User Guide

If you want to get in a little practice maneuvering, dogfighting and bombing without the added
pressure of managing a fighter squadron, here are some good practice missions to get you in the air
on your own. Soloing is a special event in a pilot’s career. It’s the first time you have the sky all to
yourself, with nobody around to blame if things go wrong and nobody looking over your shoulder.
There’s no reason to be too hard on yourself at first. Follow the advice given below and go easy.
Note that these missions all begin with you in the air, at the beginning of the engagement. If you
want to practice take offs or landings here, find a runway away from the combat.
From the startup menu, select TRAINING MISSION .
TRAINING MISSION 1
Choose a dogfight engagement. To start with, select a group of less maneuverable targets who won’t
shoot back : perhaps two or three C-130s, Lear jets, or AWACS. When you’ve chosen a small
number of one of these plane types, select ENOUGH , select an altitude — probably 25,000 feet, to give
you more maneuvering room — and continue with the weapon loading screen.
When the weapon screen comes up, load your plane with air-to-air weapons. A good practice load
would be 4 AIM-9Js and a full gun load. Click twice on the AIM-9J (to the left of your screen) with
your left mouse button. You will see the missiles appear on your wingtips and under-wing light
hardpoints. Your plane already has loaded guns, so click on the cockpit to put your plane at the
beginning of the engagement.
G Force. Practice flying past the target, then bank hard and come back at it quickly. Watch the Gs.
Pull enough to begin blacking out, then back off. Note how fast you were going and stay just below
that speed during combat. Remember, you can survive several times more positive Gs than you can
negative.
Maneuvering. Roll the plane in the direction you want to go and pull back on the stick to head that
way. Now, drop in behind the target and try to match speeds. It’s tough isn’t it? Hang in there!
Pursuit. Try using the air brakes and flaps to increase drag and dump speed. Once you have a feel
for how fast your enemy is going, you can match speeds with him and hang on his tail until he
makes a mistake.
Select Weapon. Select a Sidewinder-9J (W). Your best offense is rear-aspect missiles. After
mastering these cruder -9J missiles, using the newer, more sophisticated ones will be a breeze.
Radar Lock. Press T to get a radar lock on your target. Shoot him, then shoot him again for good
measure, since the AIM-9Js warhead is quite small and probably won’t kill a big plane in one shot.
Select New Weapon. Now switch to guns (W) and press T again to select the next target. Be sure
your target is in range before firing. Compared to other plane-mounted cannons, the Vulcan has the
highest rate of fire but only a very short range. Within 3500 feet you can expect hits, and within
2000 feet, you can expect kills. Try not to hose the gun around. It fires at 100 rounds per second,
and you only have 500 rounds on board. Winning a dogfight with guns these days is one of the most
demanding things a pilot can do.
PRACTICE MISSIONS
50