Rolling in a FW 190

[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

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