Doesn't that cord have a serial bus port plug on one end of it? If so how are you going to use it as a buddy cord? I haven't seen what you get with G3. I have G2 which has it's own controller, & NexStar which is just an interface cord that hooks up between Futaba radio, & puter. So unless G3 comes with just a regular buddy chord & an adapter plug from square Futaba to serial bus port for the puter, I really don't see how you could use it as a real buddy cord. The good news is, a real buddy cord only costs about 10 bucks. Actually they from $9.99 to $11.99 depending on which one you need.

Glad to hear you having fun now that you have got it working properly in your puter. Landing on the sim: Might I suggest what got me to finally start landing on the runway when first starting out with the sim. First of all I would set it to "look at ground" under view. This will keep both your plane & the ground in site for you. Then I just started trying to fly real small circuits, just one time around & try to land. By doing these very small circuits I never lost site of the runway therefore I wasn't trying to fish it out of sky when attempting to land. As I did this I started to notice landmarks on the screen where I was to turn on final & so on. Finding landmarks to help me remember where I was at in relationship to the runway allowed me to start venturing out further & further on these circuits until I knew the airport well enough to fly out at a more normal range.

If you're having trouble with the actual touching down of the airplane in your landings then you can break it down to one thing at a time rather than trying to learn it all at once. In other words, start out just taking off enough to become airborne & then back out of it a bit & try to gently float her back down to the ground just easing it in with very little throttle & gently flairing her with slight up elevator as she gets within a few ft of the runway. You can try practicing this over & over without ever leaving the runway area. This allows you to concentrate just on the landing part, instead of keeping track of your location, speed, elevation, approach & landing all at the same time. That will come later after you break it down & master each step individually so to speak. Then you can start putting it all back together again as you feel like it.

Good Luck, I hope this helps some.