Gunnery skills

[DoctorYO]

Gunnery Drill:

Take up favorite airplane offline climb to 4k...

Then engage the drones in the counterclockwork path they are flying...

Now once you feel your getting it down.  Reverse the circle and engage their forward quarter..

Start mixing it up from dead 6 shots to high defleciton shots..

Do this every day before you fly Aces  your gunnery will improve..


"just what the Doctor ordered.."



DoctorYO

[mos]

I've been flying 6 or 7 tours now, and for awhile I've been listed near the top 50 in terms of gunnery each tour.  I generally shoot at around 18% every month.  In order to shoot this well I turned my tracers off and I played offline with the .target command.  Try it:  type .target and a target will be displayed due north from your current position at the range you list.  I try to never fire from more than 400 out, so I learned what my spread looked like at that distance, and then started moving the target in by 25.  --I also learned my cannon separate from my 50cals.  I did this for several days: practice offline with the target, then heading online to compare my results against moving planes, leaving the tracers off.

It also helps to fly the P-38, which has a particularly deadly gun package, with everything center-mounted.  

Finally, I believe it was Erich Hartmann who said, "I hold my fire until my window is black with the enemy plane."  That's probably the best tip I can give you.  Learn your ACM until you're such a badass you can always fire from d100.  No one misses from there.

[lasersailor184]

Most of my kills are usually from under 100 yards.

However, for some wierd reason, everytime the other plane flips around and takes off my wing.

[Saintaw]

Originally posted by lasersailor184
However, for some wierd reason, everytime the other plane flips around and takes off my wing.

You are having connection problems then.

Been here more than three years now, and no one still misses like I do. I've given up...I'm hopeless

[SlapShot]

As with anything in this game, the learning curve is very steep and gunnery is no exception.

Its gonna take time ... a lot of shooting, at a lot of different angles, in a lot of different planes, along with a lot of dieing before you realize that you aren't even looking at the pipper anymore, but visualizing the correct guns solution for the position that both you and your target are in and then squeezing the trigger.

Unless you are really gifted (which I am not party to), gunnery is not something that can be perfected within weeks ... think more along the lines of months and it still won't be perfect.

I have been at this for 2 years now and every time I go up, I can see incremental improvements in my gunnery. My percentages tend to suck in general, because I will shoot at others objects (ack, GVs, and buildings) rather than planes while flying in fighter mode.

Go offline ..

Change the ammo loadout option to 10X normal and attack the drones at any/all angles and at different speeds. This will definately help lessen the learning curve.

Use the .target command as explained above and understand the dispersion for each plane and the gun convergence that you prefer to use. This will give you a good idea of how close up need to be to your target to effect a quick and decisive kill.

[Steve]

Ya, this is interesting.... if you're roping.. why can't  you see the guy?  I mean, as you come back down, you are the one who determines the attack angle.  I do a bit of roping... not sure wher your difficulties lie.  Heck when roping,  I'll roll over on my back sometimes, but hang there(fly upside down) for a bit because as you go over on your back your victim expects you to come straight down, and begins his evasive,  effectively telegraphing his move to you. Or, and my favorite, he will think you're bled out of E and hang his nose longer, giving you that canopy shot you want when you decide to come down.  This method also affords you a great view of what is going on under you.. it's a nice twist on the straight and spiral ropes and sometimes even catches the wary off guard.... try it some time.  

Also, don't worry too much about putting a lot of bullets(thus forcing a long gun solution, and a longer lead shot) in your victim.  If you've roped successfully, your shot  will be from close range at a slow target.  A well placed snap shot will get the job done.  This way, yout don't have to worry about pulling so much lead, which has 2 bad effects:  pulling a lot of lead is a harder shot than the short snapper, and it also burns precious E in case you want to go back up, rinsse and repeat.

Edit:  Just out of curiousity mos, I looked up your gunnery numbers.  You may want to clarify your CPID, because the guy with the name of Mos has hit %'s somewhere between 1 and 6% on his tours. Heh

[TweetyBird]

>>Go offline ..

Change the ammo loadout option to 10X normal and attack the drones at any/all angles and at different speeds. This will definately help lessen the learning curve. <<

I've been practicing gunnery offline, and I don't know if increasing the ammo loadout is the way to go. You tend to take long duration shots using a lot of bullets correcting as you go rather than short, precise bursts. IMO it develops a bad habit. For me, increasing the lethality is a better option. Then you can inch the lethality down to normal as you get better. This way, the duration of shots stays pretty much how it should be online.

