maybe thats the problem...flying without complex engine management.:confused:
im not sure, cause i always fly with it enabled, but i can remember that after a full reinstall of CLOD i forgot to adjust the realism settings before i flew the first sortie and realised that my Emil seemed to be pretty slow.after i changed the settings again, the problem was gone......

but i had an interesting incident a while back...i flew a self made offline mission over the channel.one bf for the player, 12spits,12hurris and 12 beaufighters.all ai enemies have the default skills. i always use that mission for the quick fun, as i start in the air and have immediately 36 enemies around me...however im really used to this mission as i play it really often and know how the ai planes normally behave. but someday one hurri suddenly seperated from its group and began do climb.they do that pretty often, followed by some rolls and dives. but this time the hurri keeped climbing from 500 meters(where all planes have their first waypoint) to over 3k, while proceeding wide turns.first i thought that its only a matter of some few seconds until i will catch and shoot it, like its used to be, but i just couldnt catch the hurri.at about 3k the hurri leveled off and kept altitude.i still couldnt get close enough, and it kept a distance of approximately 500 meters to me.after a while it began to dive, i followed the dive but it was still as fast as me and the distance was unchanged. finally the hurri regrouped with its comrades, and suddenly seemed to change its behaviour.i had the whole swarm in front of me, but focused only on that ai bastard who just outclimbed,outran and outdived me.i came into shooting distance and gave him a burst.he tried to roll and climb again,and although my shots missed him, he all of a sudden wasnt able anymore to escape.

i remember luthier saying about the ai in cliffs of dover, that one can never know if your enemy is a rookie or an ace.maybe the game sometimes selects by coincidence an ace even if you gave the ai a certain skill level.

CEM off equals slower planes, ut seems that the main effect is to disable prop pitch controls and limit your maximum rpm. this is certainly the case with the spits in the two sorties I flew with it off. Turn CEM on but keep overheating off if you want a simpler learning curve.

If it was the E-4 check that the prop pitch is moving. I have noticed that the automatic prop pitch sometimes get stuck when it's auto set lower than 9.