Catching Flak....

One easy way to make enemies on your own side is to kill-steal. It comes in many flavors, and alot of times people don't reckognize it, or they don't know that they themselves are doing it. It can happen when a Zoom and Boom (ZnB) drops from alt to shoot someone in a low alt dogfight. It can happen when many planes are chasing a single enemy. It can happen when a low alt buff comes over a base, and the "train" jumps on it. The art of NOT kill-stealing, is to see when you are putting yourself into that very situation. If you can reckognize the situation before it is created, you can stay away from it. True, it verily sucks to NOT go after a target, but it shows your maturity and savvy.
Flying at a higher altitude, or what we call "flying two mistakes higher than everyone" gives you a better over all picture, let alone giving you the alt to make two mistakes and still recover. Seeing a low con, observing if anyone is chasing said con. Will you get there before someone else will? Is the target on fire? If yes, then ignore it, it's not yours to kill. But lets stop there for a moment. The rule is "if the plane is on fire, you cannot shoot at it". Reason is that it is already "killed" by someone else. But what about multiengine planes? Is it ok then? Everyone has heard the fallacy that the P-38 dual engines gave it more chance to survive (it didn't), and if we believe that (which we shouldn't) then it goes to reason that with one engine it is still a threat. Or is it really a treat?
A B-24 is on fire in an engine, but just a single engine. Fair game? I think so, but does the admin? Who knows, cause ArticViper is drunk at the time. Me, I shoot at it. If it really isn't missing substantial controls, to me its a threat. Now if I see missing tail parts, or ailerons, I am not that greedy. I also kinda watch the radio buffer to see if the intended target as lost controls due to someone's attack. I will usually not shoot if this is the case. I know I have nailed a b-29's controls, peeled off the attack, just to watch a score whore dive in to take it. Que sara sara.
Now the trade off here is if the Admin, or "convicted child molester" (just kidding) as I like to call them on Teamspeak when no one but my brother is on, does he think you have been a little greedy. Usually, after a couple of shots of tequila, they don't know a Yak from Yakoff Smirnoff, but they generally will ask you about it before you are kicked. Tell them the truth, and if that doesn't work, kiss ass. If you WERE a dick (heaven forbid) and deserve the kick, you will generally be banned for just a day, or until a Nazi Torture Doctor (admin) gets off of work release and tells his 11 years old to "go fix that computer doohicky", and makes sure the porn is safely hidden, later to be found is some fabulous "Gary Gitter" screw up.
You can go on and on about kill stealing, and you can have the 12 year old mentality were you need to feed your ego. Or you can have a reward like I once had at one of our Warbirds conventions. I guy came up to me because he reckognized my call sign. He said that I had covered his wing while he went after a kill. I called his 6 for him, and he got the kill and got away, but remembered me covering and not trying to shoulder shoot. That made me feel good he knew the call sign for something good I did. And I could bet that if he saw me in trouble, saw the callsign, he would help me out, and I may not even know about it. Remember that next time you land after a 3 kill mission. You probably got help and lived, and never even knew it.