109 Tactics w/tracks compliments of Nodak01

Guys....reposting this information with the permission of Nodak01 on SimHQ. Thanks much to Nodak01 for sharing this with us.

I have some of the tracks but will have to aquire the rest and will post them in all in one comprehensive zip file. Also...right click and "save as" to save the tracks to your drive.

Regards,
TX-Rahman

OK, a little course syllabus here.
Start with a little story. It all started with the G-6 of all models, I was getting massacred in coops. So started to fly her just to see what was going on, what was the problem. Well it's the same problem accross the board on all models, but particularly the G-6 plain.

The problem, she's way too tail heavy with the modeled armor plates. Think about the late model with it's lighter wooden tail and how much better she seems to fly. So connecting two and two and some intensive test flying nailed it down to tail plane drop out under the flight path. That's what induces your flat spins.

You can easily check it out, take any of the F series and up, turn on smoke and whether in a hard turn or loop pull till the tail flopps under the flight path far enough, than watch her slip out. You will flat spin at speed.

That's the one and only dangerous thing you can do in a 109, a good idea to try it in the different models and observe how far to slip out per model in your tracks. Don't worry we'll take care of that. There are exceptions to the rule and times you want to drop the tail out of plane.

Any way, after playing around and learning how to quickly correct, found another coop with the plain G-6 over Stalingrad winter against a full 1943 plane set. I was the only guy flying blue that day, the AI were quickly dispatched so was solo. It was me against six or seven guys, did I win, hell no but did hold them off without any hits for a solid ten minutes while putting lead on three of them. End result, the Stukie target drones hit the primary target untouched, victory for the blue guys. These guys couldn't comprehend a slippery 109, they were so intensly focused on the throat it took them that long to back off and get another plan.

Objective of the course is not to teach you how to shoot, or approach, or how to engage. You can go figure that out for yourself. The objective is to have you realize what a great fighter you've got and how to use it in aggressive manouver to the fullest. The days of flying a target drone are over, Russian pilots are going to have to earn the kill.

1. Slicing and negative G rolls
So your having a rough time of it. Well it's time I spilled some beans on the classic uberall fighter.
Lesson one- the slice, nothing in the game can follow it or do it like a 109.

1. With smoke on at speed and level, push full right rudder and slowly pull back on the stick. Whoa you say, dang right, look at that turn rate within a verticle manouver.

2. Follow through correctly and the results will be your exactly on a 90 degree course left of original heading aimed at your own smoke trail.

3. So whats the point you say, you just beat the La in turn rate and your at close to original speed.

End of lesson one.

Track 1, Slicing and negative G rolls. Watch heading change rates and speed gains in the dives and rolls. You gain speed very fast in the rolls along with increased roll rates. Quote from Andy Bushes BFM series "In real life, reducing the G load to less than one...normally to about one half G...results in a significant reduction in drag and a corresponding improvement in acceleration." obviously modeled correctly! Also note near full recovery of speed on the close of the loops at original altitude. Banking energy in the climb instead of wasting all on the turn! Very efficient way of turning, very hard to hit in a turning dropping or rising skid.

2. The Under Cut (Power on hi alpha stall practice)
Now that you've mastered the upper slice, time for it's twin brother, the under cut.

1. From level flight with smoke on, this ones a bit tricky, takes some feel. Start out at 85% throttle at cruise, until you get comfortable, give yourself some space verticle wise.

2. Bank gently and recenter ailerons, 30 degress or so is fine, quickly push rudder full into the direction of bank gently pull the stick straight back, ease up at buffet and hold. You may use a very, very small amount of aileron to steer only.

3. Watch the amazing turn rate in the slice, when you have it down real well, play with power in the slice. Pull power back and watch her do the wild ride, watch those La drivers start to squirm.

