The One Turn 'impossible' reversal explained (films)

[Spatula]

Now your going and giving away the best secrets...

Very nice shot on that vid. Although the 4 x hizookas certainly aint hurting your chance of success. But, its nicely lined up and antipicated shot all the same. Ive ended peoples days with 50cals the same way. Its also a pilot kill as you can see on the final section of the wmv given away by the blood splatter. A 20mm round through the ol' noggin certainly would be a quick way back to the tower.

Like the others have pointed out, scoring on that shot is nice, but not a complete failure. You have taken huge chunks out of his E advantage and big chunks out of his angles so any attempt by the attacker to zoom back to safety is very risky at that point.

This film and the one badboy posted are pretty much identical in that they're both variations on a barrell roll defense. And in both cases, the attacker is a bit of a numb-n*ts. I hope all you BnZ/aspiring BnZ types out there take note of why they had their prettythang handed to them in situations where they need not have. Heres a hint: faster you go, the bigger your turning circle - and more importantly the exact opposite is also true. Do you really think you can turn with a slower plane and 'get that shot'???

Max: Try for longer than 'a couple of weeks' more like a couple of tours - then a difference you WILL see Also anticpation is very important in pulling off shots like that. Its a zen-like art.

[Ghosth]

Max, you need to look me up in the TA someday.

Ask Schatzi  

She (like you) was convinced she was a lousy shot.
An hour of practise & confidence building and she's knocking em dead. In the Yak9T no less.

In my opinon the less there is between my eyeball & the enemy plane the better.

A go minimal with gunsight. The more complicated it is the less I like it.
B No tracers. Don't "walk" your guns onto the target. Know where the target will run into your bullets.

Its like trying to hit cars on interstate doing 120mph with a water hose.

If you aim AT them you'll miss them every time.

But if you put the stream into their path, they'll run into it, every time.
So then its just a matter of learning the timing to save ammo.

Or, in goose hunters lingo.

Put the bead on the target, and pull through and ahead of the bird.
In the case of a goose, a LONG ways ahead. Same for planes, faster the plane, the more lead you need.

Last, a lot of guys do short bursts, which is fine for finding range, etc.

But, when at last he's out of E, on the deck, and 200 or less in front of you. Now is NOT the time to save ammo. Put your crosshairs on him and HOLD the trigger down till hes dead.

Then as your grabbing & checking 6 decide if you have enough left to go for another. But kill the one in front of you first!

[Gooss]

Duck hunter analogies are preferable.

HONK!
Gooss

[Max]

Ghosth,

As soon as time permits I'll hunt you down in the TA.


Spatula,

OK I'll give the no tracers approach another "couple op tours try".

Now get a load of this, I can't tell you how many times "it's" happened to me back in Air Warrior and Aces High.

I'n in pursuit of my target  taking shots along the way...five minutes later the nme is missing parts and smoking...as soon as I'm Winchester ammo, I immediately get on the nme's 6 and can ride that position till I'm out of gas...cursing and screaming the entire time.

My only explanation is that knowing I don't have a shot, my flying style changes...dunno how else to account for it.  

[Schatzi]

Ok, i just typed this a few mins ago in Squad forum. Might as well post it here, too.

Originally posted by Schatzi


The .target ### command brings up a floating target (that always stays N of your plane) at a distance ### yards. To make it disappear, just use .taget 0 command.


While im not one that has good aim at all, this is what helped my gunnery.

