F4u practice

[BigRat]

Given the sudden popularity of this ride in the squad and a few of you that have asked me for help with it.  Would there be an interest in having a night during the week to practice? if so what night works best with everyone?

 
BigRat

[DropTine]

tuesday or thursday would work for me 

[BigRat]

Tuesday works well for me.  8:00 central time work?

 
BigRat

[daddog]

Want to give us some squad training in it on a Sunday night?
Start with a 5 minute review of its strengths and weaknesses and then we can all fly it for a bit in one of the arena's?

19th or 26th?

[BigRat]

I can do that daddog.  I can probably do a write up on here first to save some time explaining on ventrillo or vox of the planes basic characteristics and then we can go and practice with it.  I'll do a search on the aces high forums for some good info as well from some of the other good F4u sticks such as Saxman and Mtnman have posted in the past, and then just add my 2 cents to it or agree or disagree sort of stuff.  While I'm writing this I can just here Ghosth and Malap saying something about me corrupting the squad with blue plane propoganda .  For those of you that don't like the Corsair, and don't really have any interest in it, we can still use you for learning purpose.  So don't feel like you have to fly one if you don't want but I may need you to fly what you want to show how to use the Corsair's advantages against your planes weaknesses.  Or keep your plane from exploiting the F4u's weaknesses.  You pick the night daddog and I'll have my stuff ready by then.  Figure we might start in the TA at an off base and after getting comfortable ,some intersquad duels in the DA so feedback will be easier to recieve and we can mix the plane set up a bit. Eg F4u-1's vs p-38J's which is a common fight in midwar with our squad.  I think it will be fun and educational for everyone, I may even get a few more converts

 
BigRat   

[Malap]

I have taken an F4u up in TA, and i have painted my Spit blue.......help LOL

Actually i find it not a bad plane for one so big, not as unwieldy as a P47. I don't mind trying other aircraft at all.

Flying a Spit was the big draw for me playing AH and I'm trying to do the "learn one plane well" philosophy stated on trainers site LOL.

But i will give it a try.

"TURN TO THE BLUE SIDE" BigRat said.
Nooooo...must fight back...got to go watch Battle of Britain DVD...argh, blue Navy planes...LOL

[LuckyI3]

been working on the be plane still like my canons was cap over field we were taking

[BigRat]

F4u-1 series "The basics"

Strengths:

Good Top speed: 358 on the deck Wep on. (only thing faster in midwar is a Typhy)

Best Flaps in the Game (in my oppinion): can be first deployed at 250mph and  highly effective.

Good Rudder:  Very good at snapshooting off of nose, also increases roll rate greatly.

Low speed stability:  I consider it very pradictable and honest. Easy to recover.

Very small turning radius: self explanatory

Good B&z er: Not great but good, dives well but not exceptionally fast in a dive, very hard to break anything in a dive. Zoom climbs very well.

It has air brakes!:  As far as I know the only plane in the game with functional air brakes. The gear has functional air brakes and can be deployed at almost any speed (I've done it well over 400mph).

It's Blue: well it's blue for most skins

Weakness's:

Poor acceleration:  If you get it slow you are going to be slow for a while.

Poor climb:  always best to start your fights high becouse you are not going to have much luck climbing up to anybody.

It's heavy:  It's a big plane and E can be burned up in it very quickly in the verticle.

Not easy to land:  likes to ground loop so make sure you get the tail wheel planted.

Poor Visibility:  Not easy to see to the rear in most models, head positions are critical.

I think that about covers the basics.  I didn't include the -4 becouse it's a different animal then the -1 series.  I'll continue with more specific plus and minus's of this aircraft in another post.  If anyone has specific questions feel free to ask.

 
BigRat

 

[Ghosth]

Forwarded courtesy of Outlaw13

http://www.freewebs.com/ah2blacksheep/ourbible.htm

http://www.bss214.com/tactics/tacticsguide.html

[BigRat]

Thanks Outlaw and Ghosth , very good and clear diagrams to be found there.

 
BigRat

[BigRat]

A little Corsair Tactics:

The key to killing and living with a Corsair is doing it fast!  Why is that you might ask.  Simple the Corsair is heavy and accelerates poorly therefore doesn't gain "E" very easily.  So the longer the fight the more likely the Corsair will run out of E before its opponent.  Smart Corsair opponents normally take the fight up.  Smart Corsair pilots like to keep the fight speed in that 250-200 mph range, so not going up for very long.  The F4u can out turn just about everything except the best turners at these speeds, with up to 3 notches of flaps out already, while most planes can't touch theirs yet.  This is the Corsair sweet spot .  The trick to fighting with a Corsair effectively is always keeping in mind your E state and doing everything you can to conserve or gain as much of it as possible.  Things to do to conserve or gain back E quickly are:  Only use as much flap as nescessary, anything more and your wasting speed and therefore energy.  Retract flaps as quickly as you are no longer needing them, eg. the opponent is diving away from you and no flaps are needed therefore pull them all back as fast as you can, don't wait for it automatically.   If you are running low on energy and your opponent gives you a chance to nose down a little, by all means take as much E as you can get without putting yourself at a bigger disadvantage.  I'm often asked how I keep so much E in a Corsair, it's all becouse I'm constantly thinking about it.  A Corsair low and slow on the deck with higher energy cons around is normally a dead Corsair.  Later I'll run through some examples against other planes. 

