Dueling vs MA fighting

[bustr]

Stiglr,

Define deuling and stop leading this audience around with "vicious circular reasoning". You blatherskite the same here as if none of us haven't read the TW boards to know you used up your welcome there with that community leveraging this same style of reasoning to feed your need as a focus of attention. In Aces High we back our assertions with action or verifiable sources for data. Get a free 2 week account and have at it with the participants of this thread. Otherwise your visit on this board is just a maintenance fix for your addiction to Internet Trolling.

I'm ashamed of you guys conceeding to follow his rabbit hole excursion. Magic mushrooms and smiling cats anyone?

[Krusty]

Duelling is merely a way to articulate, practice and reinforce ACM technique. Naturally, that is usefull in the MA, especially if you are not already familiar with it, are out of practice, or are deficient in  particular area and need some objective reinforcement. However, the MA environment requires a wide and varied set of skills beyond that used in duelling to be successful, especially on the mental side of air combat. No amount of duelling will hone your SA and ability to instantly process multiple threats, your decision making process itself in complex engagements or cooperative tactics. All of these skill-sets are required to be successful, only the MA requires all of them to a highly developed degree for true un-mitigated success...

Even my squad, known for their skill, has several people who are fabulous duelists, but who are quite poor performers in the MA. While being good at duelling is certainly an advantage in any forum of air combat, it's not the most important factor for success in the MA. Great flying ability alone is largely defensive in nature, only when combined with great gunnery and good tactics does it become a true offensive weapon. I know a lot of people who are great flyers, but bad shots and/or poor tacticians, they make for slippery targets, but very rarely are they a real threat to dominate an engagement.

The point being, there's a wide and varied skillset required to be successful in the MA, to focus on one in isolation is to take it out of its natural context and pervert it, which is kind of what duelling does in a way. Set duels are to air combat what drawing a circle is to a work of art. It may be a subset component of the work of art, but it is not the work of art itself. To examine one small component of a thing in isolation then attempt to extrapolate it to then encompass the whole is to kill a creature and dissect it in order to examine how it lived its life instead of just observing it live. In my opinion, the MA experience is really the closest analog we have to what true air combat was in its totality of required skills and expertise, duelling represents only an analog of a small subset or facet of that totality.

I've thought the same thing for many many years now, but lacked the eloquence to put it so perfectly. Any time I tried to explain I felt I wasn't doing it any justice. Thanks for typing that out, Zazen.

[Stiglr]

@ Buster: Zazen sums it up rather well. Although I'd add that in events or in historical, realistic missions, in addition to the MA, skills are also places where dueling skills don't necessarily help you. Situational Awareness skills are much more important.

[humble]

We've already gone over this, if you've been paying attention.

Duel merges at co-alt, co-energy are highly rare, considering all the other possible variables that are in play during ANY engagement. It's quite the exception.

And here in lies the problem with your train of thought. No good trainer (formal or otherwise) works in an artificial environment. I'm far from uber as dueler but I'm reasonably proficient teaching most basic to intermediate ACM concepts. Just about everyone I've worked with comes to me with some form of "dueling" issue and yet finds that within 5 to 10 minutes I'm working with them on fundamental concepts that are applicable under all circumstances. In the end "dueling" is the application of BFM in a combat environment with the intent to achieve a particular goal or series of goals (more accurately). Accordingly this is a case of applied knowledge based on circumstance. Being proficient at "dueling" in no way minimizes other attributes a player has cultivated.

When a player works with any of the tremendous duelers (and/or trainers) mentioned in various recent threads a teaching scenario tends to evolve since most if not all of us have received a helping hand along the way. This creates significant exposure to various concepts and strategies that are applicable in the MA under a wide variety of circumstances. I'll try and illustrate what I mean with 2 different sets of film clips. Here are 2 fights back to back (posted in training BBS earlier) that involve using dueling techniques/tactics vs +E spits.
http://www.az-dsl.com/snaphook/film56.ahf 

Here are two clips pulled from a recent ride along. Basically these tend to fall into two distinct categories, either how to I fly a particular plane in the MA successfully or how do I apply ACM (which I view as "dueling" ACM) in the MA.

Here is a long ago posted clip of part of a "how to fly the plane in the MA"...
http://www.az-dsl.com/snaphook/109clip.ahf


Here are the clips from this weekend where we spent some time on applying concepts in the MA...
http://www.az-dsl.com/snaphook/film60_0314.ahf  
http://www.az-dsl.com/snaphook/film60_1518.ahf  

The entire goal in the 2nd type of ride along is to learn to use ACM in a position of relative inferiority. Anyone can succeed from a position of advantage. Learning to be aggressive (even if not entirely successfully) from a position of inferiority increases enjoyment and allows a player a greater freedom of action...

[uptown]

Stiglr,

 Magic mushrooms and smiling cats anyone?

yes please 

[Nemisis]

i dont think anyone would prefer to be co-anything. if someone is higher than u u really have no choice but to make them overshoot. ur not "giving" them ur six they should generally already have it. Not dead 6 but somewhere in that sector. You can evade while also luring your attacking into ur gunsights with the same risk as u would already have anyways if you were just to avoid the attack with no offensive intentions.

