How to win BVR PvP fights?

The better lesson to learn is unless you're afraid to bruise your ego it's better to ask questions so you get your facts straight sooner. :)

When using active missiles you need to lock the target until it goes autonomous at pitbull. A common trick is to soft lock until just before pitbull, hard lock for a few seconds just before pitbull.

Others in this thread have described semi active missile combat and evasion, I shan't add any further comment for fear of driving people nuts! I have answered your question based on experience in other flight sims, and concentrated on active missile engagements on the assumption that most human V human engagements would involve active missiles. I am as yet very inexperienced in any DCS modules, and servers and it would appear in later posts on this thread that possibly SARH missile engagements are more common.

SARH engagements (at least one-sided) may be common on servers because of Su-27 being popular and they don't have ARH AAM.

This thread is mostly about SARH because OP specificaly mentioned it and then added that ARH were banned on servers he used to fly on.

Jamming is modeled with burn through ranges but I'm not sure if it's signal is homogenous all around.

One would think decent sims should have all this things similar and close to RL but there are apparently differences due to different simulations, weapon versions, aircraft systems modeled, RL information and documentation deficiency, etc. And most obviously we cannot talk about engagement ranges until we know exact weapon types, aircrafts' aspect, speed and altitude.

Nobody's mad about your comments - just be specific and know for sure your information when giving advices :thumbup: If it's false you will be corrected and no one even cares if you're an active military ace IRL.

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:thumbup:

can fire earlier since the missile isn't fighting too much with gravity

It's less about fighting gravity and more about thinner air (and therefore less drag) and higher initial launch speed with a higher maximum achieved speed (and thereby range), assisted by gravity since it's more or less diving the whole time. The additional energy it retains by the time it gets to you, combined with thicker air where control surfaces have more authority just prior to impact, also means the missile is more maneuverable and harder to evade.

The reverse is true when you're lower, launching at a presumably lower air speed, in thicker air, and the missile climbing up to the target's altitude at which point it must then maneuver at a lower speed, in thinner air, thereby being less maneuverable and easier to dodge.

Little late to the discussion, but an important distinction to make, if nobody else has yet.