Originally posted by dedalos
With all the respect Pellik, I think you just have not flown the KI a lot. You said you only flew it a few minutes and the repetition got to you? It can out turn a spitV but only has a slight turn advantage agaist the 38? The 38 can go vertical at 90mph? so? KI84 can go vertical at 70mph. If anything can kill a good 38 pilot, it is the KI84. What kind of tricks does the spitV have that make it more interesting?
Please don't see this as an attack. I just think you wrong. I can't count the number of 38s I killed because they thought they could go vertical with a KI on them. You are right about flying slow though. The KI can virtualy stop in mid air, wait for the overshoot, wep on and you can go straight up in a matter of seconds. I took of a CV last night with 75% fuel. Went straight up using about 1/4 or less of the CV deck.
I've put some time in the KI, I just don't fly it much now because of the repitition. In stall fights between the KI and the 38 there are two aspects which the 38 can use to easily gain angles. First the P38J (what I fly) can sustain level flight as low as 50mph. Second the KI takes its time to get it's nose down when it stalls nose up. The 38 can just keep pointing up until 0mph and do a clean fast hammerhead. And while yes the KI can go verticle at 70mph, it won't recover cleanly from the verticle at those speeds.
Neither the 38 nor the KI-84 turn as fast as a spitV. Fortunately their supperior verticle performance allow them to use stall fighting tactics to "out turn" the spit reguardless. I turnfight spitVs in my 38, you turnfight them in your 84.
I can't tell you that much about spitV tricks, it's just not my plane. I can say the 38 proves much more interesting to me on account of it's much better medium speed handling. It's higher speed flap deployment allows more variation on the merge. And it's guns package means you don't have to follow some spittard through 20 turns to get close enough to shoot.
-p.
