[nearmiss]

If you fly the P-51 and P-63, which I'm familiar. The Ball and slip indicator is mounted right under the gunsight. The placement of that little ball is darned important, and it would appear some aircraft mfgr actually understood it's roll in good targeting.

A suggestion...

Run some quick missions, click the "T" key for wingtip smoke so you can really follow your flight path in the mission, and make a track of each mission.

Ignore the ball and just shoot like heck to kill everything you can targeting as you're comfortable. Then when you are done run the tracks. Make sure you look at the tracks from about 100 yards from outside views of the player, and the enemy. You do this and watch carefully, you'll see how many times you're trying to get hits on an elusive AI enemy and how often you are skidding and you don't even know it. You'll see the skids and the bullets that just fly all around your enemy with no hits. You'll swear you are targeting well with the gunsight, which you probably are.

Remember, skidding, gravity and wind can definitely take you off target.

I was astonished when I started doing this. WHen I started watching that little ole' gauge and standing on the ball I improved my shooting significantly.

I may regret sharing this, especially when I met you Online and get my legs waxed. LOL

... Don't ignore trimming either. You want to trim up so your flying as level as you can before you engage. You can't control everything as tight on trim as you might like in a furrball, but at least you've trimmed out straight and level before you went into the scrap. If you are in heavy winds you may have to oscillate your pitch and/or yaw control when you're actually shooting to compensate. Remember this about trim, it isn't an autopilot. It's is a small manual adjustment in your control surfaces, which can change frequently with your flying and other outside influences.

Good shooting.