I read a lot of these types of threads, and think about these specific things a lot as well. Thanks for the films Latrobe, it's good to be able to sit in all the planes involved and see things from all the different perspectives. Having Mace and Bruv, among the better "real" and "virtual" pilots both contribute is great, and I'm glad most of the arena doesn't bother reading this stuff or it would make my life a lot harder.
I've flown the Spit5 a lot in the last few months, all under 10k, usually on the deck, and I find I can survive and kill even when outnumbered, but usually only when those enemy planes have average pilots, or good pilots with average shooting ability. Any combination of good or excellent in either category, and living in a 3/4/5 v 1 is much tougher to do, and requires a lot of luck.
I find my problem is falling into old habits. I've always just relied on timing in order to keep out of the enemies gunsite, and when I'm dived on by a higher con, I usually just pull up into him in a hard vertical pull and then roll back into him once he's gone sailing by with his trigger down spraying away, and try for a shot, without having pointed my wing at him at all. I find it's hard to judge when to relax that first pull, and roll my wingtip towards him, as this takes a lot of guts to try at first when just pulling straight usually works without changing my vector, or however Mace put it in terms of adding more planes of motion or whatever into the equation to complicate the enemy planes guns solution. By the time I've waited for him to get close enough for my "normal" break to work, which does in 95 percent of the cases, it's too late to try and put a wingtip on him as he's closed the distance and his relative overtake airspeed is such that there just isn't time. I think I should be pulling that first time when the enemy is further away, but still has committed to attacking me, say 1.7 or something like that, and then at 1.0 or something like that then rolling a bit to put my wingtip on him and then pulling again, then going for another roll to get him back into my sites. I wish I had some films of me failing at this, but I don't, as like I said I usually get by just doing it the "old" way, and keep a high k/d and k/time ratio with this, but I WANT to be able to do it better and how Mace, Latrobe, and Bruv are describing it.