Re: 1.8k to 300 yard warps
This is what happens with AH gets saturated with planes.
Your AH FE tracks the position of every plane in the arena, but at a very coarse level of update detail (not to be confused with graphics LODs). -- that is it gets infrequent updates, and very approximate positions.
When you see a "Dot", you're seeing the vehicles at this level of detail.
Normally, when you get to within 4000 yards, AH switches levels of update detail. we've all seen aircraft "warp" across this boundary.
Now what happens when there's a ton of planes around is that the FE has to pick the nearest 32 (or 48 or 64 -- I dunno) planes. So it reduces the radius of that "update LOD Boundary". Add to that the violent maneuvers, accel and decel of a dogfight, and you've got people warping from 1.8 to 300. If the LOD bubble shrinks small enough, you'll have planes that fly by, shoot you down, and fly out of the bubble between coarse LOD updates.
Nasty, huh?
So when you're in a saturated situation like that, watch out for the guy d 2k behind you.