All true. But if you can sometime, get a vertical or semi-vertical turn fight going. The intensity ramps up with the speed. Unfortunately for me, I have hypertension and had to forego that much fun on account of chest and head pounding after a few minutes. If I can't end it quicker than that, I have to let myself get shot down just so I can exit with an honorable loss rather than a dishonorable disconnect.

It all started with a post I read once about flying tilted egg shapes that got me out of low and slow and up to where I met and played with the big dogs. That and oh yeah, I have some gunnery/spatial-math abilities.

I also suffer from hypertension, but get too excited when the going gets good that I cannot stop :D
It's like bonking.. you only feel it after the event.. when flying back to base, then the relief is that much better. :grin:

I've been accused of online 'heavy breathing' (voice activated mic) at one time.. it was embarrassing.

i hope you get relief before it gets worse Freddy. It can. heart should not beat so hard when the body is almost resting. It's freaking scary!

Times like that, I just work on my flying skills if anything. And navigating. it's funny all the things you notice when you're not immersed in a fight.

Navigation errors can be downright hilarious sometimes.

I remember once we were flying bf109 in mediterranean protecting italian battleships.

Flight leader decided that east became west, and west became east (he basically mixed up the degree headings in his head)

I tried to talk him out of it, pointing out the mistake, on teamspeak but he wouldnt budge out of his decision. So, he had planned the route, but it went to the wrong place instead of to the location of the italian battleships.

Let's just say we diddn't find the battleships, we just found clear mediterranean sea, we had a pretty good laugh about it after the mission naturally :mrgreen:


As to the joystick settings.

I kind of like the 100 sensitivity these days. But, you gotta be careful with unnneeded stick movements. Such as when rolling, don't pitch up or down too much if you don't need to or don't want to.

At other times, and with some planes, like spitfire, I like 100 sensitivity, BUT a slightly exponential response curve (lower response in center, only slightly lower response in middle stick deflection, and normal response in high stick deflection)

The reason why I like the 100 sensitivity is that it helps in rolling manouvers and rolling scissors, flat scissors etc. It just feels so natural to me, if I want to roll the plane, put the gunsight on the enemy and shoot. I can roll the plane with exact movements of the stick.

Not some weird ass accentuated response curves.

hmm, maybe it's just a question of getting a feel for the difference though?

There should not be that much differnece though, which you can't overcome with being more attuned to the alternate stick response?

(such as, lower response in centre position, slightly lower response in middle stick deflection, and normal response in high stick deflection)

In full real battle, I think it also comes into identifying target positively

I mean, for sure, you can make the diving pass, but you can't realistically fire from too far away.

If you're really good at silhouette identification I suppose you can ID from farther away based on simply shape of bogey.

But I prefer to go to about 1km, you can see some decals and details at that kind of ranges?

For me, about 200-300m has been good firing range

Firing at shorter ranges / medium ranges allows less shooting time. BUT you usually get better target picture and it allows you to sort of concentrate on vulnerable areas of enemy plane better. Or so I feel at least personally.

I use 50% FILTER on my pitch (Y) axis. It smooths motions slightly and gets rid of edge-of-digitizer-step flutter.

Coming in at over (usually well over) 100kph closure takes just seconds to cross 200-300m. Firing from deflection only increases closure beyond the difference in plane speeds. if I blip shots at 400m then I have barely time to make a small correction and get in a half-second or so burst before I have to turn to cross behind the target.

With wing guns not at convergence your shots will be along a line. Match that to the path of your target and bring it on in to convergence.

often times i do notice the problem with wing gun convergence (those tend to be my favorite /mosy flown aircraft)

it just sux balls when you fire too close to the enemy and each of the bullet streams from your own wings, hits the enemy's wings separately. (not enough distance for bullets to converge, I think)

rarely does it make enough damage to kill in one strike. But it does make some nice ventilation holes in both of the enemy's wings though.

If you're that close and not going to ram,

1) your shots are coming from well below your sight, probably need to shoot a bit high
2) you can rudder back and forth to rake your fire across his fuselage all the while shooting around the IL-2 bullet soaking tail
3) you probably shouldn't be so close or co-E and may get reversed on

At speeds below 300 kph, if the other has a better sustained climb than you do then just hope that he doesn't think of it.