Energy Management 2 (Lecture by DeadDuck)

From Hocuspocus: FIRST: Bummer asked about 109 last time and I didnt give an answer I was happy with. I thought about it and I have a better answer. E fighting is maximizing your options so the way to E fight a 109 is to use its strengths. If you want to fly the 109 and use its strengths, there are two things that the 109 is best at. Between 8-12k it is actually the best turning ETO plane, so it behoves you to do turning IN THAT ALT RANGE. An example of what _I_ think of as E fighting would be using the 109s climb to keep the fight in the band where the 109 uses its energy the best. Another thing that 109 is good at, tho it rarely matters in 870, is HIGH alt fighting. 35K+ Only thing that can match it is the Dweebcat. My memories are of KurskII when I discovered a Ki will _NOT_go higher than 37K...PERIOD. Damn FWz and 109s were laughing at me from 39K. Other thing is a result of me dueling Shadow here earlier. This isnt really about E fighting, but learning in general.

If you fly in AW you MUST remeber that what you see is not neccesarly what the other guy sees! This makes many tactics and theories problematic. Shadow killed me twice. Both times I thought I was about to shoot him down. Anytime you are "sure" that somebody couldnt have killed you your probably right:) He just wasnt playin same game:) Its part of the game, and you cant let it discourage u.

Ok... advanced E fighting. I have 3 scenarios to start with and a trick of Killers and we'll go from there.

From Hocuspocus: First setup is suppose that you are totling along spoiling for a fight in say a P38. Along comes a HIGH 51 (something faster anyway). Now you could do what I mentioned before and start climbing under him, forcing him to dive straight down, but then if its Grok, he'll run. So what do you do to EQUALIZE E states? Try to get away ? AFTER he notices you, when he dives for you 6 start to dive away also. In a 38 you can wind up to 375 quick in a relatively shallow dive and if you time it right you'll be in a situation where he is trailing you by 2-3K coalt with only a slight E edge. Then u do an Immelman and engage. The idea is to draw him down and make him blow alt in a tail chase.

Assumptions are: You are in more agile plane and WANT to come to grips ANd he has a faster plane and superior E. From Porn: Why sacrifice your E with an Immelman. Why not split S?

From Hocuspocus: Assumption is you want to force him to fight and immelman will convert you speed to alt and set you up for a lead turn and if he wants to run you can drive him down to the deck. If you go low he can unload and bug. From Shadownyc: I sometimes do an immel after the drag you described...but if he's far enuff back, I perform a flat turn (slightly nose down) to come at him head-on...comments?

From Hocuspocus: Thats the next move I was gonna talk about:) The difference is that in what you are describing you are trying to maintain speed (nose down) against a plane that is faster in the first place and is esentially defensive. What happens is that the 51 in this case can just go vertical and get above u or unlaod and bug. The immelman forces the 51 to dive or engage. That of course means he might shot you down:). Like I said, the idea is to FORCE him to fight and since a 38 zooms WAY better than 51 (applies to Spit and 109 too) the thing to do is go vertical while denying the shot. The 51 has blown E in tail chase and now YOU have E advantage.

From Hocuspocus: Ok next variation: Lets say you have same situation Fast high enemy you lower in turn fighter. Now if you are dealing with someone who is AGGRESIVE, you can you usually do a judo throw on em. You start out the same way with a run, but when you let em get a little closer like they are ALMOST in range ( and they get hot flashes ) start a break BUT you chop throttle a little and start a nose low turn. Pull just enough Gs to keep his guns off you. If he is greedy enough, he'll follow you in your break and you can draw him into a tighter and tighter turn that _nose_down_ while denying him the shot. WHat will happen is at some point he wont be able to stay with you and will have to break off. Having bled most of his E in a turn AND being nose down so he is forced to recover below you.

From Whipster: Ok... what if higher target made a fake pass came over top.. U didn't see it soon enough.. U be dead. I kill guys in my FW like that all the time if I see this.. but a little late if in the turn fiter.. what do I do???

From Hocuspocus: Now if you screw up you die...thats a given. The way we start of this is with the low bogie making a run so 51 going vert means he breaking off. Ok on being low guy. What Whip is describing btw is a high yo-yo. What you do if 51 gets smart and goes vertical is unload and make him start over chasing you:)

From Whipster: explain unload please??

From Hocuspocus: Anytime an enemy does a high yo-yo they are going too fast. Unload=stop pulling Gs and try to max speed

From Whipster: ahhh what makes you think that???? Just cause he dove on ya????

