Eagl, I almost never encounter you in the skies, but I remember one encounter from perhaps almost a year ago very distinctly. You were in a Spit 9 and I was in a...well I can't remember but it was some less-manueverable and poorer climbing plane. It might have been a 47-D25. We had a 1v1 low in a canyon for about 5 minutes.
Just want to give you my brief impressions on your flying style from that one encounter.
Put simply, you didn't take your plane to it's performance edge. There were a million ways you could have killed me, low and pretty slow as I was, but you reverted to the safe manuever at each opportunity. In the end, that is what ended up being the difference.
So, rather than saddle up and chop throttle, you would opt to zoom past and then re-merge later. When I initiated scissors, rather than you taking a semi-risky crossing shot (only risky if you miss) you zoomed up and over instead. Despite the fact that we were in a canyon and my horizontal manuevering was very contrained, you never really established a "perch" from which to work down upon me (which would have been the end of me, because I had no vertical options due to my lower speed, and due to the canyon could not evade much horizontally).
I remember being very surprised that I emerged victorious after several minutes, due to the plane matchup versus a Spit 9, given our low and slow starting state. I was even more surprised when I saw the name of who I had shot down, because I knew you had been around the game a long time and your flying style was more consistent with someone "playing it safe, learning the ropes" rather than a longtime "pushing the envelope" flyer.
So I'm not sure if this was any help, just my observations from one encounter. Your overall grasp of the plane and E management was fine, better than average, but you lacked aggression at the critical times when it would have resulted in the kill for you. Maybe it was just an off day. But if what I recalled rings true to you, my vague recommendation would be to fly a little more aggressively, finish an opponent as quickly as you can, even if it means slowing yourself down and saddling up, because ultimately they may turn the tables in the long run.