Power on hi alpha stalls, a whole bunch you can learn here about the 109's handling. Watch it on original views first than use manual fly bys to observe tail drop out. Excellent exercise to get the feel and respond to it. Without rudder inputs your more than likely going down in the beginning of a flat spin. Whats happening is combined rudder and aileron cause the airplane to roll. The roll switches the attitude of the flight path tucking the tail back into alignment with the wings flight path effectively killing the wing stall and any spin torque. Congrats, you've just mastered the secret of slow and medium speed fighting. Note how she is an excellent stall fighter, lots of engine power and hang time.

3. Tieing The Knot
Next lesson block, increase your roll rate at speed.

As your beginning to see, the 109 series has strong response to rudder inputs. You'll note how she's a rather large one, also note the tail is a bit shorter than average. Post another mental note, the elevators are positioned rather high compared to it's contemporaries. We're going to exploit this and discover the only real dangerous area on her manouver envelope.

Lesson 3

Increasing roll rate at near to max speeds. You've notice the 109's ailerons stiffen and she gets a bit sluggish at speed rolling. The enemy for the most part has the advantage, or so you thought.

1. Very simple to gain on the roll, also use it defensively in jinking with minimal loss of air speed. You guessed it, start at high speed cruise level, full rudder left or right.

2. Follow immediatly with stick to front corner in the direction of rudder pedal pushed.

3. Do a full roll and maintain heading, recover wings level by releasing all controls, may take some practice but you will be able to do a snappy 4 point roll.

4. Experement with variations, such as aileron full followed by stick forward, but always rudder first.

5. Try it verticle and at high angles, if you've trouble in the vert, don't sweat it, more of the course will cover that.

Now your rolling with the big boys!

Tie the knot uses elements from all manouvers against a vet La-5 in the 109F-4. Don't worry about the gunnery, my Cougar has rather stiff springs but soft in the middle where fine gunshots take place, going to get it fixed! You'll see it hold it's own flight wise and than some in a turn fight.

4. The Tango!
Now let's do some nose control exercises and make the beauty dance!

1. Start low right about 300 meter to 600, shoot for 500, give yourself a little elbow room. This is a slow dance so slow her down to roughly 250Kph.

2. Slowly pitch the nose up to an aggressive angle, try for 70 degrees pitch and pay attention to airspeed.

3. When airspeed drops to 180, feed in throttle, wind her up like an engine, no slamming forward. This is a rudder exercise, lets see some rudder pushing and keep that nose up!

4. I want to see that nose held high and centered, you will lose speed, you will see white streamers off the wing tips, and you will keep that nose up, rudders!

5. When the stall breaks your nose will fall and you'll hear the metal shudder all at near wings level attitude, ease back the power only after the drop, let go the stick back pressure and let her dip, recover and do it again. Well done, see how she responds very predictable, rudders and slats all the way, no ailerons. The guys in proper trim will acheive negative airspeeds into the stall break.

6. Now do a controled Tango, high pitch angle, rudder pushing left to right slowly and make here do a hi alpha dance waggeling wings through the air. Excellent! Hi pitch nose control without a spin, keep your hands off those alerons!

Recommend you train on the F series, get your legs first before you go to the heavier models.

WILL POST REMAINING TRACKS WHEN I GET THEM.. -RAH

5. Vertical Manuvering
Time to start in the meat of the course, verticle manouvering. We begin with something easy, the spiral of death.
1. Conditions, on a merge with an La-5, one of the finest our comrads feild, but today we begin to beat him and demonstate superior airmanship. Begin a QMB one on one at 3000 meters and trim up on the way to merge. Give a slight angle off and you may climb some but not necessary. No need to race, 85% throttle will do nicely, we win through manouver!

2. On the close bank shallow into him to close the merge tight. Chop throttle, 0%, and use the under cut technique you learned earlier into the bank, but slightly modified with very small aileron inputs to help steer and control.

3. Your objective is to get your nose low on the La and keep it glued at him, you are in the center of the circle with power pulled all the way off and dropping. You will find it easy to point your nose in his direction with slight angle down. Don't worry he cannot touch you, only fly around you.

