ORIGINAL: scooterinvegas
You don't think you understand the usefulness of a sim. If you think it JUST to help you learn, your wrong. Get the Champ and have at it. If money is the issue, I think your better off waiting till your in a better place financially, then come back to the hobby.
Yeah the sim let's you practice situations that can get mighty expensive to do the same, in real life.
Better to let simulated failures, etc. teach you how to deal with things, so you have a chance at landing your plane with say a missing rudder and stuck aileron servo.
The sim taught me how to do just that... and when it happened in real life to me, I had the "muscle memory" in place to deal with the situation.