Trim: after take off, reach a speed and attitude at which you would like to have hands off operation. Hit shift-x to rig the aircraft. Disengage auto-pilot. Don't touch trim for the rest of the flight. In the F2b, I generally rig for hands off at 130 MPH in a shallow dive if headed for low altitude fighter mission, or to about a 80 MPH shallow climb if headed for a high alt patrol or photo recon mission.
Icons: I set my icons to size 10. Enemy forrest green, friendly turquoise. The eye is supplemented, but you still have to work at spotting and identifying cons, especially if they are below you.
Voice Comms: I turn down the voice volume completely. It can be kind of freaky, since when someone uses voice, other sounds seem to cut out, so I sometimes think my engine has died. But a mechanical scare in the air once in a while is not entirely unrealistic
Missions profiles:
Fighter: When at the Furball, I stay near the edges and focus on clearing the tail of friendly pilots who extend and are pursued.
Recon: I pick a field or landmark to photograph. I climb to between 7 and 10k, overfly the target and take screenshots. I then RTB and land. Surprisingly, both my photo recons so far have been opposed by co-alt fighters. Very tense pursuits.
Front patrol: I climb to 7-10k and head for one of the ends of the front (SW or NE) and fly from one end to the other repeatedly. Again, all my front patrols have been opposed. On one flight, I encountered an enemy observer at about 8k and tried to keep him on his side of the lines. This resulted in a quite intense running fight, and eventually a dogfight. On another, I was at 16k for testing purposes and encountered a
high triplane. After a 20 minute chase, we started the fight at 18k and he eventually disengaged and dived for his field.
Vlas
