LA-7 love/hate relationship
 

Well I had a great/fun night online saturday the 3rd with Tree Smokerer and xx Waffen SS xx hosting some realistic matches, thanks! Now I am a newbie to flight sims so my skills are very weak but improving.

Now I am partial to the LA-7 for historical reasons and also love its nimbleness, I also like being the only one not flying a Spitfire or FW-109 but am quickly finding out that it is going to take a lot more practice to be effective with its seemingly anemic firepower. It was very difficult to get clean kills, I would end up damaging an enemy enough to crash but not enough to record a kill. Tried playing on a spitfire mk IX and recorded a few more kills but felt like I was flying a semi truck in comparison, definite trade off (and I was just another spit in the skies).

So realizing that the main component to all of this is going to be practice practice! Is their any other tips out there from LA-7 Ace's?

Thanks

I prefer the LA5 in SIM (more ammo on limited F/A SIM sessions and other reasons). You got it one....practice your gunnery. There are no tips or tricks other than get close or time your burst for maximum damage on low flying Spits as these will hit the deck and no kill count. Realistic damage models are different to SIM and in SIM mode you should find that the LA is capable of clean kills even from long range. Learn to follow a 'clip' by a 'kill' by watching the target in front of you, maintain a favourable angle of attack by adjusting throttle and direction...then pounce and finish the job!

Yeah I think getting in closer is one of the key's that I am gonna have to work on.

there is a technique that favours all a/c......the zoom kill.....as you zoom your gunsight will seem to go off center and in a particular direction depending on your direction of flight, you can use this rather than adjusting your angle of attack but once again its a technique that needs a lot of practice and you still need to get the lead angle correct. If your opponent is straight and level (sucker!) then use the zoom and aim for the fuselage or wings. Even if you do not get an outright kill this can give you a 'clip' followed by a 'kill' opportunity after the zoom function has been released since you will be well placed to pounce on the damaged target....its expoiting the game mechanics and improving combat skills/gunnery, etc. Switching to cockpit view just before you press the trigger is another technique I use.....BTW, more games are now being played using the Strike and CA maps so getting a clean kill is not a priority or a problem.

(and I was just another spit in the skies).
 

The most beautiful piston fighter ever!:grin::grin:

(This is my totally biased Englishman's opinion !!) LOL!!

:rolleyes: I told you to keep quiet about that glitch!

Replying to the OP: The La7 is one of the best armed planes in the game. Get those two cannons on target and they will fireball an IL*2 with a one sec. burst.

Sounds to me like you are having what I call mini lag which is very anoying when it happens to you and makes you feel like you are shooting blanks. Try lag leading a target much more than normal.

I would advise anyone not to allways fly the La.7 as it is a very easy plane to do well in and is hugely overpowered in this game (along with the other RUS planes).
If you really want to improve your skills, once you are doing well with the best planes, give yourself a challenge and move onto more difficult planes. I never understand why people stick to the same plane over and over. I get way more pleasure from flying well in a mustang than from pwning everyone in a La.

LA5, Spit Mk1X, P47D....my fav's but Pope is right....I need to fly a wider variety but they are so difficult to resist.........so he sets up rooms with a 1940 year limit and forces me and Squirrel to fly something else.....you are so mean Pope......but we luv ya just the same!...........:grin:

Agreed. One good round in a P-47 is worth 10 good ones in a 109. And they happen at about that rate, too.

Haha. No slight intended, it is a fine aircraft. I guess I just like being a black sheep (hey that can be my new call sign! ;) )

Robotic Pope: Hmm good to hear that it is my skill and not a firepower problem with the plane. I am all for trying out new aircraft, but at this point I am so far behind the curve, having just recently picked up the game and not really having a lot of experience with flyers I need to concentrate on getting proficient with one for now.

Thanks for the replies.

Edit:I think that a lot of my problem just lies with the sensitivity/twitchyness of the plane and the small Field of Fire that the LA-7 has. Do love the no recoil though.

not a fan of the LA7, its just too dam overpowered. IT turns on a dime, and is even fast enough to run down a boom and zoom plane.

