Look, I hate to have to be the one to tell you, but you were going to find out sometime.

Video Games, including Real Flight, Suck. You'll spend hours and hours on your butt doing NOTHING. No accomplishment whatsoever.

Combat on video games? That's like the Kobayashi Maru on Star Trek. There is no real threat. No real chance of damage. If you can't really lose you can't win. The decline of this nation, I'm afraid, didn't start with long hair, or drugs. It started with Battle Zone. Was hastened with Donkey Kong. And sealed with Duke Nukem. We've done nothing but sit on our butts and play games ever since as the only people who actually knew how to be productive got old and died.

Put it away. Go out and buy yourself some fanfold and build 6 or 7 planes equipped and hand 2 of them to some buddies and make them use their receivers. Then have them come over and help make replacements. You'll be playing REAL combat in the REALworld and having REALfun. Not paying some nerd 150 bucks for an idiotic program to sit in front of.