WideWing

[Nomak]

I know its not necessairy but I just wanted to tell you what great fun I had with you in the TA tonight.  By far the most TA fun I have ever had.  My feelings were as follows.....

In the SpitV vs 109F I felt I clearly had the upper hand.  Although I think that advantage lies in the plane I was flying more than flying ability.  

In the 109F vs 109F you were clearly the better pilot.  I have quite a bit to learn in this bird.  I hope we can work on that in the future.

In the SpitV vs SpitV I again felt like I had the advantage however the margin was razor thin and I know that isnt one of your regular rides.  

Your thoughts are of course welcome here.

I look foreward to seeing you next Monday

Dave

[Widewing]

Well, I had a blast. I'm really looking ahead to next Monday.

SpitV vs 109F-4... The biggest problem for the 109 is getting it whoa'd down enough to get the flaps out.. Fully out. It'll match the Spit5 on the first reverse because that initial turn is governed more by G limits than turning ability. However, from there on the 109 is vulnerable. When I finally did get the flaps fully out, you almost had enough lead to shoot. From there it's not possible to get enough back. With equal pilots, the Spit wins most of those. With unequal pilots the 109 is in worse trouble.

109F vs 109F... You did remarkably well considering you had no time in this 109 model.

There's a couple of things to remember about it as concerns its handling. If there's no tactical advantage in turning left or right, turn left. In left hand maneuvers, torque is your friend. Go right and torque kicks you in the shin. Also, I don't know if you noticed, but with flaps out, below 100 mph, the 109F refuses to roll to the right. Simply will not budge. You can do one of two things. You can pull off power to reduce torque and it will slowly roll (aided by a boot full of right rudder), or you can "go with the flow" and roll 270 degree to the left (as in 3 lefts make a right). It's actually quicker rolling the 270 to the left than fighting for 90 degrees to the right. I won't reverse to the right if going left results in the same positioning. Sometimes you don't have that option and you have to wrestle the beastie around in a right turn. It's not happy to do so though.

Unlike the Spitfire, using flaps in the 109F doesn't hurt your turn rate much. However, you have to be alert for flap auto-retract or it'll get busy in a hurry.

Spit vs Spit. Yeah, I don't fly it much, but that's no different than you flying the 109F. Clearly, the pilot with the most time in a plane will have some measure of advantage. In the case of Spit5s, you showed me why carrying flaps out too long is a bad idea.. There were about 2 dozen reasons in my wings.

So, I left them up and saw the result. Still, I noticed you drop them a few times to tighten a turn and pull them right up again. After a couple of nose to nose merges, I saw that your limited use was gaining you a little bit here and a little bit there. I had some opportunities, but to get them I had to do some risky (IE: dumb) things. Some paid off, but some didn't and the forest took a beating. There's something about looking up and seeing trees above me that makes me a bit tense. I don't know when gopher season starts, but I already have the limit.

Seriously, after the first Spit v Spit fight (where I got owned), I concentrated on being smooth on the controls and not overflying the plane. Marine snipers have a saying: "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast". I just have to remind myself of that and not push so hard that I actually lose ground.

I learned a few things about the Spit5, that maybe I can apply next time. Likewise, you discovered some things about the 109F and I expect you will have it down pat by next week.

So, tonight was as much fun as I've ever had dueling. I was laughing so hard I could barely see where I was flying, which gets interesting with those concrete trees out there.

Next week we can take up the 109s again and perhaps the F4Us, which are the latest UFOs. With full flaps, F4Us don't stall, they just turn around and go the other way, like it was planned that way.  

Looking forward to next time!

My regards,

Widewing

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Nomak
By far the most TA fun I have ever had.

Scary... I like T&A a lot.  But widewing... eek.

Widewing, for your future Spitfire encounters, I've found that the flaps should be avoided most of the time, they are quite draggy... However, I'll share with you a trick I use (and some other spit pilots)... If you're manuvering in the vertical, you can often pop the flaps nearing the top of your loops, and retract them as quick as possible.

This can gain you several degrees of solution pretty much instantly.  And those are degrees you'll keep when you bring the flaps back up.  If you can get the opponent into a second or third loop you can nail them even if they started 90 or more degrees ahead in the first loop.

It takes timing and some caution.  I don't do it if the fight is horizontal because its too expensive on the 'E', but in the vertical you can get the 'E' back on the down hill quite nicely.  Make sure you're not hanging them down on the descent or you'll end up in a very scary energy scenario that doesn't pay.