In my experience, most "HO's" develop from quite a distance, with an enemy plane coming in from a good distance out (3k or more) and all you ever see of him on the way in is a + sign without the bottom line. If you pull straight onto him, you're now in an HO situation. I would like to point out that if you see him coming in like this, you're the one who gets to decide whether it turns into a face shooting competition or not.
My personal preference for a merge is to go nose low and try to pass at about a 4 o'clock angle to the bandit if he's just tracking me for a shot. The idea is to get your plane moving in a vector that puts you in a position where if he tries to pull to get lead for a shot, he'll have to black out before he can get it.
It's relatively easy to do this, the finesse comes from retaining as much of your E as possible. If he's one of these guys that just wants to keep pulling for a solution on every pass, I try to keep him pulling as hard as I can, while keeping my speed up as much as possible. After 2-3 turns if he's just banking and yanking, he can be low enough E for me to go for a rope. Plane matchup comes into play with this as well.
Really, I treat a HO attempt very similar to how I treat a guy trying to bounce me with alt. Don't move in a straight line, make your plane skinny to him when he's getting close to gun range. If he's pulling hard, I often like to do a high speed, gradually climbing chandelle to get higher than him while retaining speed. The object is for me to make small, E efficient adjustments and keep him at angles that get him burning E trying to put his pipper on me and hopefully fighting uphill.
When I'm fighting someone, I like to get above them or in a superior E state before I start actually trying to shoot them. A guy that's going for a HO doesn't often think ahead in the fight, all he's looking at is what's right in front of him. What I find effective with such an opponent is to try to establish an E advantage, then use it as a club to beat him with.
If I happen to be in something that thoroughly outclasses him in turning and I have smash to work with, sometimes I'll go to another tactic. I'll basically pass him at that 4 o'clock angle, and pull hard into him trying to saddle up. I tend to favor the Jug-like planes though, which means that isn't an option very often for me unless I'm trying to surprise him by doing the unexpected.
Coming at it from the other side, if you're moving in from advantage to engage a guy who turns up to face shoot you, I generally pull up a bit so I pass above him and to a side 600-800 yards out, again retaining my E and hoping he tries to put his nose up to follow me and try to shoot me.
Wiley.
