mornin Bob, I have the phoenix simulator that I got right after I bought my aurora 9 transmitter. didn't know anything about anything at the time. and one of my mentor's at my club advised me to get a good simulator and practice. it took awhile for me to figure out all that it could do. it's an amazing tool for sure. I have used realflight a few times that a couple of friends had, but didn't like the idea of having to buy expansion packs to update it. with phoenix the updates are free when it logs on, as they become available. on it under the change plane drop down menu , you can set up failures . either at specific times during the flight or randomly. I just assumed they all had this ability. if realflight doesn't , I apologize . I didn't mean any misinformation. my biggest fear is losing the elevator during a flight... and I've practiced safely landing without with several different planes on the sim. of course the ones that are easiest to compensate for have large control surfaces. I've gotten pretty good at knife edging aerobatic planes to touch down and rolling the wings level to land , that being said, it doesn't really matter. the reset button is free. or ,as in my case ,you just wait for it to start over. I meant no harm Bob, and I've not heard of anyone locally having trouble with hitec equipment at all.
but I do feel that they are of better quality than most other brands. just trying to be helpful, instead of trying to lay the blame anywhere. take care