I was flying my D-hog yesterday, from a CV to a base that was pretty quite but had the same 3-4 pilots upping, all obviously pretty green.
One guy kept upping 109's, and on every single merge he would go for the HO. He did this for 3 fights in a row, each fight I could see he was going for the HO, I would fake the return HO and at the last second juke as to make him give up position and allow me to get an instant angles advantage. I shot him down 3 times in a row fairly quickly (one or 2 moves after merge).
Rather than flaming him, I sent him polite PM's over text. I said something along the lines of "when you go for the HO, you are giving up angles right away". He didn't reply, so I figured he was just ignoring me.
The next sortie I see the 109 co alt and go for the merge. Low and behold this 109 flies at me but at about D2.0 start a mellow turn, obviously avoiding the HO, then a split S right before we merge to try to get on my 6. No way can this be the same guy I think, but sure enough after a few more moves I shoot him down and it is the same guy!
I send him another PM saying "see how that fight lasted longer", and offered some advice for him to try to gain an E advantage after the merge by using a climbing move.
Next I see his 109, we merge and he passes close without firing (understands mutual respect on the HO now?), and goes for a gentle immelman (exactly what I had been doing in our past fights). Now on our secondary merge (the first one we've had) we are on another HO at co E, and again he passes and tries to maneuver for angles. Holy crap I think to myself, I have an actual fight! This time our fight lasts a few minutes and goes to the deck, where I finally out turn him. I almost felt like giving him the kill to reward him, but I just couldn't do it so I put him out of his misery with a bunch of .50cals to the cockpit.
Now here in just about 30 minutes this guy went from blindly HOing and then getting killed on every flight, to actually making a good first pass and offering a challenge. He never pm'd me back (maybe he didn't know how), but I could tell just by his flying and progression that he was having more fun. This has been one of my more fun moments in AH in recent memory. This guy went from being the typical HO dweeb that offered little or no challenge, to actually giving me a good fight and making me work hard. This is what AH is all about, progression, learning, and getting better at ACM.
<S> to the other pilot, if you are reading this I'm sure you know who you are. Great fights and keep it up, I can tell you will be an ACE soon!