Well there's 10 minutes of reading time I won't get back
Fly however the heck you want to fly. Understand the key point here. There is absolutely no risk in this game outside of dying from a heart attack from lack of circulation due to sitting at the computer too long or getting shot by your significant other who is tired of looking at the side of your head for days on end.
Steve, you and I have run into each other many a time in the MA. More often then not, you are above me in your 51D as you like it, and me below you in my 38G as I like it. The challenge for me is to try and counter and defeat your advantage. Sometimes I do, more often then not, I don't. It's what is fun to me.
I look a the title of this thread. 'surviving the MA lonewolf". Not once in all these years of cartoon flying have I not survived. In itself the title is misleading. As always it's one guy's opinion on the way to 'fly' in the arenas. Then we get the Dicta Boelcke bit etc. Folks start confusing real life air combat with cartoon land combat. If that's how you choose to fly it, so be it, but to preach it as 'the way" is silly.
I understand where Shuff is coming from. These days I get very little time for cartoon combat in my 38G of my doom. When I do fly, I don't care to climb high. I just get myself a few K and wander towards the fight. I know someone will oblige me
And in thinking about it, the guys up high make a living off guys like me, and I don't mean the bad guys. I would bet that if you totaled up over the years the number of my deaths, to the number of deaths of the 6 guys shooting at me at the time I died in the crowd, the ratio would be off the charts in terms of their deaths. You guys up high need me drawing cons for ya so you can shoot em
In the end there is no losing in AH for me, as long as I'm having fun, and thankfully when I do get to fly, that tends to be the case.