Not nessicarily true. If they are already in their dive, aimed at where you will be, he might not have vis on you. You could turn 180 degrees, and try to escape while he's trying to correct or trying to set up again. I usually try not to fly alone incase I get bounced by a high con, or a guy in a 262, 163 or other plane with a speed advantage.

May sound kind of dweeby, but I say that if you can't win, just run. Pointless to continue a one sided fight.

[Krusty]

Not nessicarily true. If they are already in their dive, aimed at where you will be, he might not have vis on you. You could turn 180 degrees, and try to escape while he's trying to correct or trying to set up again. I usually try not to fly alone incase I get bounced by a high con, or a guy in a 262, 163 or other plane with a speed advantage.

May sound kind of dweeby, but I say that if you can't win, just run. Pointless to continue a one sided fight.

Once in the MA I was in a 190A5 about 14k or so, and get into a fight with a P-51D about 22k or so, well above me.

Any manuver he made "UP" I made "DOWN" -- I mirrored him. Any time he dove on me I zoomed back to him. Anytime he looped up to roll down, I dove down for speed so I could meet him in the zoom upwards.

THe fight lasted over 5 minutes, and ended with both of us on the deck. A wild ride, and I'm happy to say I won (but sad to say I never filmed it).

There's PLENTY you can do when somebody's higher and faster than you 

[humble]

Not nessicarily true. If they are already in their dive, aimed at where you will be, he might not have vis on you. You could turn 180 degrees, and try to escape while he's trying to correct or trying to set up again. I usually try not to fly alone incase I get bounced by a high con, or a guy in a 262, 163 or other plane with a speed advantage.

May sound kind of dweeby, but I say that if you can't win, just run. Pointless to continue a one sided fight.

There is no such thing as a "one sided fight", just one sided pilot. Paraphrasing an old fighter quote "better a spit on my 6 then no spit at all". {see above}

[Nemisis]

I'll say BS to your face. A low P-40B agains a higher La7 is a one sided fight. And again, what point to continuing a fight you can't and won't win, when you can get away, and come back on more even terms?

[Bronk]

I'll say BS to your face. A low P-40B agains a higher La7 is a one sided fight. And again, what point to continuing a fight you can't and won't win, when you can get away, and come back on more even terms?

You in the la and filth in the p-40. You at any alt will lose. That's a one sided fight.

[Ack-Ack]

I'll say BS to your face. A low P-40B agains a higher La7 is a one sided fight. And again, what point to continuing a fight you can't and won't win, when you can get away, and come back on more even terms?

It all depends on the pilot.  Yes, the La 7 would have the advantage due the altitude and energy but that doesn't translate to a one sided fight.  

Last night I was bounced by a higher P-51D with a very large energy advantage. Each time he would make his BnZ pass, I would break into a Low Yo-Yo into his attack.  As he went back up on his zoom climb, I would level out and wait until he made his pass again and again, I would turn into his attack using a Low Yo-Yo.  After the 3rd or 4th pass, instead of zooming back up, the Mustang went into a High Yo-Yo, thinking that I would level out again after I made my breaking turn and he'd be able to saddle up on his six.  What he didn't realize is that with each Low Yo-Yo I was doing into his attack, I was gaining a little bit of energy each time.  So when he made the mistake of going into a High Yo-Yo after his last pass, I had sufficient energy to continue my turn into his attack and follow him up as he did the Yo-Yo and was able to close on him and removed his wing for the kill.

Sometimes the best defensive tactic you can do is go on the offensive and sieze the advantage from the attacker.


ack-ack

[Motherland]

I'll say BS to your face. A low P-40B agains a higher La7 is a one sided fight. And again, what point to continuing a fight you can't and won't win, when you can get away, and come back on more even terms?

You in the la and filth in the p-40. You at any alt will lose. That's a one sided fight.

Take this further... fight me (as someone who has no experience in the P40 series) in the P40B at any altitude in the La 7.
I'll do just as well as when I was in the P51

[JunkyII]

Something I learned in the DA which made me better in the MA is reversing......In the MA you normally have quite a bit of time to reverse your opponents attack but in the DA you stay pretty close compared to your opponent so the change have to be on a split second. Grizz was telling me one day about how it was easy to hit me because I was very predictable because I wasnt changing direction when  I knew I was about to get shot. Now when I se Im about to give my opponent a shot Ill make adjustments in my flight path to make it less readable. Now in the MA I can do less "dramatic" over shoots where I save more E in fights that I may be out numbered

[humble]

I'll say BS to your face. A low P-40B agains a higher La7 is a one sided fight. And again, what point to continuing a fight you can't and won't win, when you can get away, and come back on more even terms?

This again illustrates the misconception prevalent in this thread. If you are plane or position dependent then your at a lose when confronted with a situation that places you at either a positional or performance disadvantage. So when confronted with a higher "superior" plane you perceive you have a "fight you can't win". The flip side is people like me who are reasonably comfortable in just about every plane in the set and only really worry about who the other guy is...not the other plane. In a P40B I'd be much more worried about a high SBD then a high La-7

[Anaxogoras]

Holy crap, zazen is alive!