Hello Yarbles!
The planes I usually recommend to start in are the Spitfire MkVIII or MkIX or the F6F. All of them are not best, but good in everything and have a very forgiving handling. The F6F also needs flaps to turn, so if you have no prior flight Sim experience and no idea what im talking about here, the Spits are probably your best bet.
Are you using a Joystick or do you only have a mouse/keyboard?
For views: yes, in most online arenas (except Training Arena) the views in fighters are restricted to internal cockpit. This is the case for everyone! But be aware of one thing: you can look around with the numpad (or even better the hatswitch on a Joystick) and also have a look up (kp 5 or a button mapped on stick). Including the combination of those views and the default position, you get a total of 18 view directions. All those views are adjustable in the head position.
If you look back, by default you only see the headrest. Now hold the kp2 key and adjust your heads position with arrow keys and page up/down, untill you have a maximum visibility back. Then save that head position with F10. Now every time you hit kp2 to look back again, you get the saved head position again.... gotta do that for all views and each plane separatly.
http://www.netaces.org/ahview/view.html#title one of those 100 pages
. Seriously: Loose sight, loose fight! Learning to track your opponent in a fight is THE single most important thing. Knowing the view system and its use is mandatory for that.
Speed: What Straffo meant was, that there are two "different speeds" in a plane. IAS (Indicated Air Speed) and TAS (True Air Speed). TAS is the speed that you are really travelling at. IAS is the speed that gets measured on the outside of your plane (usually a wing), where the speed of the airflow is measured (kind a like counting the air molecules that pass by in a certain time). Since at higher altitude, the air is thinner (ie less molecules pass by at same speed), the IAS is slower, then the TAS, the higher you get the bigger the difference between the two.
On your speed indicator, the white needle is always the indicated airspeed. Theres also a second, small red speck ("needle") which tells you your true airspeed. Notice that the higher you climb, the further apart those two are.
To get numerical values of your current speeds, check the E6B on your clipboard (ESC).
Flaps: The only lower at slow speeds. For mose planes, speed for first notch of flaps is around 160-180 mph. Flaps are meant to give you additional lift to the wings at low speeds (on landing or in real tight stallfights).
Trim: If you are new to the whole flight sim thing, i recommend you turn on Auto Combat Trim (under OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > Flight on your clipboard). It will trim your plane automatically level at all times. While it does have its disadvantages in certain situations, they are minute and you have a lot other, more important things to worry about for now.
As for not reading the manual to make a game harder for you to master.... let me give you one piece of advice: AH will be hard enough to learn even WITH reading the "manual".... do yourself a favor and look at it
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http://www.netaces.org and
http://trainers.hitechcreations.com are the places to go to start you. You will also find information about trim on those pages.
