Unfortunately for me, a bad attitude at altitude!

I'm still getting used to flying the Camel which is the one plane I've patiently waited for in RoF. Like Dart, at least according to his recent posts, I tend to fly one plane almost exclusively so that I can hopefully fly it well; that was my pattern in OFF and I'm going to maintain that in RoF, again with the Camel, my favourite.

So, I'm at least aware of some of the Camel's quirky flying characteristics even if I haven't mastered her yet in this sim. I was puzzled, therefore, when I found that at times I can twist and turn in a flight session with no problem, yet other times I am flipping, flopping and going into unrecoverable left spins. It finally dawned on me that the difficult and erratic flight was happening at much higher altitudes. I have been using the "free fly" scenarios for practice and when I picked a "balloon attack", for example, I fly just fine, albeit carefully as usual, in banking turns with this plane. This scenario I've noticed is set at about 5000 ft. But, if I choose "bomber escort" which is set at about 11 to 12000 ft., Camel flys very differently and will flop and spin in a second with far less turning and banking, often resulting in a vicous left spin from which I can rarely recover.

I'm having a great time flying the Camel and I'll keep working on mastering her behaviour, but I just wonder if others have noticed this particular behaviour. I didn't think that this amount of altitude difference would result in such different behaviour, but perhaps it does.

It's also quite possible that I'm just a very bad pilot...

The Camel wasn't a high altitude fighter and performed better at lower altitudes. The camel's older brother (the pup) on the other hand excelled at high altitudes as did I think the Dolphin.

On large sorties into hunland, late 1917 and through 1918, the SE's/Dolphin's would cover at high altitude whilst the Camels patrolled at lower altitudes to attract the attention of those ridiculous little DR1 contraptions so the Aussie gunners could shoot 'em down

11.000-12.000ft was not considered high altitude for a Camel.
Actually they often crossed the front at that altitude.
According to some aces that was the best altitude to fight at with the Camel.
High cover ... they did fly high, up to 15.000-20.000ft.
Only our online furballers begin to fight at tree tops, with 25% fuel or less.

All I'm saying is the Camel was not a good high altitude fighter (ie at heights of 15K and higher) but of course it flew at those heights when ordered to. There was a war on after all. So if RoF models sluggish FM at 11-12K there's a good chance it's wrong

All rotaries were sluggish at higher altitudes, especially 15,000 ft and more. It's one of the reasons they were phased out as the war progressed.

I have the same problem with the Hurricane IIb in IL-2 (where, it's true, I picked one plane to be good in); the solution is to mentally double the time required to do maneuvers, or rather, half the control input.

Tonight I was taking on baddies in my beloved Hurri at 15K+ altitudes and doing okay until I got inpatient. Man, I hate Japanese planes!