In another thread and in game lots of people have asked me about E retention and ropes. Some people have wondered in text/PM/vox how I retain so much E and more than one have accused me of cheating. I'm going to discuss the spiral rope in this thread but do not claim to be an experte. I'm just trying to help my fellow AH'ers out. Feel free to add your own ideas, comments.
A very simple and effective way to disguise E in the vert is the spiral rope. The goal of the spiral rope is to fool your opponent into over committing in the vert and thus giving you a gun solution on his very slow plane. As you watch in the film it seems like such a simple thing, but there are several complex factors going on.
First you must very quickly ascertain the E of the enemy. If you guess wrong and your spiral is too loose, you will pull too far from the enemy and he will see the trap. If you spiral too tight you will bleed E too much, giving a gun solution and the initiative to your intended victim.
When I say tight spiral, imagine a tightly coiled spring... looser... less coiled. Before you can effectively spiral rope, you MUST be very proficient at QUICKLY gauging E states.
Notice in the film the distance of my target never varies much until he is completely committed, and then I allow him to get closer! I can do this in the spiral because I have correctly gauged his E state and know that he cannot pull enough lead on me for a gun solution. To keep him interested, I tighten the spiral and allow the distance to close, while not giving up a shot to the bad guy. Watch the film from his POV and notice, even as he closes the distance, he cannot get his nose on me.
The next crucial step is to know when to nose down for the shot. Many people go up until their plane stalls, or the target's plane stalls. That's not how to do it!
The tricky part is to nose down BEFORE your opponent stalls, yet when he is too low on E to pull his nose up for a shot. The trick is to nose down so that you have a gun solution on a slow/helpless plane. The failing of many people trying to rope is that they wait too long to come down and once they do come down, they find themselves chasing a plane who has already nosed down and has enough E to attempt to evade.
Notice in the film that when I have a gun solution, my target is completely helpless to evade. You will see that as I come over the top I am quite slow. I put in 2 notches of flaps and chop the throttle.... Combat trim off! Reasons for this: The 2 notches of flaps will keep my plane flying and allow me to get me nose up enough for a solution. The chopped power in this film is for two reasons: One: I'm slow enough that, at full power, I'd be fighting the torque of the engine as I came over the top then tried to acquire my target. Two: My target is close enough that if I stay on the throttle, I might zoom down past him before I can get my nose on him. By chopping the throttle, I've given myself another moment or two to acquire the gun solution because I've slowed my rate of acceleration/closure. Notice that as I nose down and begin to pick up speed I bring the flaps back up. Reason: As you gain speed, deployed flaps are going to want to push the nose up and you don't want to be fighting this trend as you acquire a solution for your guns.
Once you master E state gauging, you will become really good at all of this. I hope there are those who find this helpful.
Steve
<S> to JB64
Film:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=6223b08b94613233d2db6fb9a8902bda