And as far as it being under-armed, from my experience the 2x 20mm cannons with very littel recoil is plenty enough to rack up clean kills.

anyway, just wish the russian aircraft were a little more even with the british planes and the US widowmakers or if you want to call them aircraft in this game.
I'd say the best US dogfighter according to BOP would have to be the B-17G

All Bombers can be defeated by correct selection of fighter and tactics but in a dogfight there are too many enemy players and insufficient time before one of them is on your ass, the result often being that the attack is badly exceuted rather than the Bomber being superior!

DAMN YOU ANTI-SOVIET "FREE" WESTERNERS!!! Always downing superior Soviet technology because of it's greatness. lol (Specially you Pope, I've got my Soviet KGB agents watching you... :P)

Anyway, personally, the La-7 is a great plane to fly but it's bigger than a Yak-1M (The Yak-3) so I stick mostly with the La-5FN, Yak-1M, Yak-1B, and of course the nimble little I-16/I-153. I like the Yak-1M the best because it's smaller than the rest of the planes (excluding the I-16 and I-153,) and has twin 12.7 Berezin UBS MGs and a good 20mm ShVAK cannon to boot. Plus, I find it's more nimbler than the La-7 and harder to get hit.

I don't fly the La-7 all that much, but it's a good plane... just wish there were more missions involving the Yak-1M. :(

the game should allow you to go back and play missions with your aircraft of choice. that really would have added to the replay value of BOP

Yeah that would have been nice. Mainly because most of the missions over Stalingrad would have been me flying the Yak-1B or I-16 for most of the missions; and Korsun would have been straight La-5FN, with Berlin as Yak-1Ms. :cool:

Hey if the Jug was as ridiculous as the Russian planes (and was the Razorback version - cause they're just so damn sexy) you could have your overpowered yaks, etc. and I wouldn't care.

To be honest I don't think i am buying the overpowered Russian planes argument. If that was the case then there would be a LOT more people using them. Fact is 8/10 times I won't see any Russian planes in the online realistic matches I have been playing. It is human nature to try and get an edge, go for the advantage....and people simply aren't doing that when it comes to these planes.

This is by no means an argument to make excuses for my piss poor flying skills lol. Just an observation.

Well the one thing that Spitfires and 109G6/k4's have that the rusian planes don't is the huge bullet sprayability. In a hectic realistic dogfight you need to take down your enemy quick before you get spawned on, so one tactic that is often used is just chuck as much bullet into the air as possible with minimul aiming (this is also a tactic that is best against mini lag as with that much gunfire there is no way every bullet will miss). The La is more like a scalpel, compared to the spitIX/109G6 fire hose. The La.7 is the king in sim were you have more time to aim. I have a feeling that the combat flaps are very effective on the la's and give it an extra turning boost over the spitfireiX in sim

no one flies the russian planes because they dont mean much to people in western europe and U.S.

i dont fly the best plane when i play...i fly the planes that interest me. That means i'll fly the butchered P-51 and P-47 as well as the bf109 and FW190's. If i want a plane that can actually dogfight, then i'll play with a hurricane or spit. I'm a really big history buff, but i honestly dont own one book that concentrates on the russian military and if it does mention the russians, its more from the german perspective.

Thats exactly my feeling about the LA-7. It handles brilliantly, but the cannons are very difficult for me to get on target properly. The lack of sprayability hampers me online, where as the the various spit's have the MG's for making a "wall of bullets" that I can be sure will hit the target. The cannons of the spit I find to be much easier to aim primarily thanks to the MG's and being able to "see" roughly where your rounds are going to hit, giving improved accuracy.

If it had been commisioned with even a pair of wing mounted MG's, It would be up there as one of my first choice aircraft.

Ok, first off: Check my sig. That's one of the first you NEED to get. (I love it so much, it's almost like a baby to me. :P)

Second here's my own personal list.

Check 1
Check 2
Check 3
Check 4
Check 5
Check 6
Check 7
Check 8
Check 9
Check 10

There's some others too, that I have, but I can't find them on Amazon or anywhere else; but these will do to get you into the know how. :D (This is for anyone interested, not just ButcherBird.)

Thanks, i appreciate the advice on good books. I'll definitely start looking to pick some of those up...I seriously consume a good military history book in record time. Really would like to learn more about russian aircraft so that i can develop a historical appreciation for them...

