Originally posted by TexMurphy
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Situation 2.
Slow approaching con on my six at about 2.0k distance. Not too uncommon but its sometimes hard to spot this early enough.
I do sometimes create this situation intentionally in big furballs. I grab someones attention and lead him out of the fight to get him alone. If he is in a faster plane this situation will automatically arrise.
The move Im about to describe requires aprox 1.5k separation. You can pull it off at 1.0k in some planes but often requires some modification to it. Closer then taht its not recommended.
What I do is I go into a very very long clockwise barrell roll. You want to strech it as long as you can and pull it as high as you can without becoming too slow. At the inverted position of the barrell roll you wana be flying in the same direction as you started the manouver. You arnt gonna be going exactly in the same direction but want it as close a possible.
Now you do a split S.
At the bottom of the split S you are just under your enemy in a perfect merge position. From here you pull a immelman and pop right in behind your enemey.
The risk with this manouver is that you either start it too late (less then 1.5k separation) or you get too slow in the barrell roll. If either of these two happen then your enemy will have a good shot at you by just going straight as you come out of the spilt S.
Reason I do this instead of a High YoYo, Flat turn or a Immelman is that the entry and exit points of these manouvers are in the same position on the depth axis.
When your enemy sees a High YoYo comming he will just follow you through it and hence you wount gain anything from it.
Also the above mentioned manouvers allow your enemy to get into a lead shot position. Not something you wana give him either.
The manouver I described has the exit position is further down the road of the depth axis then the entry position. This means that the enemy isnt closing in on you through out 50% of the manouver. Its first when you get to the Split S part that the gap closes between the enemy and your self.
This results in one very important thing. The enemy is very unlikely to follow you through your manouver. If he doesnt follow you through the barrell roll part you are already haf way out of his grasp. Reason he is very unlikely to follow you through that part is because most pilots are quite bad on reading barrell roll + other acm manouver combos and the fact that the distance isnt changing. If the distance aint changing he is comfortably on your six, he thinks...>=)
Hard manouver but very good one.
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Tex
You have a film of this? Sounds like something I'd really like, but having trouble wrapping my head around it.
Let me see if I have the thng visualized.....
By going wide and high with that barrel roll, you're gaining lateral+vertical separation and giving up, um, linear separation as he closes. you're goung for a half barrel roll, and at the top inverted you want to essentially do the 2nd half of a loop (since you're already inverted), timed so you end up merging with him nose to nose but significantly under him. Then you continue the upward srtoke of a loop to come on his 6?
But wouldnt that timing mean he went way past you, and with the climb to his alt you'd have lost speed? And doesnt he react by trying to follow downward, maybe split-S 'ing himself since energy states are fairly equal with the initial slow close rate?
I must be visualizing this wrong....