Peope have different aproaches to learning. If one guy  wants to high jump 7 ft, he sets the bar to seven feet anf jumps until he makes it. Another sets it to 4 feet and inches it up to 7 feet. I guess whatever works for you.

But hey, thats just an opinion from someone struggling with an under 3% hit percentage

[SlapShot]

Originally posted by TweetyBird
>>Go offline ..

Change the ammo loadout option to 10X normal and attack the drones at any/all angles and at different speeds. This will definately help lessen the learning curve. <<

I've been practicing gunnery offline, and I don't know if increasing the ammo loadout is the way to go. You tend to take long duration shots using a lot of bullets correcting as you go rather than short, precise bursts. IMO it develops a bad habit. For me, increasing the lethality is a better option. Then you can inch the lethality down to normal as you get better. This way, the duration of shots stays pretty much how it should be online.

Peope have different aproaches to learning. If one guy  wants to high jump 7 ft, he sets the bar to seven feet anf jumps until he makes it. Another sets it to 4 feet and inches it up to 7 feet. I guess whatever works for you.

But hey, thats just an opinion from someone struggling with an under 3% hit percentage

I see your point ... the extra loadout for me was to not waste time landing/augering to get more ammo and then climbout to get back to the matter at hand. I wanted to stay aloft as long as possible to make flying and firing as repetative as possible.



Here is a link to an article written by Andy Bush from simHQ. Excellent article ... one of my first reads when I started AH.

http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_031a.html

Andy is the real deal ... Fighter Pilot ... Combat Fighter Pilot Instructor.

[mars01]

Improve your gunnery by knowing how to use the gunsight.  



The above link refers to a list of pages.  These pages are an original pamflet that was used to train the British pilots.  

It teaches you how to use the gunsight and how to line up an enemy pilot( The Hun) lol.

Srry about the pop-ups your best bet is to just right click the link and "save as" to download.

[mos]

Originally posted by Steve

Edit:  Just out of curiousity mos, I looked up your gunnery numbers.  You may want to clarify your CPID, because the guy with the name of Mos has hit %'s somewhere between 1 and 6% on his tours. Heh

My nick is Director.

I first flew in tour 42:
42 - 7.5%
43 - 16.1%
44 - 17.5%
45 - 9.9% (I flew hardly at all that tour, massive work schedule)
46 - 19.8%
47 - 18.3%

Currently, I'm shooting over 16% in tour 48, but I've only flown a few sorties.  I expect it'll get better.  As you can see from my k/d ratio, my ACM needs a lot of work still, but this wasn't a question on how improve one's dogfighting skills.  

I was mistaken, I shouldn't have said I shoot better than 18% every tour, as it looks like 18% is about my average so far.  Still, I think my first post's advice holds, especially the quote from Erich Hartmann.

[TweetyBird]

Well I made it to page 5 of the pamphlet before it exceeded your download limit for the day

[mars01]

WOW that sucks!!!


They must have just started that.  potato peeling BS!!!!!   I guess its not really a zero catch anymore.

Oh well.  If anyone can get the whole thing please feel free to do with it what you want, I have no ties or rights to it.

[TweetyBird]

Thanks too, Slapshot, for posting a link to that Andy Bush article.
I had read that before, and thats where I got the idea about making a gunsite on plastic to maximize over the nose viewing.
I don't know why they just dont extend the  fixed sight area so it could be used at the full head up position. I also don't know why the full head down position even exists. Anyone use that position effectively? A lot of little people (~4 feet) flying in WWII?

Now if having a higher head position increased the chance of pilot wound,  I could see its use. But as is, I down see the point of a position where you cant see over the dash

I don't know how much of a load on the server it would be, but to have the gunsight available at all head positions, and having higher head positions increase the chance of a pilot wound, would be an ideal setup.

[slimm50]

Soulz, I see you're from B'ham. So'm I, only now I live in Houston. Was just back home over Christmas/ New Year to visit relatives. What part of B'ham do you live in?  I grew up there. e-mail me, if ya want.

[SoulzofAW3]

I live over on Southside, right near 5 Points South.