RE: A few questions from a new guy
For me sims are not the same as flying. I learned to fly before I got a sim. I use the sim in winter to keep the rust off. I do think sims are great and can help while learning. I have seen a few new pilots that learned on a sim and they progressed very fast. Of course I don't know how fast they would have gone without the sim first.
Warbirds is a big open catagory. The same plane from different companies can have very different flight charactistics, some good some bad.