4. Pay attention to your speed as you drop, see the grey out setting in from the speed and spin, excellent work, just imagine how dark it is in our freinds canopy at even greater speed in that tight circle.

5. Don't worry now what happens at the bottom out, when the time comes for real you'll be ready. Just learn how to command the spiral and control your speed and spin rate on the way down, again, rudder control

6. Tail Plane Dropout Problem
Time to look at the tail plane drop out problem. First two things to remember.
A. A tail out of plane above the flight path will never induce a spin, at negative AoA's all is OK. Power on and rudder, elevator, and aileron control.

B. A tail out of plane below the flight path beyond the stall break isn't a problem inverted against gravity. Just ride her through.

Why is that useful? Were moving into pure vertical manouvers now, the objective will be reversal down your own smoke trail and nose on target. You won't be slowing to a crawl but reversing at moderate speeds is possible. This is going to require some controlled out of plane tail movment. More on this later.

Back a bit, to the negative G rolls, hope you've been practicing. Want to point out something, you've noticed the speed increase in the roll. Doing it accellerating in continueous rolls gains of 30 to 40 knots very quickly, almost unbelievable. Want you to take a look at this, for the reason why.

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/air_combat/bfm101/bfm101_part2.shtml

Look after the (1.) section for Andys analysis, bravo Andy, been doing some study! Also score one for Oleg and crew, yeah even rgreat, we love you too!

Now back to the problem, how to regain a tail breaking out of plane. Solution, very simple, change your flight attitude and you changed your tails plane of manouver. She'll pop right back into trail if done correctly. We know over pull of elevator and momentum slipped it out of plane, so release elevator, exception when you wish to stay out of plane, see above. So your left with rudder and aileron which brings up another issue.

Minimum flight surface control airspeeds. Why is this a problem, because your ailerons become none effective first at a slightly greater speed than rudders, remember that nose up control exercise. So were left with the ole rudders again as primary nose attitude control and ailerons to assist at higher speeds in changing flight attitude.

Hands off positive pitch elevators!

7. Trim
No moves will really help against the high performance AI, they cheat just a bit. But they should be unable to touch you, fly defensive all day and wait for them to slip up, or pick a more evenly matched AI performing machine. The G-6 can't be handled to roughly or pushed too hard, the heavy tail and over heating engine won't stand it. However should be much less a problem against human flown planes, they have to keep sight and don't know what your going to do in real time. AI also has way more patients, they don't home in like bloodhounds!
A little bit on trim, it's important but not necessary, in the straight up vertical manouvers mostly, to keep the rudder centered. Just makes for cleaner handeling in the straight ups, but as you see we don't fly a whole lot of straight. Most of the time your working the rudder aggressively, so no real need.

This is for the guys who want to get their rudder centered. Using a Cougar with TM Elites on the floor, real nice kit except the spring at center zone drops off a bit, thats more a gunnery issue though. So if you have the means to trim rudder axis do it.

Here's a little trick that will help out. In game axis settings for rudder=100/10/13/16/19/25/39/54/72/98.

Why the 100 in the 10% slot, it's a real nice trick to boost the axis into trimming with very minor bumps. Result is you have more of the original full travel in game on the side you subtracted from. You don't gain any extra motion on opposing side, if you leave it low you may have to bump six to eight axis value positions and loose a rather large part of that sides rudder swing. With it high one to two bumps will trim her nicely, and your close to normal full control. Advantage? You can slash both ways equal, as someone who hasn't cut the axis, and go straight up with no drift just like the enemy.

The other axis setting I use are-

Pitch 55/38/29/25/29/35/42/48/63/90

Roll 8/16/25/35/44/54/64/75/85/99

Doesn't mean it will work for you, but if your having a rough go might be a start.

In game trim, I like to have it level at cruise power setting of 85%, just personal preference. That's about the zone near middle anyway, allows the recovery to level flight rather nice, don't have to worry about ground contact when pouring on full power she'll want to rise. Helps when your not looking at the ground.