* Stick to one gun type at a time for a while. This removes adapting to the "ballistics" part of the equation constantly and helps you get a better feel for the rest (judging speeds, angles, etc)

* dont fire different guns together, ie cannon and MG in Spit for example. Even if you fire at convergence distance - on a stationary target it would mean both cannon and MG would hit the same spot. But, a2a theres also the other planes speed (ie movement) to take into account. Now, MG has a lot faster muzzle speed then the Hispanos, meaning the MG rounds will get to target in less time - time in which the target moves a certain distance. Now, if you fire a Hispano round, due to the lower speed it will take more time to travel to target, read: The target will have more time to move, read: you will have to pull more lead in the same position/speed/angle then youd need with a MG. So, to make a long story short, unless youre VERY close, youll only hit with one of the guns - and - in my experience - thats usually the MG

* get up close and personal for shooting. Make getting on the six of the enemy for a tracking shot your main goal in a fight. Not pulling for a shot. Ive seen this numerous times in TA when people fought me. They kept giving up position and angles, just to pull for that one, low% snapshot theyd miss anyway. When i fought them "cold guns" and goal of the fight was to get 200 off my tail and stay there, theyd suddely have a 200% improvement in their "skill". By that i dont mean "dont take any snapshots" - i just mean that PATIENCE is a huge virtue and sometimes giving up one snapshot in favor of gaining angle/position and a higher% tracking shot gets you further then you may think

* set your convergences to your usual shooting distance. If you have the feeling that you hit a lot, but dont KILL, it might be you need to adjust your convergences. In a turnfighter, my usual conv is between 175 and 250 yards. For a more BnZ type of flying, you might want to have them a little further out. Play around on those and find out whats best for you.

* fire short (1/2 second) bursts only. Never "walk" your guns on the target. Shoot and hit, or shoot and miss, adjust aim, shoot again. Try to visually remember the "view" in your gunsights when you hit. Develop your gunner eye

* try turning tracers off for a bit. this will force you to judge your aim BEFORE hitting the fire button, and not depend on shooting first, then see where your tracers go and adjust your aim afterwards. If you turn them back on later or not is personal preference. I left mine off, mainly because when i tried turning them on again, all i did was watch those beautiful light effects in the air and not my aquired target (read: my hit% dropped from a solid 10% to 1-2%)

* shoot drones offline. get unlimited fuel/ammo, set yourself certain "rules". Make a game of it. Heres some suggestions, just be creative, im sure youll find more that suit your personal "problem zones" best - put on some loud, badazz music for the occasion
- tracers off, no LCG
- make fast passes from high 4-8 oclock, no shooting inside d400
- turn icons off
- fly the circle clockwise (opposite drone flying direction) - practice snapshots
- aim for certain parts, take the drones apart piece by piece. wingtip, wing, rudder, stab, tail.... If it blows before youre done, youve lost.

* ask Schatzi for a "date" in the TA and blast her full of bullets for suggesting all that BS

[B@tfinkV]

very good tips for shooting from all.


personally i love tracers on, regularly waste ammo for a few pings from 800 yrds with 50cals, miss almost any BnZ attempt i make above 400mph.



like spatula says, some solutions are almost zen-like in the judgments.


notice in the cockpit view, or from the .ahf version i am tracking the con the whole way and using parts of my cockpit and external surfaces to 'line up' the shot before i switch back to gunsight view. then as i make the shot, i switch back to front view half a second before the target enters the FOV, because i know exactly where he is going to pop up.



example: lets say that i know that if i keep my left wing tip level to the con in the left view as he turns outside and fastr than me, i know he will cross my front sight across all fours guns if he doesnt change his flight path drastically.
tough to describe I'm sorry.


like Bruce Lee said 'don't think, feeeeeeeel'

[Mustaine]

Originally posted by B@tfinkV
example: lets say that i know that if i keep my left wing tip level to the con in the left view as he turns outside and fastr than me, i know he will cross my front sight across all fours guns if he doesnt change his flight path drastically.
tough to describe I'm sorry.


like Bruce Lee said 'don't think, feeeeeeeel'

see for me personally, that is THE hardest part.

first off i am usually (read 99% of the time) just a hair under or a hair above where i need to be aiming.

second, i can not change view and shoot that fast. i lose complete control of the plane, and lose all awareness of my heading / attitude. i don't know why, but i just can't "follow" my plane's orientation like that. thats just me though.

