Agreed that it's the 'pilots' who give it the bad name. And agreed that it has much more to do with it being one of the planes of choice of the newer folks for the most part.
When you see an LA7 you expect that you'll see shooting from way out, while going light speed and not much more. Not often do you run into an LA driver who actually fights in it. What they've heard is that it's real fast, and has big cannons. So they go real fast and shoot big cannons.
N1Ks fall into that category a bit because of the 4 cannons, but they are more apt to at least attempt to turn occasionally.
Spit 16 drivers are more apt to stick around and fight, only because they've heard it's uber and can out turn everything, which of course isn't true but they've not gotten the memo yet.
51D drivers are in it initially because they've watched the history channel and know what a Mustang is. They also know they can go really fast and are hard to catch when they've dropped from 20K to the 2K fight, shot once and blown through.
Does it mean there are no really good LA drivers? Nope. As with any bird, there are those guys who can do magic in them, but they are the exception, not the rule.
In my opinion of course
