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Help and Training / Re: Best Defense against Wingover/Reverse
« Last post by Badboy on Yesterday at 01:40:34 PM »Title says it all. 50% of the time an opponent that misses his HO (which I try and avoid) I'll watch them pull up and reverse with usually a high percentage of a lock on and eventual kill on me. Jinking, split s, diving away, Immelmann all fail. There a maneuver that is successful assuming I have enough speed and altitude.
Hi Kini,
The situation you are describing is a difficult one, and you have already received a very good response from Fugitive, so I'm not going to add much, other than to elaborate a bit so you can understand what's happening in that situation and why Fugitive gave you such good advice.
First, its a tough situation to be in because when most opponents go for the head on attack it is because they have two main advantages. Better guns and more speed. Better guns increase their probability of a kill (PK) and so does the extra speed. Their speed adds to the velocity of the bullets and can result in your death before your rounds even reach them. If you survive and see the attacker pull into the vertical, that means they are probably not just faster, but much faster. That presents you with a big problem, because if you follow their maneuver in a one circle fight, you a most likely to have real difficulty avoiding another head on pass because you are going to be slower and less maneuverable and they are going to have more time to line up the shot and their PK is even better than before. Even if your speed is almost equal to theirs and you have the same weapons, your odds went from bad to 50-50 at best.
That's why good timing and rolling out of plane can be a very good tactic. You can do it in two ways. The First mentioned by Fugitive is to roll 180 degrees and reverse your turn and look for a shot. That only works when you are able to force a tighter turn circle inside that of your opponent so that they overshoot and concede a shot. By reversing your turn you are essentially initiating a scissors maneuver and it only works if you can get a smaller turn radius and you recognise the visual cues involved and time it just right. The other option, a more difficult choice to execute, but one of my favourites is to only roll 90 degrees out of plane before they get their nose around for a second attempt. I try to make that into, or as close into the vertical, as possible and it creates a very difficult shot and leaves you with a very nice positional advantage. With practice and good timing, you give them an impossible shot and often end up on their 6 looking for your own shot. The only question then is will they get beyond effective guns range before you can get a kill. That is often determined by the relative low speed acceleration of both aircraft, and many of the big gunned aircraft are faster and have great low speed acceleration, so you won't always get a kill here.
Then Fugitive mentions putting his nose down a bit and extending. Again, excellent advice, and here is why. If we are working on the basis that your opponent wants to take a head on shot and is probably faster, you would like to equalise your energy states. Using short extensions is a great way to do that. To do this you need to do several things. Firstly time the extension for when your aircraft are pointing in opposite directions, i.e just after his failed head on. He will need to turn 180 to follow giving you time to get separation without losing too much altitude. Watch the rate of closure, keep your extension going while you are increasing the separation, then the moment you notice he is begining to gain on you, start your reversal. Do a gentle low slice so that can maintain a good turn rate and hold speed.
What will have happened now is that you will have reduced the energy disparity, it will be closer than it was before. So you will be entering another merge with a slightly improved situation. If your opponent had wanted to keep an energy advantage he would have needed to do a climbing turn and followed much less aggressively while maintaining or gaining altitude. So after that evolution your situation should be better. You may need to rinse and repeat this process until you judge that his energy advantage is sufficiently reduced. Then as you turn back into him you have more options and two good choices. You need to watch his nose position as you approach the merge, if it looks like he might get a shot, you can choose one of the options we have been discussing. It is amost always good to keep your nose below his in the early stage then at the last moment to roll out of plane and pull up hard. You choose the 90 degree roll to get a positional advantage and a two circle fight or the 180 degree roll to stay one circle and convert to a scissors by reversing your turn and turning inside his circle to force an overshoot and hopefully a shot.
I've made this sound easier than it is in practice because so much depends on the aircraft involved. Often the pilots who like to take high aspect shots like to fly the aircraft that have high speed and big guns and so the most common scenario is a match up that involves an aircraft that has high speed, good acceleration, very deadly guns and while those aircraft are not the best turners they have the ability to generate very high pitch rates, jerking the nose momentarily for a snap shot. The other aircraft is most commonly slower, with less effective guns but higher turn rate and tighter turn circle. So most of what I've described will work over a wide range of dissimilar aircraft match ups and also for similar aircraft engagements that begin when one pilot has a significant energy advantage.
Fighting aircraft with deadly guns, particularly when they have an energy advantage is just plain difficult. Against anyone it is a challenge, against good shots it can be more about survival than anything else and then you have to factor in the location of friendly aircraft and bases etc.
For most BFM problems, the solution is rarely about a single maneuver, so my additional comments should clarify some of the options. Fugitive summed them up nicely and hopefully I've helped you understand it well enough so you can make good choices.
The key skills involved are:
- Avoiding high aspect shots
- Energy management and equalisation
- Correct choice of one or two circle options
- Lastly and always, situational awareness
Hope that helps
If you want me to elaborate on anything let me know.
Regards
Badboy
