nicely for the other. Your best bet against a pair of attackers is to dive away, twitching the stick and rudder to complicate aiming, or to break the leader's pursuit and dive under the follower.

[rakinroll]

For attack, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpBMsB0qAqo

Very good deflection shot and excellent timing on high speed shooting.

For defence, watch these:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6lkgo_fw-190a-defence_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc2dan_eagleturk-dogfight-3_videogames

Good rolling yoyos and scissors also.

Finally, i only can say that in a FW you only need speed. Otherwise you can not do any maneuvers. So, speed up my friend.

Good luck.

[Crumpp]

The 1944 A-8 is only good against bombers really. The extra armour is too much against fighters. The A-9 is a slight improvement but will still struggle if there are lots of P-51s around.

There is no extra armor on an FW-190A8 fighter variant on the real thing. It has the same armor as the FW-190A3.

In fact, it has better performance including sustained turn than any other FW-190A variant except of course, the FW-190A9. If you do the math it is obvious.

[Erkki]

There is no extra armor on an FW-190A8 fighter variant on the real thing. It has the same armor as the FW-190A3.

In fact, it has better performance including sustained turn than any other FW-190A variant except of course, the FW-190A9. If you do the math it is obvious.

Not so in game... Vs. typical enemies, even less so. Dont think the mods do have it any better either, at least relative to opposition.

[Avimimus]

It is useful to remember that the point of the sizzors in the FW-190 isn't to loose speed. Instead it is to gradually increase the aspect angle with each successive turn.

I found this observation in a book that had a chapter on FW-190 tactics and tried it out online. I was untouchable for a little while (This was back in the days when they said the FW-190 was hopelessly undermodelled and the Bf-109 was the only competitive axis aircraft online).

[K_Freddie]

A quickie (50MB) (http://www.vanjast.com/IL2Movies/Scissors.avi) I made a while back...
The idea was to visualise the control actions..

Hope it helps
:grin:

[rakinroll]

Nice video, thanks.

[noxnoctum]

Thanks for the tips guys, I've gotten a lot better at defensive tactics especially, and offensive too as I improve in deflection shooting... One split second burst is all it takes with the 4 cannons and 2 guns ;).

Using scissors and multiple quick rolls + split s alone has significantly improved my survivability. Finding "feints" with half rolls very useful especially in scissors. Still got a long way to go though. I'm really struggling with doing scissors without relying on external views too... having a hard time maintaining situational awareness while looking out the back and still flying decently.

Also tough I find is slowing down enough to let the bandit get close to where the scissors is useful and I can force an overshoot without getting shot down in the process (while he's drawing near).

[noxnoctum]

At lower speeds (<350kph) the FW-190 still rolls better but the advantage is most pronounced between 450-550kph. At high speeds, the late-model P-51s roll better so they're your natural threat.

Fast rolling helps hugely in a flat scissors (or any sort of scissors) because you can switch direction faster than your opponent. The 190's excellent at flat and vertical scissors manoeuvres, especially the former. Get use to the noise of turbulence over the wings that happens when those little eddies appear at the wingtips in tight turns... You need to turn the 190 at its limit with out snap-rolling. As soon as the turbulence get's loud you're turning perfectly but pull any harder and you'll stall and probably die.

I often hear about it being good at 'fast rolling scissors' but I've never seen much point in this. The whole point of a scissors is to move forward slowly while keeping your plane speed high.

A slight rolling scissors or (better IMO) a jerky series of small 'dinks', just enough to throw off a pursuer's aim, can be very useful when you want to get a pursuer close enough to you to use a decisive evasion manoeuvre (like a flat scissors) but that's about all the use I have for rolling scissors in the 190. Small turns (or open curves) won't slow you down much -- the 190 loses energy in turns because the angle of attack quickly gets very large in sustained manoeuvres. Quick small changes of direction don't have so much of an effect.

There are numerous ways the roll speed advantage can be used to throw off close pursuit. You can feint in one direction, then rapidly reverse the direction of roll and turn away (propably scissoring back into him to seal your escape). Alternatively, you can do a 3/4 roll and then turn hard (your pursuer will probably not have done more than a 1/4 roll in the meantime if you're doing 475-550kph).

Some people just roll constantly for a couple of seconds and then turn off in a random direction. If you're using external views, that's fine as you'll be able to tell if your enemy is well positioned to follow you. If you're using cockpit only view, this is a bit chancy. Probably your opponent won't be aligned to follow your turn but it's really random chance.

