Hum. I fly the 190A8 with some frequency, I suppose. I really enjoy flying the plane, but it is rather unsuitable for fighting in the gangbang arena. Whoops, I said that out loud. What I meant was it is totally unsuitable for flying in the MAIN arena, of course.
I'll list the pros of the 190A8 as I see them, followed by the cons, again as I see them.
Pros-
1. Superb firepower. Unbelievable firepower.
2. Roll rate. It rolls very well.
3. Handling in general. The plane feels light on the controls, and is generally very easy and nice to fly, as long as you don't get below 200mph in it. Around 200mph, the controls feel slightly mushy, and the plane will stall at the drop of a hat.
Cons.
1. Extremely poor turning (rate and radius). This is not true at high speed, at 350mph or higher the 190 will turn inside of a Spitfire. Below 300 mph, the 190a8 is easily one of the worst 3 turners in the game.
2. Acceleration. Slow, compared with what you will be fighting in the MA. Over 50% of the planes you see will be N1K2's, P51's, SpitIX's and LA7's. All of the above accelerate much, MUCH better than the 190a8.
3. Climb rate. Abysmal, in my opinion. With the 500kg centerline bomb mounted, this plane is lucky to break 1500fpm. Even without the bomb mounted the climb rate is no great shakes.
4. Top speed. Again, slow, compared to what you will be facing in the MA. The N1K2 is at most 5-10mph slower than the 190a8 at typical MA altitudes (below 10k). If you are below 300mph, and the N1K starts out faster or the same speed as you, you are dead. You may as well bail, unless you enjoy making them waste their ammo. The P51 is about 25mph faster, the La7 is around 45mph faster.
Well, as you can see, you have picked an "inferior" plane to work with. However, since you have experience flying in Airwarrors, you at least have a leg up on the other newbies that might be fooled into getting in this plane. The good news is that of the 50% your opponents that the "Big 4" make up, you really only have to worry about the P51 and the LA7. And even in those cases you probably only have to worry about the P51 about 25% of the time, because 75% (at least) of P51 drivers in the MA couldn't find their bellybutton with both hands and a candle. The La7, unfortunately for A8 drivers, is a good enough plane that no matter how stupid the la7 pilot is, his plane will only let him lose maybe 1 in 10.
Anyway, as far as advice in the plane.. I never flew Airwarriors, so I don't know how the 190A8 flew in that game. In Aces High, the most obvious piece of advice is to never let your guard down. Never engage any enemy that is higher than you are. Always leave yourself a way out of a fight (in this you are lucky, because the 190A8 DOES dive very well. You will have to worry about a Spit or N1K for perhaps the first 5 seconds, but after that they will not keep up with you).
You will have to rely on snapshots, and you will have to get good at them, because you will not get many opportunities for tracking shots, nor can your plane manuever with just about any enemy plane you care to pick. Of course, with the awesome firepower that the 190A8 packs, a snapshot will USUALLY do the job on an enemy plane. I personally use the 4x20mm loadout instead of the 2x20+2x30mm, because the ammo loadout means you can keep firing all of your cannons for a much longer time (plus the 2 cannons have different trajectories, which makes it tough to hit sometimes). My advice is NEVER take only the 2 cannon loadout, if you want to fire 2 cannons hop in a Dora, she will get the job done much better. Someone worked it out that you only get a 5% increase in performance by dropping the outboard cannon (compared to a 50% increase in firepower by keeping them), so it isn't worth it in my opinion.
NathBDP, Martell0, Kirin.. all of these guys are very good 190a8 sticks. You can contact them ingame (or me as well), and I'm sure they'd be happy to help you out.
