I just bought the game last week and am having a load of trouble myself. I haven't even gotten to missile combat yet. Any advice on how to get someone from being on your tail to being in your sights? I know... I know... That's the whole point of air to air combat and what all the maneuvers are for. Trust me, I have read them and have spent hours now trying them. My problem is that they just don't seem to work for me. I have been playing gun only furballs and have not shot down a single plane yet (other than an A-10 which I don't even consider an accomplishment) after about 15 hours of trying. I try cornering with my nose below the horizon, above the horizon, split S turns towards the sky, towards the ground, pirouettes towards the ground and towards the sky, dropping my throttle to idle and hitting the speed brakes ect ect. The entire fight the enemy stays right on my 6 without breaking a sweat. I say "enemy" and not name a plane type because I have tried half the list with the same results.

I try them with and without afterburners although I know using the afterburner allows me to corner faster because I can pull more Gs at corner speed (which means I am turning faster right?) It would be nice not to have to use the afterburner for 10 minutes, though. Since I am assuming after just one fight like that I am going to either need to refuel or abort the mission due to lack of fuel to make it to the target and back.

So what I am asking is what could I be doing wrong that not only does the enemy not come anywhere near my gun sight, but he never even leaves my 5-7 o'clock. I must be doing something drasticly wrong to be doing this bad. This is against recruit enemy pilots by the way and I have even tried turning all the realism settings down to minimum (which I am very much against since the realism of this game is 90% of the fun of it)