Combat maneuvering -- need help!!

[Gully Foyle]

OMG! :O OMGOMGOMG!
So I unstored my Sidewinder (I had gotten a Cobra Mk III from my courier jobs) and upgraded its shields and gave it a small Warrant Scanner and decided to give the Nav Beacon a try. I die like the Training Sim, not big loss.
With extreme trepidation I scanned around and found someone with a warrant, "mostly harmless," and went ahead and started combat.... AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! It was a little back and forth, kinda challenging but not too much, and I won! He'd gotten my shields down but no hull damage!
I waited til shield powered back up and stayed out for another... and another!
A couple of them, local cops helped me kill .... I was SOOO afraid of accidentally hitting on of them :O
But I got 4 kills on my first outing (all mostly harmless or less) and it was the perfect balance of nerve-wracking but do-able!

You’re on your way from Missouri to happiness today Uh uh uh
(Pleasant iPhone misspelling)

 

[SMcA]

The way I see it, if I literally cannot beat the simple Training Sim, I'm obviously doing something wrong and have to figure out what. I know "in the wild" combat will have tons of variables... but this is the game's built-in trainer and I can't even come CLOSE to beating it. That means there's a problem that needs a solution. IMO

I thought it was a "trainer" too, when Elite was released. I couldn'y get past the third one, (fighting a wing of three).