You know, I was thinking about this quite a bit earlier this evening. Here's a clip of a fight I had earlier today. I wasn't really flying a better turner but after reviewing the film, I think that I really pushed too hard trying to pull lead when a lag pursuit might have set me up for a better shot. Of course, better gunnery might have ended it sooner. He did present me with a good planform shot at one point, which I missed. I would be interested to hear what more experienced sticks have to say about the enagement. I find that I can learn by watching my own films, but sometimes I wonder what I am missing since I don't have the experience to fully understand what I am seeing most of the time.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=ea9273c6ecfdbe5dab1eab3e9fa335ca321633ea72b60a23
Look at
TT1engin.ahf at around 1:00. I am setting up a merge with a spit. He is intentionally not in my forward view. I want to merge with him in a way that will make him pass through my lift vector, and I want my lift vector above the horizon (because I intend my first turn to be nose high). This gives me the option to turn into him early on the merge.
If I can get position to have him pass through my lift vector. I want to get separation at the merge. This offsets our turn radius and gives me the opportunity to finish a reversal inside his turn circle (figure below). .
If you had applied that kind of approach to the merge followed by a more vertical turn, you should have been able to have guns on him within a 270 degree turn after the merge when his first maneuver was a flat turn.
It looked like you were often mirroring his maneuvers, and trying to keep your lift vector on him. Once you get in trail, or at least on his side of the circle, that's the right thing to do with your lift vector. But when you are still in a merge-to-merge portion of the fight, you'll want your lift vector pointing toward your next turn. Your next turn should be whatever BFM will best counter your opponents turn, and that may be "out of plane" with your opponent.
The first turn after the merge he did a nose high flat turn and you followed suit. Had you done an immelman or pitchback you could have gained angles (
film example). At 0:48 he inverted into a split-s, you followed suit. Initiating a flat turn, and then rolling your lift vector to follow as he passed by would have gained you angles (
film example).
Other than that, something I really noticed was you were giving up too much energy dialing back the throttle. You were in trail for awhile, but you gave up so much speed that you allowed the spit enough separation to reverse almost nose-on back into you. There are times when you may want to be off the throttle briefly, but it looked to me like you were overdoing it. I am looking at both my projected flight path/angle-off, and separation when judging whether to adjust the throttle. If you are not in danger of overshooting, you'll usually want all the thrust you can get. Even if your turn is G limited by your speed, at full power you're still at a thrust deficit due to all the induced drag you're producing with your maneuvering.
