Help dogfighting (and moderating speed)

[MaxGunz]

When you fly, are you keeping The Ball near or at center? If not, you can get more speed by doing that.

IRL you would feel when it's out (a pull to one side like when turning a car) which no sim gives. So you have to develop the habit of ruddering about enough but you can with flying practice. and spot checks on that black ball in the curved track for feedback on when you have it right. It has a minor to major effect on your speed and acceleration.

Another speed-factor is your elevator trim. Trimmed nose high, you will never get your full speed and your acceleration will suck. Trim changes with speed and power settings as it does IRL. When you want speed it's better to be trimmed a tiny bit nose down and have to pull back a teensy bit that to be trimmed nose up and have to push. But coming into tight turns you want just the opposite since you will slow down while turning and -need- more and more nose up trim!

And last for now is how hard you hold your stick (with appropriate low-humor jokes) and -not- resting the weight of your arm on the stick. In practice flight you don't need to shoot, what I was taught is to hold the stick with just 2 fingers and thumb to force myself to be a light touch on the controls. Not resting arm weight on the stick is a ***VERY*** hard habit to break. When I get it right, I maneuver much better! When I tire out and rest my hand on the stick I fly more sluggish, ham-handed.

I can't emphasize how important practicing just flying and perfecting your BCM's and ACM's and control habits is. Once you know your maneuvers well and have your habits tuned you will do better and find setting up tactics far easier.

If you could conquer this game in a month, that's all it would be worth and there wouldn't much community around it.

BTW, there are scenarios when it's stacked against you. For Russians it's worst in 41-42 and for Germans it's 44-45. If it's not the planes or lack of firepower (Early-war Russians, play as Germans first time through!) that gets you, it will be numbers. If you didn't have these, you would miss a major aspect of the historic war feeling of being the underdog.
If it gets you down then go practice flying and work on your speed and those maneuvers that failed you. Conquering maneuvers and your own habits isn't as satisfying as shooting a plane down but flying better has it's own rewards that will continue to pay past the next 100 shoot-downs.

[tota]

I enjoyed "In pursuit - A Pilot’s Guide to Online Air Combat" by Johan Kylander a lot, you can find it on the net. Was an eye-opener for me ...

[Janosch]

G-2 has one major disadvantage... the canopy. Rearward visibility is awful. G-6 late version is a much better choice, and with the Mk108 it's a really fun plane to fly. Of course, the Mk108 is almost a mélee weapon (like a sword), and it may take some time getting used to, but it makes an awesome sound when fired!

Anyway, if one really wants to use a better plane, the best choice is the G-14. It has all the goodies: Erla canopy, the option for Mk108, MW50, decent performance and very, very stylish MG bumbs. The G-10 and such look snobbish and fake with their streamlined cowlings.

[MaxGunz]

About moderating speed, you might want to try an energy management approach. If you're flying too fast to make your best turn, the first thing you do is zoom climb until you've slowed to a bit over best turn speed and then do your turn on the same angle you're zooming up, flying a tilted-down loop. Once over the top you come back down, regaining the speed you stored as height in the zoom lost in the dive. You don't have to come out turned 180 either, you can roll-turn while headed up or down in the zoom or dive.

If you want to accelerate a highly wing-loaded plane (like FW) at low speed best, let it drop 50m-100m in a shallow descent while you pick up speed. The drop unloads the wings, you have less induced drag while you lose height.

Roll turn: You don't have to do a banked turn to change direction, even 180 deg. You just zoom up or down 30 deg or more and roll your canopy to point where you want to go then pull back smoothly to be on track. See how fast you can reverse, every other direction change is as fast or faster. It's the fastest way to change direction and it conserves energy.

So why play turn-fight with a slower plane that slow turn better than yours? Build up a speed advantage, turn it into zoom-height he can't reach and higher than he can point his guns and -then- maneuver to bounce once you have the upper hand.