RWH,
I'd suggest reading the forum a bit before posting (at least posting multiple messages). That's what I was hoping you'd do before I replied here.
There's another complaint about practice level 4, so I suspect a bug is in play. If memory serves, there was a reply to the other poster that he might skip the rest of the practice levels for the moment and dive into multiplayer. I think that's a good suggestion for you too, if you feel comfortable flying, maneuvering, and evading.
If you happen to spawn into a multiplayer game that is the midst of a huge fire fight over your base, you can quit the game, wait a few minutes, and try spawning again. Hopefully you'll find a slower paced game. Well, others would argue that jumping into the midst of a firing frenzy is the best thing for learning, and I sort of agree... nothing like baptism by fire! But if you don't even see who killed you, sometimes the specific learning is tough to ascertain, IMO.
As for a fix, the developer (aka Zuperman, Zup, Z, Joaquin, and The Man With Many Things To Do But Not Enough Time In A Day) is in the midst of a server migration that requires a bunch of re-writing from scratch. You posted in the right place, and he's seen it. You might reply with your device type, and Dogfight release version # (About menu in the game).
I hope to see you in the skies!
Manfred