I am looking forward to the training session Delirum. I stalled the 38 twice last night at the top of a loop setting myself up for an easy kill. I really need the help.
Soulyss, you are a terrific shot. Do you zoom for most shots?
There's something I don't hear very often.
I don't think of myself as a particularly good shot, missing shots gets me killed more often than not in the MA. If you watch the films and check the box film viewer that says "Use recorded views" it will show when I'm using zoom and when I'm not.
In general I don't use it very much I don't think when possible I prefer not to zoom in. When I do use it is when I'm having trouble seeing my target. My eyesight isn't very good especially viewing certain colors, more specifically greens tend to blend together and I have a real hard time making out distinct shapes. You'll see that one of the times I use zoom is when I'm diving on the P-47 in the last film, when I'm looking down and it's a green P-47 against the green ground during dawn/dusk in the MA I was having a real hard time seeing him, making out the P-47 shape or seeing which way it was oriented compared to me.
One easy little "drill" that I like to do when I'm killing time in the TA is set up on the runway 25% or 50% fuel and perform a normal take off, as soon as the plane get's airborne I level and hug the ground, when I get down towards the end of the runway I pull and zoom straight up. If you can keep the plane going straight up you can hold it there down to 0 airspeed, after that I drop off and dive I zoom back down the runway and do it on the other end. I stay within the length of the runway, I feel like it helps with my spatial orientation as well low speed handling because you have to make a lot of small adjustments as the speed bleeds off, if you don't have the nose going straight up, the plane will fall off before IAS get's down to 0. You can also practice the stalls at the top, see if you can decide which way you're going to fall off then do it, practice over the top, nose/bunt over, rudder left, rudder right, etc.