[B@tfinkV]

another usefull tip can be to just trust your judgment through the move enough so that you dont tweak the shot off at the last minute, often you will be naturally lining the correct solution up without thinking as you look up mid exchange. I often think im gunna need to pull a side slipping final shot, and miss the target and even lose possition.  

It is suprising how many opponenets will completely disregard the chance to offer you a side on profile target instead of a big fat canopy bullseye when they must know you are about to shoot.

[Dead Man Flying]

There are ways to counter this maneuver that don't just entail the higher, faster plane keeping all of his energy and blowing through or scrubbing it all off as quickly as possible to prevent the overshoot.  In fact, at times you can really take advantage of the overconfidence of the person performing this reversal by essentially performing a climbing spiral rope on him.  The key is to turn away from the defender as he begins his reversal.  Thus if he's rolling left hoping that you'll pull lead on him so he can then reverse back to the right, turn to the right instead beforehand and begin a climbing spiral.  Instead of geometry helping the lower guy doing the "impossible" reversal, it now works against him by creating quite a bit of seperation between the two planes.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[B@tfinkV]

well said, and thats when you know you've chosen the wrong person to try the trick on

[Spatula]

I think what batfink is saying (and what i termed 'anticipation') is that if the bogey's movements can be predicted, at least in part, then its simply a matter of mental extrapolation to be able to move your nose to a point in space they are about to fly through and put some lead out at that point (both in the local and temporal sense) and watch the bogey fly straight into it.

In the simplest case is where your dead-6 and the bogey breaks rights, you know he will continue moving right at least enough for you to predict where he will be in the future. So you simply pull through lag, pure and into lead pursuit and take your shot at your estimated lead point and watch the bogey fly into them. Note this all happens within the reference of your forward view - eg you can see he moves closer to one your cockpits A pillars or away from a reference point like the gunsite.

The more complicated case, as batfink pulls off so nicely, is exactly the same in principle, however the execution of it is quite different. In this case batfink saw how the bogey was moving relative to his position, from this he estimates the bogey will continue to try pull for a shot, continuing on his current flight path, as that looks like what he is committed to doing (why are people so predictable?). With this knowledge its simply (is it simple??) a case of extrapolating out how your flight path can be altered to set your nose at a point the bogies path is going to pass through and start shooting. To do this you can again use static reference points about your c*ckpit and some view knowledge to aid you in this. The keys here are the predictability of the bogey's flight path (something to learn here...), and the prediction of his relative path about your aircraft (static reference points and view knowledge help here).

I wont comment for batfink, and im not the best shot in the universe by any stretch, but ive been in situations like this where i have worked all the above out and started maneuvering my nose to that predicted point before ive tracked the bogey (with view keys/buttons) anywhere near the forward view. Eg i have his path sussed out while still looking up or backwards up and are already moving to the 'fire point' while looking up and forward-up, and actually fire at the exact same time i transition to the forward view - no time required (or available) to line my shot up any more - just in time to watch hit sprites.

Its the sort of incomprehensibly complitcated task super-computers would struggle with, but humans have an uncanny ability to work all this out without even conciously thinking about it. It is quite zen-like.

[Badboy]

Originally posted by B@tfinkV
following up on Badboy's fantastic tutorial for the barrel defence, here is a similar video showing how to perfom this move in a single 'turn'.

Great Film B@tfinkV.

The maneuver I illustrated before, and the one you have executed in this film are both the Barrel Roll Defense, and all the main features of the maneuver are present in each case.

I've worked up the film to illustrate the key points of the maneuver so that the similarity to the previous film is apparent, as shown here:



Hope that helps...

Badboy

[B@tfinkV]

excellent diagram badboy, very clear and from the best angle to show the roll.

[Lye-El]

Nicely done.

[MajWoody]

That move works great 75% of the time but if you try it with the likes of kappa he k1ll yur @zz 75% of teh t1m3:cry