Saw,
One thing that can really mess up your gunnery is trim. Having a plane that is far out of trim will result in the problem you are having. There are a few ways to solve this in AH. One way is to manually trim the plane as you roll on to the target so that you are perfectly in trim. This is very difficult to do, especially if you don't have a fancy stick and throttle setup with tons of extra hat switches. What I do is to try and figure out what speed I will be shooting at, and auto-trim the plane for level flight at that speed before I enter the fight. Of couse you need to turn combat trim off at this point or you will defeat the purpose of auto trimming at a certain speed. Combat trim is the simplest solution, but not the most exact. If you have combat trim turned on, it will allow you to be "pretty close" on the trim when shooting and should prevent most of the problems.
If you are still having problems you will need to do two things. First, play with your stick scaling and try to smooth your stick input in that part of your range. Pay attention to which shots you miss, the ones with a lot of back stick, or the ones around center point. Then try adjusting your stick scaling at that travel range and see if it helps. The second thing is to be patient! Do not try to pull lead too early. If you do, you just end up whipsawing back and forth as you pull lead and fall back repeatedly. You want to stay in lag pursuit until you are pretty sure you can hold lead for a couple of seconds solid, and then slowly and smoothly ease into lead and shoot. I try to start firing a bit before the bullets should contact and slowly pull through proper lead angle to rake the target with a good 1 second burst. The trick is to be patient enough to stay in lag pursuit and not try to pull lead too early. There is a fine line when flying a plane like the jug, you need to be patient, but not wait too long.
It takes a while to find that perfect spot where you have the E to get a nice solid tracking shot against a better turning plane. If you wait too long, you generally lose your advantage. Try to maneuver for a shot early in the fight, but don't rush the shot itself. A couple of extra seconds to make a smooth shot will do wonders.
Give this stuff a try, and let me know what worked and what didn't.
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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
http://www.flyingpigs.com "A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 12-04-2000).]