Any questions so far

 
BigRat 

[BigRat]

Basic Corsair combat:

Bandit co-E and co-alt, single con (1v1);

Many of you that spar with me in the TA, will recognize my description on how to do this and know it's hard to counter with most planes and plays to the Corsair's strengths.  Lets use a Spit9 for a bandit.

Both planes are basically head to head, Co-E and Co-alt, and pass each other wing level.  Corsair and spit both immmediately going into an immelman to get their noses back at each other while both bleading E in the verticle.  Soon as the Corsair gets under 250mph he throws out a notch of flaps and beat the spit to the nose point and rolls itself back wing level but is still out of guns range. Spit gets itself rolled over and pointed back at the corsair and finds the corsair already pointed at him with a HO guns solution.  The spit in this case normally won't go for the HO shot given the Corsair probably already has a better gun solution since he's had more time to straighten his plane.  So the spit will normally go defensive and either try to dive under the nose of the F4U or turn away from it. If it turns away it's going to show the Corsair it's 6 and it then becomes a tail chase.  If it dives under the Corsair's next step is to try to beat the Spit to the corner.  In other words as the Spit goes under the nose of the Corsair, you want the Corsair to have it's nose pointed at the Spit as it goes under.  What's the best way for the Corsair to do this.  When the intention of going under is known by the Corsair pilot by the spit, The Corsair is rolled onto it's back quickly by using the rudder to boost the roll and throws out another notch of flaps and pulls onto the Spits 6 as it passes under.  Spit is now totally defensive with a F4U on it's 6 but noticeably slower (that Corsair move cost quite a bit of E).  The Spit has a couple of choices at this point: It can try to dive away with it's superior E and accleration, It can try a Split S, it can try to use it's superior speed to try and zoom climb away, or it can try and flat turn.    If it tries to dive away  it's going to give the Corsair a good 6 quarter shot until it's gets enough distance to be safe, all the while the Corsair is gaining E back.  If A split S is tried the Corsair simply does it's earlier move over again further depleating the E reserve of the Spit and playing more and more into the Corsair's hand of great low speed handling.  If the Spit tries to pull up and over the Corsair, the Corsair can simply stay inside of it's loop and try and keep a guns solution as it comes over, this will require quite a bit of flap work to do and will burn a lot of E but this can be gained back as the loop comes over and the Corsair's nose gets pointed down again and flaps can be retracted for best acceleration and E rebuild.  The smart Spit surviving the upper part of the loop will simply try to extend after immelmening over, leaving a Corsair low on E and flying level in his direction.  The flat turn by the spit is probably the most suicidal for the spit, since the Corsair already has a couple of notches of flap out and can easily turn inside the spit at this point.

The rule of thumb on a 1v1 with a Corsair is this first merge immelman one notch of flaps.  2nd merge with no adavantage, flat turn with 2-3 notches of flaps (however much you need to get an advantage or negate theirs).  Most planes if they flat turned with you, the corsair should be gaining an advantage.  Every merge after the 2nd depends on the situation. As I said rule of thumb but it works in most cases of 1v1.

Questions, Comments

 
BigRat

       

[trap78]

I was in Spit IX last night against Einhorn in an F4U-1. I tried several different tactics and the one that seemed to work the best was to extend while in a moderate climb after the merge then go into a steep climbing left hand spiral right when the Corsair pitched over from it's Immelman. Things got a little hairy because the hog could get in guns range at first, but couldn't get it's nose pointed in front of me for a shot. Eventually the F4U would have to drop its' nose and then I could think about going offensive.

My mistake was entering a low speed turning contest with him after diving in from the climbing spiral. He out turned me, I stalled and tried to dive out. He easily caught me in the dive (he was in guns range already) and that was the end game. My question is this; is the climbing spiral a good tactic for the Spit driver to use against the hog? And what other tactics work well against the F4U?

[Baumer]

I'm sure BigRat will have more to add, but in general any maneuver where you can keep the corsairs nose pointed uphill for a prolonged period will work in your favor.

An important lesson is to work on, is the climbing spiral at your best climb speed. I've seen a lot of people try the spiral climb at the edge of a stall, that really hurts you as you're not going to be gaining altitude at your best rate.

