flying the LW planes

[Elysian]

190s are great BnZers with their good high speed handling and climb.  Try and keep your speed above 290 at all times, don't kill your speed in a multi-con environment by pulling hard turns or too steep of climbs.  Wotan told me a long time ago to try not to exceed 2 gs in turns, not always possible but good advice.

Easiest way to get kills is to bounce cons that are lower and slower than you (as always ).  Fly your attacks so that you swoop in from the enemies blind spots, like split S down from directly above.  Time it so you connect your shots with the least amount of angle off tail, try and delay your visibility in his rear hemispehere until you are ready to fire.   Hit or miss, zoom past and regain E.

If you get in trouble, 190s can dive fairly well and have good level speed if you are forced to the deck (D9 can outrun P51 on the deck).  Last ditch efforts to turn the tables on a con can use the 190s roll to its advantage, such as barrel rolls or scissors to force overshoots.  190 has very poor low speed handling however, it is tough to win the "overshoot fight" vs most planes.


I take the extra 20mm on the A5, the performance difference is really negligible IMO.

Shouldn't really turn 190s if you can help it, but they do get *sort of* maneuverable when low on fuel (say 50-75 fwd left).  190A5 struggles, but can keep with turning nikis and spit 9s sometimes when low on fuel.

190s are great fun when ya get used to them !

[gofaster]

Originally posted by Elysian
Easiest way to get kills is to bounce cons that are lower and slower than you (as always ).  Fly your attacks so that you swoop in from the enemies blind spots, like split S down from directly above.  Time it so you connect your shots with the least amount of angle off tail, try and delay your visibility in his rear hemispehere until you are ready to fire.   Hit or miss, zoom past and regain E.

My tactic in a 190A8 is to drop down from the target's 4 o'clock position, keeping my nose in front of the target's so that my flight path will connect to his.  From that angle, you sit in the target's blind spot since you're neither directly behind nor beside and are slightly above the level view area.  I chop throttle around 2.5 or so to (a) avoid an excessive rate of closure and (b) to hide the sound of my engine which can alert the target that another plane is near.

Originally posted by Elysian
I take the extra 20mm on the A5, the performance difference is really negligible IMO.  

I skip the A5 and go straight to the A8, which has the same armament but more ammo.

Originally posted by Elysian
190s are great fun when ya get used to them !

I love getting into an HO merge with Spitfires, Hellcats, P-51s, 109s - heck, anything except P-38s, Me-110s, Hurricane IICs and P-47s.  I can WEP the A8 up to around 15k on take-off, then normal climb from there to 20k and drop down on most targets at will.  There's a certain satisfaction in watching a plane just disintegrate into its component parts under that sort of withering firepower.  It makes pretty short work of bombers, too.

[XtrmeJ]

*Sheds Tear* Learning to Fly LW planes. *sniff* ATTA BOY!!!!!

[wetrat]

I'd suggest learning to fly the 109's well. If you can fight well in a 109 (as in not running all the time), you can do well in just about anything.