I really wasnt meaning to be a prick by saying that i didnt care about russian planes, but its just because i havent had good books or opportunities to learn about them.

Thanks

Ditto on sharing the great list of books. So you would recommend the Osprey series of books over the Red star series?

I have read a lot of Eastern front WW II literature. It is so fascinating to me, the scale of the battles, destruction and loss of life was so massive it doesn't even compare to the battles that the were fought in the west and south. That being said I haven't read a whole lot on the aviation aspect of these titanic struggles, only in context of larger battles. I would definitely recommend "Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945" as a great read and not far behind that Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor. Also A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 By Vasily Grossman is great, he is kind of the Ernie Pyle of the Eastern front.

Don't worry, no offense was taken. Just support was all I was giving. :cool:

Yes, Stalingrad is a very interesting book. There are others, but I'm too lazy at the moment to leave my seat and go rummage through them and name off dozens more. lol

But to answer your question. It depends. The Osprey series I gave are good in their own right, as they give you information on particular areas that the Yaks, La's, etc. fought over and give you some information about the pilots and such who flew them. But if you're more interested in understanding the planes, than the Red Star series is really great. It gives you the history, and statistics, etc. needed to understand the planes and see what's what with them all.

I do have a strong believe that the Russian planes are very overpowered in the game...and I think most of the 109's have a very underpowered armament, they should do a bit more damage than what they do. So I fly the K-4.

That being said, I find the Spitfire to be a much more difficult opponent than the La-5 or La-7. I never feel overmatched by the La-5 or 7. The Spitfire is what frustrates me the most though.

To master the la7 you need to use all its capabilities. It's not the best turner, but don't stress the turns. In a multiplayer fight, if you can't beat an opponent in 2 or 3 turns, you might get a kill, but someone else is even more likely to kill you. It's usually not a good strategy.

La7 is near the top in turn rate, and it rolls very well and you can barrel and jink it easily to avoid being hit. In free-for-alls, you should do well if you can kill quickly and evade enemy fire. One of my favorite BOP evasions (since the FFA is always near the ground) is do an ascending barrel-roll, checking 6 the whole time, keeping careful watch on the bogey's guns plane and rolling to avoid it. Once you get enough altitude, you can turn and dive, making them overshoot.

And here is where the la7's real greatest power is: it's the fastest non-jet in the game. If you can't make the opponent overshoot, you can throttle up, neutral the stick and continue the dive, if they try to follow just fly past someone else. They won't catch you but whoever you fly past will catch them.

In a 1 on 1 combat vs a spitfire, stay near the edge of blackout level as long as it's a turning fight, you can match a spit's turn rate, while making it keep its own turn radius high. Be wary of its lower radius, if your circles are off center, it may be able to line up a shot, especially if it zooms vertical. What I usually do is some form of rolling scissors, which starts with nose-to-nose turns, and rolling so you're not in front of it at each pass. Then the planes will be competing to see which one can fly slowest at the top of its barrel-roll, and the la7 stands a better chance of winning this, making the spit stall and fall out of the maneuver.

Talking about Sim and realistic here... I don't know if these tactics work in arcade

such a pity were are on different platforms, it would be great to fly with/against Koz, Soviet ace and many of the other PS3 forum fans who contribute regularly and with interesting posts.......if ever I see a cheap PS3 I might just be tempted to buy it.......or we will all have to get WOP (ouch!).....:grin:

or they can buy xbox.don't jump ship on us grandpa il2.

For me, it's a matter of you getting '46, not a PS3 or WoP. They've got a lot more detailed and obviously more planes than both those games put together :P (even if they are the same game BoP an WoP.) Though lately, I haven't had a good '46 online match, and have been mostly just playing around with the AI in big air battles over different places.

Flight Times
 

For anyone who is interested, they're usually out about between 9-10pm to 1-2am GMT minus 5. Sometimes longer. I try and get out then too.

I have been house sitting for the week, so no Xbox live. Hope to be up in the skies this weekend though.

a tip for the la7 cannons
 

I've found in realistic that the twin cannons are most effective when used against the wings of enemy aircraft; dealing them lethal damage in one hit and blowing the wing clean off in two.
To go with the thread i too share a love hate relationship with the la7... it seems to handle damage better than any other aircraft in the game.
I do quite often feel guilty when using it in a dogfight