TiG

we should do VWF together real soon....on comms...as a pair.

As long as I can tell you apart from the bad guys ;) which should be OK as you wont be in a 109 with yellow wing tips...

think we can do this pretty darn well.....felt good for the few minutes we were together last night....

We can sort our own wordings (you know what I mean) for direction finding...and then we're on it.

Talking fast comes naturally to a Sales Man and a CO driver.....

and you shoot well.....all I have to do is cover your arse and then have a go if you over shoot......

as to my gunnery....I have no idea what to do....

currently I have my CANONS at 200 metres for when one is right under my nose....and MG's at 400 for following shots...

Watching Hats track yesterday afternoon I leanerned about views :) and juggling with the different ones fast....it helped to follow you and Luke etc.

But the ability to hit someone in one reasonably fast hit is a no goer....not like you guys do...as Luke says, once he's got me on his arse he stops looking backward and concentrates on his next target....cos he's quite safe with me wasting all my ammo on thin air.

Shame I can shot you, TiG, in one pass ;)

those were canons as you were under my nose.....he was too tho...both falling away....sorry bud.

I shall set up some 1 on 1 practices and record them and send them to ya TiG...you can tell me then what to do...

Thanks to Hat for the hour.....its only my second lesson with Hat....and both have been one hours.....he doesn't tell me what to do....I just watch it from his view point afterwards.....and I see the difference straight away....

thanks to Luke for letting me fall out of the air over and over in the SPit until he simply said, dont pull so hard so fast.....

and watching him.....external....on a track....watching the elevators close up.....heis inputs are slow and then more progressive....much more than I realised....

I mustn't hang upside down so close to people....

and I MUST stop dreaming of a Lagg3 with 4 canons ;)

:)

VWF - without a doubt, as you know what having you as wingman does more than improve my ability for not getting killed, it does something else for me too, it makes me keep my H advantage, i hadn't even twigged on this last night at all, but thats pretty much what it was.

I think the overshoot thing is something to definitely focus on, as if i'm setting you up a nice line to follow into the target if i've just overshot you should still be able to see my shots in relation to the target and then allow for your slight distance behind me and adjust to make your shots count, (you did that on Moby last night so we both got a kill marker, was a highlight for me, very nice kill imo)

I loved the zoom in gun view and watch behind you trick, that is nice to know and certainly something i will do much more now.

I think your problem with the ammo is that you are using TiG Seeker ammo, common mistake to make, lots of people use this :)

It was a very good hour, something i'd like to do once a week as that was very benefical :)

TiG

agreed...

but I learned most from Hat's track...he killed me three times and never stopped recording.....

His viewpoint is totally different to mine (well...not now its not) and Lukes too....the exnterals on Lukes plane are eye opening...

watching his elevators and aerelons.....

I owe Hat a track of my flight, but if I have more than 50 tracks on Quick Record in the database the 51'st will be a view of the sea from a ground camera and no other stuff...not even external on other planes....

so I deleted the lot and I'm gonna start from scratch and go again :)

Not only is it smoothness of the control surfaces Zak, but its use of the throttle and prop pitch in turns. Something that Hat said is that he thinks that you always use full throttle in every turn - and thats where you're going to be running wide and pulling harder on the elevators. Even just throttling back to 50-60% while meeting the 'apex' of your turn will greatly improve the chances of you staying on him without stalling out. Of course your exit speed may be lower, but you'll still be on the bandit, and the speed will be higher than what it would be if you *did* stall out.

Onto gunnery...
The way I practice my gunnery is through the QMB. I'll load it up on unlimited ammo in whatever plane I fancy, and fly against 12 friendly planes.

When you launch up you'll be adjacent to the first group of friendly's. What I do with these is fly straight for a while (Hopefully getting slightly ahead of them - for the next bit), then I'll turn so I'm coming in at a right-angle to them. This gives you deflection practice in a big way. The way I normally fire these shots is to zoom out, line up the height of my nose so I'll be firing into his path, zoom into FOV 45 and then fire when ready. Usually you'll only get one or maybe two hits from this angle, so you gotta make em count, and they need to be cannon shots ideally.

The next group of planes I'll come in from directly behind. I'll try different things - ie, try and smoke one with mg's, try and rip wings off with cannons etc etc. The AI's will then do their silly stall turn thing which is done to make you overshoot - if you can hit em when they are doing this then you are doing REALLY well :)

After shooting all of them down, I'll climb to about 500m above starting altitude, and B'n'Z them. I'm not sure but maybe this is your problem - when you come in hot and you don't hit em?? Because last night in said session, I spent ages trying to get my B'n'Z right, and MANY MANY times I was coming in at the wrong angle. BUT, don't fret it - because you've still got the altitude and E advantage, so you can make another pass :) Most of the time I wasn't keeping the plane in my gunsight during the dive - I'd zoom right out and guesstimate where he'd be by the time I get there, which saves me pulling hard on the stick at the last second and losing priceless E and altitude.

The gunnery will come to you - just need to practice practice practice ;)

out of interest. When using the P51 and Spitfires with auto prop pitch, how many of you set it to manual?

I was finding I missed the control in the DF server last night. Though turning it off in the P51 turned out to be a bad idea, it defaulted to 0, left me floundering for a few seconds, during which Zak snuck up on me and shot away my controls :)

That was a very good DF by the way. It was good to polish up a few skills and find out where I was rusty. Highlights were boom and zooming TiG (one pass was enough), and a nice deflection shot on Hat as he came out of a barrel roll to break right which took out a cannon, then a cracking headon pass that sent him smoking.

Low points. Trying to spot anything (I haven't done much VEF VWF recently so my eye was out). Finding things on my six (usually Luke) that were shooting at me :crazy: . Being caught snoozing/enjoying the view by a boom and zoomer (TiG?) :) .

What I really need to do is get some practice in on the wingman teamwork though.

Yep... in the Spit I always turn it off.. she sings along nicely at 2800rpm.... it's also a good indicator of how fast you can go if you need to... if you're revving below the redline then there's always a bit extra to to use if you get in trouble, and you don't fry yer engine..

I love my Prop Pitch...its on AUTO in a dogfight with a Spit cos I cant seem to improve on it myself....but in a FW190 or a 109 I use it manually UNLESS its uber busy ...then I let auto work for me while I get a life and sort out up from down ;)

You know what else I agree with and only fund out by accident,,

Luke and Hat are both right....I dont throttle back enough....listening to Hat I can hear him (and on track see him) throttle back...I never ever do that....

I do now :)