From Hocuspocus: ...and are using the high yo-yo to stay INSIDE turn. What a yo-yo does is allow you to change your vector in the vertical by rolling rather than pulling Gs and then come down using new vector. Downside is that yo-yo take more time. Time in proportion to excess speed. Whip, a slower plane doing a yoyo= suicide:)

From Bummer: I was wondering about the break turn that started this one. I have been having trouble lately with getting killed in what used to be a good break turn by 1) wonderful 90 degree deflection shooting, or 2) the lag has them with a better angle on me than I thought. Your thoughts on break turns?

From Hocuspocus: ok...no good answer to that one Bummer. Fact is that gunnery is royally porked in AW right now IMO and the host is starting to do some weird stuff. BBs protestation to the contrary, I think we have some problems that are going to get worse before they get better. On the break turn, Basically at speed all planes turn the same. Since the idea of a break turn is to get AWAY from enemy guns. (and in this example make em do something stupid) you have to turn BETTER than the enemy. This is where the the "judo" comes in. By going nose low AND chopping throttle you are slowing down and decreasing your turn radius while making it look like you are speeding up (nose low. The trailer, unless he reacts IMMEDIATLY will accelerate in turn when he follows you and find his radius increasing OR hw will black out:) Either way you can take advantage. The idea is to use his speed against him. If you keep your speed up in a break, you are inviting the trailer to chop throttle and cut inside YOUR turn.

From Hocuspocus: Ok.... next setup is again based on same premise of a high/fast vs a lower/nimbler. Think how nice it would be if you could just subtract 3000 yards from where u are if you have an enemy 2400 back? Welllllll, I do this mainly when Im in fast planes myself like a FW or Ki. Ill do the running extend bit to draw the enemy down, BUT Ill do what appears to be a purely defensive move when he gets in range, namely a split-S, or I'll start one anyway:). I believe this is called a lag-lead roll. I will roll inverted and put my nose straight down and then I roll 90 degrees and start to pull up watching the enmy the whole time. When it looks like he is extending (or doesnt have a shot anyway) I roll another 90 degrees and pull up going on my original course BEHIND the enemy and with a good bit of speed if I havent jerked the stick around. From

Shadownyc: does it work?

From Hocuspocus: If you time it right it does....its hard BUT :)

From Hotrail: ok..sounds interesting....how much do you pull up on the first and secound 90 degree turns?

From Hocuspocus: Ahhh here we talking art. The first nose down is the break. After that I dont actually break it down into 2 90 degree turns or rolls Im sorry. I start rolling back and curving onto my original course while watching the enemy in rearview. It DOES work and Ive gotten Whip with it before BUT you have to time it JUST right or hes out of gun range

From Hotrail: what kind of alt is needed for this?

From Hocuspocus: hehe alt depends on speed but you need enough that you arent afraid of ground while you tracking enemy plane

From Sherlock: what happens if they chop throttle and keep following you?

From Hocuspocus: Its called a lag-lead turn and it works about like a lead turn. Then, my friend you have a fight on your hands:). Generally tho you do a lag-lead if the enemy has a speed edge on you and given that he is fast they rarely follow a plane into split_s. They naturall move is to go vertical and setup for next pass. You NEVER do this against a plane with speed bakes or and e bleeder like Ki or YAK.

From Whipster: Ok I've seen what ur talkin about before. What if I see ur nose down dive and pull up and disengage... This will make you do ur little 90 U seeing the seperation and what not meanwhile I got my canopy on ya... I see ur little 90... say off to my right...

From Hocuspocus: Wish I could wave my hands around on this one...... first of all I start this when your CLOSE.... like almost guns on and I HAVE to track you the whole time. If you start to pull up when I commence split_s, I roll back immediatly and follow you up. Its a judgment Whip. Id start when Im showing 2K and your probably seeing 900-1200

From Whipster: unless ur going real fast.. and get real lucky u will not get a shot..

From Hocuspocus: Nope....remeber Im going slower so I can turn sharper

From Hocuspocus: Hehe

SHerlock whispered "Risky but I like it" ...... And he is RIGHT! It is risky, but sometimes unexpected:)

From Whipster: I would be diving on you right?? VERY RISKY... but ur right if done right and higher plane not too smart ...

From Hocuspocus: Thing is Whip if trail plane makes NO mistakes then you cant win:)

From Bummer: Onn the "roll back immediately and follow him up" part, do you mean, rolling back from inverted before committing to the split-s or pulling on through the split-s and going up?

From Hocuspocus: the former. What you are doing is FAKING a split-s not doing one. The hardest manuver for a fast aggresor to follow is a split-s so they learn that the counter is to extend and zoom for another pass

From Whipster: sorta like fakin a break and coming back on his six eh??

