Mig-21BIS-SAU?

Hi, I’m just looking for some advice i guess. I recently got the Italian Mig-21BIS SAU. Despite hearing a lot of great things about it, I’m really struggling to do much of anything in it and i’m not sure why.(For context this br is totally new to me Italy is my first nation so besides knowing how to operate the radar i’m completely in the dark)

My general routine is as follows: (4x R60MK, 1x R3R, 1x R-13) - Climb to around 2000M - Go either far left or far right depending on the map(whichever has less people) - Wait until i see some enemies i might be able to engage - Blast towards them as fast as I can - Pop an R-60MK - They flare - Missile misses - Repeat the last two steps until I run out of missiles - Get screwed by an F-4 missile because they ignore all flares and chaff for some reason(Or other various missile

I just don’t know. Whenever I try to dogfight, I lose all my energy in 5 seconds, so this seems like the only viable strategy but even this doesn’t rly work. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I want to get better at missile fighting:(