The spit8 is a good choice for an energy fighter. It can climb with the best of them. It can also turn so you are a turnfighter too. The only thing it doesn't have is speed so you can't run from a fight, but you can climb out against a lot of planes and you can keep angles on others until you get them or they get tired and go away. The spit8 is a plane I fly quite a bit. The really dangerous planes to you are higher number spits. Trap other planes by entering a fight with lots of altitude on them, then dive to catch them. You have a limited distance to catch the runners because they will be gaining speed in the level as you lose it. Once you force a plane to turn use energy conserving vertical manovers and keep hitting them over and over again in rapid succession. Mix it up a bit, sometimes delaying your dive and sometimes flying above them and duplicating their moves higher up.
If you get into trouble, know your evasive manovers. If your nme is not a turnfighter then turn the fight into a turnfight, usually horizontal, but possibly vertical against planes that can't climb or zoom. It helps when on the defensive to be neither purely in the vertical or in the horizontal. Keeping back pressure on the stick and throwing in random banking, changing roll direction every one or two seconds can help in an emergency where you don't know what to do but don't get nose high with low speed in front of the nme. Change roll direction/rate every one or two seconds. Also know how to force the overshoot.
Some pilots will throw out heavy flaps and try to outturn you, which they can do. In this case I would go into a spiral climb against most planes. Against a 109K I would try to gain altitude/speed (i.e. energy) while he has his flaps out and is compromising his speed/climbrate while avoiding getting shot down until I had the energy advantage then I would go on the offensive with something like a low yo-yo. This is a bit problematic since you never know what he is doing with his flaps but if he is gaining angles he probably has his flaps out. If he is gaining speed or altitude he probably has them in.
I hope this helps.