From Hocuspocus: Exactly that whip. The timing part is _when_ do you come back. The whole key to all of these manuvers is that it is possible to USE differences in E state to "throw" a high E attacker off. Everyone here pretty well knows what to do when YOU have the E. Where we all have problems...and where you can learn a LOT is fighting at a disadvantage. Next time one of you jumps my 38 and sees me diving, you are NOT gonna be typing about runners. You are going to be watching closely! And maybe Ill fake you out:). Remeber this whole discussion is from the point of view of the underdog so you will die trying this stuff:). I get plucked LOTS...cept in scenarios and warnight:) I fly for real there. If you are looking for a PURE defensive move, a split-s is usually the way to go vs high E enemies and if you time it right and enemy is VERY greedy, you can auger em, specially Spits..... Spits cant slow down for ANYTHING. Get em to follow u in low split-s ans they fricasee themselves:)

From Hocuspocus: Ok... here is a trick that Killer pulled on me a LOT, and I will confess that I cant do it well. It takes timing and patience. I have the timing:) He does it in a FW, but it should work in a YAk or any E bleeder at a turning disadvantage.

What kilelr would do when I chased him in a 38 (killer in FW) is he would start to zoom like he was looping, pulling enough Gs that I couldnt get my guns on him, till he started slowing to the point where he couldnt maintain Gs (point hwere I usually kill FWz). The he would snap roll 180 do a split-s, building speed as he went down and doing a getle pull out at the bottom. I would follow and as I got near shooting again he would start the zoom again. What happens is after 2 or 3 of these zooms and split-s's, he actually would pull me into rolling scissors going straight down! And with the FWz roll rate, i died. Reason this worked, well 2 reasons. First reason is that the FW BLEEDS E when its pulling Gs. Killer used that to make me overshoot and have to pull around to line him up as he kept rolling. Second reason involves what I wasnt doing.

And when I STARTED doing this Killer started to die, to my 38 anyway. Any guesses what it wasn't I was doing?

From Robinhood: riding the brakes?

From Porn: target fixation

From Hocuspocus: Its the brakes. A spit is helpless vs that manuver but a 38 can stop on the brakes and prevent and overshoot. Thats when I first started using brakes

From Hocuspocus: Another piece of advice this kind of talking moves out helps if you dont do it already....(like at work:) spend time mentally flying a plane. I dont mean fantasizing about killing 10 spits in one pass:) I mean doing a slow visualization of what you are doing and what the bogy is doing.

From Bummer: DD, do you ever use HiTech's flight program to view proposed (or real) manuevers?

From Hocuspocus: Ahh...answer to that is yes and no. I reached a stage right when Vfilm came out where I was REAL serious about flying. About the only 2 people that could kill me 1 on1 where Killer and HT and what crytalized a LOT of that was Vfilm. I knew what I wanted, and I knew I did stuff that WORKED. But I didnt know what it was I did. Vfilm showed me what I was doing. Thats where I first saw a lag-lead, when I did it:). I dont use it anymore NOW cause I got to a point where I KNOW, but I recomend it

From Hocuspocus: ok let me real quickdefine yo-yo. Visulize a plane in a flat tight turn. You come in on its 6 in an attack run going faster than it is. Its turning too hard for you to follow it so you pull UP, roll TOWARDS the enemy, aiming ACROSS the circle of his turn, and push over. THAT is a high yo-yo

From Hocuspocus: rolling scissors. imagine that you and the guy you want to kill are flying side by side doing the SAME speed. YOU do a barrel roll to move sideways and get behind him and HE does the same thing. Viola, rolling scissors, and he that stops first or loses flight controls, dies

From Hocuspocus: Ok a quick synopsis of pairs. Wolfie and I (and we're pretty good pairs) fly in TWO modes. If we are in the SAME type of plane, we try to maintain similiar E states. The reason is that we work as a PAIR. What it means is we cover each other. If one of us is fast, that one tends to be fighting a different fight than the slow one. To peel enemies of tails you need to be close to same speed.. We also fly CLOSE; 3K is big seperation for us. Thats when we are facing furballs and such or dueling. If we are HUNTING, we like a Ki/F6F combo. Ki at 20-25K and F6F at 35K. F6F (me) covers Ki(WM) while he forces runners to engage. Above 25K the Ki is a total brick, which is why the F6F is high cover. This is a very aggresive combo, cause the pair cant really fight together. They can force fights, but not coordinate well cause of different strengths and critical speeds.

From Bummer: then doing the welded wing thing....how do you stay close? and do you both dive together on a target?

From Hocuspocus: We coordinat by phone, BUT we fly that way without too. The trick is lead plane flys and looks, trailer just watches and follows lead plane. When we engage, lead plane picks target, trailer attacks whatever try to attack lead, then we try to pull the ones on our tail past each other so we can take out the parasites on the other:)