Sorry Amon, I've been busy.
A defensive spiral is a downward turn. If you drew a picture of it in 3D, it would look like a corkscrew.
Hmmm... OK first you might want to read this:
http://www.propsim.com/wb-training/worr-guns-defense.html (You may notice my name in there.
That was back when I was learning from Master Worr in the old days.)
The defensive spiral is, in essence, a sucker move. That means two things: 1. You will die learning it and when to use it. 2. It only works if you time it right and the other guy falls for it. If he doesn't, you are in deep, deep trouble.
What you want to do is try to get your attacker so focussed on shooting you, that he screws up and overshoots. Now you are also going to basically try a "judo throw", and use your attacker's greater energy against him. Lets assume a bogey is on your six, and he has more speed (hence more energy) and is closing for a shot, but not closing so fast that he'll overshoot. That's best, but even if he's saddled up on your six, this can still work. You start a nose low turn in whatever direction your plane turns best. Assuming you are below your best cornering speed, you will want to turn nose low enough that your plane picks up some speed. This is tricky, and it depends on the bad guy's position, but you may not want to pull as hard as possible at first, you want to get up just above your best corner speed first if you have time. Now you have started a diving turn that is fairly steep, the next step is to pull right to the edge of blackout and hold it there. You will need to keep turning with your nose low enough that your plane stays at it's best corner speed. If you find yourself too fast, cut throttle as well. The hard part is to watch the bogey at the same time. Unless he is paying attention, he will likely accellerate faster than he wants, and he will close rapidly. If he is very close to you, you may want to pop flaps and/or chop throttle to help force him out in front of you, but try not to slow down too much, you want to maintain good turn performance and enough speed to nail him if you can later. When he overshoots, you must then either extend by diving away to his blind side, or if you can roll in behind him for a shot. If you time it right you can shoot him as he passes you simply by relaxing your pull. If you need to displace your flight path to get behind him, a lag displacement roll will do the trick. By that I mean, if he is overshooting in a left hand turn, as he overshoots, you can execute a barrel roll to the right which will move your flight path from inside of his turn, to outside of it, in lag persuit. The hard part is timing this move correctly. If you relax your turn too early, he's got you. Too late and he may adjust his flight path in time to stay behind you.
The really hard part is maintaining max turn performance while decending and still watching the bogey. It's not easy. The worst part is, the enemy can defeat this very easily... he just has to back off and wait for you to finish. If he is smart enough to not try and pull lead for a shot in this situation, he can maintain the advantage and set you up for another shot when you finish. However, you can delay getting killed with this move certainly, and also use it to move the fight lower. Also if the bogey backs off a bit to avoid an overshoot, it may give you enough separation to try escaping if your plane's performance will permit that.
Always remember though... this is a sucker move. It only works if he doesn't realise what is happening. If he does realise it, it's pretty easy to counter. Also, when you see your attacker back off into lag pursuit or just pull off a bit instead of following you in this move... the guy you are fighting is a good stick, so if you get the chance, run like hell!
[ 09-27-2001: Message edited by: Lephturn ]