Trim is bound to a rotary, if you use one do trim initially first thing, the game will do a bump to syncronize. Once trimmed leave her set, remember the tail slip out, trim abuse will help it along faster than anything. You don't need it in rudder fights.

8. The Tight Spiral Climb
Many variations on this one, negative G with stick slightly forward, or positive G with slight back pressure.

1. Conditions, set up a low level QMB, this time use the horspower of the G-2, trim level cruise, its time to use some of this fancy stuff. Three shallow negetive G rolls at 100% power for speed. (We no longer need WEP ever!)

2. Snap wings level and pull her straight up gentle but quick, ride it for a second or two, it takes that long for Ivan to pull in and line up his shot, we want all the altitude we can get.

3. This time we have excellent speed and the aileron is primary, choose which way and follow the stick with same side push of full rudder.

4. We're still going fairly fast which has tightened the spiral, loosen it up with slight elevator either forward or back pressure on the stick and let her rise.

5. A negative G roll will bring your nose down much quicker, you can combine it with the positive G by pushing and pulling the stick as the spiral starts to dip.

6. For now let the nose drop off when it starts to slow by pushing negitive G around 150Kph and stop the spin with one wing pointing down groundwards, practice entering a slow nose down slice when the nose drop through horizon cut some power and try to slice through your own smoke trail.

9. Down The Pipe
OK, last manouver, down the pipe.
If you mastered the last tight spiral, this one shouldn't be any sweat. No spinning needed or required on this one, can be useful in combat if your both seperated and beating the pants of the other guy in a vertical climb. In that case you need a method to reverse fast and at peak before you lose control speed and waste precious altitude in a tail slide.

1. Conditions, hauling butt in level cruise, feel free to neg G roll, drop the drag, get extra steam into the pitch up.

2. Now were going straight up, this is where pay dirt hits with the trimmed rudder.

3. Once you hit 150 to 170 on the airspeed, begin an aileron roll, you guessed it, rudder follows the aileron.

4. Now remember that deliberate tail throw out discussed earlier, PULL!

5. Whats happening is your flipping on you back and the tail is going to break fully out of plane, thus you wings are now stalled, the good news is your nose is going down and gravity is our friend.

6. Do not release the controls or pull power back, ride her cowboy, she'll bring the nose down for you.

7. What to watch, look straight up and watch your smoke, kind of cool passing between the red and green streams, your officially backward to flight path, keep holding her powered up.

8. Break point, keep the controls locked until you see your gunsight piper pointing down your straight pipe smoke trail, release aileron and elevator now and push full opposite rudder, recover straight down the pipe and get that La driver!

9. Do pay attention to which way he was last you saw him.

Hope this helps out all those aspiring young aces in the Me109 series. The same manouvers work with the heavier models, but you have to go much easier on the controls, good part is you can fight them at faster speeds in the verticle.

Remember rudder is your best friend, the power on stall is an excellent exercise to watch at what speeds they begin to fail, rudder is always the last, effective right down to around 60 to 70 Kph on the F-4, ailerons drop out above 100.

Change the flight path, recover the tail.

Rumor has it FB keeps the 109 series as is, Whew! it would be a shame to destroy her now. Very capable plane, and fun. Except for that huge cross bar blocking out the sun on the late models, funny how I never seem to get around to them all that much.

Oleg and 1C guys, you done good, now class dismissed!

PS. Hope you guys make your own tracks from here out, gunnery on a stock Cougar is a bit embarrassing. Recommend you fight Veteran level, they love getting in close and mixing it up, much better training had against the faster plane sets.

10. Closing Notes
Copy, I'm not a fighter pilot, just play one on the screen. It helps when your defensive and fast, gives 109's a quicker roll rate at speed, at slower speeds you can gain some speed fast while defensive, and makes you a bit harder to hit.
It works better in the 109's than any other in the sim, at least any that I've found yet. There's no gain in roll rates in La's, nor any speed increase worth doing it in them and Yaks. Actually a negative in those for most of the models.

NODAK01
simhq.com

Regards,
TX-Rahman
"BLUE 2"