[BigRat]

My question is this; is the climbing spiral a good tactic for the Spit driver to use against the hog? And what other tactics work well against the F4U?

Remember what the Corsair's weaknesses are, poor climb and acceleration.  Anything you can do to make it fight up is in your favor.  What you don't want to do is let it get its nose down.  When you dove down at him and got below his verticle plane he started to get his E back as he followed you past.  When you get the height advantage and E advantage over a corsair and you decide to make your run on it, two things to keep in mind.  One, you want to come in over the top of it or rear quarter, shooting at it from the cockpit to the tail.  This pretty much keeps you out of it's guns, just in case it's hiding some E.  Two, you don't want to dive past it, you want to get your gun solution and pull up over the Corsair, in other words above it's altitude.  This way the Corsair is still trying to fight up.  

Getting one in a Spiral climb with a spit9 will work but it's slow and tedious against a competent F4U stick.  You basically circle like a shark while he spins in the middle like a turtle trying to face the shark.  This will work as long as you are patient and none of his friends show up.  But beware of the Corsair that noses down just before your gun run, he's is going to try to give you a facefull on the way in.

A quick way to kill an F4U in a light weight quick plane is to catch one level and on initial merge immelman, he will do the same or give you the advantage. On the next merge do the same, you'll find in most cases the Hog doesn't have enough E to do this twice.  You'll find yourself in a position above the corsair but both in about equal E states.  He most likely flat turned on the second merge while you went up.  If he tried to immelmen up on the 2nd merge he may of stalled it and gave you a better advantage.  If he had enough E to immelmen twice, your still in an equal fight.  So lets say everything went as planned and he flat turned on the 2nd merge, you are now over the top of him and can wing over onto his tail or make a passing shot at the top of him.  

Now that I told you all of this you must forget this information and never use it to your advantage.  The F4U is Uber and you might as well just bail out when you see one, after all it's a UFO with invisible biplane wings

Questions, Comments, Am I nuts

 
BigRat

[BigRat]

Sunday the 26th would probably work best for me for doing a squad night with the Hogs,  Just got the 69 back from the body shop this weekend and putting it back together, so not much free time this weekend.

 
BigRat

[BigRat]

I encourage everyone to try the F4u sometime this week in arena of your choice or offline vs the AI.  This way if there is something you need help with or just can't quite figure out.  I can try and address it Sunday or here if you'd like.  In the meantime I'm normally in the TA after 8 CST.

 
BigRat

[daddog]

 

[daddog]

I think that went real well last night BigRat. You did a fine job of presenting information about the F4U and explaining its strengths and weaknesses. I like the 'Rolex' method where we type questions and you answer them via vox as you presented your information.

I think using Ventrilo over the game vox was a marked improvement. The quality is significantly better. I will try to remember next time to recored the Ventrilo vox for these kind of sessions.

I would like to try to put something together similar for the P-38. Maybe this summer I will have time.

How did it go after I left?

[Kansas2]

How did it go after I left?

I died many times like usual. Had fun and learned some good info. I used flaps more yesterday
than ever before. I'm now more aware when to deploy them. Thanks Bigrat!

 

[Malap]

That was very interesting last night BigRat,   but it doesn't mean I'm a convert. 

I can help you with the P38 training Daddog.

1. Don't put the stick in the back right corner.

2. Don't input right rudder and nail the throttle to the firewall.

[BigRat]

Thanks guys ,  First time I ever tried anything like that with that many people.  So it was a bit intimidating to me to start off.  Special thanks goes out to Ghosth, who kept prodding me back in the right direction and reminding me of things I need to explain.  After you left daddog we went to midwar for a bit, deffinitly the most hogs I've seen in one place at one time .  I think we gave better then we got last night, with a mix of attack and fighter action.  As always guys, if any of you would want some one on one or small group help with the Hog just let me know and I'll be glad to help as much as I can.

 
BigRat

[trap78]

Excellent training session BigRat. If I hadn't of known this was your first attempt, I would have thought you were an old hand at this sort of thing.

[BigRat]

Thanks Trap

 
BigRat

[Ghosth]

He is an old hand at this sort of thing trap, he just didn't know it. 

As for the help bigrat, I didn't do anything that I haven't done for Rolex and Widewing.
In fact your pretty much in their class clinic wise. So if I was you, I'd email murdr, offer to do the same clinic again, only this time open for the public. Let the trainers post it on the AH Calendar. You'd have more people there than you'd know what to do with.

And I suspect you'd get an invite to a trainers liaison forum.
Which would be a very good way to set yourself up for catching an open trainers slot when one opens.
Up to you of course, not sure if thats something your interested in or not.

That would apply to anyone who was actually hunting a trainers position.
Start by making yourself indispensable.