It might be useful to understand the just what you are looking at when you perform a spiral climb with the enemy on your 6.
There are a lot of visual clues which provide you with positional awareness in relation to your opponent. For instance, the 3 types of pursuits allow you to compare your nose position with that of the enemy. We'll use the gunsight as reference point.
In pure pursuit you put your gunsight on the turning planes tail. This allows you to maintain the same distance and speed in relation to the dude you are pursuing. In lead pursuit, you may put your gunsight on the turning dudes nose or even a plane length or more ahead of him to increase the closure rate. In lag pursuit, you may place your gunsight either on a point behind him or perhaps a little above his tail feathers. Lag pursuit requires you merely ease some of the G pressure off the stick. Ok, 3 different situations with 3 different views although you are using the gunsight as an alignment tool.
<exit back to the spiral climb with the enemy on your 6>
There have already been lots of good info posted here on the subject. Energy or speed differences, zoom climb ability, and how some folks go about their personal tactics to accomplish it have all been touched on and good points, too. I will add the visual clues you may want to be seeing as you perform the maneuvers. To do this I will touch on the 3-9 line.
The 3-9 line is actually numbers on the clock as it relates to your plane. It's easy to understand when you hear "break hard, there's someone on your 6". Bullets zipping by your canopy brings home what "your 6" is quite dramatically. Well your 3-9 line is merely views to the left and right of seat in the cockpit, 3 being your right side view and 9 being your left side. Simple, right? In fact, most folks are saying, "I knew that...it's nothing new". Ok, let's put it to use to determine the positional difference between your plane and that dude out there who's trying to kill you. Or to put it more simply, just who's behind who? I'll bet you've flown around with some other dudes in the arena and you've seen them rolling their wings to the left and right to about 70-90 degrees. You figured this out...hey, they're looking down to see who's below they might be able to jump. Did you know that if you roll your wings and look down and note if the guy is ahead of your 3-9 line then you are behind him? That's kinda cool info to have if you plan to get in on him. You end up on his 6 instead of him pointed right at you with a possible HO situation.
Ok, a quick review. The 3-9 is an invisible line you draw from your eyeballs (in the cockpit) out to the center of each wingtip and from there out into infinity (as far as you can see). Anyone you see ahead of the invisible line is in front of you. Anyone you see behind that line is in back of you. Remember this...AHEAD of line and you're BEHIND them. BEHIND the line and they're BEHIND you. The only that is not true is when you are head on at a merge.
Putting the 3-9 line into real time spiral climb tactics, and you can use any of the previously mentioned ways others have mentioned in this thread, and you use your views to take the dude behind you into a spiral climb until you have turned around him in the climb enough to get behind him or place him in line or ahead of your 3-9 line. At that point your merely roll over and pull right onto his 6. Simple and effective but it must be practiced. It was also mentioned if you can place the dude at your 3-9 line in a turn he cannot "pull" enough to get his guns on you without stalling away. BTW, the spiral climb might also be called, "the rope a dope" manuever because folks fall for it over and over without realizing they're being set up to get sent to the Tower.
Hope this helps.
Ren
Aces High II Training Corps