Some people use the scissors to attack and it can be a way to turn defense into attack in an instant provided you start out at high speed. A Spit within 150m could easily end up in front of your guns if he doesn't react quickly enough to your scissors. Personally, I don't like this tactic though. This amounts to 'betting the farm' on scoring a kill in the scissors. If your enemy goes for a high yo-yo or if you just cant get your guns on him, you'll soon find yoursrelf at 250kph while he has plenty of energy and (if it's late-war) probably accelerates better as well.

I find it best to use the FW-190's strengths in this regard to evade only: after one or two scissors, you'll be crossing over your opponent head on and that's the time to make your getaway. Just head on straight and by the time your opponent's turned to follow you'll be gone.

Diving (often preceded by one of the manoeuvres above) is another excellent option for the 190 but has the disadvantage of probably leaving you well below the fight afterwards. It's best to evade without losing altitude if possible if you want to stay in the fight.

As regards attack, if there's a big furball around you don't need to dive on a specific opponent. Don't even dive right into the middle in fact; dive short of the fight, pull up slowly so that the angle of attack stays small and you retain energy, blast into the fight at 650-700kph (faster if you like but the 190 doesn't turn so well at very high speed) and you can pick a target as you go. Nothing turns like a 190 at 650kph and you'll have no problem finding a target if there are enough of them around. The 190 has so much blasting power that even extreme deflection snap shots have an excellent chance of scoring.

If the attack works out, that's great. If it doesn't, don't turn more than 90-120deg trying to get your guns on him (try and keep it below 45deg if possible in fact). Just fly straight on and when at a safe distance do a slow, high banked turn or half-cuban to reverse direction back into the fight while retaining energy. This will have you in position for another attack within 30secs without bleeding off too much speed.

Ideally, getting some practice in with a wingman would be perfect. The 190 is not a solo machine. It's basically useless 1-on-1 but 4 v 4 it's unbeatable. The Thach weave is ideal for the 190, but this would require joint training, a bit of discipline and mutual confidence.

I love the 190. It's very hard to enjoy any other plane as much when you've gotten used to it. I don't know how much experience you have with it so I'll mention that the A-4 and A-5 are excellent but the A-6 (the 1943 model) is the best. All these models are so superior to their contemporaries it's almost unfair.

The 1944 A-8 is only good against bombers really. The extra armour is too much against fighters. The A-9 is a slight improvement but will still struggle if there are lots of P-51s around.

dduff
Hey this was some REALLY good advice, thanks a lot man.

Can you explain your reasoning why the A6 is the best though? I've heard from so many people that the D-9 performs the best, and in IL-2 compare, the D-9 scores higher on pretty much everything (except armament obviously). Likewise, the A9 scores better than the A6. Also, just in my own experience, it seems like the D-9 seems just a bit more maneuverable, rolls better, and faster than the A series. Maybe it's just my imagination though.

Obviously you have a lot of experience with it (way more than me lol) so I'm just curious why you say that.

[Blackdog_kt]

A6 seems one of the easier handling variants. It has the right mix of weight, engine power and armament. That later ones are good as well, but there are certain compromises.

For example, the D9 handles well, is fast and can fight high, but it lacks the "kick the rudder, take a snapshot, cripple or outright kill the opponent" factor of the 4 cannon variants.
The A9 can also go high thanks to the paddle blade prop and has 4 guns, but it handles heavier than the rest.

The A6 is good all around, as long as you're not interested in fighting above 5-6km altitude. There it starts to "gasp" compared to the latter variants.

[rakinroll]

The best manouverable FW-190 at low altitude is A-4 (with %80 pp).

[dduff442]

Hey this was some REALLY good advice, thanks a lot man.

Can you explain your reasoning why the A6 is the best though? I've heard from so many people that the D-9 performs the best, and in IL-2 compare, the D-9 scores higher on pretty much everything (except armament obviously). Likewise, the A9 scores better than the A6. Also, just in my own experience, it seems like the D-9 seems just a bit more maneuverable, rolls better, and faster than the A series. Maybe it's just my imagination though.

Obviously you have a lot of experience with it (way more than me lol) so I'm just curious why you say that.

As a '43 plane, the A-6 probably has a bigger edge over its contemporaries than the late-'44 D-9. The D-9 has better performance but its 1944/45 rivals are improved as well.