I use my Aeroflight Pro sim pretty much the same way Barry. Here it can rain for weeks so it gives me some stick time while I'm waiting and just like you said to practice a new manuver. Since I'm instructing at the field now I do ask the students that want to fly if they have a sim and have found that if they have some sim time they seem more ready for the "real" plane, except for landing and take off. Landing and take off, at our field anyway, is nothing like the sim. It's funny, this one younger guy came down to the field and wanted to fly. He said that he had flown the sim quite a bit. The funny thing was that after only his 3rd flight up (just flying around) he asked when he could get his solo card. (?) [X(] I wouldn't want to burst his bubble or hold him back but landing and take off from the real field is quite different. I don't know if he ever took the test. I haven't seem him back there since.