Today is my official entry into Tier 7 after I finally saved up enough to buy and outfit the tech tree I-220. (I played my first Tier 7 battle in the VB 10 a few days ago) I'm also working towards the Yak-3 soon. Along with the Typhoon this is probably enough Tier 7 planes for me, since I'm a noob and play the sadly gimped joystick version of the game.
I had a fairly hard time with the I-210 (76 battles), which was decent at everything and not really good at anything. I-220 promises to be more of the same. I'm starting with a Marksman 1 pilot, but will probably retrain for Engine Guru 1+2 when I get him up to 5 skill points?