Part of the problem is that there have always been "edge conditions" in the flight model in CK, WB, AH, and now AH2, where you can basically trigger between the flight modes. If you are observant, you can find where those edges are and ride back and forth over them, resulting in occasionally obscene flight behavior.
For some reason I can't even remember anymore, I spent a couple of hours right after AH2 was released finding several of the edges or boundaries in the ground handling model. These are the same conditions and boundary issues that used to cause planes to slide off the back of the carrier when you released brakes, etc. As an example, there is a small but measurable throttle band where you can be at idle or near idle, and your friction drag on the ground is increased. Bump the throttle up even a bit, and that extra drag and ground stability vanishes instantly. It's nearly impossible to find this edge however unless you turn the wind up pretty high. To see the edge for yourself, turn the wind up to 80 knots or more, select a zeek, and fly. Turn the engine on with the throttle in idle. Then slowly bump up the throttle bit by bit. At some point, your plane will rocket backwards in a straight line. If you do it right, you can even bound over the terrain shedding parts until nothing but the fuselage is left, and you'll still be screaming along backwards with the wind pushing you. Lower the throttle back to idle, and you'll eventually stop. Push the throttle back up, and you'll rocket backwards again.
In the air, there are some huge holes as well. I don't know if it's still a problem, but in early AH2 if you took a spit5 up and made a gradual spin entry, you could start and stop the spin "normally" just like it's supposed to work. But if you entered the spin with an abrupt full aft stick motion, the plane would stop nearly all horizontal motion and fall straight down with no hope of recovery. I spent 2 days fiddling with this, determining various entry conditions, but I finally gave up because there seemed to be no practical application to just falling out of the sky
I just learned that in a spit, don't pull the stick back that quickly or you'll enter this weird hole in the flight model where you fall straight down in a sideways attitude.
The other normal flight, spin entry, spin, and spin exit modes can occasionally be used in fights however. Back in AH, it was possible to get the P-47 into spin mode and fly it out of the spin without actually triggering the code back to normal flight. On one occasion, I triggered a P-47 spin and fought my way out of the spin using traditional anti-spin controls but didn't push and hold the stick full forward which was the recovery method HT required to exit spin mode. That meant that for a while I was flying around at around 250 knots with the plane constantly trying to spin on me. The nose was all over the place, and I could literally turn on a dime at 250 knots because the spin code was in effect and it wanted to make me spin around. Fast footwork on the rudders and quick reactions allowed me to keep the plane right on the edge between a left and right hand spin, so I flew around for quite a while like that. The P-47 was well known for having a tough spin at the time (drex and I won our first con dueling tourny fight that way when both of our opponents spun their p-47s at the merge and spun 10,000 ft without recovering) and that's because the plane would seem to be recovering as you flew out of the spin, but because you didn't hold full fwd stick, the code path never switched from "spin" to "flight" or whatever it is HT calls it, and most players couldn't figure it out and would eventually auger. Knowing the actual elevator position was the key, but how many people recover from a spin while looking backwards at the tail?
So if you know those boundaries and the rules and conditions required to flip from mode to mode, you can really do some amazing things with the planes and AH flight model. Most of them are gimmicky and not very useful, but I know that it's been possible to ride the edge of the spin entry in many planes ever since early WB versions to make very quick turns. Just enter a spin in the direction of spin you desire, and exit it at the right time to fly out heading in the right direction. Mili's old p-38 flip turn trick was nothing more than riding the spin entry. The F-4U could do the same thing if you were careful with the power setting, as "byngtn" (hatch) taught me one evening.
For what it's worth, you can make a real life T-37 do the same thing so it's not even unrealistic. When I was flying the T-37 at Sheppard AFB, I was able to turn the tables several times during instructor continuity training formation rides by causing the plane to *almost* enter a spin, letting it develop just enough to cause the plane to rotate, then recovering at the exact right time with the plane heading in the opposite direction. If done at the right time in a rolling scissors, the plane would rotate right around to the other plane's 6. In the F15E we can do a maneuver that is actually pretty similiar to Mili's old P-38 flip turn, making the plane just rotate in mid-air like a controlled spin entry. It takes intimate knowledge of the aerodynamic capabilities of the plane, just like knowing the details of the AH flight model can let a dedicated player use those flight model features to outfly an opponent. Do it right and it can save your butt. Do it wrong and you can auger or fly right in front of the bandit.
It probably sounds like I'm bagging on HT's flight model, but really I'm not. Real life is full of boundary conditions. In real life, somewhere between spinning and not spinning, a plane is in a "spin entry". But at some point the plane is definately in a spin and at some point it's definately recovered. So knowing how to enter and exit precisely isn't gaming the system, it's just becoming a better flier, the same both in real life and in the game. I'm not saying that Levi is doing this because I don't know, but I know that most really good players find and exploit some of these boundaries even if they don't know that it is what they're doing. It's not cheating, it's "max performing" their aircraft, or in this case the flight model HT has given us to play with. It's a testament to HT and Pyro's skill that most players never know about these boundaries because the transitions are very smooth and invisible unless either you're trained to recognize them or just very observant.
